Q: WASHINGTON In 2004, Desmond Meade, while serving a 15-year prison sentence for a drug offense in Florida, got a break. An appeals court returned his conviction to the original trial bench, allowing him to plead guilty to a lesser charge and get out of prison in three years, most of which he had already served. But his freedom came with a price, something that didn't quite register with him at the time: as part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Meade agreed to give up his civil rights: the right to vote, to serve on a jury and to run for office. "At the time, when I first accepted the plea deal, I didn't understand the consequences," Meade says. Fourteen years and a pair of college and law degrees later, Meade, now 50, still can't vote; his application to regain his civil rights was rejected in 2011. The reason: a new Florida law that requires felons like him to wait for seven years before they could apply for rights restoration. Home to nearly a quarter of the nation's disenfranchised felons, Florida has become a battleground in a national debate over felony disenfranchisement laws. With lawmakers deeply divided over the issue, Meade says he wants the state's voters to change the system when they head to the polls on Nov. 6. He's promoting a ballot initiative that would amend the state's constitution, restoring the voting rights of all felons in Florida (except those convicted of murder and sexual assault) after they've completed the terms of their sentence. The measure enjoys broad voter support. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in February showed that 67 percent of Floridians were in favor of restoring the voting rights of felons other than those convicted of murder and sexual assault. Another poll showed support at 71 percent. "We're going to change the system," Meade says confidently. "What we're doing is taking the power out of the hands of politicians and we're allowing the citizens of the state of Florida to decide whether or not folks should have a second chance, to be able to vote." After the ballot initiative is voted on Meade will: Pick the correct answer from the following options: - get another degree. - get his civil rights back. - run for mayor. - not enough information
A: get his civil rights back.

Q: I'm not good at sticking to the rules, not even the ones I set myself. I'm really terrible with the rules set by others, especially companies. Even as a child, I could never stay inside the lines in colouring books. Some of you might put this down to poor hand-eye coordination, but I maintain that I was a rule-breaker right from the beginning. One of my roles as an engineer with a multiplicity of companies was to set up projects, define the scope of the work, contract the work out and manage the project. I was setting up a robot-based manufacturing cell for the company in the business of making early cellphones. The cell design required some equipment to be designed and built from scratch, so I got a local designer, Fergus, to give me a quote and got him started on the work. Now, any project will run over budget and take longer than planned and the contractor may come back for more money. And so it was with this designer; he wasn't really vocal about it, but he indicated that the work did take a lot more time and expense than he's originally budgeted. My usual reaction to these things is that this is not my problem. Most of the companies I've work for have lost money, so why should I give a rat's ass if some other company comes up a little short? In this case though, I liked Fergus and, as he was really a one-man operation, I decided to cut him some slack. But first, I had to get permission from my boss to drop another few grand into Fergus's jeans. My boss refused. Having someone tell me I can't do something really brings out my dark side; especially around the time of the full moon. Not long before, we had just waved a fond(-ish) farewell to our president as he was going on to greener fields. As a parting gift, the company bought him either a boat or a motor home, I forget which, and equipped it with three of their cell phones. this story went on for probably: Pick the correct answer from the following options: - several weeks - a month - several days - not enough information
A: several days

Q: The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb in the concrete bunker. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm, sensitive tenor. The boy, Kurt, continued to scratch the imaginary itch, which had leapt magically from his right hand to the left. Eventually the falseness of the itch would be deduced, and the lab coated man would disappear out of the cell and return with... God knows what. He had seen torture hundreds-if not thousands-of times on TV, and he was glumly certain that there would be no commercial breaks for him. "Can I offer you a glass of water?" The question was repeated without urgency, like a forgetful waiter. The itch now leaped with the dexterity of a trained flea onto the boy's leg, and the dutiful fingers followed. He watched as the man in the lab coat, without name tag or company insignia, studied his stack of papers attached to the clipboard. Several yellow forms near the top half inch were labeled 27B. The man frowned and wrote a note on the top page. "Note: Find out who isn't duplicating 27B in Pink." "I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't listening. Was that a yes or no to the water?" Kurt remained in his chair, almost motionless, except for the itching-and-scratching routine. It had leapt again, this time onto his scalp, and the twitching fingers followed. He wondered how long he could keep this up without drawing blood. What Kurt belived will happen to him? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - His itch was real - The man in the lab coat was a doctor - He will be tortured - not enough information
A: He will be tortured