BINGE HYSTERIA: Dave Kopel points out that today’s Senate hearings on college binge drinking are a waste of time and money. Well, he says it better than that:

Not that Congress has any legitimate constitutional power over the subject — as the Twenty-first Amendment (repealing the grant of Congressional power over alcohol) makes clear. The witnesses consist exclusively of supporters and instigators of the current moral panic about college drinking. The hearing is obviously a platform for expanding federal pork to pay for more “counselors” and other neo-prohibitionist busybodies on college campuses. The alleged statistics about “college binge drinking” are, as I detailed, in a Rocky Mountain News column, utterly bogus. Among other flaws, these statistics define “binge drinking” in such an absurdly broad way as to encompass people who aren’t legally intoxicated or impaired. By the neo-prohibitionist definition, a woman who attends a three-hour Passover Seder and drinks the ritual Four Cups of wine is a “binge drinker.” The real binging problem involves power-intoxicated bureaucrats and politicians who can’t resist the temptation to intrude themselves into matters which, for federal officials, are none of their business.

I wish I could buy Dave a beer.