Premise: What's the most important thing in circuses?"

Hypothesis: The important part of a circus is what?
Answer: yes

Premise: uphill and underpublicized struggle to achieve equal access to justice for millions of Washington-Americans too poor to afford legal representation.

Hypothesis: Nobody at all cares about providing equal access to justice to Americans.
Answer: no

Premise: Analysts speculated what would happen to Omnimedia if Martha were hit by a bus or cab (or succumbed to an accident in the potting shed, as the New York Observer 's Christopher Byron nicely put it).

Hypothesis: Martha was hit by a bus last week.
Answer: it is not possible to tell

Premise: How do you forbid the kids to practice what you, er, practice?

Hypothesis: The most common way to get children to follow conflicting logic is by threatening punishment.
Answer: it is not possible to tell