US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3608

On April 15 2016 02:25 Kipsate wrote:
The alternative is that they are both wrong and just are trying to advance their own agenda

But that would be wrong!

On April 14 2016 10:07 oneofthem wrote:
how heavy is experimental design and statistics in a bio program?

ive actually helped my dad edit some of his medical research papers it seems pretty heavy on the statistical and design aspects. this is in molecular cardiology

On April 15 2016 03:16 cLutZ wrote:


Its kind of involved from what I've seen. But IMO in a bad way, because all the options gives them too many chances to massage stats to get the result they need to be "significant".

When I worked in a lab we actually just submitted our work to the university stats department because our principal hated stats (despite being pretty bright mostly) and she trusted no one with them. This, however, also led to her aggravation when we would do 160 hours of experimentation to achieve no significance (and some of them I know we could have gotten with the 2 tailed tests you learn in Bio 101).

Microsoft sued the US government on Thursday for the right to tell customers when authorities search their email inboxes.

In a federal complaint that names the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the company argues the government has taken advantage of the consumer trend for storing their private data on tech companies’ servers, rather than storing it on their own devices. This shouldn’t let the government search the digital equivalent of a person’s desk without telling them, Microsoft argues.

The government counters that doing so may tip off suspects of a criminal investigation.

The salvo marks the latest effort by a major US technology firm to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding modern electronic surveillance. It comes after several attempts in recent years by Twitter, Google and Microsoft to have gag orders about surveillance requests removed. The industry has a renewed confidence in taking on the government following Apple’s recent stare-down with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In this case, Microsoft wants a judge to rule a statute unconstitutional that allows the government to request indefinite gag orders on warrants for suspects’ emails. With traditional searches or wiretaps, the government is often required to notify people they have been searched after some period of time.

That’s not the case with digital communications like email, which is covered by legislation including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has decided he may want some help from Washington after all to stop Trump.

But alas, his entreaties to his Senate colleagues aren't going very well.

Cruz is facing varied and dynamic obstacles in his quest to build support on the Hill. Some senators are stubbornly nursing grudges against the freshman senator's 2013 government shutdown gambit or any other number of slights and affronts he committed as a freshman senator that made him deeply unpopular. Other senators endorsed candidates who already dropped out of the race and are unwilling to repeat that mistake with Donald Trump the clear frontrunner and Cruz likely needing a contested convention to win the nomination.

Ultimately, Cruz is little more than a polarizing colleague asking individual senators to go out on a limb for him on his long-shot bid to deny Trump the nomination. It's a request that makes for sometimes awkward private conversations.

According to one Republican senator, who was given anonymity to disclose details about the conversation with Cruz he had, Cruz's pitch went beyond a standard courtesy call.

"It wasn't a short phone call," the Republican senator said. "It wasn't a hello, help me phone call."

The senator said Cruz's pitch is that even though he had disagreements with the conference on strategy, he and his colleagues had shared the same goals.

Cruz has been reaching out both by phone and in person to make appeals to senators. He spoke directly with Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) when he was in Colorado last weekend and talked on the telephone with freshman South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott last week. He's also dispatched his only two Senate supporters so far Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and onetime adversary Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to make appeals on the Hill in his stead.

On April 15 2016 04:38 oneofthem wrote:
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/4/14/11421744/bernie-sanders-tax-revolution

gee i wonder why these highly informed voters would do this

Sen. Mark Kirk isn’t just distancing himself from the rest of the GOP — he’s fleeing from it.

From the Supreme Court vacancy battle to gay rights to criminal justice reform, the moderate Illinois Republican is sounding more like a Democrat with each passing day as he fights to save his political life in an overwhelmingly blue state this fall.

Kirk is one of just two outliers in the Senate GOP Conference on whether the chamber should vote on Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court this year and has bent over backward to show he disagrees with his fellow Republicans. Aside from telling other Republicans to “man up” and vote on President Barack Obama’s nominee, Kirk has circulated memos to Republicans touting Garland and boasted about a personal note from Obama thanking Kirk for advocating for his nominee.

Just this week, Kirk co-sponsored a criminal justice reform bill that would loosen some mandatory minimum sentences, despite complaints within the GOP that it would unwittingly release violent criminals early from prison. And he joined with five of the most liberal senators to urge the NBA to move its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, in response to the state’s controversial new law that bans anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people.

Kirk’s strategy is dictated by his home state’s leftward bent: His Democratic challenger, Tammy Duckworth, may need to do little more than emphasize her party label to oust him in November. Kirk has long been considered the most endangered GOP incumbent in an awful year for Republican senators trying to get reelected. The party is defending 24 seats, and one of two divisive figures, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, is likely to be leading its ticket.

“For me, it’s just Mark Kirk being Mark Kirk, because I was always very independent of my party in the House, as well as in the Senate,” Kirk, a former House member, said in an interview with Politico on Wednesday. “I think for Illinois, they want a thoughtful, independent voice and not just a party Xerox.”

There has been little public polling in the Illinois Senate race; the most recent was in July from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, and it showed Duckworth defeating Kirk, 42 percent to 36 percent. Though she faced an intraparty challenge from former Chicago Urban League CEO Andrea Zopp, Duckworth left the March primary mostly unscathed.