I was really irritated by the following article that I stumbled across while I was researching the issue of birth control for middle school girls, and I decided that I needed to tell someone why.

"Arguments against it: 1) It violates parental rights. 2) It encourages premature sex. 3) Sex with a 13-year-old isn't just wrong; it's illegal.

1) Valid argument. False pretenses? Probably.

2) Same as the first, only with a minor hint of making a value judgment.

3) Alright holy crap. You're totally making a value judgment there. Go ahead and say it's illegal, but I sure as heck don't ever want to hear the phrase "just wrong" anywhere in any of the news I'm reading.

Arguments for it: 1) Middle schoolers are getting pregnant, so let's face the reality that some are having sex. 2) The schools' job is to protect girls so they can finish their education. 3) Providing the pills doesn't cause more sex. 4) We won't give them to prepubescent kids. 5) We'll report illegal underage sex. 6) Parents still have control, since kids can't use the clinics without a waiver.

1) This is an argument for the idea that middle schoolers are having sex. This is not an argument for birth control.

2) This assumes that the birth control pill is the only way that schools can protect their students.

3) This is not an argument for the birth control pill. This is not even an argument. It's a statement. It could also be seen as a rebuttal to #2 against the pill, which causes a bias.

4) Like #3, this is also not an argument for the pill. This too is not even an argument.

5) Like 2 and 3 this is not an argument for the distribution of the birth control pill.

6) This is not an argument for the pill. This is an argument against the anti-pill argument #1.

So all in all, the pro-pill side gets 6 "arguments" and the anti-pill team gets 3. Then two of the six anti-pill arguments are directly attacked by the pro side, while the anti-pills get no rebuttal whatsoever.

Holy crapin' poops, batman! I am sick of bias and bad logic in the news. I'm sorry that this was the first article I happened to find. But hey, good news for Slate. Google likes you.

It is now bedtime for me.

Slate often contains links to news sites, and does make its readers aware of facts, but is not a news site per se. It's really more of an opinion site, or a magazine (as the bar at the top of your screen will tell you).

The reason Google seems to like Slate probably has more to do with the fact that Slate has several articles this week about the current topic. I doubt they would rank so highly on a lot of other subjects (but for all I know they might).

The "bias" you refer to, if anything, is probably that of William Saletan (the author of the article). He also, I'd guess somewhat confusingly for new readers, refers to himself as "Human Nature," which is also the name of his column/blog.

In this article, he did link to some actual news sites, which wound up in the C&P section of your post. The arguments made come from the respective news sites, although Saletan does like to summarize them in very terse and sarcastic ways.

Well in that case, I guess I owe everyone at slate an apology. I obviously didn't take any time to figure out what the site was about before I went tromping off last night. Hopefully there aren't any hard feelings.

Lesson learned.