• For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime—Writing in the New York Times, Paul von Zeilbauer examines how Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly turning to alcohol and drugs “to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments” and how such substance use has led to “a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries.”
• Anonymity of Death Echoes Life For Undocumented Latino Immigrants—Writing in the Washington Post, Theresa Vargas documents the increasing but often overlooked problem of undocumented Latino immigrants meeting a tragic end on U.S. soil and then languishing unidentified and unclaimed for years in morgues.
• Justices to Hear Landmark Free-Speech Case—Also in the Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports on “the most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War [which] hinges on a somewhat absurd, vaguely offensive, mostly nonsensical message of protest: Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”
• HPV Vaccine: Betting on a Mercky Record—Writing in In These Times, Terry J. Allen takes a thoughtful look at the controversy over mandating use of Merck’s new vaccine for human papillomavirus.
Kmareka.com 
i’m glad that Terry Allen acknowledges the good side of vaccines. recently i saw an obituary for the last iron lung survivor. she was a victim of the polio epidemic that was terrorizing parents and children across the country when I was young. I don’t know what thrown together vaccine they injected us all with then, but it was sure better than paralysis, or deafness, as one of my friends was left with. i share David Jaffe’s well- founded scepticism about the greed of the pharmacuetical industry, but like i’ve said before, mother nature can be a bitch. when you have a real disease a vaccine is almost always a good bet.