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Emily B, I agree with you that it’s really unfortunate that the conclusion that we don’t need to routinely do mammograms until 50, instead of aparking a national, rational discussion about the advisability of “screening and prevention,” has become the harbinger that we’re all going to live under British health care rationing. The debate over ...

Emily, Hanna, Jess, Rachael, if Sarah Palin were Sam Palin, would anyone still be interested in her? Dan Quayle was a good-looking, young, conservative, politician who, in his roll-out as a vice-presidential candidate, impressed everyone as being a dope who was in over his head. After his vice presidency, he blessedly slipped from public ...

Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal today has a bracing piece about the almost surreal disconnection between what’s increasingly clear about the Ft. Hood killer, Maj. Nidal Hasan, and what officials and some commentators seem unable to acknowledge. As she writes: “It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing ...

Hanna, I am the product of the “simpler” '50s dating culture. My parents were young, hot for each other, met their families' requirements of looks (her) and potential earning capacity (him), and married at ages 19 and 20. Their union produced four children, lasted 20 years, and was a nightmare for all concerned. So I do not share David ...

Were any of you uncomfortable as I was seeing the photo of Hillary Clinton in Pakistan wearing a scarf over her hair? I know given the magnitude of what she has to deal with there, that this a small, possibly trivial issue. But on the other hand, whenever I see an American female official (and this has been true of Democrats and Republicans) ...

I grew up in a household in which the normal mode of verbal interaction started at banshee and escalated to supersonic, so I was interested in the New York Times piece “Shouting is the New Spanking” that KJ wrote about last week. The article says that yelling at children is becoming as socially unacceptable as whacking them. I agree that ...

Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for economics (read Ruth Marcus’ insightful column about women “firsts”) was not trained as an economist but a political scientist. She joins the ranks of Nobel economic laureates whose backgrounds are in different disciplines. An economics blog post discusses how the field is being upended by ...

It was reported over the weekend that Obama’s speech at the United Nations describing his dream of a nuclear-free world helped clinch his Nobel Peace prize. Many have observed that while Obama’s words and sentiments are noble, the accomplishments that go along with earning a Nobel are lacking. However, I find his dream itself disturbing ... (Read ...

Add this to the health care death panel debate. In 1936, long before the creation of the National Health Service, King George V was euthanized by his physician (with a speedball!), and the fatal shot was timed so that the death could be announced the next morning in The Times.

Hanna, I hadn't seen your insightful post about the welcome end of the expectations laid on the last generation of Kennedy women when I posted on how not being expected to be president was probably beneficial to Kennedy females. When I think of the Kennedy women who were able to escape the family pathology, I was looking at the current generation: ...