Judging by the traffic, you guys just can’t get enough of Ta-Nehisi Coates. We aim to please at Clear it With Sidney, so here’s your next dose of Coates: Ta-Nehisi’s op/ed on the insidious, ingrained racism that leads an otherwise “nice” person to frisk Forest Whitaker in an upscale neighborhood deli.

Proponents of alternative medicine often complain, justifiably, about Big Pharma’s propensity to secure the good will of influential doctors with cash and perks. But as the Los Angeles Times reports, Big Placebo can play that game, too. Herbalife, a billion-dollar natural products firm often accused of being a pyramid scheme, has effectively annexed large swathes of UCLA’s medical school for a relative pittance:

One of Ackman’s accusations against [Herbalife] is that it exaggerates the scientific research behind its powders and pills. That’s where UCLA comes in, because Herbalife has exploited its “strong affiliation” with the medical school to give its products scientific credibility.

Those words were uttered by Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson during a 2007 conference call. In fact, Johnson seldom lets an investor event pass without mentioning UCLA, specifically the Mark Hughes Cellular and Molecular Nutrition Lab at the medical school’s Center for Human Nutrition. Herbalife says it has contributed $1.5 million in cash, equipment and software to the lab since 2002. (The lab is named after Herbalife’s founder, who died in 2000 after a four-day drinking binge — not the greatest advertisement for healthful, active living.) [LAT]

One UCLA professor collects an astonishing $300,000 a year from Herbalife according to company disclosures.

[Photo credit: Mint chip and kale protein smoothie by elana’s pantry.]

The best of the week’s news:

• “Signature strikes” sounds like a brand of cigarettes, but it’s actually a little-known facet of the U.S.’s drone war, the part that involves killing unidentified people who seem to be up to no good.

• While profiling an ex-convict, photojournalist Sara Naomi Lewkowicz captured harrowing images of her subject beating his girlfriend. Her photo essay is a terrifying depiction of an all-too-common problem, one that is rarely glimpsed and only dimly understood by outsiders.

• Andrew Solomon has won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction for “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.“

• Canine murder mystery: Was a prize-winning Samoyed poisoned?

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Thanks to a 1978 Supreme Court decision, non-Indians who rape on Indian reservations operate with near impunity, Sierra Crane-Murdoch reports:

In 1978, the Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian land. If both victim and perpetrator are non-Indian, a county or state officer must make the arrest. If the perpetrator is non-Indian and the victim an enrolled member, only a federally certified agent has that right. If the opposite is true, a tribal officer can make the arrest, but the case still goes to federal court.

Even if both parties are tribal members, a U.S. attorney often assumes the case, since tribal courts lack the authority to sentence defendants to more than three years in prison. The harshest enforcement tool a tribal officer can legally wield over a non-Indian is a traffic ticket.

The result has been a jurisdictional tangle that often makes prosecuting crimes committed in Indian Country prohibitively difficult. In 2011, the U.S. Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of rape cases reported on reservations. According to department records, one in three Native American women are raped during their lifetimes—two-and-a-half times the likelihood for an average American woman—and in 86 percent of these cases, the assailant is non-Indian.

Indian tribes have their police forces who could be making arrests, were it not for the legal shackles imposed upon them by the court’s decision. The Senate inserted language into the Violence Against Women Act that would have allowed tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on reservations, but the House Republicans opposed the measure.

Sine 2008, outsiders have been streaming to rural North Dakota to get a piece of the Bakken Shale Oil Boom, and the Fort Berthold reservation is at its epicenter. Federal prosecutors have received additional resources to deal with criminal complaints on the reservation. Case filings on North Dakota reservations rose 70% between 2009 and 2011. The rise crime reporting tracks the influx of non-Indians to the oil patch. The reservation’s population has more than doubled, and the tribal police have little legal control over the new residents. For local women, the newfound prosperity represents an ongoing threat to their safety.

[Photo credit: Hansen.Berlin, Creative Commons.]