You say yourself that most victims of this adult female on minor male abuse don't view themnselves as victims, that it takes decades if at all for awareness of the damage done to surface. You admit that there is almost NO societal recognition of these crimes. NO support for male victims to come forward and report what happened.

Given all this, how in the world can you consider reported incidents of the crime- the only possible support for the assertion that most perps are male-- how in the blessed world can you consider those reports an accurate representation of these crimes?

Certainly female victims have a hard row to hoe as well. None of this is easy. But there are whole institutions, rape crisis centers and abuse prevention programs designed to address their needs. The social support for reporting and healing is there, if the victim has the courage to reach out for it. Boy victims of women don't have those resources, for the most part.

and put a stake thru its heart to make sure it stays dead. Then we can worry about whether a new conservatism is possible.

It's a sign of the times that all they can think about in terms of stimulus packages are tax cuts. If spent properly-- like fully funding the building of a renewable energy infrastructure-- tax hikes can be a stimulus program as well. But after 25 plus years of no new taxes and government is the problem propaganda, no one is even mentioning that bit.....

and remember this, a tax cut, no matter how it is structured, won't do a damn thing for you if you're unemployed, without an income, or living on the street!!!!

Why did the editors feel compelled to put quotation marks around the word terrorist in the headline of this story? They target civilians with violence for political reasons. They blow up planes and assassinate politicians they don't like/ Sounds like a BLEEPin terrorist to me.

I expect the editors of this rag to be a bit more straightforward than this. Kowtowing to the fanatic rightists who should be slapped instead.

...is that the massive economic train wreck, caused in large part by economists' slavish devotion to supply side, voodoo economics, has caused such a credibility crisis among the blathering class, that they have been forced to pull their heads out of their buttocks and admit what we have known all along.

Contrary to what Leonard claims, there is nothing new in the Johnson, Parker and Souleles study. It only documented what we've known at least since 1935 with the publication of Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (and FDR's 1937 budget balancing attempt, the effect of which is known as "the Roosevelt recession")... that putting money in the hands of people who have to, by necessity, spend it is the source of stimulus. Taking money away from them shrinks demand and hence the economy. DEMAND drives the economy. We have known this for decades.

No. The data hasn't changed. The analysis hasn't changed. What has changed is the POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT; and economists, the feckless sycophants that they are, changed tack in response.

Let's put the other shoe on. Would we even be HAVING this conversation if it were FEMALE circumcision that had a slight impact on rates of HIV transmission? HELL NO. Circumcision is a barbaric treatment and the benefits here claimed do not do away with the need for practicing safe sex. If he's gonna have to practice safe sex anyway, why take a knife to your son's genitals? It just makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The risk to the women involved, the false sense of security this program gives, makes things MORE dangerous and are other good reasons for not doing this.

For over 100 years male circumcision has been a procedure in search of a medical justification. As research continued, the justifications have shifted over and over. The search for a good reason continues. This is just the latest and it will be replaced once enough people realize how totally obsurd it is.

Hey Cowhead

Economics classes are 95% bullshit, 4% outright lies and about 1% useful information. Fancy ideas about how economies work with hardly any connection to reality.... supply and demand without consideration of market power? or the way that information asymetries make a hash of the theory? Or the way that financial power translates into the political power that gives form to markets? Or the way that marketing creates and manipulates demand? Economics as a science?What science has to spend so much time trying to convince you it's science? talking of market forces like they're some law of nature like the law of gravity? Gimme an F'in break! The WORST place to learn about how the economy works is in typical economics class. (Economist joke: this equation describes everything except the special cases. And reality is a special case.)

No. Better to study economic history- how things have actually played out in the past. Get free of the ideological filters that corrupt most economics classes. There's a lot of good economic history being done these days. Mimh's "Nation of Counterfeiters" is one of the best treatments of the nature of money I've seen. It's also a rollicking good story. Beatty's "Age of Betrayal" is an epic, brilliant in the way he fuses politics, legal history and nineteenth century economic development. Edward Chancellor's "Devil Take the Hindmost: A history of financial speculation" is nearly 10 years hold, but it's also a great explication of the context of our present mess. Chancellor worked as an investment banker after graduating Oxford with a degree in history so he knows what he's talking about. And unlike most economists, the guy knows how to write!

Those three books would give a person a better understanding of how the economy works than most classes. Check em out.