J. Goodrich

A VERY BELATED NOTE ON THE HILLARY DEBATE. The media treatment of Hillary Clinton‘s campaign has not been free of misogyny or sexism. But one particular sexist card has not been played much, as far as I can tell, and that is the argument that if she won the presidency it would really be her […]

CURING CANCER. Ezra has a post at his other place on the NIH budget. After several years of rapid rise in budget allocations, the NIH is now faced with the lean years. The puny promised increases in research funds amount to a drop in the budget in real terms. This creates problems for young researchers […]

MEANWHILE, IN SODOM. Joe Klein made an interesting observation a few days ago while writing about the concern for the poor both Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee express: Then again, the Republicans are fielding a motley crew right now: if you count Newt Gingrich, who’ll probably join the fray in the fall, the four leading […]

CHOICES, CHOICES. The conservatives suffer from what used to be called a multiple personality disorder (remember The Three Faces of Eve?) when defending the traditional division of labor between men and women. They can’t figure out if women staying at home is something our genes force us to do or if it is something the […]

HILLARY-BASHING. Glenn Beck has said that Hillary Clinton‘s voice is grating, something to trigger the images of nagging wives in the minds of all red-bloodied American male conservatives. The b**ch term was used, too. Not very subtle work from our Glenn, but then he is not paid for subtlety. Media Matters for America caught a […]

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY? One of the funniest things I ever saw on television was the Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland‘s inability to name all Ten Commandments on the Stephen Colbert show; funny, because Westmoreland was on the show for the very reason that he advocated wider knowledge of those commandments. No wonder then, that Rahm […]

POPE BENEDICT ON THE MORAL DUTY OF POLITICIANS. Benedict‘s most recent 140 pages of advice for the Catholic Church include a list of his non-negotiables: The Church’s opposition to gay marriage is “non-negotiable” and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it, as well as laws on abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict says. Here […]

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE WOUNDED SOLDIERS? The Walter Reed hospital scandal struck a nerve in the country, and politicians of all stripes are scrambling to be on the right side of history on this one. George Bush expressed his utter disgust at what had taken place under his watch: “Some of our troops […]

I’M NOT USUALLY IN THE BUSINESS OF SELF-PROMOTION, but Kay‘s and Dana‘s posts on Hillary Clinton‘s plans to reintroduce the Paycheck Fairness Act reminded me that I have written a very accessible three-part series on the gender gap in wages for a noneconomist. It begins with a survey of some alternative theories, continues with a […]

THEY LOVE US NOT. A recent poll for the BBC World Service covering opinions in 27 countries has the United States taking the bronze medal as the third most negatively viewed country among the same 27 countries. Only Iran and Israel are viewed more negatively, on average. These findings partly follow the expected fault lines […]