Category: The Dish

A big study says no – for mild depression. But I love my Sertraline! Kevin wonders why this isn’t news in the US.

Jon Cohn homes in on the one objectionable part of the campaign piece:

They are suggesting Clinton would force people to put up cash for insurance they couldn’t afford.

Alas, Jon thinks any opposition to mandates is verboten by a Democrat. I disagree.

After all that wine, demoralized Clinton staffers can’t wait for next week:

Advisers figure that a loss in Texas is as likely as a win in Ohio; a large number of staffers appear to be willing to quit en masse next Wednesday if there’s a split decision and Clinton gives notice that she intends to fight for another month.

Eugene Volokh skewers the Lancet’s left-racist mindset.

"He’s ready to be president, and I’m ready to support him," – Chris Dodd on Obama.

"Sixteen months into this, I’m just angry."

My take on Anthony Cordesman’s latest report on Iraq here.

Jeff Rosen explains why the Dems have a shortage of SCOTUS candidates ready on Day One. It’s as good a time as any to repeat my own suggestion. A president Obama should offer the first SCOTUS vacancy to Senator Clinton. It’s perfect for her: she gets to lord it over others, she’s a sharp lawyer, it appeals to her vanity, she doesn’t have to get elected, and as a sitting senator, she’d be a shoo-in. The base would love it.

Graeme Wood is troubled that death penalty victims can’t donate their organs. But he has a solution:

Death-row inmates have repeatedly asked to donate their organs, but their requests are always denied. The simple reason is that execution generally ruins organs before they can be harvested. By the time you cut someone down from the gallows or pronounce the injection lethal, the heart and lungs will have thumped and puffed for the last time. Soon after, the kidneys start rotting, and before long nothing is useful but the corneas. Even with beheading— still practiced in Saudi Arabia—the heart and lungs probably wouldn’t make it, says Douglas Hanto, chief transplant surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

But by using what the bioethicist Arthur Caplan calls "the Mayan Protocol"—a term derived from the ancient Mayan practice of vivisecting their human sacrifices—the removal of organs would itself be the method of execution. If this sounds inhumane, compare it to current practices: botched hangings, painfully long gassings, and messy electrocutions. Removal of the heart, lungs, and kidneys (under anesthesia, of course) would kill every time, without an instant of pain.

Nancy Grace gets first dibs.

A reader writes:

The post from your reader about Jews not voting for Obama because of a history of "black anti semitism" is absurd.  First, blacks and Jews have a long, shared history. Jews helped found the NAACP. Of civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, two were not black.  (Guess what they were!)  Blacks and Jews continue to be targeted by the same groups: the Klan, neo-nazis, etc.  While I can’t dispute that the groups have had their tensions (e.g., Crown Heights), I still can’t see this as a basis for Jews not supporting Obama.

Further, there is a presumption in your reader’s email that Jews vote on Israel and nothing else.  That’s an unfortunate stereotype.  But for the sake of argument, even if that was true, Jews may also see Obama’s foreign policy as being the one most likely to bring peace to the region and therefore provide the greatest security for Israel.

Finally, let’s talk about the significance of the Jewish vote.  We are approximately 1.5% of the total population.  Perhaps we vote and contribute in proportionally higher numbers.  But 1.5% ain’t a lot.