Archive for 2022

THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CYCLE HAS BEGUN: Trump Engages in Friendly Fire, Goes After Ron DeSantis at Rally. “Donald Trump held a rally in Pennslyvania tonight, but as usual, the candidates running for office were an afterthought. Instead, the former president spent the majority of the time talking about himself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a Trump rally after all, and to be sure, they can be very entertaining. Unfortunately, instead of some of the good things he said making news, there’s currently just one clip going gangbusters on Saturday night. That would be this one where Trump engaged in friendly fire by taking a very public shot at Ron DeSantis. Trump mocks DeSantis as ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ at a rally tonight in Pennsylvania. Personally, I’d like to at least get into mid-2023 before this stuff starts, and I don’t understand the play here aside from Trump being fearful DeSantis is going to grow his following with a blowout re-election.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Desanctimonious” is neither funny nor particularly accurate. If Trump’s aiming for a linguistic kill shot, this is enough of a miss that it makes me wonder if he’s off his game.

NITA GHEI: The Other Opioid Crisis: How the Criminal Justice System Imperils Patients and Physicians: Law enforcement agencies have had broad powers to pursue and punish opioid prescribers, but a recent Supreme Court decision offers some hope.

In most popular depictions of the “opioid crisis,” ranging from Hulu’s “Dopesick” to Stanford physician Anna Lembke’s 2016 book, “Drug Dealer, MD,” the driving force of the crisis is physicians—who in this narrative are helpless pawns of the pharmaceutical companies—overprescribing opioids. This narrative has been taken up and repeated by politicians, law enforcement and interest groups seeking solutions to the harms caused by substance use disorder.

This narrative has at best a tenuous link to reality. It is, however, deeply entrenched in culture and widely accepted as true. As a result of this narrative, combined with ambiguous statutory language in the Controlled Substances Act of 1971 and the poorly drafted 2016 “Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), law enforcement has had an inordinate influence in medical decision-making, as physicians desperately sought to treat patients while protecting themselves from the threat of civil forfeiture and loss of livelihood.

Because of the Controlled Substances Act’s ambiguous language, there has historically been no legal definition of “overprescription.” So matters stood for half a century, until the Supreme Court handed down its unanimous ruling in Ruan v. United States in June 2022. The decision establishes a narrow definition of what constitutes overprescribing, leaving physicians with greater discretion in their medical decision-making. But the long-term effects of Ruan on law enforcement and physician behavior remain to be seen.

Law Enforcement Discretion and Physician Uncertainty

In the decades between the Controlled Substances Act and the Ruan decision, law enforcement agencies had extraordinary latitude in their hunt for “overprescribing” physicians. This high level of discretion affected not only how the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) pursued the so-called war on drugs for half a century, but also how medical decisions were made for both acute and chronic care, as physicians were uncertain what behaviors would run afoul of the agency and state and local law enforcement. The DEA persisted in its focus on prescribed opioids for medical use, even as illicit drugs flooded the nation and a vast majority of the skyrocketing fatal accidental overdoses were caused by a combination of street drugs and alcohol, not by prescription opioids.

To be fair, the DEA is hot garbage.

HMM: Court Filings Reveal Contradictory Accounts Of Dean’s Exit At Texas Southern Law School.

Officials at the Historically Black University were tight-lipped about Joan R.M. Bullock’s dismissal in June, but recently filed court documents cast light on the turmoil within the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Bullock is suing the university, its regents and other leaders, alleging that she was stripped of her position and tenure without cause.

The attorney general’s office, which is representing the public university, outlined in a federal court filing some of the reasons for why they said the former dean was fired. They also argued a motion for the case’s dismissal Wednesday and denied that Bullock was ever granted tenure—a highly protected status that provides educators job security and safeguards the freedom to teach and conduct research as they choose.

I find that highly implausible. In every deanship search I’ve ever heard of, the new dean gets faculty tenure when hired. Thus, even if they resign as dean they become a regular faculty member. (The dean position is like a coach, there’s no guarantee you’ll keep the job as dean if you’re unsuccessful.) I can’t imagine anyone taking a deanship without tenure.

WAIT, WHAT? NOBODY TOLD ME THAT THE RIGHT HAS STEALTH LESBIANS!  How Stacey Abrams-founded group discussed digging for racism.

Seriously guys, if you don’t share this kind of resource with us here at Casa Instapundit, we won’t be able to tell you where to stealth them. Next you’re going to tell me we have midget assassins and no one told me so I couldn’t pick their targets. It’s like you don’t trust me to use these responsibly.

(Also, the owner of that site is running a 25% off subscription sale for instapundit readers.)

I HEAR RUMORS THAT SO WAS PAUL. THEN THINGS HAPPENED:  Democrats Begin To Consider Life After Pelosi.

By the by are those security tapes now in the deep vault with Hunter’s laptop, Biden’s medical history and Obama’s educational history? How big is that vault? The pressure in there must be growing.

SINCE MISINFORMATION IS DEMOCRAT FOR “TRUTHS WE HATE” ALL I CAN SAY IS I HOPE SO:  Democrats: Misinformation Will Flourish On Twitter After Layoffs.

I never had any hankering to be verified before, and I’ll never spend a ton of time on twitter, but I’m seriously thinking of subscribing.

UNFORTUNATELY Y’ALL ARE FORGETTING THE MASSIVE FRAUD HEADING OUR WAY:  Things Look Too Good.

I won’t link “I see your bad moon rising” again. But it’s playing full on in the back of my head. “I see trouble on the way.” Oh, and “I hear hurricanes a blowing
I know the end is coming soon. I fear rivers overflowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin”