Biden has proposed to have health insurance companies pay for Covid-19 tests, with a limited number of tests available gratis through community clinics.

By international standards, this is an inadequate plan.

Arguing that Cop26 produced a weak declaration because of the unfairness of singling out coal over oil and gas.

There is some truth in that, but I think it is a matter of details. There are many powerful specific interests in one kind of fossil fuel or another. Whatever set of priorities among fossil fuel activities an international campaign might choose — including the set, "all fossil fuels are equally bad" — will arouse strong opposition somewhere. That opposition will create arguments about "fairness", all aimed at "reduce that other fossil fuel in that other region first".

There will be no fairness in the climate disaster we are heading for. Wealthy countries such as the US will be able to keep things going for longer than India.

US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 and ask per to ask the House leaders to bring the MORE Act (H.R. 3617) to a vote.

This bill would end federal prohibition of marijuana.

The British military has eliminated command influence in the response to accusations of rape. This means that your commander won't be able to protect the accused.

Command influence is the poison in the military justice system, and people have campaigned for decades to eliminate it from the US military.

The US rejected the idea of a treaty to ban autonomous robots with lethal arms.

I can imagine US officials thinking about the current US advantage in AI and concluding that unrestricted deployment of autonomous weapons would give the US an advantage in this decade, so (they might conclude) it is better to reject the treaty.

On the other hand, if 15 years from now China is in the lead in AI, having this treaty in place already would benefit the US against China.

Those short-term considerations are the wrong way to look at this question, because it is bigger than the narrow questions of short-term advantage. In the long term, this treaty will prevent a danger to all humans.