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New at Reason: Jeff Winkler on Miniature Monsters Attacking America
In the Artifact from our December issue,
Jeff Winkler examines the monster-themed role-playing game that
ran afoul of the Department of Homeland Security.
New at Reason: Friday Funnies
In the latest edition of Friday Funnies,
Scott Stantis previews the upcoming Senate health care debate.
New at Reason: John Stossel on Lying Politicians
When you knowingly pay someone to lie to
you, we call the deceiver an illusionist or a magician. But as
John Stossel writes, when you unwittingly pay someone to do the
same thing, you should call him a politician.
New at Reason: Steve Chapman on the Truth About Teenagers and Sex
Prepubescent boys aren't supposed to be
tormented by romance, and neither are their adolescent brothers.
Popular culture fosters an image of teenage males as shallower
than a plasma TV, with little interest in the opposite sex beyond
meaningless hookups. But as Steve Chapman writes, the truth is
that the term romantic boys is not an oxymoron.
Recently at Reason.tv: A Very Special Thanksgiving Message—Why we're so much more happy this year than last!
It's that time of year when we all take stock of what we're thankful. And here at Reason.tv, we know that things are so much better now than they were a year ago. Of course they are. Aren't they? Aren't they?...
1.20 minutes long. Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie.
For downloadable versions of videos and related links and articles, go to Reason.tv.
Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel by going here.
Originally released on November 25, 2009.
Suicide in the Services
Not pleasant to think about on this evening and weekend traditionally set aside for family and giving thanks, but all the costs of war and a huge world-sprawling military are worth considering. See this sobering Congressional Quarterly account of U.S. military suicides:
More U.S. military personnel have taken their own lives so far in 2009 than have been killed in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars this year....As of Tuesday, at least 334 members of the military services have committed suicide in 2009, compared with 297 killed in Afghanistan and 144 who died in Iraq, the figures show.....
So far in 2009, the Army has had 211 of the 334 suicides, while the Navy had 47, the Air Force had 34 and the Marine Corps (active duty only) had 42....
Armed forces personnel traditionally have had a much lower suicide rate than the population at large. Because the most recently available national suicide statistics from the Centers for Disease Control are from 2006, it is impossible to know whether the current military rate is higher than the current civilian rate. However, the civilian suicide rate for males ages 20-29 hovered around 20 per 100,000 during the first half of this decade. The Army said its suicide rate is now a bit higher than that for the first time.
Moreover, the total number who have killed themselves in 2009 is probably higher than 334, because the figure does not include unavailable suicide statistics for 2009 for Marine Corps reservists or veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have left the service.
The veterans’ numbers, in particular, could yet swell the totals considerably. The Department of Veterans Affairs said an average of 53 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans committed suicide each year between 2002 and 2006. And that number only includes suicides among the quarter of all veterans who use the VA's health system.
The Army says only 1/3 2/3 [thanks to commenter Art-P.O.G. for pointing out my error] of the suicides are from active duty soldiers who have actually been deployed in either of our two ongoing wars in the news, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the stresses and separation from home and family of military life obviously take their toll even if not actively involved in a combat zone. A wonderfully empassioned attack on the anti-family aspect of world-straddling militaries and constant ongoing wars is contained within the pages of occasional Reason magazine contributor Bill Kauffman's great recent book Ain't My America.
New at Reason: Jesse Walker on the Sarah Palin Fan Culture
As the release of Going
Rogue sets off another Palinpalooza in the press, Managing
Editor Jesse Walker complains that the media are spending so much
time reviewing the opinions of Sarah Palin, and so little time
exploring the opinions of the varied band of fans who have
rallied around her.
Obama is Going to Copenhagen Climate Conference
It's official. President Barack Obama is
going to
drop in at the United Nations' Climate Change Conference on
December 9. He is likely to announce a U.S. goal of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.
I will be writing daily dispatches from the conference starting on December 13, so I'll miss the president's visit.
How Can You Lose Your Second Amendment Rights?
Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit cast doubt on the constitutionality of a 1996 federal law that bars anyone convicted of a misdemeanor involving domestic violence from owning a gun for the rest of his life. Other courts, including the 10th Circuit, have concluded that the law is consistent with D.C. v. Heller, the 2008 case in which the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms. "Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in Heller, "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill." But as the 7th Circuit noted in a case involving a man who was caught with a shotgun a year after he was convicted of domestic battery, Heller did not address the constitutionality of taking gun rights away from people convicted of misdemeanors. To justify that policy, the appeals court concluded, the government must do more than assert its constitutionality. Since the shotgun in this case was used for hunting (as opposed to self-defense in the home, the issue at the center of Heller), and since the challenged restriction applies only to people convicted of certain crimes (as opposed to all citizens, as in Heller), the 7th Circuit decided that "intermediate scrutiny" is the appropriate standard. Accordingly, it sent the case back to the trial court for consideration of whether "the challenged law is substantially related to an important governmental interest."
CBS News.com correspondent (and Reason contributor) Declan McCullagh notes that the law at issue in this case is not the only conviction-related restriction on Second Amendment freedoms that can reasonably be challenged now that the Supreme Court has recognized gun possession as a fundamental, pre-existing right guaranteed by the Constitution. He cites a recent Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy article—titled "Why Can't Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"—that questions the justification for denying nonviolent felons the right to arms. "In an age when Americans can be non-violent felons for possession of a short lobster or sharing MP3 files," McCullagh asks, "is a lifetime ban constitutional?" Although Heller suggests the general ban on gun possession by felons is constitutional, it does not actually uphold that policy, which was not at issue in the case. So it's conceivable the Court will at some point ask whether the Second Amendment allows the government to permanently deprive tax evaders, pot growers, and online casino operators of their right to arms.
The 7th Circuit's ruling is here (PDF).
Is There No Political Problem That a Powerless Independent Commission Cannot Solve?
Dave Leonhardt's NYT column today looks at ways that health care reform legislation attempts to address the rising cost of health care. One solution, he says, is of particular importance. Leonhardt says that "economists put the idea near the top of their wish list, as has President Obama. It has the potential to bend the curve of Medicare spending, as the experts say, and eventually spread to the rest of medicine."
What is this mysterious and powerful reform idea? According to Leonhardt, it's "the creation of an independent commission with the power to suggest changes to Medicare payment rates." (Bold mine.)
That's right, the key to keeping health care costs down is the power to say to Congress, "Hey, maybe you might consider cutting payments to some of your constituents. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. You know, if you want to." To which Congress will obviously respond by telling constituents that sometimes payment rates have to drop for the larger good, and ignoring organized lobbying efforts to keep payments from dropping.
Yes, yes, I snark—but not without cause! There's good reason to believe that Congress will simply ignore such suggestions. In the past, changes to reimbursement rates have been governed by a formula, but Congress consistently voted to avoid making cuts based on that formula. Why should this be any different?
As former CBO chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin recently wrote, "Everyone knows that Congress will never surrender its budget authority to independent commissions." And, when I reached him on the phone last week, he told me, "They surrendered their budget authority to a formula, but they took it right back." To Congress, in other words, when it comes to cutting payments to powerful constituencies, there's little difference between a formula and a commission.
Obama's Appetite for "Unprecedented" Crisis and Response
Politico has a useful little story today:
Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: "We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action." [...]
Obama has said he "took office amid unprecedented economic turmoil" and that the situation demanded "unprecedented international cooperation" and resulted in his signing of the "unprecedented" Recovery Act. Yet it seems the Great Depression and the New Deal might be considered precedents for the current economic crisis and the $787 billion stimulus plan. [...]
Andrew Jackson was the first president to use the word "unprecedented," in 1831, according to a search of the archives of The American Presidency Project. For more than 100 years afterward, presidents used the word "unprecedented" in 72 speeches and mostly reserved it for major addresses.
But since FDR talked of meeting "the unprecedented task before us" during his first inaugural address in 1933, presidents have used the word on almost 2,000 occasions to describe everything from the death of Elvis Presley (Carter) to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (Reagan).
Obama has relied on "unprecedented" in more than 90 instances, using the word at least 129 times in everything from major addresses to small speeches, statements, memorandums and proclamations. (Bush, by contrast, used the word 262 times over eight years.)
Obama has used "unprecedented" to describe his efforts on science research, his plan for the auto industry and his administration's ethics, transparency and accountability guidelines.
He has promised an "unprecedented commitment" to education, to developing clean energy and "to preserving America's treasured landscapes," which, Obama has noted, have seen "unprecedented droughts" and "unprecedented wildfires" in the face of climate change.
Whole thing here; link via a less-impressed Dave Weigel.
Nick Gillespie's classic about the uses of "national pants-shitting moments" here. Gene Healy's examination of the link between presidential rhetoric and power-grabbing here.
Moonbeam Blocks Sunlight
The smart California journalist Joe Mathews has an op-ed in today's L.A. Times talking about how hard it is to gain access to the official papers of former California governors, thanks to once (and quite possibly future) Gov. Jerry Brown. Explanation:
You and I can't see Brown's records unless we get his written permission first. That was his choice, and that's the way it will be for the foreseeable future -- for 50 years from the end of his administration (which would be 2033) or until his death, whichever period is longer.
Moreover, Brown's rules also apply to any other governor who wants to take advantage of them. And guess what? They all do. [...]
In a way, California's 50-years-or-death rule amounts to theft of public property. "Governors are not allowed to take state cars or furniture as 'personal' when they leave office," said then-state archivist John Burns in 1988 during the debate over legislation that produced the rule. "State documents are just as important and just as valuable."
Whole thing here. Early punk on the pop governor here:
New at Reason: David Harsanyi on Washington's Phony Political Bravery
In Washington's atmosphere of habitual
self-aggrandizing, a place where faux historical importance is
attached to every spending bill, courage is easy to find. And as
David Harsanyi writes, it certainly makes you miss the days when
politicians had the common decency to offer false modesty with
their arrogance.
Pennsylvania Judges Get Partial Immunity in 'Kids for Cash' Case
Last Friday a federal judge ruled that Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., the two former Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, judges who have been indicted for taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from the builder and operator of two juvenile detention centers that they helped keep full, are immune from civil liability for judicial actions related to the scheme. Responding to a lawsuit filed by former juvenile offenders who accuse Conahan and Ciavarella of conspiring to deprive them of their constitutional rights, U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo emphasized that the common law doctrine of judicial immunity, intended to preserve judicial independence, applies even in cases where judges are accused of egregious misconduct. Hence Ciavarella cannot be sued for railroading the defendants who appeared before him, routinely denying them the assistance of counsel, and shipping them off to the detention centers for minor offenses in exchange for payoffs. Caputo said his decision upholds "the rule of law in the face of popular opinion which would seek a finding directly contrary to the result the rule of law dictates."
Caputo ruled that both Conahan and Ciavarella can still be sued for actions they took outside the courtroom, such as arranging for PA Child Care to be Luzerne County's sole provider of juvenile detention services and pressuring probation officers to recommend jail. He also allowed the plaintiffs to pursue claims against Luzerne County and against a court psychologist accused of deliberately creating an evaluation backlog that forced defendants to spend more time in the detention centers. And he noted that Conahan and Ciavarella—whose plea deal, involving seven years of imprisonment, was rejected by a judge who felt it let them off too lightly—are still subject to criminal prosecution for the full range of their actions.
The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center unsuccessfully argued that Ciavarella's courtroom conduct was so far outside the norm that it should not be viewed as part of the judicial function. A story in The Legal Intelligencer suggests that both men acted more like gangsters than judges. Based on "hundreds of interviews with dozens of sources and extensive research of court records and prior news accounts," the paper reports that "the scam some in the media have labeled 'kids for cash' was just the tip of the iceberg and only the most blatant example of the corruption overseen by the two judges." Noting ties between Conahan, who prior to his guilty plea served as Luzerne County's president judge, and several local crime bosses, it paraphrases sources as saying "the two judges ran the courthouse like a mafia family."
Caputo's decision is here (PDF). More Reason coverage of the scandal here. The Juvenile Law Center has background here, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has a website devoted to "Luzerne County Corruption Prosecutions" here.
[via The Wall Street Journal's law blog]
Obama Pardon Tally: Flightless Fowl 1, Human Beings 0
Debra Saunders laments that 10 months into his presidency, Barack Obama's first presidential pardon has gone to...a turkey.
According to political science Professor P.S. Ruckman Jr. of Rock Valley College in Illinois, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, has taken longer to use the executive pardon and commutation power than all but four presidents - George Washington, John Adams, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Obama hasn't pardoned a single ex-offender, even though about 1,200 people have asked for pardons because they have turned their lives around, expressed remorse for their crimes and now want to wipe the criminal slate clean of long-past offenses for which they paid the penalty.
Nor has Obama commuted the sentence of any of the 2,000 or so federal inmates seeking sentence reductions - many because of draconian federal mandatory minimum sentences.
Saunders notes that when he served in the Clinton administration, Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder's record with the pardon power was stingy, making exceptions of course for political patronage.
It's telling that over the last three administrations, the one executive power Clinton, Bush, and Obama have been reluctant to make broad use of is the one that grants clemency, forgiveness, and justice to the governed.
I do disagree with Saunders on one point, though. She writes:
Of course, the pardon doesn't free anyone. It is a reward for reformed offenders who, after serving their sentences, have led exemplary lives and want a clean criminal slate so that they can vote or look for a job without revealing their past.
Forgiveness for contrite, admitted convicts has become the most common use of the pardon power. But it isn't the only reason the Founders gave it to the president. It was also intended to be a last check against injustice. Here's Alexander Hamilton defending the pardon power in Federalist 74:
The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel. As the sense of responsibility is always strongest, in proportion as it is undivided, it may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance.
Unfortunately, the pardon power is almost never used in this way. Unless you happen to be the former vice president's former chief of staff.
Professor Ruckman, by the way, has a terrific blog dedicated solely to the pardon power.
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