Resultados Editorial "Audible Studios" en Legislación

Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband.

Misfit Jeremiah Rodgers, 21, and racist devil worshipper Jonathan Lawrence, 23, were serving time for petty crimes when they met in a Florida penal-system mental hospital. A friendship grew from their shared lust for sadistic brutality, and once released they teamed up to hunt human prey. In March 1998, in Pensacola, Florida, while quietly watching TV, Leighton Smitherman was shot in the back by assailants hiding outside his home.

Recalling the great muckrakers of the past, an outraged team of America's best-selling writers unite to confront the disasters of wrongful convictions. Wrongful convictions, long regarded as statistical anomalies in an otherwise sound justice system, now appear with frightening regularity. But few people understand just how or why they happen and, more important, the immeasurable consequences that often haunt the lucky few who are acquitted years after they are proven innocent.

Since the "surge" in Iraq in 2006, counterinsurgency effectively became America's dominant approach for fighting wars. Yet many of the major controversies and debates surrounding counterinsurgency have turned not on military questions but on legal ones: Who can the military attack with drones? Is the occupation of Iraq legitimate? What tradeoffs should the military make between self-protection and civilian casualties? What is the right framework for negotiating with the Taliban? How can we build the rule of law in Afghanistan?

Thurgood Marshall was the most important American lawyer of the 20th century. He transformed the nation's legal landscape by challenging the racial segregation that had relegated millions to second-class citizenship. He won 29 of 33 cases before the United States Supreme Court, was a federal appeals court judge, served as the US solicitor general, and, for 24 years, sat on the Supreme Court. Marshall is best known for achievements after he relocated to New York in 1936 to work for the NAACP.

Same-sex marriage has become one of the most volatile issues in American politics. But if most young people support gay marriage, and if there are clear indicators that a substantial majority of the population will soon favor it, why has the outcry against it been so strong?

The greatest threat to privacy today is not the NSA, but good-old American companies. Internet giants, leading retailers, and other firms are voraciously gathering data with little oversight from anyone. In Las Vegas, no company knows the value of data better than Caesars Entertainment. Many thousands of enthusiastic clients pour through the ever-open doors of their casinos. The secret to the company’s success lies in their one unrivaled asset: they know their clients intimately by tracking the activities of the overwhelming majority of gamblers.

As renowned national security law scholar Laura K. Donohue explains in The Future of Foreign Intelligence, global communications systems and digital technologies have changed our lives in countless ways. But they have also contributed to a worrying transformation. New and emerging technologies have radically expanded the amount and type of information that the government collects about US citizens.

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, Our Bodies, Whose Property? challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies.

Americans are losing the freedom to make sense of daily choices - teachers can't maintain order in the classroom, managers are trained to avoid candor, schools ban tag, and companies plaster inane warnings on everything: "Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller". Philip K. Howard’s urgent argument is full of examples, often darkly humorous. What’s at stake, Howard explains in this seminal book, is the vitality of American culture.

An examination of the initial years of the Roberts Court and the intellectual battle between Roberts and Kagan for leadership. When John Roberts was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court, he said he would act as an umpire. Instead, his Court is reshaping legal precedent through decisions unmistakably - though not always predictably - determined by politics as much as by law, on a Court almost perfectly politically divided.

The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think. Sure, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship.

When the states ratified the Bill of Rights in the 18th century, the Fourth Amendment seemed straightforward. It requires that government respect the right of citizens to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Of course, "papers and effects" are now digital and thus more vulnerable to government spying. But the biggest threat may be our own weakening resolve to preserve our privacy.

From healthcare to workplace conduct, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. The most alarming consequence of ineffective policies, in addition to unrealized social goals, is the growing threat to the government’s democratic legitimacy. Understanding why government fails so often - and how it might become more effective - is an urgent responsibility of citizenship.

From the lead prosecutor on the Enron investigation, an eye-opening examination of the explosion of American white-collar crime. If "corporations are people, too", why isn't anyone in jail? A serious defect in a GM car causes accidents; Enron scams investors out of their money; banks bet on the housing market crash and win. In the race to maximize profits, corporations can behave in ways that are morally outrageous but technically legal.

HATE dispels misunderstandings plaguing our perennial debates about "hate speech vs. free speech", showing that the First Amendment approach promotes free speech and democracy, equality, and societal harmony. We hear too many incorrect assertions that "hate speech" - which has no generally accepted definition - is either absolutely unprotected or absolutely protected from censorship. Rather, US law allows government to punish hateful or discriminatory speech in specific contexts when it directly causes imminent serious harm.

Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when.

The inside story of the most audacious public health campaign of the 21st century. In 2002, a dynamic doctor named Thomas Frieden became health commissioner of New York City. With support from the new mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Frieden and his health department team prohibited smoking in bars, outlawed trans fats in restaurants, and attempted to cap the size of sodas, among other groundbreaking actions.

From the best-selling author of A Vast Conspiracy and The Run of His Life comes Too Close to Call - the definitive story of the Bush-Gore presidential recount. A political and legal analyst of unparalleled journalistic skill, Jeffrey Toobin is the ideal writer to distill the events of the 36 anxiety-filled days that culminated in one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history.