The Weekly Sift

This week’s Sift will be a little longer than usual because I’m about to take two weeks off*, so I can’t push any articles back to next Monday.

Last week I talked about ideological bubbles and how to know if you’re in one. I should have mentioned the best technique for avoiding getting into a bubble in the first place: Read original documents from the other side, not just the paraphrases of them that your side generates.

With that in mind, this week I read the 91-page document Paul Ryan wrote to advertise his budget. So this week’s first featured article is my report “I Read Paul Ryan’s Budget”.

The second featured article will look at an issue the Sift hasn’t covered very well, the Keystone Pipeline. Supporters of the pipeline have done such a good job getting their message out that I think a lot of people regard building the pipeline as a “common sense” idea, while opposition seems fringy. I make the don’t-build-it case in “A Hotter Planet is in the Pipeline”.

The weekly summary talks about the new pope, Senator Portman’s switch on same-sex marriage, how an entire committee’s worth of Republicans can oppose 91% of the public, the Cruz-Feinstein clash, and a few other things.

*Not really. I’ve just got too much other stuff going to be able to get a Sift out. Next Saturday I’ll be giving two completely different talks at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And I’ll be leading the Sunday service at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois on March 31, which to my great surprise turns out to be Easter. No pressure there. (Funny story about that, which I’ll tell next Monday in my quarterly column at uuworld.org.)