Texas is the poster state for guns, and we probably won't have the same full-spectrum debate on gun violence at the state level that voters elsewhere will see in the wake of the elementary school killings in Connecticut.
And without an identify that spans the political spectrum, public debate about climate change will continue to be stilted and subdued.
Online political discussion has become so fragmented so quickly that some public policy scolds warn that the Internet is in danger of narrowing the spectrum of debate even as it attracts more participants to it.
A Times spokeswoman said: "The Times regularly reports on energy and climate change from across the scientific spectrum of debate and, as the peers' letter acknowledges, our coverage at the close of the Paris climate summit was 'both balanced and comprehensive'".
Talking to him, I was struck that, nearly a decade after he became an activist, just about the only thing on which Ai Weiwei and the authorities agree is that he is Chinese — and from that simple fact rises an entire spectrum of debate about what it means to be a citizen of this vast, rising, complex country in the early years of the twenty-first century.
Regardless, it's worth recognizing just where on the political spectrum this debate is now happening.
Obama campaign senior economic adviser and University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, a very good guy, is nonetheless from the part of the economic policy spectrum of debate where one would not expect to find a Leo Hindery.
This full-spectrum TV debate offers smaller parties a unique chance to break through in the same way.
Since endorsed by 57 Muslim governments, including Iran's, it offers to recognise Israel once it withdraws from the territory it captured in 1967 and deals with the plight of Palestinian refugees.Israeli politicians across the political spectrum recently debated the Arab initiative in a side hall of their parliament.
And, perhaps as important, it is used by people across the political spectrum as they debate how well this nation cares for its less fortunate.
