RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 11 to June 17 Featured Investigation Prohibition's repeal in 1933 opened the spigot on government regulation, leading to a robust framework of controls on alcohol that have largely held on into the new millennium. As Erin Clark reports for RealClearInvestigations, that system is buckling. She writes: From Utah to Pennsylvania, Washington to Texas, states are loosening restrictions on the production and sale of spirits. Even online alcohol sales, small now, are projected to gain wider acceptance as more digital natives come of legal age. Clark reports that many of these efforts are aimed at tearing down the three-tiered system that drew firm lines among producers, distributors and retailers of alcoholic beverages. The rise of winery tours - free tastings! - offered the first blow along with the subsequent rise of brewpubs. Those efforts have been bolstered by the more recent rise of craft breweries of craft distilleries. Clark aligns those last two developments with the wider artisanal movement, marked by liberalized laws to foster the rise of small local bread and cheese makers and organic farms - the "cottage food industry." Pulling her lens back, she connects the various liberalization efforts to cultural norms that increasingly value personal freedom and convenience. She writes: Marijuana legalization is but one example. At a time when it's not outlandish to expect pepperoni pizza delivered by drone, and a bag of medicinal weed curbside in 10 minutes, Prohibition-era laws designed to make alcohol consumption inconvenient can seem downright archaic. Read Full Article
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series For Refugees in U.S., Freedom's Just Another Word for Self-Reliance
RealClearInvestigations/Columbia Journalism School
Many refugees new to America hold romantic ideas about life in a country where citizens are guaranteed so many rights and freedoms. But they soon learn, often the hard way, about the strong traditions of self-reliance in America - and how little time they have to adapt. A collaboration with the Columbia Journalism School. How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico
ProPublica & National Geographic
It began as a coup for the Drug Enforcement Agency: In 2011, it had gotten hold of trackable cellphone data for two kingpins of the Zetas cartel. But that success turned into a weeks-long bloodbath for the people of Allende, Mexico, when the DEA shared its information with a leak-prone unit of the Mexican federal police. Years later, accounts of survivors, cartel members and government officials offer a rare chronicle of such violence. Russia Linked to 14 Deaths on British Soil and Counting
BuzzFeed
British police called Scot Young's death a clear case of suicide. But Young's ties to Vladimir Putin's enemy Boris Berezovsky place him among suspicious deaths involving money laundering, fraud, lavish lifestyles and Russia. There have been 14 such deaths in all, and they illustrate a known problem of Russian assassination on British shores, and a reluctance by the British government to respond forcefully. The Strange, Secret History of Operation Goldfinger
New Yorker
During the Johnson administration, as gold's role in the monetary system was about to implode, the U.S. government ran a secret project to look for the stuff in the oddest places: seawater, meteorites, plants, even deer antlers. Plans were even drawn up to use nuclear explosives to extract gold from deep inside the Earth. The project's name drew on popular culture: Operation Goldfinger. 'Fracking' With Twinkies: Classroom Fare From the Energy Industry
Center for Public Integrity
If funding for "The Magic School Bus" came from the oil industry, Ms. Frizzle might look a little bit like Petro Pete. Pete and his friend Sandy Shale are stars of "Petro Pete's Big Bad Dream," put out by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board as part of a pro-fossil fuel curriculum for first graders. Meanwhile, in Ohio, fracking probably never tasted better: A school program there shows how to "frack" Twinkies using straws to pump for cream. | 
