The Dish

Is inclusion in a religiously homogeneous community a good thing? Can orthodoxy suffocate? A Jewish atheist writes:

I grew up in a very modern Modern Orthodox community. But what I experienced was not a community courageously combining modernity with its sacred beliefs, but one threatened by reality.

… Is it moral to shun a person for deciding that your religion isn’t for them? To pretend that they never existed? People like Feldman and me are as worthy of love and respect as anyone else is. That our very existence is a threat to your worldview is no excuse for the way you treat us.

It’s a response to this piece by Noah Feldman.

 

What makes a New England cottage charming? A theory.

(Window view: Highland, New York, 10.30 am.)

A young, conservative voice they should not ignore:

The DC Circuit Court puts another brake on King George and Prince Dick:

The D.C. Circuit Court has put a stop to any further efforts to dismiss Guantanamo Bay detainees’ habeas cases in federal District Courts in Washington, recalling the mandates that would implement its Feb. 20 decision nullifying all detainee habeas rights.

… With the Supreme Court scheduled to take up the basic question of legal rights for detainees at its Term starting Oct. 1, the government’s attempt to get the benefit of Congress’ court-stripping provisions in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 has been stalled, likely for several months.

The only Guantanamo detainee cases moving forward now are the D.C. Circuit’s review of the military orders finding prisoners to be "enemy combatants" leading to their continued detention at the U.S. military prison at a U.S. naval base in Cuba.

And the truth about the military tribunals begins to leak out.

Ma, I hate campus gay groups. I know they offer important support for often beleaguered students. I was a gay advisor on campus and I know the pain and issues involved. I know they need to exist. I know it’s inevitable they will skew far left and necessarily alienate some gay students who need support. But the p.c. crapola gets you down. I have no idea why the gay rights movement has to be represented by a term that looks like a hamlet in Croatia, but this may be a new low.

"You talking to me?" Taxi Driver.

There seems to be a correlation between long-term marijuana-smokers and the minuscule odds of various forms of psychosis. This equivocal finding is reported by Fox News thus:

Even Infrequent Use of Marijuana Increases Risk of Psychosis by 40 Percent.

Well, what did you expect? The caveats:

The researchers said they couldn’t prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, "like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses," Zammit said…

The overall risk remains very low…

My emphases. In a country of 60 million people,

the researchers estimate that about 800 new cases of psychosis could be prevented by reducing marijuana use.

 

 

Now think of the potential risks of drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. How many lives would be saved from cyrrhosis or lung cancer if drinking or smoking were reduced? Infinitely more. So even if this study proves what it wants to prove, it seems to me to be a trivial point. Yes, we should examine all the evidence for benefit and harm before using any substance. But this is not the impulse behind some of the "experts":

"We’ve reached the end of the road with these kinds of studies," said Dr. Robin Murray of King’s College, who had no role in the Lancet study. "Experts are now agreed on the connection between cannabis and psychoses. What we need now is for 14-year-olds to know it."

Yes: no fourteen year olds should be smoking pot. But who is arguing for that? And we find this:

Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications.

My colleague Matt Yglesias has many issues and disagreements with TNR. Which is why his sane and dogged defense of the publication against the current lynch-mobs on the bloggy right is well worth reading. Money quote:

What the right is trying to do is establish a precedent where if you say things the right doesn’t want to hear anonymously then you’ll be treated with a presumption of guilt. No matter how vindicated the article may be, it’s still the case that TNR expended a lot of person-hours on re-verifying things even though nobody on the right raised any serious reason to doubt the story other than that it wasn’t something they wanted to believe. It’s extremely difficult to operate that way, and people won’t want to. But suppose you do identify yourself. Then you get the full Michelle Malkin treatment — character slimed, all kinds of personal details splayed across the internet, don’t say you weren’t warned. Thus, we’ll have all our information coming from official sources, just as the right likes it (until, of course, there’s a Democratic administration).

This swift-boat hysteria on the far right is one reason they need to be badly defeated at the polls. Until they are, the revival of a sane, positive, constructive conservatism is doomed.

The full list.