The Atlantic

In a column published Friday, Megan Garber, a staff writer at “The Atlantic” proffers some sage advice to members of the media: Stop pinning labels on people whose names end up in the headlines because of dastardly deeds. The title of piece — “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” — is meant as an admonition. And so are the opening paragraphs, which catalog all the things “we think we” know about the brothers Tsarnaev (Tamerlan was a “gifted athlete” and “very religious,” Dzhokar is “very quiet” and career-oriented).

Although some of the descriptors she cites are well-documented (for example, “Dzhokar received a scholarship from the City of Cambridge”), she dismisses all in the third paragraph as “provisional facts,” adding:

America has a debt problem, driven in part by huge entitlements. The liberal solution? Make them bigger. “An expansion of Social Security not only would be good for America's retirees, it also would be good for the broader macroeconomy” argued New America Foundation political writer Steven Hill, in an article for “The Atlantic.”

According to Hill, the problem with Social Security is not the lack of money going into the system, but rather that there aren’t enough benefits coming out of it. “The bigger problem is that Social Security's payouts are so meager -- far too low for the program's new role as America's de facto national retirement system. It only replaces about 33 to 40 percent of a retiree's average final wage, which is simply not enough money to live on.”