RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
September 1 to September 7 In RealClearInvestigations, Bob Ivry has another thing to keep sleepless American up at night: the news that melatonin’s no good for chronic insomnia, according to much science, although it can help overcome jet lag. That means the 67 million Americans who use the supplement, or about 27% of adults, are pretty much wasting their money: “There’s not enough strong evidence on the effectiveness or safety of melatonin supplementation for chronic insomnia to recommend its use,” according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Decades ago, travelers embraced melatonin as a proven way to regulate the body’s 24-hour internal clock, known as circadian rhythms, and thus recover more easily from jet lag. Soon melatonin morphed – without proof – from a treatment for the ravages of long plane rides into a nightly sleep aid. “I would argue that melatonin is the most misused supplement in the world,” says Michael Breus, known as the Sleep Doctor. Melatonin racked up $2.2 billion in sales from bleary-eyed Americans in 2022, a number expected to rise to $8.6 billion by 2032. Breus singles out Relaxium Sleep, with commercials featuring former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee: “They say all the ingredients have been clinically tested,” Breus said. “What they don’t tell you is they haven’t been tested together.” A cheaper alternative to melatonin? “Skills, not pills,” says Wendy Troxel of the RAND Corporation. She means mundane but difficult-to-maintain night habits like keeping away from the sort of digital screen you’re looking at right now. Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Nonprofit for Wolves Devoured Utah's Money, RCI
LA Workers Earn Up to $614,000 in Overtime, RCI
The Shortcutting $633K Colo. DNA Tester, RCI
Who Put Poems in Zoo? Feds, That's Who, RCI
Cop Abuse Lawsuits Buffet Windy City, RCI Election 2024 and the Beltway Hunter Biden Pleads Guilty 9 Times in Tax Case, New York Times
With Plea, Hunter's Betting It All on a Pardon From Dad, NY Post
GOP Network Backs Liberal Third-Party Candidates, Associated Press
Bogus Philadelphia Eagles Street Posters Tout Kamala, CBS Phila.
In Forgotten Speech, Harris Backs Transgender Agenda, Just the News
Prime Partisanship: Amazon's Alexa Appears to Back Harris, Fox Biz
Who Shot Trump Gunman First? Clashing Narratives Emerge, Daily Mail
Tim Walz Puffed Up Academic Resume, Washington Free Beacon Other Noteworthy Articles and Series When a 15-year-old student identified as Dianah made her sexual abuse allegation against him, Deputy Jamel Bradley had been the subject of at least five complaints in his nine years at South Carolina’s Spring Valley High School. Parents, fellow deputies, an administrator and a coach had all raised concerns that Bradley was acting inappropriately with teenage girls. But, this article reports, some people on the force refused to investigate the concerns: Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott had personally recruited Bradley, a former star basketball player at the University of South Carolina – placing him at an elementary school before he’d even graduated from the police academy. He was painted as a role model in the community, with glowing evaluations and praise-filled newspaper profiles. Bradley, Jackson told the teen, was “a unicorn in the force … considered rare and precious and above reproach.” The sheriff’s department, Dianah learned, was not going to arrest Bradley. He was not going to be removed from Dianah’s high school. After briefly being reassigned to another school, Bradley had returned to the halls of Spring Valley. “I can’t go back to school,” Dianah declared. This article reports that in South Carolina and across the country, the presence of more than 20,000 local police officers and sheriff’s deputies in schools has been welcomed by many parents fearful of mass shootings and other safety threats, and protested by those concerned about excessive force and the arrests of kids. Largely ignored in the debate: the risk of sexual abuse of children by the officers patrolling their campuses. In a separate series of articles, RealClearInvestigations has reported on the epidemic of sexual abuse occurring at the nation’s secondary schools. Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is estimated to be in the millions, James Varney reports. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America. For a variety of reasons, ranging from embarrassment to eagerness to avoid liability, elected or appointed officials, along with unions or lobbying groups representing school employees, have fought to keep the truth hidden from the public. The Biden administration has distinguished itself both by the gushers of money it seeks to spend and all the strings it has attached to that taxpayer largesse that make it hard to spend the money. This article reports on delays surrounding one aspect of Biden’s mammoth 2021 infrastructure law – which included $42 billion to bring broadband service to underserved and remote areas of the country. So far, the government's rules, especially a vague affordability requirement (any provider taking the federal money needs to offer a low-cost service option), have choked the release of much of the funding: Thanks to a federal affordability requirement that telecommunications companies say is too tight, many states have sparred with Washington over their funding applications, delaying the rollout. There’s little chance that communities across the country will see concrete results until 2025 at the soonest – well past Biden’s time in office – and no chance at all before November’s election. … The affordability rule was part of a suite of federal conditions, some written into the original infrastructure law and some added by the administration in its 2022 guidelines. The rules require states accepting the money to make sure providers plan for climate change, reach out to unionized workforces and hire locally. One vague but broad provision requires low-cost options and fast connections for “middle class families” at “reasonable prices.” Nevertheless, in response to the question of who is responsible for the delays, this article offers both-siderism. “Republicans have generally blamed overweening Washington bureaucrats, but industry critics say the Virginia government was too sympathetic with the telecom industry from the start.” Acadia Healthcare is one of America’s largest chains of psychiatric hospitals. Since the pandemic exacerbated a national mental health crisis, this article reports, the company’s revenue has soared and its stock price has doubled. But some of that success, this article reports, “was built on a disturbing practice.” A New York Times investigation found that: Acadia has lured patients into its facilities and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary. In at least 12 of the 19 states where Acadia operates psychiatric hospitals, dozens of patients, employees and police officers have alerted the authorities that the company was detaining people in ways that violated the law, according to records reviewed by The Times. In some cases, judges have intervened to force Acadia to release patients. This article reports that Acadia held all of these patients under laws meant for people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others. But none of the patients appeared to have met that legal standard, according to records and interviews. Tim Blair, an Acadia spokesman, said the patient examples cited by The Times were not representative of many patients with positive experiences. Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups based in the United States organized demonstrations in San Francisco that harassed and silenced protesters opposed to Beijing’s policies during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the city in November, a six-month investigation by the Washington Post finds: Of the more than a dozen attacks against activists that The Post tallied over the four days that Xi was in San Francisco, among the most severe was an assault on Zhang Kaiyu, a 51-year old Chinese man, and his two friends, Chau Kaihung, 73, and Li Delong, 40, all immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong [who were surrounded and beaten]. … “Everywhere we went … we were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the pro-CCP people,” Zhang said in an interview. … The events in San Francisco illustrate how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is willing to extend its intolerance of any dissent into the United States and target people exercising their First Amendment rights in an American city. It is part of a broader global pattern of China attempting to reach beyond its borders and suppress parts of its diaspora advocating against the CCP and ongoing rights abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and mainland China, the U.S. government and human rights groups say. Across New York, recently arrived migrants are flooding the criminal justice system, this article reports, at far higher rates than public officials have acknowledged: Police sources shared with The Post a staggering estimate that as many as 75% of the people they’ve been arresting in Midtown Manhattan in recent months for crimes like assault, robbery and domestic violence are migrants. In parts of Queens, the figure is more than 60%, sources there estimate. On any given day, Big Apple criminal court dockets are packed with asylum seekers who have run afoul of the law. … Police sources say word has gotten out in the shelters about the city’s lax bail guidelines – meaning migrants know they’re going to get kicked back onto the street quickly after they’re nabbed. This article reports that the problem is exacerbated by sanctuary city laws that mean New York cops aren’t allowed to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on cases where they believe suspects are in the country illegally. The NYPD also says it is barred from tracking the immigration status of offenders. This makes it almost impossible for authorities to get their arms around the problem, experts and sources on the ground say. In a separate article, the Denver Gazette reports that authorities in Aurora, Colorado, took no action for weeks after they were informed that several apartment complexes had effectively been taken over by migrants who are members of a brutal Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. This article quotes a letter from the property management company’s lawyer to Colorado’s Attorney General that states: “Our clients have, for several months, complained to the Aurora Police Department and the Aurora Code Enforcement Division about the lawlessness surrounding the Aurora Multi-Family Projects. For the most part, the response has been very little and totally ineffective.” | 