This November 4, Californians should vote YES! on Prop 2 – a modest measure that stops cruel and inhumane treatment of animals, ending the practice of cramming farm animals into cages so small the animals can't even turn around, lie down or extend their limbs.

Anti-nuclear activists successfully stopped the nuclear industry once before, but nuclear energy is too important to America to allow that to happen again. Despite the activists' attempts to mislead the public, nuclear energy is a proven, viable, economical, and environmentally sound solution to U.S. energy needs and legislative carbon constraints.

Future politicians can, if they choose, communicate with anyone who provides personal information during the politician’s campaign at nearly no cost, without having their message filtered. A sitting President could reach out to a broad base of strong supporters, keep those supporters in close contact with each other, keep those supporters funneling their support to sympathetic Congressmen, keep those supporters hounding political adversaries, and keep those supporters listening to their message. Most importantly, the nature of the message can be very granular.

These proposals I list here serve to lower costs for all consumers, without harming the high quality of care which distinguishes the American health care market, while addressing the humanitarian crisis of the uninsured poor.

There is no single solution to all of the challenges and problems that foster children face in school and at home. Ideally, every child in the foster care system would become a part of a stable, loving, permanent home with adults committed to nurturing their talents and skills. However, policymakers can embrace measures to alleviate some of the stresses associated with foster care that contribute to lower educational attainment and poor life outcomes.

At the federal level, Congress should reform federal education policies to protect academic transparency, eliminate inefficient bureaucracy, and encourage innovation at the state and local levels. Policymakers should embrace policies that give more families the freedom to choose their children's school; allow school leaders to innovate and develop successful school models and improve teacher quality; and allow parents, lawmakers, and the general public to hold public schools and students accountable for results.

The communication problem can be addressed very early in the development of children. Efforts should be made to ensure that their language skills are being developed. Children should be made to understand the importance of language and communication so that when they go out into the world, they are able to communicate at all levels. Parents, schools and communities need to encourage children to learn about other peoples and cultures.

It is vital to increase communication and exchanges of information between the UN, NGOs and other stakeholders. All humanitarian actors must work together to develop indicators and a verification mechanism to identify priority needs and to ensure that comprehensive mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation are in place. It is vital to develop the capacity of Iraqi aid workers and local communities, especially in the areas of quality of assistance, fundraising, conflict resolution, reconciliation, networking and information sharing.

A group of philanthropic American entrepreneurs will finance and help to establish cooperative businesses that employ and share ownership with most of the population of small, very poor villages in underdeveloped countries. These businesses will produce mainly hand crafted items that are indigenous to the region. Their products might be as diverse as jewlery, art work, carvings, furniture, clothing, hand-made quilts and woven fabrics, table ware, pottery, perserves and local crafts of all kinds.

Choose Responsibility supports a series of changes to treat 18, 19 and 20 year-olds as the young adults the law otherwise says they are. Current drinking laws infantilize young adults. We should not be surprised, then, by infantile behavior from otherwise responsible adults.

We support a series of changes that will allow 18-20 year-old adults to purchase, posses and consume alcoholic beverages.

We propose a multi-faceted approach that combines education, certification, and provisional licensing for 18-20 year-old high school graduates who choose to consume alcohol.

We should not pretend, that another round of "humanitarian intervention" would represent anything other than the soft face of that same imperialism so hard at work today in Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq. Fresh from an illegal and deceitful war of aggression, Anglo-US forces now have only one moral responsibility: to stay at home.

There is, however, a clear, simple, and direct way to have a significant impact on the crisis of access. It begins from the assumption that higher education should be available as a right in our public colleges for all applicants who meet admissions standards regardless of their ability to pay. To make it so, the federal government should pay tuition and fees for all students, part and full time, who are enrolled in two- and four-year public institutions in the United States. (Eighty-three percent of undergraduates now attend public institutions.)

Considering possible outcomes of the war on terror makes clear that it can indeed be won, but only with the recognition that this is a new and different kind of war. Victory will come not when foreign leaders accept certain terms but when political changes erode and ultimately undermine support for the ideology and strategy of those determined to destroy the United States.

A defined contribution approach has the following main features:

• Fixed employer contribution. The employer decides upon a fixed amount to pay for health plan coverage for all employees.
• Many plan options. The employer presents employees with a choice of different health plans with varying deductibles, co-payments, health management styles (health maintenance organizations versus preferred provider organizations), and premiums.
• Employee selects plan. Employees choose from the menu of health plans available and presented by the employer.

Any sensible oil plan has to be built on four fundamental pillars. This is a subject that would need a five-part series of its own to do it justice, but here's the basic outline: increased production, conservation, increased efficiency and alternative fuels.