Blowback

Those searching for answers to the question " Is medical marijuana good medicine? " will find few in Dr. David Sack's Times Op-Ed article.   On the one hand, Sack concedes, "Marijuana can effectively treat neuropathic pain, and it has been shown to improve appetite and reduce nausea," an acknowledgment substantiating the plant's therapeutic utility. However, he later warns that cannabis' ability to provide relief for certain other conditions, such as lupus and anxiety, remains unproven.

In their April 12 Op-Ed article " Who should own DNA? All of us ," Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar write about Myriad's patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2, the so-called breast cancer genes (which were under review Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court), as if they have served little purpose in the development of tests that have helped more than 1 million women to understand their risks of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. The patents do not cover human genes from anyone's body.

AMC has killed "The Killing. " The cable network has axed the crime drama after two seasons. The series started to great acclaim from critics, but many fans turned against the show after it failed in its first season to resolve the investigation of the murder of Rosie Larsen, which fans felt they had been implicitly promised. "After much deliberation, we've come to the difficult decision not to renew 'The Killing' for a third season," AMC said in a statement. "The Killing" marks a rare failure for AMC, which has embarked on an aggressive expansion into original programming in recent years.

In his March 22 blog post criticizing proposals to switch from the consumer price index to "chained CPI" to determine cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries and other items in the federal budget, Michael Hiltzik claimed that there were "no grounds" for the statement made in a recent paper from the Moment of Truth Project (" Measuring Up, The Case for Chained CPI" ) that the chained CPI provides a more accurate measure of inflation than the measure currently used.  In fact, experts across the ideological spectrum agree that the chained CPI is indeed more accurate.

Former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Robert Bonner wrote in his Feb. 1 Blowback article , "There is still no such scientific study establishing that marijuana is effective as a medicine. " Nonsense. Over the last several years, the state of California, via the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research , has conducted several placebo-controlled, FDA-approved clinical trials affirming the safety and therapeutic efficacy of cannabis. Other institutions have as well.

Got a beef with the L.A. Times? Read something in the paper that really ticked you off, but haven't got a place to make your opinion heard? Want to write an article about it and get it into The Times? Blowback is The Times' forum for full-length responses to our articles, editorials and Op-Eds. It is the missing link between the 150-word letter to the editor and the Op-Ed piece, and you're invited to participate. To submit an entry to Blowback, just send your best 700 words or fewer to blowback@latimes.com . To get an idea of what we're looking for, check out previous postings . By submitting a Blowback article, you agree to our terms of service . Any questions?

Chalmers Johnson, an influential scholar of East Asia's political economy whose seminal writings forced a reevaluation of both the Chinese Revolution and the Japanese "economic miracle," has died. He was 79. Johnson, who taught at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the University of California from 1962 to 1992, died Saturday of complications of long-term rheumatoid arthritis at his home in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, said his wife, anthropologist Sheila K. Johnson. The UC Berkeley-educated Johnson was the founder and president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a 16-year-old nonprofit organization devoted to public education about Japan and its place in the world.

I'm feeling oddly tongue-tied in the wake of the pop psychology gabfest spawned by the ever-evolving sex scandals of the New York governor's office. Even though I happened to be in New York when the whole Eliot Spitzer thing was unfurling, and every other conversation had something to do with hookers or managed to incorporate cheesy innuendo about "Client 9. " I'm still not entirely clear as to what we're supposed to take away from this. But, by God, we need something. The Spitzer narrative, its many lurid subplots, and now the peccadilloes of the new N.Y. "Luv Gov" and his wife have demanded not just around-the-clock reporting but a breathless "cultural dialogue" suggesting that a huge percentage of Americans have quit their day jobs and turned into amateur psychologists.

Nina Burleigh (" Hoaxes from the Holy Land” Op-Ed article, Nov. 29) is unwilling to consider the possibility that the now-famous bone box inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is authentic. This is despite the fact that the Jerusalem judge in the case, after listening to the state's witnesses for more than three years, is of the view that the government has failed to prove the inscription is a forgery and should consider dropping the case. Burleigh's view after the judge's pronouncement remains the same as in her book, "Unholy Business.

When Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate, Kia Motors Corp., announced Wednesday that they were conducting a massive recall of 1.7 million vehicles, it was a sign of what can go wrong when parts are shared by many vehicle models. Since the recession, according to automotive industry analysts, more and more manufacturers have turned to the economies of scale involved in having fewer vehicle platforms and more interchangeable parts and components. "This is supposed to be the ideal for making cars now," said Jesse Toprak, analyst for TrueCar.com.

In response to Jonah Goldberg's Op-Ed on Tuesday, " The wisdom of Dan Quayle ": What? It's been 20 years since the Murphy Brown-Dan Quayle feud, and we're still talking about this? I suppose I should be flattered. And not surprised. After all, we're still talking about glass ceilings and Roe vs. Wade and what constitutes "legitimate rape. " But because history, like a hit television series, repeats itself, let's revisit 1992.  For those of you too young to remember (or too old to recall)

Though public debate over the future of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is proper and healthy, it is important that customers understand exactly how their rates are calculated and how utilities' costs are recovered from long-term investments in critical electricity grid infrastructure.   On its face, Times columnist Michael Hiltzik's argument that utility customers should not have to pay for a power plant that, like San Onofre, is not currently producing electricity seems perfectly logical.

In opposing HR 689, a bill by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) to federally reclassify marijuana as most other legal prescription drugs and remove oversight from the Drug Enforcement Administration and give it to the states, The Times states in its Feb. 28 editorial that it would be better to regulate cannabis at the federal level than have a patchwork of conflicting state laws. The Times' reasoning in opposing the bill, co-sponsored by 12 representatives from both sides of the aisle, is shortsighted.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has been under much scrutiny lately, following a series of highly publicized child deaths, a disgusting case of child abuse in Palmdale and, more recently, the publication of a scathing internal report, which The Times wrote about in the Feb. 14 article, “ Report excoriates L.A. County agency in child deaths, torture .” Contrary to what some people believe, front-line social...

In his Feb. 5 Op-Ed article, " The case for drone strikes ," Michael W. Lewis presents a distorted picture of the methodology and conclusions of a report I coauthored, “ Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan .” First, Lewis suggests that our report errs in adopting the civilian casualty estimates provided by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in Britain. It is true that the bureau's estimates of civilian casualties have been higher than the two other institutions -- the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation -- compiling the information available on this issue.

Former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Robert Bonner wrote in his Feb. 1 Blowback article , "There is still no such scientific study establishing that marijuana is effective as a medicine. " Nonsense. Over the last several years, the state of California, via the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research , has conducted several placebo-controlled, FDA-approved clinical trials affirming the safety and therapeutic efficacy of cannabis. Other institutions have as well.

In Argentina, even in the wealthier area that includes Buenos Aires, half of the population lives in poverty in shantytowns. In Brazil, 10% of the people control half of the wealth. In Guatemala, about two-thirds of children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. In Colombia, an average of eight people a day are kidnapped for ransom.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has been under much scrutiny lately, following a series of highly publicized child deaths, a disgusting case of child abuse in Palmdale and, more recently, the publication of a scathing internal report, which The Times wrote about in the Feb. 14 article, “ Report excoriates L.A. County agency in child deaths, torture .” Contrary to what some people believe, front-line social...

Reacting to a federal appellate court decision upholding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's denial of reclassification of marijuana, The Times states in its Jan. 25 editorial that whether marijuana should be reclassified under federal law to permit its prescription as a medicine should be based on science and an evaluation of the facts, rather than on myths. I fully agree.  And yet the editorial is based on the myth that the DEA has made it "nearly impossible" for researchers to obtain marijuana for such scientific studies.

We're all familiar with the most visible damage caused by our Great Recession -- high unemployment, widespread home foreclosures, lost retirements and more. Also on that list is a less recognized tragedy: Only the relatively well-to-do can afford a lawyer, while working- and middle-class families have limited or no access to legal representation when dealing with the challenge caused by our slow economy. In other words, the rest of us must go it alone. Or must we? Long ago, California, along with every other state, adopted a creative approach to fund not-for-profit organizations that provide basic legal services for working-class families free of charge.