UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Oxycontin Tweak Helped Turn Addicts to Heroin.

“We attribute the recent quadrupling of heroin death rates to the August 2010 reformulation of an oft-abused prescription opioid, OxyContin,” continues the report, authored by William Evans and Ethan Lieber, both from the University of Notre Dame, and Patrick Power from Boston University.

Deaths from heroin jumped to more than 15,000 in 2016, up from around 3,000 in 2010, according to the KFF data. And the fatalities from semisynthetic opioids stayed relatively flat for a few years and then grew, but much more slowly than previously.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: US Tanks In Europe Get Invisible Futuristic Missile Shield To Counter Russian Threat.

I’m still waiting for the hover tanks I was promised back in high school.

RED ON RED: GOP launches secret group to attack West Virginia coal baron.

The Republican establishment has launched an emergency intervention in the West Virginia Senate primary aimed at stopping recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship from winning the party’s nomination.

Late last week, a newly formed super PAC generically dubbed the “Mountain Families PAC” began airing TV ads targeting Blankenship, who spent one year behind bars following a deadly 2010 explosion at his Upper Big Branch Mine. The national party isn’t promoting its role in the group, but its fingerprints are all over it.

The 30-second commercials, which the group is spending nearly $700,000 to air, accuse Blankenship’s company of contaminating drinking water by pumping “toxic coal slurry,” even as the multimillionaire installed a piping system that pumped clean water to his mansion.

“Isn’t there enough toxic sludge in Washington?” the narrator intones.

If you want more Joe Manchin, I’m pretty sure nominating Blankenship is how you get more Manchin.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Comey, ABC News Join Forces for Infomercial and Much, Much More. “ABC News hosted an hour-long infomercial on Sunday night as part of a larger marketing strategy for the hyper-emotional, former Director of the FBI. James Comey, who regularly dispenses his wisdom and bon mots on Twitter, was ‘interviewed’ by Clinton foundation donor George Stephanopoulos.”

I don’t call major news outlets the “infotainment industry” for nothing, you know.

SCOTUS: States Want to Force Online Retailers to Collect Billions in Sales Tax.

WHERE IS SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST? ‘Bipartisan’ Arizona Teacher Protest is Led by Democratic Operative. “Face of #RedforEd fight worked for Bernie alum data collection group, Clinton campaign aide’s Dem recruitment group.”

Questions were raised last week regarding the background of Noah Karvelis, a teacher who has been the face of the highly visible #RedforEd push for increased teacher salaries, after Arizona governor Doug Ducey (R.) labeled him a political operative and chose to keep him out of talks on education spending.

“What I don’t want to do is get into these political operatives’ political circus,” Ducey said, calling into question the political motives of Karvelis’s group, which says it is nonpartisan. He said he would work with “decision makers” and separate out “political activists.”

The Democratic Governors Association criticized Ducey for mislabeling the “organic, bipartisan movement” as a “political movement,” but it failed to mention the ties Karvelis has established to Democratic groups in the last two years alone.

It never fails to amaze me how much growth the Left can nurture out of Astroturf.

SPACE: NASA’s TESS Satellite Will Supercharge Search for Nearby, Earth-Like Worlds.

TESS is designed to find planets orbiting nearby stars spread across the sky, astrophysicist and pioneering exoplanet researcher Sara Seager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told Space.com. The satellite is not specifically intended to look for planets that can support life, but it can find planets orbiting in the habitable zone of small stars, said Seager, who serves as a deputy science director on TESS.

TESS will find signals of planet candidates, Seager said. A lot of follow-up work will go into determining whether these candidates are truly planets, rather than binary stars, artifacts in the data or something else. Once this is accomplished, deeper investigation can begin. Unlike with Kepler, the stars TESS examines will be bright enough and close enough to allow detailed follow-up studies with large ground telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

It’s scheduled to go up today on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and you can watch the launch live here.

IT’S COLLUSION, I TELL YOU: Trump to Impose New Sanctions on Russia Over Support for Syria.

The Trump administration plans to impose new sanctions against Russia on Monday to punish it for enabling the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war, the latest in a series of actions by both sides underscoring the deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West.

The sanctions, coming shortly after American-led airstrikes against facilities linked to Syria’s chemical weapons, are meant to signal that the United States holds responsible not just the government of President Bashar al-Assad but also his patrons in Russia and Iran. President Trump has vowed that Syria’s allies will pay a “big price” for facilitating the suspected use of poison gas.

At this point, the strongest argument that could be offered by anyone still holding on to the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” narrative is that Trump wasn’t an honest enough politician to stay bought — and that’s pretty weak tea.

FAREWELL: Barbara Bush to Stop Medical Treatment, Focus on Comfort Care.

Mrs. Bush, 92 years old, has had a recent series of hospitalizations, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement Sunday. He said that after consulting with her family and doctors, she decided to not seek additional medical treatment and instead will focus on “comfort care.”

“It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself—thanks to her abiding faith—but for others,” Mr. McGrath stated. “She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving.”

What a lady.

BLUE WAVE? 2018 vote margin narrows as Democratic engagement slips.

A 10-point Democratic lead among all adults narrows to 4 points among registered voters and 5 points among those who say they’re both registered and certain to vote; neither of those is statistically significant. In January, by contrast, Democrats held similar margins in all three groups – 13, 12 and 15 points, respectively.

Factors at play include a slide in self-reported registration among Democrats, which is a sign of waning engagement; consolidation among Republicans of their base; and better results for the GOP among less-educated Americans generally, and non-college-educated white women in particular.

Among other results, the poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds more than three-quarters of Americans looking for a congressional candidate who agrees with them on gun policy.

Somewhere, Bill Clinton shakes his head at today’s Democrats.

JAMES COMEY: ‘My Wife and Girls’ Marched in Anti-Trump Women’s March.

LAUREN SPAGNOLETTI: The 10 Best Alien Films Ever Made.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who still has a soft spot for “Enemy Mine,” but I’m going to have issues with any Best Alien Films list lacking “The Day the Earth Stood Still” or John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of “The Thing.”

HMM: Wells Just Reported The Worst Mortgage Number Since The Financial Crisis.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: McCabe ‘Lacked Candor’ Under Oath.

That’s bureaucratese for “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

FAITH MOORE: Planned Parenthood Exec. Creepily Obsessed with Parkland Survivor Kyle Kashuv. “But, instead of engaging on the issues, she went after his prom date.”

OH, CANADA: A survey of Canadians over the age of 18 by polling firm Ipsos shows that no other country is less enthused at the prospect of turning over the steering wheel to a mass of sensors and a computer that knows best.

BREAKING: Former F.B.I. Deputy Director Is Faulted in Scathing Inspector General Report.

The Justice Department inspector general delivered to Congress on Friday a highly critical report that accused Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, of repeatedly misleading investigators.

The inspector general said that when investigators asked whether he had instructed aides to provide information in October 2016 to a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. McCabe said he did not authorize the disclosure and did not know who did.

But Mr. McCabe did approve the F.B.I.’s contact with the reporter, according to the review.

The newspaper article delved into a dispute between F.B.I. and Justice Department officials over how to proceed in an investigation into the financial dealings of the Clinton family’s foundation. It revealed a sensitive meeting during which Justice Department officials declined to authorize subpoenas or grand jury activity.

The inspector general also concluded that Mr. McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of the ongoing investigation in the manner described in the report violated media policy of the F.B.I. and Justice Department and constituted misconduct.

Heckuva job, Andy.

THERE’S NO PLEASING SOME PEOPLE: A Transgender Romance Hits Theaters in May, But LGBT Activists Aren’t Pleased.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME: Image of Venezuela’s Right-Wing Violence Wins World Photo Award.

The photo is amazing, but characterizing protests against Venezuela’s hard-left socialists government as “right-wing violence” is just… well, on reflection I guess it’s to be expected.

Update: The link died, but here’s the Google Cache version.

MICHAEL WALSH: ‘Here I Stand’ — Or There He Goes? “In the Mueller investigation, all roads lead to Rod Rosenstein.”

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Florida’s state lawmakers haven’t gotten a dime from the NRA since 2005.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Losing perspective — and understanding — in the era of Trump.

We have left the simple and reassuring rhythms of the progress of legislation, of the White House “message of the day,” of the ritualized game of hide and seek between the press and officials elected and appointed, of Republican and Democratic squabbling over the 50-yard lines of majority rule, of debate and discussion in which civility and decorum, manners and deference, are prized above all.

We have left all this and moved instead into a march played at the fastest tempo, in 6/8 time, where a given week brings us the FBI raid of the offices of a presidential lawyer, an impending military strike on Syria (“Get ready Russia!”), the testimony of a Silicon Valley Titan before Congress, the retirement of a Speaker of the House who practically defines not only the establishment of his party but also the supply-side ideology that has dominated its thinking for a generation, hearings for secretary of State, and much else besides. This is a song filled with contradictions, in which porn stars and Playmates haunt the presidency of a man backed by a supermajority of self-identified evangelical Christians; in which a genius innovator and entrepreneur faces his most skeptical questioning from members of the pro-business party; in which a liberal New York crowd erupts in cheers at the mention of Paul Ryan’s retirement, without giving even the slightest thought to the politics that might replace him.

I am not saying that the weirdness, the distortion, began with President Trump. This story opens years earlier, with a financial crisis in which those responsible paid no price, with economic stagnation and the rise in deaths of despair in the American interior, with the decline in race relations during the second half of the Obama presidency, with mass migrations of peoples across borders and progressive governments unable or unwilling to stop them, and with sudden bureaucratic announcements that public school restrooms are to be made gender neutral, that the population covered by DACA is to be expanded beyond what the president said was legal just months before, that teachers and principals cannot enforce discipline in the public schools without coming under suspicion of racism.

These really are Heinlein’s Crazy Years.

MAYBE SHE SHOULD RETURN TO HER NATIVE SOUTH AFRICA AND TAKE UP A QUIET LIFE OF FARMING: Charlize Theron Says ‘I Might Have To Leave America’ Because of Racism.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: The horrifying maternal mortality rate in Texas turned out to be wrong, but that’s not the biggest issue.

Though we only now realize how flawed the data were, this isn’t entirely a recent revelation. Experts suspected that something was wrong with the data, they just weren’t sure what. The authors of that original study noted that “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a 2-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely.” Their suspicions turned out to be right. Instead of roughly 36 deaths per 100,000 births, the mortality rate was more like 14.6 deaths per 100,000 births.

Texas is, in fact, a cautionary tale, just not in the way we all thought. It’s been collecting data poorly for years now, and they’re not alone—maternal mortality rates could be wrong all over the U.S. Ever since some states introduced a checkbox to their death certificates asking about pregnancy back in 2003, the stats on maternal mortality have been skewed. A 2017 study concluded that this addition “appears to be the main driver of the increases in [maternal mortality rates] during the last decade.” States with and without the checkbox differ so much in reported data that we haven’t published an official national maternal mortality rate since 2007. The data just haven’t been good enough.

It makes you wonder what other data aren’t being collected, or are being improperly or incompletely collected.

PRIVACY: Uber Data Breach Exposed Personal Information of 20 Million Users.

A data breach in 2016 exposed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of more than 20 million people who use Uber Technologies Inc.’s service in the U.S., authorities said on Thursday, as they chastised the ride-hailing company for not revealing the lapse earlier.

The Federal Trade Commission said Uber failed to disclose the leak last year as the agency investigated and sanctioned the company for a similar data breach that happened in 2014. Bloomberg News reported the breach in November.

“After misleading consumers about its privacy and security practices, Uber compounded its misconduct,” said Maureen Ohlhausen, the acting FTC chairman. She announced an expansion of last year’s settlement with the company and said the new agreement was “designed to ensure that Uber does not engage in similar misconduct in the future.”

Lyft seems to be run by nicer people, anyway.