Senator Cruz is proposing to block companies from using H1B visas to bring foreign workers to the US temporarily for training.

It is a good cause, but his solution operates by closing off H-1B visas except for very highly paid jobs. I think the solution should more directly address the problem.

I propose that any company or division hiring H-1B workers should be forbidden to eliminate any US jobs for the next two years, unless it has suffered a big drop in gross sales, or to move any work out of the US or to a subcontractor during that time. Fines for violations should be very high.

Also, workers who are told to train their successors (and then be fired) should refuse to train them, or quit immediately. Resisting oppression calls for some guts.

Some research suggests that unhappiness does not predispose people to illness.

There are distinct questions here:

1. Factual: does being unhappy tend to cause other sorts of harm to you?
2. Moral: is unhappiness something unfortunate that happens to you, or is it wrong on your part?

The research suggests that the answer to (1) is no. That's fortunate, for unhappy people. But whatever the answer to (1) is, it does not mean that being unhappy is blameworthy. If there is no ethical, reliable way to decide to be happy, then your unhappiness is no more your fault than an injury or a birth defect.

France's constitution may be changed to support long-term repressive "states of emergency".

The main points of the deal agreed in Paris.

Paris climate agreement 'may signal end of fossil fuel era', according to optimists.

This agreement could very well start a process leading towards truly curbing global heating. I fear we can't afford to lose that time in getting started. The agreement will still raise global temperatures 3 to 4 degrees centigrade. The problem is, it involves "no action, just promises". When a country adopts a long-term emissions target without policies that will realize it, it may never adopt suitable policies. By the time the target is not met, it is too late.

Atheists in Lincoln, Nebraska, booked all the exhibition space in the state capitol building so that no sectarian exhibit can be presented about Christmas.

It is not right to promote a religion in a state capitol building. It is also not right to censor any view by cornering the market on places to present it, but the atheists didn't do that. There must be plenty of places in Lincoln, outside the capitol, where manger displays for Christmas can be set up — churches, for instance.