Barbara Oakley, the author of Evil Genes, has an interesting article on the amoral among us in the Chicago Tribune today.

Suspicious Circumstances

I posted a while ago on a local Knoxville woman who killed her second husband and her first husband was suspiciously trampled by cattle which was ruled an accident. Many people locally (myself included) wondered if the first husband's death was no accident. I read today in my local newspaper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, that finally, the prosecution is requesting that the first husband's body be exhumed and an autopsy performed:

The 1992 death of Knox County District Attorney General Ed Dossett was "highly suspicious" and his body should be exhumed for a second autopsy, according to the special prosecutors who are preparing to try his widow for the death of her second husband.

Tenth District Attorney General Steve Bebb of Cleveland, whose office has been assigned the murder case against Raynella Dossett Leath, filed a petition Tuesday seeking a judge's order to exhume Ed Dossett's remains for "a full and complete post mortem examination."

It's about time. Both of this woman's husbands are dead, she was charged with attempted murder of another man in 1995 and was never convicted and now, finally, the first death looks suspicious and maybe, another autopsy might be performed. If she had been a man and the victims women, the media would have been all over it like this.

Should Women get Married?

My "Ask Dr. Helen" column is up:

Dr. Helen Smith’s column, Should Men Get Married? caused quite a stir. Now she looks at the other side of the coin - and offers some tips for women on improving the odds of happiness if they do step up to the altar.

Go take a look and add a comment here or at PJM on whether or not women should get married and if they do, what can they do to improve their relationship with their husband?

A Doggy Christmas

What's with all the toys and books that are coming out right now that are featuring...dogs? I recently bought a copy of The Dangerous Book for Dogs: A Parody by Rex and Sparky from Amazon.com and am now being treated to all kinds of items for and about dogs in my inbox. The most recent book was by radio host Mark Levin who wrote Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. This book review from booksforkidsblog makes the books sound fairly interesting:

Mark Levin's just published memoir Rescuing Sprite (Pocket Books, 2007) recalls the brief 26 months he spent with his dog, A shelter dog which Levin's family chose as a companion to their two-year-old Pepsi, Sprite turned out to be a dog of great personality and capacity for love.

An inseparable companion to Pepsi, Sprite also bonded with every member of the family, and when he started to have physical problems, the whole family rallied to try to save him. Although at last they had to let him go, his death made such an impression on Levin that he stopped work on a political book he'd planned to write and devoted himself to this memoir of Sprite.

There are plenty of other dog books to get for the dog lover on your Christmas list that you can read about here. But I must say, the tackiest toy that I have seen so far for dogs has to be this--a political pet dog chew modeled after Hillary Clinton with the following description:

Think the junior Senator from NY is more interested in regaining the White House than in making life better for all Americans? You can't get even - but your pet can! Toss her (likeness) to your dog! Seeing your dog happily drag this personality around the garden will harmlessly satisfy your ire. (You could write a letter to the editor, but this is more fun!) The chewable pet toys are made from long-lasting PVC and soft rubber so dogs can have years of fun and so chewing is not harmful for their gums.

Uhh, personally, I think a letter to the editor might be more constructive, but if this type of sublimation brings you joy, why not?

Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, has an interesting column at Pajamas Media today on Barack Obama. Bawer takes a look at the psychological dynamic of Obama's feelings towards his black father and white mother and concludes that something disturbing is amiss:

What does it say about the young Obama that he was well-nigh obsessed with his vain braggart of an absentee father but trivialized his mother’s accomplishments? What does it mean that he himself plainly can’t see that his father comes off in these pages as a world-class jerk and his mother as a woman of admirable self-discipline and quiet achievement? What does it mean that throughout his account of his work as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama himself is in sharp focus while the underprivileged folks he’s supposedly trying to help are hazy figures in the distant background? What does it mean that some of the characters in this book – whom one would otherwise assume to be important people in his life – are, as he admits in the introduction, composites? What does it mean that despite his fixation on his father and his Kenyan kin, their religion (Islam) is barely mentioned, and that in the most substantial reference to it, he gives a genial thumbs-up to his brother’s newfound religious fervor?

Bawer asks a lot of important questions about Obama's background that relate to what kind of president he would make. Take a look.