CAR LUST: R.I.P. Mercury.

WANT A CLEANER ENVIRONMENT AND “GREEN GROWTH?” Support free trade.

SHOCKER: Voters’ support for members of Congress is at an all-time low, poll finds.

HMM: Actress Sues Yasmin Birth Control Over Her Stroke. Don’t know about the merits of the suit, but birth control pills were probably the cause of Helen’s heart attack.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Boone emails:

Your post on the InstaWife’s stroke/birth control relation hit close: I have a good friend (an ex-girlfriend) who is currently facing criminal Child Endangerment and DUI charges (two separate events) here in Pennsylvania (Allentown). She has been experiencing random, spontaneous “transient states of awareness”, whereby she blacks out and becomes confused, sometimes for hours. During one occasion she “lost” her children at a store; during the other she woke up in the middle of the night and drove and wrecked her car into two parked cars.

I’ve been providing a lot of primary care for her, mostly because it scares the bejeesus out of me that something like this can happen to a 33 year old out of the blue. She’s been to Psychiatrists, Neurologists, Epileptologists, drug & alcohol clinics, in and out of hospitals, underwent EEGs, EKGs, you name it! Of course the crim-just folks just KNOW she’s a drug addict. The Doc’s say there is no evidence of such. The current “thought” is epilepsy.

But in doing research on the internet we have happened upon a correlative relationship: she had the Mirena hormonal IUD installed on New Year’s Eve. It was the second insertion, her body rejected the first. By mid-January she was experiencing the events. Arrested first within 60 days, arrested twice within 90. Her cycles are erratic and non-cyclical. There are many reports of “Ambien-like” behavior tied to the Mirena on the ‘net. She is currently following up with her OB-GYN, whose approach seems merely “well, we’ll remove it.”

But how can it be that we are so unaware in this country of the problems of birth control hormones that we are CRIMINALLY CHARGING innocent women? She is left dealing with massive legal bills, got fired from her job, has to pay COBRA out of pocket, lost her driving privileges, and, worst of all for a mother, lost custody of her children.

Sounds like the authorities jumped to conclusions, as they are wont to do. Also, numerous readers point out that while birth-control side effects are underappreciated, pregnancy can be dangerous too. . . .

SHOULD DERMATOLOGISTS POINT OUT SUSPICIOUS MOLES they see on passersby? In the comments, Freeman Hunt observes:

Yes, it is the right thing to do.

Perhaps if some dermatologist had noticed the bad mole on the back of my father’s head and said something to him, he wouldn’t have melanoma spreading throughout his liver and lungs right now.

Another reader comments:

It was over the course of a few years that I noticed a strangely colored, irregular mole on the back of the neck of a client/associate.

Repeatedly, I almost said something, but every time I just assumed his wife must have noticed it and he had it checked out. So, who was I to bring it up? Within a few years he was dead of melanoma.

I mentioned an iffy mole to a dive guide last month. She looked vaguely irritated and said “it’s been checked dozens of times.” But better safe than sorry — it was huge and odd-looking.

On the other hand, don’t take health advice from Sex and the City.

UPDATE: Oncologist David McCune writes:

In case your readers would like an easy way to remember the characteristics of a mole with a higher risk of melanoma, think “ABCD”.

A – asymmetry (one half different from the other)
B – border irregularity (edges notched, uneven, or blurred)
C – color that is uneven
D – diameter greater than 6mm

Worth noting. Easy to treat if you catch early, really nasty if you don’t.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Pass Earmark Transparency Now.

MAYOR DALEY: Not helping the gun-control cause. Yeah, when an obviously corrupt machine’s thug-in-chief preaches citizen disarmament, it’s just a little too obvious what it’s about . . . .

ASHTON KUTCHER: 7 MPG Environmentalist.

CHANGE: Moody’s Downgrades Illinois Bonds, Revenues Continue Slide.

THE SAFETY OF Mandatory Decadence.

ANTI-WALMART ASTROTURF: “When I saw local busybodies try to stop the opening of a Wal-Mart in Cleveland — a Wal-Mart that did not receive any local subsidies nor require the use of eminent domain — I realized that union groups backed the effort. What I was not aware of at the time was that grocery stores and large supermarket chains have become substantial funders of anti-Wal-Mart activism.”

MARK STEYN ON HELEN THOMAS: “A guy with a flip camera just took out one of the most storied names in American journalism. Presumably US newspaper managements have been assured by Obama, Pelosi, Frank et al that that bailout’s a-comin’ any day now. The alternative is that they’re inept timeserving mediocrities too dullwitted even to know they’re going over the falls.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: L.A. Times: The ties that bind. Remember Rahm Emanuel’s rent-free D.C. apartment? The owner: A BP adviser.

TELEGRAPH: Are Europe’s political elite on course to destroy the EU? After meeting the President, I think so.

THEY TOLD ME IF WE ELECTED BARACK OBAMA THEY’D BE putting up statues of Stalin around our nation’s capital. And they were right!

WALTER SHAPIRO on Nikki Haley. “Haley, in her first statewide campaign, has proven a master of boomerang politics – making every attack seem like a vindication of her conservative populist outrage.”

ON THE LEFT, assassination chic.

HEH: Actually, Elton John had a great time at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding.

SO THE PROLIFERATION OF SPEED TRAPS BROUGHT ON BY SHAKY STATE AND LOCAL FINANCE HAS ME THINKING ABOUT BUYING A RADAR DETECTOR. Any advice?

UH OH: CRACKS. “In China, cracks are appearing – in the neighbourhood of the massive Three Gorges Dam, the country’s great prestige project, and also in the Great Internet Firewall of China, enabling the ominous news to leak out. Three years ago stories were already emerging in the Chinese media about landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae further down the river. And less and less effort seems to be made to plug the leaks.”

IS TURKEY BECOMING the next Iran?

HOW TO Free A Rusted Bolt.

TALKING CARS with the Car Lust guys.

PJTV: Chutzpah and Consequence: Karl Rove on Gaza Violence and Jewish Republicans.

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INEVITABLE: Affirmative Action For Men In College Admissions?