Viewpoints: Rising Federal Deficit Puts Medical Research In Jeopardy; Repealing Second Amendment Would Be Opening Pandora’s Box

The Washington Post: The Debt Crisis Is On Our Doorstep
We live in a time of extraordinary promise. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, 3D manufacturing, medical science and other areas have the potential to dramatically raise living standards in coming decades. But a major obstacle stands squarely in the way of this promise: high and sharply rising government debt. (Michael J. Boskin, John H. Cochrane, John F. Cogan, George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor, 3/27)

Bloomberg: Second Amendment Repeal Suggested By Justice Stevens Is A Mistake
It’s understandable that Justice John Paul Stevens would call for repeal of the Second Amendment, as he did Tuesday in an op-ed article in the New York Times, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of it to protect some gun sales. I have great respect for Justice Stevens, and what’s more I agree with him that the Heller case was wrongly decided by the court in 2008. But it would actually be a terrible idea to attempt a repeal of the Second Amendment just because the Supreme Court got it wrong. Experience shows that the Constitution is weakened if we respond to bad Supreme Court precedent by trying to amend it right away. (Noah Feldman, 3/27)

The Wall Street Journal: John Paul Stevens For The NRA
Critics often accuse the National Rifle Association of paranoia for arguing that gun controllers want to eliminate the Second Amendment. Well, being paranoid doesn’t mean the NRA is wrong. Look no further than former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is arguing this week that the Parkland, Florida, students and their allies shouldn’t settle for mere restrictions on guns. They should lobby Congress and the states to abolish the Second Amendment. (3/27)

Chicago Tribune: John Paul Stevens Is Wrong. Trying To Repeal The Second Amendment Would Be A Pointless Mistake.
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has just done the NRA and its allies a great favor: In an opinion piece in The New York Times, he proposed to repeal the Second Amendment.“ That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform,” argued Stevens, who dissented in the landmark cases recognizing an individual right to own firearms for self-defense. (Steve Chapman, 3/27)

The New York Times: The Trump Administration Sabotages The Census
In a last-minute move that would give Republicans an advantage in maintaining control of the House of Representatives, the Trump administration is reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 census. ...If the decision stands — the attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra, has filed a lawsuit seeking to block it, and other elected officials are preparing to do so, too — it would be the first time in nearly 70 years that the federal government has asked people filling out census forms to list their citizenship status. This is important because the census count determines how many House seats each state gets. The census is also used to determine how more than $600 billion in federal spending is allocated across the country, including Medicaid, food stamps and grants to schools. (3/27)

Los Angeles Times: Southern California Has The Resources To Solve Homelessness. It Chooses Not To
Disdain for street people is nothing new. To Marcus Tullius Cicero, homeless Romans were "the poverty-stricken scum of the city," who ought to be "drained off to the colonies." Following Huntington Beach's recent mobilization of the city's paid legal staff to oppose a county plan to house 100 homeless people near Huntington Central Park, similar coarse statements appeared in newspaper comment sections. ...When one scratches deeper into the homelessness issue, these attitudes appear not just a byproduct of the problem but also a source of it. And while the sentiment dates to Cicero — and exists in Europe, Canada, South America and elsewhere — residents in Southern California seem to shout the loudest about grime, odors and plunging housing values linked to their homeless neighbors. (Erik Skindrud, 3/27)

The Hill: A 21st-Century Solution To The Opioid Crisis
Pharmacists who dispense controlled substances have a responsibility not to dispense to patients who may be at risk for abuse of these drugs; however, their tools are limited. The systems that clinicians rely on to detect improper opioid prescriptions – known as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) – hold great promise, but they operate as a patchwork of separate programs in each state, creating troubling blind spots that allow episodes of abuse and unintended misuse to fester.(Joel White and Lee Ann Stemper, 3/28)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Lawmakers Should Allow Needle-Exchange Programs
Iowa lawmakers should finally allow needle-exchange It is difficult to understand the rationale of some Iowa lawmakers. Again this year they have failed to pass simple legislation clearing the way for needle-exchange programs to legally operate in this state. Fortunately, lawmakers still have time to get this done. Three dozen other states allow needle-exchange programs, which provide intravenous drug users a way to turn in contaminated syringes and receive clean ones. Supporters say these programs can reduce transmission of diseases, and there is likely federal money available to fund them. (3/27)

San Antonio Press-Express: In Citing Mental Health And Video Games, Gun Enthusiasts Grasping At Straws
Thousands of young people essentially said “enough” this past weekend in marches nationwide. The issue was guns and adult inaction on them. Our children were pointing their fingers at adults who apparently believe the Second Amendment permits the nation’s youngsters to be deemed acceptable collateral damage in the name of keeping highly lethal weapons legal. (O. Ricardo Pimentel, 3/27)

Kansas City Star: Supporters Of Arming Kansas Teachers Prove Their Critics’ Point
The majority of those crowded into the standing-room-only hearing on arming Kansas teachers had come to the Statehouse to plead against that folly. But it was those who’d come to argue in support of a bill that could force some teachers to take up arms who made the strongest case against pressuring educators to double as first responders. (Melinda Henneberger, 3/27)

Portland Herald Press: Prison Program Offers Model For Slowing Spread Of Opioid Epidemic
While drug overdose deaths set records across the country, they began to recede in Rhode Island. How did the small state buck such a powerful trend? By providing to some of its most vulnerable residents the treatment proven most successful in saving lives. In 2016, the Rhode Island Department of Corrections began screening all inmates for opioid use disorder and providing those who needed it with medications for addiction treatment – methadone and Suboxone to quell cravings, and Vivitrol to prevent users from getting high. (3/27)

Bloomberg: Gun-Control Movement Will Likely Lose To The NRA
After a massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999, journalists thought they saw a groundswell of public support for new regulations on gun ownership. Frank Bruni, then a reporter for the New York Times, marveled that “the earth has finally moved.” He explained that the National Rifle Association had lost clout. In the Washington Post, Roberto Suro reported that polling had shifted in favor of gun control. Cities were filing lawsuits to hold gun makers responsible for gun deaths. (Ramesh Ponnuru, 3/27)

The New York Times: I Tried To Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.
My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry. (Robinson, 3/27)

Axios: Lawsuit Filed Over FDA's Delay Of E-Cigarette Review
A group of public health organizations and doctors filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday for delaying its review of e-cigarettes — a growing concern amongst parents and pediatricians due to increased reports of adolescents and teenagers picking up "vaping" or "juuling" (when using a popular brand, Juul). (Eileen Drage O'Reilly, 3/28)

Sacramento Bee: Why Police Don't Get Charged For Shootings Like Stephon Clark's
Clark, the most recent of these victims, was killed on March 18 by two Sacramento police officers who fired 20 times at him. The officers said that they saw a gun, but all that was found was a cellphone near Clark’s dead body. We must do a better job of understanding how this happens, of preventing it from occurring, and of holding police departments and police officers accountable when tragedies take place. (Erwin Chemerinsky, 3/27)

The Wall Street Journal: ‘The Sequence’ Is The Secret To Success
"You should wait until you are older to date.” Growing up in a working-class family in China, I learned this at an early age. Like many Asian parents, my mother stressed the importance of working hard and getting a good education before beginning a family. Having a child outside marriage never crossed my mind. In the small city where I grew up, it isn’t done. Even today, less than 4% of births in China are out of wedlock, and the same is true in India, Japan and South Korea. For the vast majority of young adults in Asia, the path to success clearly runs through education, work and marriage—in that order. Families, schools, media and society at large all reinforce that message. ...More important, the success sequence benefits young adults from low-income backgrounds. (Wendy Wang, 3/27)

Bloomberg: Protein Engineering May Be The Future Of Science
Scientists are increasingly betting their time and effort that the way to control the world is through proteins. Proteins are what makes life animated. They take information encoded in DNA and turn it into intricate three-dimensional structures, many of which act as tiny machines. Proteins work to ferry oxygen through the bloodstream, extract energy from food, fire neurons, and attack invaders. One can think of DNA as working in the service of the proteins, carrying the information on how, when and in what quantities to make them. (Faye Flam, 3/27)