Word: specious
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...academic year’s end drew near, some of the gravest transgressions against justice manifested in the national issue of immigration policy. The passage of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 represents the worst of our nation’s approaches to problem solving. Its reliance on specious standards of “reasonable suspicion” that seemed to entail nothing further than “looking” like an illegal immigrant remains unacceptable. More horrifying, perhaps, this bill will negatively affect the nation’s Hispanic and Latin-American communities, who will undoubtedly...
Similarly, the contention that humor’s right to free speech should not be protected but that news or some purely informational medium should enjoy that special protection is an unnecessary and specious privileging of one form of expression over another. Rights are indiscriminate and should not be subject to the weak claim that the work of a Pryor, Carlin, Wilde, or Maher is a lower form of speech than journalism. Much like other types of expression, there is valuable humor and humor that is less so—but all of it deserves to be protected...
...water and power. To make matters worse, the Slums Act, passed in 2006, provided legal authority to sentence those who resist eviction by up to five years in prison. Although most of these evictions occur for shack dwellings in which there are significant health and security risks it is specious for the government to not provide alternative housing—while it finances the building of stadiums...
...reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias - i.e., a preference for centrism - whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry...
...calling upon young people to engage the critical issue of energy independence and hope that students at MIT and other universities answer this call. We also endorse the current effort on Capitol Hill to pass climate-change legislation. However, we urge lawmakers not to resort to the specious and politically convenient answers of ethanol and clean coal, the inefficient and experimental favorites of special interests, and recognize that nuclear power must be an integral part of any comprehensive solution to this crisis.Since the infamous Three Mile Island incident in 1979, there has been a de facto moratorium on the construction...