Our modern stereotype is that – until recently – people were plagued with rotting teeth, cavities and gum disease. But the truth is that prehistoric people had much better oral health than we do today. Also, a healthy microbiome is important for mental health:

“Without overstating things, this does open up the concept that we could develop therapies that can treat psychiatric disorders by targeting the gut,”

Dorner is not a hero, he is a wanton murderer who targeted not only those he claimed wronged him, but their families and random officers. But the notion that he forfeited his grievance because he resorted to violence robs us, not him, of the lessons to be learned.

The Justice Department "white paper" purporting to authorize Obama's power to extrajudicially execute US citizens was leaked three weeks ago.

At a time when soldiers kill themselves in record numbers – 18 veterans per day – the armed forces spend a fortune on a drug known to increase the chance of suicide.

This powerful story can impact a new generation of Israelis, just before they are recruited to their mandatory military service. Engaging Israeli youth with this intimate, personal story of Palestinian nonviolent resistance offers a critical intervention before many of them find themselves stationed in a village like Bil’in, facing unarmed demonstrators. This generation offers a new opportunity for political change, in the face of diplomatic stalemate, growing extremism and escalated settlement expansion.

That might sound like a mangled version of the aphorism: you are what you eat — something surely worth remembering when industrially-produced toxins are now so pervasive they can be found in unborn babies.

I was shocked when I heard that Mary Jo White, a former U.S. Attorney and a partner for the white-shoe Wall Street defense firm Debevoise and Plimpton, had been named the new head of the SEC.

Nuclear negotiations with Iran, in the right spirit, will work. US-led trade embargoes and military threats will bring only disaster, yet today's best and brightest say that to stop Iran achieving "critical capability" to produce nuclear weapons in the coming months, President Obama must impose "maximal" sanctions" – that is the message of a new report issued in Washington by five senior non-proliferation specialists.

On December 31, 2012, Time Magazine published an article entitled, “The West Bank’s 2012: The Year of the Israeli Settlement.” Earlier this week, the Israeli Peace Now movement released a new report that makes a case for a different title: 2009-2013: the Years of the Israeli Settlements.

As Barack Obama embarks on his second term media discourse predicatively overflows with talk of how he could avoid the final term doldrums. And this of course all will lead toward talk of an alleged legacy from years from now.

If it is to be a truism that the role of the modern Democrats is to validate the most controversial policies of their alleged opponents, this may prove especially true for Barack Obama.

If there's one thing media want you to know about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, it's that he doesn't like the United States

Inducing the Iranians to concede is not just a matter of hurting them more. They already are hurting a lot, from the economic consequences of international sanctions. What is missing from the negotiations is any reason for them to believe that the hurt will be eased if they make concessions.

January 8, 2012. By Nathan Fuller. At Bradley Manning's hearing in Fort Meade today, Judge Lind awarded 112 days credit off of any future prison sentence awarded due to the abuse Manning suffered in Quantico—little to keep military from torturing next American soldier awaiting controversial trial.

As it typically does in the US National Security State, deceit and radicalism result not in recrimination or loss of credibility, but in reward and promotion.

Commenting on all of these experiences, Yaakov Peri – former head of the Shin Bet (1988-1995), named on the Facebook page of the film [the Israeli] “George Smiley”, after John le Carré's mythological master spy - stuns the audience with what he considers to be an inevitable conclusion: “These moments end up etched deep inside you, and when you retire, you become a bit of a leftist.”

Hagel has become the neocons' new target of opportunity after emerging as a likely choice to become Defense Secretary. He is a bete noire to the neocons because he is viewed as disturbingly independent of Israel's preferences for what U.S. foreign and military policy must be.

Christian Science Monitor reports: Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza may have been motivated by anger at his mother because of plans to have him committed for treatment, Fox News reported Thursday, citing comments from the son of an area church pastor and an unnamed neighborhood source.

To solve the real problem (keeping guns out of the wrong hands-without
restricting other people) we must use an idea that has worked to limit
losses from many other hazards: insurance. That's right, insurance, the
system of risk-management contracts that lets people take responsibility
for choices they make that impose risks on others.

In March President Barack Obama reportedly offered Israel bunker-buster bombs and other advanced weapons in exchange for a postponing an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities until 2013.

At the time the White House denied that any such agreement was proposed or reached.

Reports are that Obama may tap former Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican and Vietnam veteran, to be his next secretary of Defense. Hagel is a realist who has repeatedly bucked the neoconservatives (and as Eli Lake and Steve Walt say below, the Israel lobby is gearing up to try and do to him what it did to Chas Freeman 4 years ago). The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), for instance, is already gearing up to battle Obama over Hagel.