Hooray! Lady-beater Ray Rice Is Free To Play Sportsball Again

• Here is some really important news for people who still care a lot about football, but not so much about domestic violence:

  Ray Rice has won the appeal of his indefinite suspension by the NFL.

  An arbitrator ruled Friday that his suspension for punching his fiancee, now his wife, should be vacated immediately. The NFL said Rice, a free agent, is "eligible to play upon signing a new contract."

  Former U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones said Commissioner Roger Goodell's decision in September to change Rice's original suspension from two games to indefinite was "arbitrary" and an "abuse of discretion." [...]

  In her decision, Jones also wrote:

  "Because Rice did not mislead the commissioner and because there were no new facts on which the commissioner could base his increased suspension, I find that the imposition of the indefinite suspension was arbitrary. I therefore vacate the second penalty imposed on Rice.

  In case you've managed to bleach your brain enough to forget, Ray Rice was indefinitely suspended, eventually, when the powers that be at the NFL could no longer pretend they hadno ideathat when Rice beat the crap out of Janay, it was, like, really bad. If only they'd been able to see the video, the whole video, so they could have understood that punching a lady in the face is actually kind of a big deal ... at least until it's game time. Lucky for Rice and people who still think sportsball is REALLY IMPORTANT, the decision to suspend Rice was totally unwarranted because reasons. So Rice is up for grabs for any NFL teams who've got some great PR guys who can explain that Rice has already suffered enough, and did he sort of kind of apologize, and everyone deserves a second chance, so come on, let's all move on and focus on what matters most. Which definitely is not domestic violence.

• Some really important lessons from National Review "writer" Rich "Sarah Palin gives me starbursts in my pants" Lowry:

  You look at Ferguson specifically, this is an area where the governmental structures haven't caught up to the demographic change over the last two decades or so and that's something you take care of simply by organizing and voting.

  But what I really object to is you can discuss all of these problems, but let's not pretend that this particular incident was something it wasn't. It you look at the most credible evidence, the lessons are really basic. Don't rob a convenience store. Don't fight a policeman when he's stopped you and try to take his gun and when he yells at you to stop with is gun drawn, just stop and none of this would have happened.

• Apparently, Hillary Clinton stinks like an old car:  

  Hillary Clinton has lost the "new car smell" she might need to win the presidency in 2016, said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen on Sunday.

  “The president said [last week] that the next president needs … a new car smell, and it’s pretty hard for me to say … that she [Hillary] has a new car smell," Schoen told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview to air Sunday on New York's 970 AM.

  Those are some awful pretty words from the Democratic pollster -- and, ahem, Fox "News" contributor -- who worked on Clinton's campaign in 2008. He thinks Elizabeth Warren sure smells nice, though. And she, unlike Hillary, won't have the problem of trying to distance herself from the president while not distancing herself from the president. Or something. Guess he won't be applying for that gig as Clinton's campaign manager, if she ever decides she's ready to run. But that Fox "News" gig sounds just about right for him.

• Do you suffer from depression or know someone who does? There just might be an anti-inflammatory for that:

  [S]ome say we need new ways of thinking about depression entirely.

  For Turhan Canli, a professor of integrative neuroscience at Stony Brook University, that means looking at the possibility that depression could be caused by an infection.

  “I’ve always been struck by the fact that the treatment options did not seem to have dramatically improved over the course of decades,” Dr. Canli told Op-Talk. “I always had a feeling that somehow we seem to be missing the actual treatment of the disease.”

  He was intrigued by research showing a connection between depression and inflammation in the body, and he started to think about the known causes of inflammation — among them pathogens like bacteria, viruses and parasites.

• Our friends at Happy Nice Time People have news of a new show from self-appointed financial guru Suze Orman. If you enjoy watching her tell people how much they suck with money this show just might be for you:

  Suze Orman wants to be a financial Supernanny who swoops in and straightens out your misbehaving money. Or maybe more of a fiduciary Chef Robert who turns around your failing finances in 48 hours, Restaurant Impossible-style. The details aren’t 100% clear yet, but anyway, Suze Orman is abandoning her CNBC money show to take a more personal, hands-on, family-by-family approach to helping people with their financial struggles.

  The new show will be called Suze Orman’s Money Wars and will air five days a week… somewhere. Do you have money troubles that are ruining your marriage and/or family relationships? Give Suze a call, and she’ll stage a financial intervention… with cameras rolling, of course.

• Did you miss our Wonkette Black Friday for you to buy all the things, from home in your underwear? That's OK! It's Cyber Monday, which is like Friday except you have to put on pants and go to work and it's basically like any other Monday, except with shopping. On the internets! So go buy some things, for America.