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Kushnick, Part 1 | Please, sir, may I have another? ASK THIS The nation's major telecom companies have been ripping us off blind for 20 years, writes customer advocate Bruce Kushnick. And now they want to weasel out of their obligation to provide affordable telephone service to homes? 
A critical issue | Are politicians prepared for the enormous change taking place in America? ASK THIS Before long more than half the U.S. population will be people of color. Today many of them are disadvantaged, in need of better education, job training and financial assistance – and many will be voting this year. Incumbents and challengers need to be asked what ideas, if any, they have for a group that represents so much of America’s future.
'Today, errors aren't remedied' | Time to abandon the death penalty? ASK THIS Estimates are that 4 to 8 percent of people on death row are innocent. How many wrongful executions are too many? David Dow, author, constitutional lawyer, and founder of the Texas Innocence Network, poses four key death penalty questions and explores the answers to them.
Endgame | In Afghanistan massacre, did the gunman act alone? ASK THIS After a U.S. Army sergeant slaughters civilians in Afghanistan, some important questions about not just the incident, but the larger U.S. mission.
What about the old? | What do the presidential candidates know about the retirement security crisis, and what do they plan to do about it? ASK THIS A scholar at the Claude Pepper Foundation writes that the presidential candidates should be required to clearly and fully articulate their policies. And journalists then have an obligation to assess the extent to which these proposed policies respond to the objective facts about the economic realities of old age.
New nukes? | So many questions about nuclear power ASK THIS How competitive is nuclear power? How safe? And how practical? Two scientists examine the future of nuclear power in the U.S. and find many fruitful but unexplored lines of inquiry for journalists.
Learning from history | Six questions reporters should ask of anyone advocating military action against Iran ASK THIS Avoiding another war of choice will require a media that digs beyond agenda-driven analysis and prevents the debate from being curtailed, write the authors. It will require a media that doesn't permit a question of life and death to be framed in a simplistic manner that leaves the U.S. with a false choice of either bombing Iran or accepting an Iranian bomb.
30,000 deaths a year | 'Is the NRA paying mainstream reporters by the hour?' ASK THIS Two gun control advocates say that misstatements and fuzzy data coming from the National Rifle Association often are accepted by the press unchecked, and then disseminated, incorrectly, as trends and facts in American life. They point out, among other things, that gun sales are not perpetually rising; that neither are sales of guns to women, and that lax 'carry laws' have not been shown to lessen crime. There’s a lot of misinformation being spread, hardly examined at all by the press.
Good deeds? | As income inequality grows, are charities making the problem better or worse? ASK THIS Most major charities are surprisingly unresponsive to economic suffering and increased inequality, writes an advocate for more socially responsive philanthropy. In fact, fueled by massive tax write-offs and paying big salaries to top executives, some look more like the problem than the solution.
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