Vox Sentences: We did it, folks. We politicized Ebola

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1. Ebola gets political

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Thomas Frieden leaves today's House hearing on the Ebola outbreak. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• Over 40 members of Congress (most of them Republicans) have called for a ban on travel between West Africa and the US.

• The calls came up in a House hearing featuring CDC chief Tom Frieden today; Frieden said he's leaving the option open, even though just last week he wrote an op-ed for FoxNews.com on why such a ban might actually increase the disease's spread by denying West African countries access to US medical expertise.

• For the record, Frieden was right the first time around — a travel ban is a really bad idea.

• NIH director Francis Collins says if his agency hadn't seen its budget cut, we'd have an Ebola vaccine by now. Fat chance, says Sarah Kliff.

• Some schools in Texas and Cleveland closed in response to the revelation that a person infected with Ebola flew from Cleveland to Dallas; public health officials face-palmed in response.

• It shouldn't surprise us that Ebola became a partisan issue: shark attacks in New Jersey had a big impact on the 1916 presidential election, so we can politicize more or less anything.

• A Yale grad student who recently came back from Liberia is being treated for "Ebola-like symptoms."

• The UN needs $1 billion for its Ebola trust fund, and only Colombia has ponied up its share so far.

• Here's where to donate if you want to fight the outbreak in West Africa; also consider donating to efficient charities working on other issues.

2. 5-O factor authentication

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey wants backdoors for accessing people's online communications. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

• FBI director James Comey is continuing his push for companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook to create backdoors making it easier for authorities to spy on people.

• Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has also has argued for this and the FBI has wanted it for a few years now.

• Under a 1994 federal law, phone companies have to make their systems capable of setting up wiretaps quickly, a requirement that was later extended to ISPs.

• That law was related to a broader fight known as the Crypto Wars that pitted the Clinton administration against privacy advocates. Most notably, the administration unsuccessfully pushed the "Clipper chip," a NSA-designed device to give the government a backdoor for breaking encryption, that turned out to have huge technical flaws.

• Julian Sanchez wrote the definitive case against these backdoors; among other issues: if the government can break in, so can hackers. See also Conor Friedersdorf.

3. TV, unbundled

Soon, even people without cable will be able to enjoy the soul-crushing depression of The Leftovers. (Paul Schiraldi/HBO)

• Within days of each other, HBO and CBS have announced online subscription-based plans that let you view their shows live without cable.

• Verizon, Sony, and Dish Network are trying to build similar services (with more channels, obviously); Verizon, like HBO/CBS, wants you to be able to pick and choose channels à la carte.

• A bipartisan bill that would mandate à la carte cable failed in the Senate last month.

• But some critics argue à la carte channel-buying won't actually make TV cheaper.

• And other critics argue à la carte cable would have made TV's Golden Age impossible.

• Internet TV also won't necessarily weaken cable companies — who's providing the broadband it would stream on, after all?

• Then again, government-provided broadband, most likely offered at the municipal level, could make it possible to ditch Comcast and Time Warner Cable altogether.

• Before channels like HBO and CBS got in on it, Aereo was trying to make streaming TV a reality on its own, only to be beaten by broadcasters at the Supreme Court.

4. Misc.

• Your cat doesn't love you, just FYI.

• Scientists have figured out how to Incept rats, more or less.

• What if the minimum wage just doesn't do much of anything, good or bad?

• The president of evangelical Patrick Henry College ("God's Harvard") resigned after The New Republic published an exposé on how the school treated handle sexual assault on campus.

5. Verbatim

• "There’s a Trader Joe’s in Vancouver, now?" "No, there's a Pirate Joe's in Vancouver."

• "Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women."

• "The odds of this country returning to a draft are almost zero, but the price for failure to register is high and is largely born by the men who can ill afford to pay it: high school dropouts, disconnected inner city residents, ex-offenders and immigrants — legal and unauthorized — who do not know that failure to register can jeopardize citizenship."

• "Jimmy John's workers have to promise not to take any of the trade secrets they learned assembling subs to any nearby sandwich shop for at least two years."

• "If we try to escape, and we get killed, at least our parents will be able to see our bodies."

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