Anytime you report bad behavior on the part of company officials, you invite the possibility of retaliation. That's why most well-run companies have an ethics hotline where you can report abuses. For information on how to report, look in places like breakrooms (or wherever your company posts things like labor rules) for informational posters, or at your company's intranet site. If your company is of any size, they'll have an ethics hotline, and they're better equipped than you are to get to the bottom of issues like these. You can usually report anonymously.

Good luck.

It's called the market. If we were to stop subsidizing highway construction, and tax fuel to reflect the true cost of dumping CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere, the "invisible hand" of the marketplace would automatically build the appropriate costs into both local and remotely grown produce, and each product would stand or fall on its own merits.

The problem with trying to buy more responsibly is, as the article points out, it's too hard to figure out. Most of us don't have the time to research the true carbon costs of our apples, avocados, beans, berries, cantaloupes, chard, etc, etc. But if the true costs of the products are built into their actual prices, we can look at the relative price and quality and make rational choices.

So - want to make a difference? Help convince your Congress-critters to implement carbon taxation (cap & trade works too). And argue against funding road improvements from general revenue - they should be funded 100% from fuel taxes.

The bill failed because Hoyer and Pelosi couldn't count? Because Pelosi made an entirely routine Bush-bashing speech that the Republicans WEREN'T EVEN LISTENING TO, and somehow it hurt their fucking feelings?

Tune in to a message from Planet Earth, Tom - this bill, even with the improvements made to it, sucks donkey balls. It's still a giant giveaway of taxpayer dollars to the richest of the rich. And even considering that, the Democratic caucus delivered all the votes they were able to commit to and then some, whereas the WATB GOP caucus threw a temper tantrum and voted no, and their leaders were too clueless or too powerless to do anything about that.

Let's take advantage of this crappy bill's defeat to write one that solves the problems of ordinary people, rather than hedge fund managers and investment bankers.

From the article:

When -- they claimed -- he refused to drop his weapon, they gunned him down.

This is what I think we know based on the article:

1. The guy threatened a group of at least two FEMA agents.

2. When the police responded, he threatened them as well.

3. He fired on SWAT team officers when they entered his house.

Given all that, is there any reason to use constructions like " - they claimed - [he refused to drop the weapon]", and "gunned down"? Given the sequence of events discussed here, I think that a more neutral "SWAT team members reported they shot and killed the man after he refused to drop his weapon" would have been more appropriate.

I'm all in favor of strict scrutiny of police actions, particularly when someone gets killed - but given what we're told in the article, it seems pretty likely that events went down exactly as described. This comes across as gratuitous police-bashing.

I don't see how it's going to be possible to explain these kinds of systems to the average voter in terms he or she can understand. And failing that, you're still left trusting in some experts that your vote is being counted. "Voter-verifiable" elections sound like a geek's dream, but I fear it would actually make things worse for everyone else - most people understand the idea of locked ballot boxes, trusted agents for vote counting, the potential for recounts, and other current technologies for election integrity; but I think the idea that getting a receipt with some magic numbers on it will somehow "prove" your vote was counted, is not going to cut it for most. Average folks seem likely to trust this process even less.

From the article:

...he found the area of the screen where the buttons for President are located are extremely close together. He blames the problem in part on poor design by software programmers, and adds that there may be sensitivity issues with the screen itself.

Cyrus's response: "In other words, it's the voter's fault". What? The quote clearly says the it's a combination of software and hardware problems in the system itself. How could anyone conclude he was blaming the voter?

What were you thinking?

I saw this, and I was really unimpressed. For one thing, the interview became far less about what Ms. Yellin was actually "there" to talk about, and more about the gee-whiz technology itself. And even if Wolf had managed to focus on the topic of the evening, was there anything whatsoever gained by having Yellin "holographically" present? Why couldn't they have just put her face on an ordinary camera? This pseudo-holography seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

I guess I was wrong. I want the 10 minutes of my life back that I spent reading that article. Seriously - if this article had been printed anywhere else, the good writers of Broadsheet would have been quick to announce their disgust (rightfully so, in my mind).

While I'm getting good and worked up, does Ms. Kaplan write about anything but butts? Someone should tell her about the heartbreak of being typecast.

Finally, about those Editor's Choice selections - over 270 letters to the editor about this article. Per my quick persusal, a majority of those shared my low opinion of it. Fourteen selected as Editor's Choice, and ALL BUT ONE LOVED IT? Self-justifying, much? Who did the selecting, the author? Come on, folks, some of us only have time to read the EC letters. You ought to make an effort to showcase a variety of thoughts about the article - not just the ones you agree with.