I know you're trying to be polite, but you sound sort of gullible here. You should doubt *everyone*, especially if they're trying to make a political point.

The actual plan is to limit the value of charitable tax deductions to 28% of the amount given, even if the giver is in a higher tax bracket (tax brackets max out at 35%). Plus, it's just a plan at this point and hasn't been passed by Congress.

http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/7244/obama-plans-to-reduce-charitable-deduction-for-wealthy-donors

Yeah, nothing stands out as being obviously bad science here. The result is basically that on average, the right ear is slightly better at hearing things in a naturalistic setting. Only the first page of the article is available online, but the authors explain that this right-ear advantage has been fairly well-studied in the laboratory and they were attempting to confirm it in a less artificial environment.

Note that this advantage is apparently small, and may be only an average thing; could be that 60% of people hear better with their right ear, 40% of people with their left, I can't tell from the available information. The crap about "amenable parts of the brain" was most likely invented by journalists.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/123t3782704t876v/

That story is about Dallas, not Houston, and 3.15 seconds is a lot more than 2. Ancestor post seems to have invented their facts.

The quote from the not-really-worth-reading article is:

So they might be measuring the energy needed to turn on a computer and mess around on the Internet for 15 minutes. Or they might just be making stuff up.