Your response to each one should be detailed and well-developed and should provide a demonstration of what you have learned in the course material. The first one is completed for you and should serve as an example.

1. President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan will permanently ruin our economy! After all, the president is interested in his image only. He will do anything that makes him look like a hero.

Critique: The value and likely success of the cap-and-trade plan is not changed by any real or perceived motives the President Obama might have. The only way to accurately judge the plan to is to read it and evaluate it on its own merit.

2. Sarah argues that women should make the same amount of money that their male counterparts do. But, that’s absurd! Men have to support entire families; imagine their poor children starving if they made lower salaries.

3. Jim has given us several reasons why we should welcome the Second Chance Center. Don’t listen to him; you don’t want a homeless shelter in our neighborhood! Just think about the danger to our children; many homeless people are sex offenders!

4. Marcela Morris would like you to vote for her in the upcoming election, but remember that she went to Central High, and a high percentage of Central High students end up in jail. How can you expect her to be a responsible public official with that kind of background?

5. Of course you’ll want to read Bite Me: A Vampire’s Tale. Everyone in literary circles is talking about it.

6. I just know that aliens exist! After all, every time someone tries to show that the obvious evidence for their existence is faulty, they just leave us with more doubt and more questions. We can conclude that there must be alien life out there.