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Reason Staff LIve Tweets the Arizona Republican Debate. Now!
Arizona. Republicans. Reason staff. Twitter. Go!
Shikha Dalmia on GM’s Government Handouts
Three years after being rescued by a taxpayer
bailout, General Motors recently announced some rather ambitious
profit targets for 2012. But even if it meets these targets, writes
Shikha Dalmia, taxpayers should not wait on one foot to recover
their remaining “contributions” to the company. The company’s cash
cushion is more likely to go to unions than to investors.
Attn, DC Reasonoids! Come to a Stossel Viewing Party at Reason's DC HQ on Thursday, 2/23 at 8pm!
Join
Reason's DC staff with our friends from Alumni for Liberty and
Students for Liberty
for a viewing of the Stossel show filmed at the
2012 International Students for Liberty Conference!
- What: Stossel Viewing Party
- When: Thursday, February 23 from 8pm - 10:30pm
- Where: Reason's DC HQ at 1747 Connecticut Ave. NW
- RSVP: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/StosselViewingRSVP
- Invite Friends on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/355350801164442/
Come at 8pm to catch up with friends in the liberty movement and have a few drinks. Stossel airs at 9pm ET. If you would like to watch the show in the quiet section of the party, be sure to arrive early to reserve your seat!
Hard and soft beverages will be provided.
Be sure to officially RSVP here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/StosselViewingRSVP
Selling Off Seized TSA Contraband Is Just Barely Worth it for States
As I noted approximately five million years
ago when I was but an intern babe in the woods, the
Transportation Security Agency (TSA) has a use for the
property it takes from you, forgetful airline travelers. And it is
not just so staffers can start hoarding your weird junk. No, your
thousands of pocket knives, snow-globes, and more existential
threats such as
grenade-shaped belt buckles or purses with gun
motifs can be sold or donated.
USA Today picks up the story today, and it turns out that 30 states either donate their seized contraband or have it sold at state surplus stores in order to make teeny tiny dents in their deficits:
Because the TSA had trouble coping with the accumulation, with 10 tons of contraband piling up at Los Angeles International Airport alone, [executive director of the National Association of State Agencies for Surplus Property Scott] Pepperman helped negotiate an agreement a decade ago with the federal government for states to take possession of the surrendered items.
"It was of no use to TSA. It's of no value to them. The cost and care of storage and handling was exceeding the commercial value of it to them," Pepperman says. "Some (states) put them up on eBay. Some have their own websites. Others have auctions."...
Some items have questionable resale value. Items that crossed Pepperman's path while he worked in the Pennsylvania surplus agency until two years ago included machetes, meat slicers and a box of rocks.
"We collected more fuzzy handcuffs than you would ever see in your life — boxes and boxes of fuzzy handcuffs," he says.
But what it comes down to is that it's barely worth it for the TSA to steal your stuff and sell it. All of the contraband, the semi-dangerous and the laughably benign, they will take it, but they're not very excited about it. The article reports that since 2004, Pennsylvania has earned $700,000 for its coffers and:
In Alabama, the surplus property division at the state Department of Economic and Community Affairs got about 3 tons last year from airports in Alabama and Florida. Sales totaled about $15,000 for the year, says Larry Childers, an agency spokesman.
"It's a net plus for us, but not a big moneymaker," Childers says.
Georgia opted out of collecting the objects in 2008 because it was too much trouble, says Steve Ekin, the surplus program manager for the Department of Administrative Services.
"It was a lot of work for very little return," Ekin says.
It's probably is more of a pain to sort through all this stuff than anything, but the TSA sure doesn't need one more incentive to not fix their absurd security theater.
Reason on the TSA
Anthony Randazzo on Greece’s Looming Debt Default
As details have emerged on the agreement reached
between European authorities, private creditors, and the Greek
government in order to provide enough money so that Greece pays a
March debt bill, it is increasingly clear that this deal will not
be enough. As Reason Foundation Director of Economic Research
Anthony Randazzo explains, this new European bailout will only
delay the inevitable—Greece is going to default on its debt.
Marco Rubio Challenges GOP on Immigration, Obama Advisor Pushed for $1.8 Trillion Stimulus, Santorum Popular in California: P.M. Links
Marco Rubio with some
real talk on immigration. - White House economist Christy Romer wanted a $1.8 trillion stimulus.
- Syrian forces plotted to kill foreign journalists.
- Santorum surges in California.
- Koran riot death toll up to seven.
- An alternative take on the legacy of Steve Jobs.
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Obama Spox Praises Journalism Abroad, Denies That Obama Is Stifling It Here at Home
Moments after White House Press
Secretary Jay Carney eulogized journalists who have died reporting
from Syria, ABC's Jake Tapper asked him why the White House talks
such a big game about press freedom abroad, while back home it
indicts whistleblowers and subpoenas the journalists to whom they
come clean. Carney denied that was the case, and referred Tapper to
the DOJ press office.
The response was blatantly disingenuous, considering that the DOJ is under Obama; and downright disgusting when you recall that before he was getting paid to pretend the president's shit doesn't stink, Carney was a journalist.
Read the transcript of Carney and Tapper's exchange below:
TAPPER: The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed –
CARNEY: I don’t know about “keep” — I think -
TAPPER: You’ve done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?
You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.
CARNEY: Well, I would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons, and I would refer you to the Department of Justice for more on that.
I think we absolutely honor and praise the bravery of reporters who are placing themselves in extremely dangerous situations in order to bring a story of oppression and brutality to the world. I think that is commendable, and it’s certainly worth noting by us. And as somebody who knew both Anthony and Marie, I particularly appreciate what they did to bring that story to the American people.
I — as for other cases, again, without addressing any specific case, I think that there are issues here that involve highly sensitive classified information, and I think that, you know, those are — divulging or to — divulging that kind of information is a serious issue, and it always has been.
TAPPER: So the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here?
CARNEY: Well, that’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not. Again, I can’t — specific –
TAPPER: That’s what the Justice Department’s doing.
CARNEY: Well, you’re making a judgment about a broad array of cases, and I can’t address those specifically.
TAPPER: It’s also the judgment that a lot of whistleblowers’ organizations and good government groups are making as well.
CARNEY: Not one that I’m going to make.
Why Gay Marriage is Winning
With Washington state recently legalizing same-sex unions and Maryland about to follow suit, gay marriage hasn't been on this big a roll since Bert and Ernie first shacked up on Sesame Street. When Maryland finalizes its bill, seven states and the District of Columbia will sanction the practice.
But before you bust out the appletinis and Indigo Girls CDs to celebrate, consider that just last year in Maryland - a deep-blue, Democratic-majority state when it comes to politics - gay marriage went down faster than George Michael in a public restroom due to resistance from socially conservative African Americans in the Democratic Party. Indeed, while 71 percent of white Democrats in the Old Line State favor gay marriage, just 41 percent of black Democrats do.
So what's different this time around? Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and other pro-marriage legislators took a page from New York's gay playbook and reached around to sympathetic Republicans to seal the deal.
Inconceivable even a generation ago, gay marriage is well on its way to becoming mainstream as a growing majority of Americans now favor it. The only question is when, not if, folks such as Maryland residents Justin and Phillip Terry-Smith will join heterosexuals in the joys of getting married - and divorced - happily ever after.
About 2.30 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain. Written by Nick Gillespie and Kennedy, who also hosts.
Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Where Do I Go to Get Back My Valor?
Today the Supreme Court
heard
arguments for and against the Stolen Valor Act of 2006, under which
falsely claiming to have received a military medal or decoration is
a federal crime punishable by up to a year in jail. The case
involves Xavier Alvarez, a minor politician in Southern California
who invented a 25-year record of service in the U.S. Marines,
capped by a Congressional Medal of Honor. Two years ago the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
agreed with Alvarez that prosecuting him for his lies violated
the First Amendment. Much of today's debate revolved around the
question of whether lies about purely factual matters have "First
Amendment value," with Antonin Scalia stating that they do not
(which is the government's position) and a few other justices
seeming to agree. Assuming that is correct, the question becomes
whether the Stolen Valor Act leaves enough "breathing space" for
speech that does have value.
But since the Court is applying a constitutional provision that says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech," this approach seems backward. Shouldn't the question be whether the government has a compelling enough reason to overcome what sounds like a very strong presumption against punishing speech? At the very least, the First Amendment puts the burden of proof on the censors, who must justify their speech limits, rather than the speaker, who need not show that his words have value. (Alvarez's obviously had value to him, until he was exposed as a liar and subjected to nationwide ridicule and condemnation.) As Jonathan Libby, the federal public defender who urged the Court to uphold the 9th Circuit's ruling, put it, "Our founders believed that Congress as a general principle doesn't get to tell us what we as individuals can and cannot say." Of all the justices who spoke, Sonia Sotomayor came closest to the skeptical attitude that is appropriate when confronted by a new crime that involves saying things the government does not want you to say:
What harm are we protecting [against] here? I thought that the core of the First Amendment was to protect even...offensive speech. We have a legion of cases that said your emotional reaction to offensive speech is not enough. If that is the core of our First Amendment, what I hear, and that's what I think the court below said, is you can't really believe that a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone's claiming fraudulently that they got one. They don't think less of the medal. We're reacting to the fact that we're offended by the thought that someone's claiming an honor they didn't receive.
So outside of the emotional reaction, where's the harm? And I'm not minimizing it. I too take offense when people make these kinds of claims, but I take offense when someone I'm dating makes a claim that's not true.
I think Sotomayor is right that the Stolen Valor Act really is about punishing offensive speech. But even if it were true that "a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone's claiming fraudulently that they got one," that is not the sort of injury that justifies legal sanctions. "Stolen valor" is, after all, a metaphor; Alvarez did not actually steal anyone's property.
According to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, "one of the harms that justifies this statute is the misappropriation of the government-conferred honor and esteem," and "there is also the particularized harm of the erosion of the value of the military honors...conferred by our government....For the government to say this is a really big deal and then to stand idly by when one charlatan after another makes a false claim to have won the medal does debase the value of the medal in the eyes of the soldiers....That is the government's interest." An interest, maybe, but not one that justifies criminalizing speech. Notice that Verrilli never explains whose rights Alvarez violated or how he did so. If debasing the value of a military medal were a crime, you could be thrown in jail for saying the Congressional Medal of Honor is a mark of dishonor that represents the random murder of innocent people who have the misfortunate to live in countries ruled by dictators who piss off the U.S. government.
Whatever harm might result from the lack of a criminal penalty for lying about military medals, the country somehow survived it for 230 years. Maybe that's because mendacious blowhards like Alvarez tend to be punished by public humiliation. The more often they make their claims, the more widely publicized those claims are, and the more benefit they derive from them, the more likely they are to be exposed. Rather than "stand idly by," which Verrilli portrays as the only alternative, the government could help the process along by making lists of medal recipients readily accessible and calling out liars. If the government has the resources to investigate, try, and imprison these guys, it surely has the resources to say they're not on the list. And if a phony hero is never exposed, meaning actual medal recipients never hear about his false claims, where is the harm?
The oral argument transcript is here (PDF). Previous coverage of U.S. v. Alvarez here.
Shikha Dalmia on The Wall Street Journal's Video Blog Talking Ayn Rand the Illegal Immigrant
Reason Foundation senior policy analyst Shikha Dalmia appeared on The Wall Street Journal's video blog to discuss Ayn Rand's early history in America as an illegal immigrant as well as how immigration policy is playing a decisive role in the GOP race. Air Date: February 16, 2012.
Approximately 6.39 minutes.
And check out Dalmia's column on the same topic, "Ayn Rand Was an Illegal Immigrant."
Reason Staff Live Tweets the Arizona Republican Debate Tonight!
Join us, as we get our tweeter on tonight in honor of the Arizona GOP debate, right here at Hit&Run.
Some Highlights From the 2012 International Students For Liberty Conference
[Update: I originally incorrectly referred to Representative Justin Amash (R-MI) as a Senator.]
This weekend marked the fifth and largest International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC) yet. Over one thousand students, supporters, and organizations convened on the Grand Hyatt Hotel here in Washington, D.C. to discuss the philosophies, applications, and proliferation of libertarian ideas. Of course, given the age range and the rarity of so many like-minded people together in one location, other priorities were likely to surface. As the MC, Gilles Verstraeten, put it, "The best way to spread the ideas of liberty is for libertarians to breed. We're all in a room together now, so get to it."
Besides that, and the beautiful moment when performer GoRemy asked if everyone had a good Valentine's Day and a spontaneous chorus of adolescent male voices boomed No! in response, the highlight of opening night had to be the Alumnus of the Year speech by Peter Thiel, libertarian venture capitalist and founder of of PayPal. Thiel's praise for the advances in the tech world was tempered by admonitions of little to no innovation in other fields, especially transportation. "The failure of innovation in transportation is the result of a failure in energy innovation," he declared, and considered this the outcome of government overregulation. "We've had progress where there was little regulation," meaning the digital world, "but anything in the real world, the world of stuff, has seen little advancement."
Thiel also warned of the third economic bubble we are likely to witness, as he did of the first and second most recent ones: he said it was "the government itself. It is deficit spending and it is bigger and dumber than the other bubbles, if that's even possible."
He called the crisis of rising higher education prices "a very important subcomponent of the government bubble" and said that, as in the mortgage crisis in which "people told trillions of dollars' worth of lies to convince others that there was no bubble," there is an imbalance between those who oppose reckless education spending and those who encourage it. He invited students, entrepreneurs, and individuals in general to ask themselves: "Do you want to do what hundreds of other people have done or do you want to do what's right for you?" The proposition was met with applause.
There was no Alumna of the Year speech, probably proving that libertarians are a bunch of sexist evil lady-haters. Or maybe not: Marty Zupan, president of the Institute for Humane Studies, closed the conference with a speech and a Q&A session. When asked what libertarian women can do to move forward in the promotion of a free society, she smiled and said without hesitation, "Work hard and don't underestimate yourself."
International Students
Not surprisingly, there was a good number of international attendees at this year's conference. One, a young man from the People's Republic of China, received applause for the gravity of his mere presence at a libertarian conference.
One group that generated a lot of excitement was members of the African Students For Liberty chapter. The group was started as an initiative of Atlas Economic Research Foundation, "a nonprofit organization connecting a global network of more than 400 free-market organizations in over 80 countries to the ideas and resources needed to advance the cause of liberty."
I got a chance to speak to their founder, Adedayo Thomas (pictured, far left). He said he met Tom Palmer, Vice President for International Programs, at a 2007 conference in Kenya, where they discussed "the issue of African liberty." He lamented that students in Africa have little to no knowledge of classical liberal philosophy, mainly because "the history of Africa has been distorted by the misconception of capitalism as colonialism.... This makes Africa what it is today." When asked how he became concerned with introducing students to the ideas of liberty, he told me he had considered talking to politicians to be a waste of time and saw more potential in going directly to people and to students in particular.
Thomas' argument for exactly why colonialism was bad seems to be refreshingly uncommon. "There were no borders in pre-colonial Africa. People freely moved their wares, voluntarily. We had a king who was not a dictator and a council of chiefs" who served solely as mediators in disputes. "Individualism existed in pre-colonial Africa. Dictatorship was an import of colonialism." When describing the system of voluntary enterprise that characterized pre-colonial African commerce, he said, "What we had was exactly capitalism."
Goodies and Politicians
The event came with lots of good swag, including T-shirts, bumper stickers, and even a souvenir from the Young Americans for Liberty's photo booth:
One of the most interesting breakout sessions was a Q&A session on Saturday night with Representative Justin Amash (R-Michigan). Attendees of ISFLC got to hear about how the youngest freshman Congressman became what he calls "a Libertarian Republican." He pointed to his father, a Palestinian refugee, who he said "taught me the importance of liberty."
There was a lot of emphasis on the power of social media in Amash's talk as well. He claimed that "Facebook is helping to break down the two-party system" and said he first discovered libertarianism as a concrete political philosophy by Googling his own views on issues. Continuing on the theme of individualism, he urged the audience to contact their senators more. He said that senators so rarely hear from their constituents on specific issues that they are easily swayed by such appeals. "If ten people call, they panic. They say, 'No, I've got to vote no on that one. Every single person who called today said they opposed it.' Even if only three people called, that's what usually happens."
Read more from reason on Peter Thiel, Justin Amash, and teens having sex. More coverage from me on ISFLC 2012.
Report Finds Police Did Not Deceive Public in Fatal Kelly Thomas Beating
A report from attorney Michael Gennaco of the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review said February 22, that the Fullerton police department did not deceive or falsify information regarding the July 5, 2011, fatal beating of Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless drifter.
The city hired Gennaco to investigate the incident after outcry over the handling of the case from the public and Thomas' family. Called into question was the department release of a two-year-old booking photo of Thomas looking disheveled as well an incorrect information given to the local media that two officers suffered broken bones during the incident.
Ron Thomas, Kelly Thomas' father, told the Los Angeles Times, that he didn't believe the report and, "All of it was intended to make Kelly look bad."
Officer Manuel Ramos was charged with second-degree murder and Officer Jay Cicinelli was charged with involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the incident.
Reason TV looked at the Kelly Thomas beating and in Cops vs. Cameras: The Killing of Kelly Thomas & The Power of New Media:
Robert Poole on Fixing Traffic Congestion
Twenty years ago, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV)
lanes were virtually the only politically acceptable way to add
freeway capacity. But as Robert W. Poole Jr. explains, now it is
becoming politically palatable to add capacity with high occupancy
toll (HOT) or express toll lanes, which are open to toll-paying
vehicles and usually some form of high-occupancy vehicle—bus,
vanpool, or carpool. The success of HOV-to-HOT conversions, and the
demonstrated ability of private firms to raise large sums based on
projected revenues from such projects, Poole writes, has stimulated
activity in several of the most congested metro areas. Here is a
sampling of the projects.
President Dreamypants
Jezebel,
the website about lady-things, has this headline up: "Your
Morning Swoon: President Obama Sings 'Sweet Home Chicago.'"
Here is some of the writing underneath that headline:
Last night, the President and First Lady hosted an all-star blues concert at the White House. There were a lot of famous musicians there—BB King, Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger, and more—but one man outshone them all: Barack Obama. At the end of the concert, the group started playing "Sweet Home Chicago" and roped the Prez into singing a few lines. His voice was *smooth as ever*, but the best part is the sly smile he gives as he's singing.
That "smooth as ever" hyperlink takes us to a Jezebel headline "Damn, President Obama Is Hot When He Sings Al Green."
Here is President Swoonworthy in action, taking the mic from Michael Jagger.
There are worse things than an American president enjoying a bunch of Blues greats at the White House and taking a bar or two. For instance, this is a LOT worse:
And I can even forgive the Jezebel swoon more than, say, Lucy Steigerwald can; those who revere the vocal stylings of Dennis Wilson probably shouldn't throw stones. But where the leg-tingle starts to chafe (don't stop me, I'm rolling here!) is when I have to read it in the context of allegedly high-quality journalism. As in this passage, from the lead comment in the current issue of The New Yorker:
Obama believes that gross inequality damages our society, and he has forcefully criticized the deceitful banking practices that nearly destroyed the economy and pushed the homes of more than eleven million people underwater. He has been careful not to demonize the rich, but he intends to allow their Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule this year, which should go a long way toward reducing the deficit and at least a little way toward mitigating the rush toward a society of plutocrats and paupers.
Hey Dorothy Wickenden! Why don't you crawl out of the president's brain, and crawl back into his public statements and deeds, which contradict your omniscience! Like this, from April 2009:
[A]lthough there are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of to banks -- one of my most frequent questions in the letters that I get from constituents is, "Where's my bailout?" -- and I understand the sentiment. It makes sense intuitively, and morally it makes sense, but the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in $8 or $10 of loans to families and businesses. So that's a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth. That's why we have to fix the banks.
The president may (or may not)
"believe" this or that, and "forcefully criticize" the other, but
his actions, like those of his crappy predecessor (only moreso),
directly resulted in the plutocratic bad guys getting first in line
for bailout money, because (from the presidential P.O.V.) they were
both too big to fail and too multiplier-y to not receive transfer
payments from the comparatively poor. Also, intending to
allow the Bush tax cuts to expire in the election year of 2012 has
precisely as much bearing on what will actually happen
this year as my intention that
Albert Brooks win Best Supporting Actor. Oh, and before you go
using Warren Buffett as the star witness for the prosecution
against well-connected plutocrats (as Wickenden does elsewhere in
her little campaign document), you really need to read
this great Reason piece by Peter Schweizer.
Obama has talked out of both sides of his mouth since Day 1. It is astonishing to me that there are still journalists lapping this stuff up.
Nick Gillespie on Special Stossel on Fox Business This Thursday at 9PM ET
Last weekend, the great group Students for Liberty held its
fifth annual international conference in Washington, D.C. For the
second year in a row, John Stossel taped a special episode of his
Fox Business show. Here's the show pitch for tomorrow night:
Join us this week for a special edition of our show from Washington, D.C. in front of a spirited crowd of 1,000 college students at the annual Students for Liberty Conference.
David Boaz from the Cato Institute and Nick Gillespie from Reason TV will stop by to take the student's questions and discuss how the future for freedom is bright.
These young liberty lovers will also grill our guest panel, which includes the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton . We will debate how the U.S. should react to the possibility of a nuclear Iran and other national security issues.
Ken Klukowski from the Family Resource Council will take the stage to defend social conservative stances against abortion and same-sex marriage.
Finally, comedian Tim Hawkins shines some light on what government can do for us with a satirical song.
Tune in tomorrow night at our new time, 9pm, on the Fox Business Network.
Note to regular Stossel viewers: The show now airs at 9pm ET. So re-set any Tivos, etc.
David Harsanyi on Why Democrats Should Be Happy About High Gas Prices
Why aren't Democrats making the case that the
spike in prices is a good thing? Isn't this basically our energy
policy these days? How we "win the future"? If high energy prices
were to damage President Barack Obama's re-election prospects,
writes David Harsanyi, it would be ironic, considering the left has
been telling us to set aside our "dependency"—or, as our most
recent Republican president put it, "addiction"—for a long
time.
The Strategic and Constitutional Problems With Trying to Establish an Acceptable Islam
Writing in The New York Times, NYU
law professor Samuel J. Rascoff, former director of intelligence
analysis at the NYPD,
questions the government's "dubious enterprise of trying to
shape the beliefs of American Muslims" in an effort to prevent
terrorism:
The problem is that when American officials intervene in Islamic teachings — interpreting them to believers in a national-security context and saying which are or are not acceptable — they create tensions, both legal and strategic.
The strategic problem is easier to see: Is the government a credible authority on Islamic interpretation? Based on the results of comparable efforts in Britain, the answer is a resounding no. Simply put, young Muslim men in the thrall of radical teachings will not embrace a more pacific theology because the F.B.I. tells them to, any more than Catholic bishops would have yielded to Mr. Obama’s plan to mandate coverage of contraceptives at Catholic hospitals if he had invoked canon law to defend his position.
Then there’s the legal problem. Constitutionally speaking, a government official who sets out to determine what a contested concept within Islam means, or which imams have the right to speak for a particular community, would be in danger of transgressing one of the cardinal tenets of the Establishment Clause: the secular state shall not become an arbiter of religious content.
Rascoff argues that "countering radical religious ideology is on much more solid constitutional — and strategic — footing if the heavy lifting is done not by the government but by grass-roots organizations that are grounded in civil society or in religious communities."
How Do You Feel About Bans on Private Discrimination Now?
The New York
Times reports
that "a Supreme Court decision forbidding the use of race in
admission at public universities would almost certainly mean that
it would be barred at most private ones as well under Title VI of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids racial discrimination
in programs that receive federal money." Here is another reason
that progressives should not be so quick to dismiss the libertarian
distinction between public and private discrimination. Two years
ago Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who was then running
for the Senate seat he now occupies, was pilloried for questioning
the federal ban on private racial discrimination in places of
"public accommodation," on the assumption that anyone making such
an argument must be either a naive ideologue or a closet racist.
But the same property rights, freedom of association, and freedom
of contract that allow bigoted businessmen to shun blacks make it
possible for unpopular minorities to make a living, get ahead, and
establish their own spheres of autonomy. These rights also would
allow private institutions to pursue whatever race-conscious
remedies they deemed appropriate in response to the lingering
effects of slavery and institutionalized racism, no matter what the
Supreme Court said.
Obama Administration Proposes Corporate Tax Overhaul Based on Theory That Loopholes Are Bad and Should Be Replaced With Different Loopholes
Today, the White House will
release a proposal to overhaul the corporate tax code, reducing the
top corporate tax rate, currently the second highest amongst
developed economies, from 35 percent to 28 percent. The potential
gain against international competitors, however, would likely be
small:
According to Jim Pethokoukis, the new plan would probably leave
the U.S. with the fourth highest corporate tax rate.
Despite the lower rate, meanwhile, the plan is expected to raise the total amount of corporate taxes collected (or at least be revenue neutral, depending on how exactly one makes the calculation).
How will this be accomplished? President Obama has long offered rhetorical support for the idea of getting rid of "special interest loopholes" in exchange for lower overall rates. And as The Washington Post notes, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner previewed the theory behind the plan in congressional testimony last week, saying “We are going to propose a broad reform that will lower rates, broaden the base and eliminate and wipe out a very substantial fraction, dozens and dozens and dozens of special tax preferences for businesses...We’re doing that because we think there’s a compelling economic case for doing that.” The economic case is apparently not so compelling, however, that the Obama administration is willing to avoid adding new “special tax preferences” for favored industries. The Post reports that “Obama will target oil and gas companies for tax hikes while promising special breaks for manufacturing companies.”
So the Obama administration’s proposal to reform the corporate tax code is a tax cut that will probably result in a net tax hike, and a tax simplification that will include the creation of new loopholes.
Earlier this month, Jacob Sullum caught Obama condemning tax carve outs while calling for more.
New at Reason: Nick Gillespie on Getting Contraception Out of the Presidential Race
"Let's face it," writes Nick
Gillespie, "long after the term Santorum exists
only under vine-covered ruins of safe-search-off Google queries,
we'll still be talking about the beast-with-two-backs in public
policy venues. Or at least in JFK-themed memoirs.
"But in the hopes of moving past the issue and never having to hear about state-mandated "vaginal probing" at least until tonight's GOP debate (a series that has now tied Gunsmoke and Meet the Press for longevity and coma-induction)," Gillespie offers up "three relatively frictionless ways to take birth control out of current political discussion."
Gallup Survey: Government Regulations Hinder Small Business Hiring
Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist, writes for Gallup:
“…lawmakers could place a moratorium on new regulations for some period of time. In turn, this might provide the extra push needed to get small-business owners to decide to hire the employees they actually need and get the economy growing at a pace the average American can recognize as an economic recovery.”
Jacobe writes this in response to the most recent quarterly Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business survey. Although small business hiring conditions are the best they have been since 2008, they are still not exceptionally good with 22 percent saying they expect to hire more people and 8 percent saying they plan to reduce the number of jobs at their company. Moreover 66 percent say they are worried about the US economy and one in four fear they may not be in business one year from now.
85 percent of small business owners say they are not hiring; among these, the top reasons for not doing so include not needing additional employees, concerns about cash flows and the US economy. About half of this group listed potential health care costs and new government regulations as reasons for not hiring.
These results have several implications for government action. Some may look at these numbers and conclude government should spend additional money, or “stimulus” funds, to create cash flows and work projects for these companies to encourage them to hire. Others will look at this data and conclude government cannot artificially bolster sustained demand for these companies but instead should look to repeal excessive regulation and stop enacting new regulations.
Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Survey
Gallup’s Methodology
Results for the total dataset are based on telephone interviews with 600 small-business owners, conducted Jan. 9-13, 2012. For results based on the total sample of small-business owners, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Sampling is done on an RDD basis using Dun & Bradstreet sampling of small businesses having $20 million or less of sales or revenues. The data are weighted to be representative of U.S. small businesses within this size range nationwide.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.
Utah Moves to Clamp Down on "Pimp" Massage Therapists
Life
in Utah is about to get more stressful. The Utah House has just
passed a bill (HB 114) that would facilitate crackdowns on
unlicensed massage parlors.
Unlike Minnesota, which is trying to deregulate some occupational licenses, Utah wants to expand licensing to include more massage therapists. Currently, a masseuse doesn't need a license as long as a massage doesn't manipulate "soft tissue." This loophole allows practitioners of Reiki, sensual massage, and more spiritual relaxation to bypass Utah's stringent licensing requirements. To be fully licensed, a massage therapist needs at least 600 hours of training and must pay $10,000 for lessons on "human anatomy."
The bill comes after accusations that unlicensed massage therapists are fronts for prostitution. HB 114's main sponsor, state Rep. Tim Cosgrove, has blasted the "soft tissue loophole," saying "It really has been nothing more than a veil to camouflage the solicitation for prostitution or other illicit activity."
Ergo, HB 114 would re-define "massage therapy" as
providing, offering, or advertising a paid service using the term massage or a derivative of the word massage, regardless of whether the service includes physical contact.
Reiki practitioners and other alternative masseurs would now need to be licensed. In addition, limits on advertising would inhibit these businesses from promoting on Craigslist and backpage.com.
Not complying with the law would lead to steep legal consequences. In Utah, operating without a license is actually a worse crime than prostitution. The former is Class A misdemeanor and can lead to 1 year in prison and/or a $2,500 fine. Meanwhile, prostitution is a Class B misdemeanor, with 6 months imprisonment and/or a $1,000 fine as possible penalties.
As The Salt Lake Tribune notes, since these businesses would be illegal if they didn't have a license, cities and local jurisdictions would have power to shut them down. Indeed, a city official from Murray, Utah, praised the proposed law for exactly that:
Investigating them "puts our officers in professionally delicate situations and personally delicate situations," he said. "We’re just really hoping we have to run fewer stings in our community."
Unsurprisingly, there is also a "baptist and bootlegger" dynamic at work here. The head of the Utah chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association supports the bill, since it doesn't go after "professional" masseuses. Cracking down on alleged prostitution in Utah provides the moral cover to eliminate the competition. Of course, if prostitution were legal and occupational licensing were abolished, there would be no need for the crackdowns in the first place.
Katherine Mangu-Ward on Craigslist "erotic services." Reason on prostitution and occupational licensing.
Gay Marriage Opponents File Appeal in Prop. 8 Case
As Lyle Denniston notes at SCOTUSblog, the backers of California’s Proposition 8, which had amended the state constitution in order to forbid gay marriage, have opted not to appeal their recent loss before a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, but will instead ask an 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit to first reconsider their case:
Arguing that the issue is of “exceptional importance” and that a Ninth Circuit Court panel got it wrong, sponsors of California’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage in the state—“Proposition 8″—asked the appeals court to reconsider the case en banc, a move that would wipe out the panel ruling and slow the progress of the case toward the Supreme Court. In a 52-page rehearing petition, the ballot measure’s backers contended that the panel’s decision on February 7 directly contradicts four prior Supreme Court rulings.
The petition also sought to have the fuller court wipe out the District Court judge’s 2010 ruling that nullified Proposition 8, asserting that his failure to disclose that he is a gay man involved in a long-term partnership disqualified him from trying the case—an argument that the Ninth Circuit panel had rejected.
For additional coverage of the Prop. 8 case, go here. For a look at what the Supreme Court's recent rulings on gay rights may mean for the future of gay marriage, see here.
A.M. Links: U.N. Nuke Inspectors Frustrated in Iran, Browsers Sue Google for Privacy Violations, Obama to Unveil Tax "Reform" Plan
U.N. nuke inspectors left Iran
Tuesday, declaring they "could
not find a way forward." - Romney catches up to Santorum in Michigan.
- Five dead in Afghan Koran protest.
- Obama administration mulls lowering corporate tax rate to 28 percent.
- Safari users sue Google for privacy violations.
- Gov. Robert F. McDonnell rescinds support for requiring women who want abortions to get ultrasounds first.
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New at Reason.tv: "Tolls, Not Taxes: How Americans Want to Fix Traffic Jams"
Jacob Sullum on Obama's Phony Birth Control 'Concession'
President Obama acknowledges
"many genuine concerns" about his administration's requirement that
religious organizations pay for health insurance policies that
cover contraception and sterilization. He just isn't willing to
address them in a genuine way, says Senior Editor Jacob Sullum.
The 12 Biggest Customer Service Failures of the Year
At 247WallStreet.com, Charles
B. Stockdale tallies up the
dozen retailers that suffered the biggest declines in customer
service rankings in 2011.
It’s a pretty interesting list, including some companies that are actually customer service winners with plenty of room to spare: Amazon’s rating, which Stockdale derives from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, went down 1.1 percent, but the online bookseller started by hero of freedom Jeff Bezos still has the highest score among all e-commerce and retail trade companies.
There are also a few expected basement dwellers (such as CVS, which in my experience offers a shopping experience even less pleasant than Rite-Aid’s); both Wals (-green and –Mart); one company whose ranking may only be dropping because more people are shopping there and absorbing the low-rent ambience (Dollar General, which I’d doubt anybody ever patronized for the friendly service and about which Stockdale concedes "[C]ustomer satisfaction concerns have done little to slow sales"); most of an entire sector (Office Depot and Staples, which together make up the majority of the U.S. office supplies market, clocking in at number 8 and number 7 respectively); and at Number One by a wide distance, our era’s greatest cautionary tale of customer service gone wrong:
12. Amazon.com
11. Charles Schwab
10. Winn-Dixie
9. CVS Caremark
8. Office Depot
7. Staples
6. Dollar General
5. Expedia
4. Walgreen
3. Barnes & Noble
2. Walmart
1. Netflix
Full story, with comments. Any such list that doesn’t include Time Warner Cable and every broadband/telecom company in the solar system should be viewed with suspicion. But again, this is just a list of 2011’s biggest decliners, not the worst of the worst.
Who else sucks? Should Reason’s server squirrels be on the list? Bellyache in the comments. (And if you like our service, tell a friend!)
Naloxone Reverses Drug Overdoses, Saves 10,000 Lives
Since 1996,
naloxone has reversed 10,171 drug overdoses, saving thousands
of lives, according to a new study from the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC). Naloxone hydrochloride (also known as
Narcan) stops an
overdose on opiates and helps restore regular breathing and
consciousness. Once injected, naloxone can reverse an overdose as
quickly as under a minute. Since naloxone is an opiate antagonist,
it's not effective to stop an overdose on cocaine, alcohol, or
benzodiazepines.
First approved by the FDA in the 1970s, naloxone was used only in emergency rooms and ambulances. But thanks to community-based programs, the drug has seen wider distribution in 15 states and Washington, D.C. According to the CDC, there is a direct correlation between harm reduction policies and saving lives:
Nineteen (76.0%) of the 25 states with 2008 drug overdose death rates higher than the median and nine (69.2%) of the 13 states in the highest quartile did not have a community-based opioid overdose prevention program that distributed naloxone.
Nationwide, drug overdose deaths have tripled since 1990. In 2008, there were over 36,000 drug overdose deaths. This actually topped car crashes as the leading cause of accidental deaths. That same year, more than 20,000 people died from a prescription painkiller overdose. Nevertheless, Eliza Wheeler, one of the authors of the report and program manager at the Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC), was ultimately optimistic:
Thousands of fatal overdoses occur every year, but this report shows that we can reduce overdose deaths by giving members of the community the right information, training, and tools.
Indeed, naloxone has enormous potential to save even more lives: Almost three-quarters of the drug overdoses in 2008 were from opiates. Because of this, Sharon Stancliff, the medical director of the HRC, wants naloxone to be sold over-the-counter. Time magazine explains the reasoning:
The drug is safe and nonaddictive and it cannot be misused (indeed, it blocks the action of opioids, so it produces the opposite of a high), and so the more places it is available, the more likely that it will be within reach when needed. The possibility of a wider market would also be likely to spur more manufacturing of the drug.
To further stop overdoses, more states could pass "Good Samaritan" laws. This medical amnesty legally protects those who call 911 and report a drug overdose. So far, only New York, New Mexico, Connecticut, Illinois, and Washington state have enacted Good Samaritan laws.
Reason on drug policy. For more on harm reduction, check out the Drug Policy Alliance and the Harm Reduction Coalition.
Homeschooling is Not Progressive-Friendly Because it Allows An Awful Lot of Choice
Last week at Slate, Dana
Goldstein offered her views on how homeschooling is in
opposition to good, progressive values. The headline and sub were
not subtle:
"Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids: Why teaching children
at home violates progressive values."
Goldstein, well, she's peeved about folks like writer Astra Taylor who has a print essay in N+ about her experiences with unschooling under super-hippie parents, as well as Taylor's explorations of off-beat education options such as Albany's Free school.
But, writes Taylor's fellow-lefty, Goldstein, pointing out the rigidity and excessive rules that often come with public schooling is a "caricature."
This overheated hostility toward public schools runs throughout the new literature on liberal homeschooling, and reveals what is so fundamentally illiberal about the trend: It is rooted in distrust of the public sphere, in class privilege, and in the dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which at least one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work in order to manage a process—education—that most parents entrust to the community at-large....
Homeschooling is so unevenly regulated from state to state that it is impossible to know exactly how many homeschoolers there are. Estimates range from about 1 million to 2 million children, and the number is growing. It is unclear how many homeschooling families are secular, but the political scientist Rob Reich has written that there is little doubt the homeschooling population has diversified in recent years.* Yet whether liberal or conservative, “[o]ne article of faith unites all homeschoolers: that homeschooling should be unregulated,” Reich writes. “Homeschoolers of all stripes believe that they alone should decide how their children are educated.”
Basically, if you do have the privilege or the luck or the hard-work or whatever it is to be able to homeschool, you should feel very guilty about that. What's frustrating even from a moderate standpoint is that Goldstein is not even critiquing so-called radicals who might want to abolish the public school all-together. Goldstein disapproves of homeschooling simply as an option. In the progressive world, we all go down together.
And though Goldstein mentions that nobody wants to sacrifice their child on the altar of fixing a bad school, she basically says that's what real progressives must do. No exceptions for physical or mental disability or behavior problems or learning problems or horrible schools or, God forbid, religious or political reasons needed. Simply, if you feel yourself drawn to the left side of the aisle and drawn to homeschooling, ask yourself, as Goldstein does "Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressive—by which I mean, does homeschooling serve the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole?" She says no. (Goldstein, we can assume, makes serious decisions about herself and her family only after considering the effect it will have on society as whole.)
Taylor, by the way, wrote an online response to Goldstein which demonstrates that she is no education anarchist. She approves of public schools and even condemns supposed "austerity." She also, however, make this libertarian-lite argument:
This is why I think unschooling poses a fundamental challenge worth considering—even if it is utopian and uncompromising and undesirable on a mass scale. Today, conventional wisdom has it that the solution is more, never less. We need more teachers, more textbooks, more discipline, more preparation, more class time, more tests, more metrics, more accountability, more excellence and success (but again, according to what standard?). Since the 1960s the school day and academic year have both lengthened considerably. The amount of homework assigned to a first grader has more than doubled since 1981, a surge that has even caused the New York Times to sound the alarm. Too many schools have become warehouses holding hordes of young people who are monitored by security guards and police, subjected to an ever-increasing number of tests and pre-fab programs of study, and offered diminishing educational opportunities in the fine and liberal arts....
What intrigues me about the history of radical pedagogy and the unschooling tradition is that its proponents were and are not afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom, to dream of different ways of doing things, to take seriously words like “freedom,” “autonomy,” and “choice”—inspiring and important ideals that have been all but ceded to the political right in recent decades. Unschooling, I’ll readily admit, is not the answer to our nation’s educational woes. But taking a closer look at the radical margins may help us ask better questions about what we really want from our educational system and how to go about getting it.
Atlantic's always-dependable Conor Friedersdorf offers his own refutation of Goldstein today. Friedersdorf is also less-than-radical (though he does break out a Hayek quote!) and is entirely sensible. Friedersdorf writes that with all the questions of which school system is best, "I'd bet on the diversified system, the one where there are always competitors with different models to measure public schools against." With all of the problems in the world, it's just irritating that Goldstein would bother to disapprove of homeschooling as simply one more option of many. We could debate many more radical education solutions, but how can you fight against people so completely disinterested in even a modicum of choice?
Reason on homeschoolin' and regular educatin'!
FDA to Investigate Breathable Caffeine Shots
At the
urging of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) will
review the safety of Aero Shots, a new breathable caffeine
product. The product allows users to ingest about 100mg of
caffeine—roughly the amount of caffeine in an average large cup of
coffee—in a powdered "shot" from a lipstick-shaped
container.
“FDA will review information brought to the agency’s attention about this product” in order to see "whether regulatory action is warranted," the agency reportedly said in a statement released to the press. It's not clear what actual information, if any, was brought to the FDA's attention, unless Sen. Schumer's latest round of ban-happy grandstanding counts. Schumer has focused his attention on worries that club-goers might rely on the boost provided by the caffeine shots to party longer into the night, which sounds like fun for those who enjoy clubbing, but not a matter that should concern the FDA.
Schumer doesn't really have any evidence that the product is harmful, but that is exactly what seems to concern him. He warns that the product's "effects have never been examined by independent regulators to determine their impact on the human body and in combination with alcohol, especially for adolescents.” Of course, adolescents are already free to consume caffeine in soft drinks and coffee, often in far larger doses than come from an Aero Shot. Those who frequent Starbucks, for example, have the opportunity to purchase single cups of coffee with an average of 330mg of caffeine, more than three times the amount in one of the shots.
An ABC News report on the FDA decision quotes University of Florida professor Dr. Bruce Goldberger expressing similar concerns about youth access and the possibility that "you could mix it with alcohol in a social setting." Given the recent hysteria over the caffienated alocoholic beverage Four Loko, this is sadly not surprising. But the ongoing freakout over the possibility that someone might mix caffeine and alcohol will surely vex America's many whiskey-and-Coke drinkers.
No matter what, it's telling that the primary worry about breathable caffeine does not seem to be that the product itself might be harmful but the fear that someone might somehow hurt themselves by mixing it with an entirely separate product.
Here's Reason.tv on why the feds, encouraged by legislators like Sen. Schumer, banned Four Loko:
White House Blames GOP for Keystone Pipeline's Demise, Newt Gingrich Still Running For President, Supreme Court Takes up Affirmative Action Case: P.M. Links
White House flack Jay Carney
blames GOP for failure of
Keystone pipeline.- Newt Gingrich visits Oklahoma.
- Obama peddles more economic magic.
- No light at end of Greece's tunnel.
- SCOTUS to take up affirmative action case.
- Iran rattles its saber at Israel.
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Ronald Bailey on America's Ethnic Makeup 2050
Whites will become a minority of the American
population by 2050, according to Census Bureau projections.
But Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues
that the turning point has already happened. He tallies up all the
descendants from immigrant groups that were once not considered
"white" and adds them to the current federally recognized
ethnicities. According to the definitions applied by nativists a
century ago, 60 percent of the current population is not "white."
And that's a good thing.
Tolls, Not Taxes: How Americans Want to Fix Traffic Jams
"Communist China has way more cases where the private sector is involved in building roads than the United States does," says Reason Foundation transportation economist Adrian Moore.
Moore sat down with Reason to discuss transportation policy in general and the results of the January Reason-Rupe poll in specific. The Reason-Rupe poll is a quarterly national survey of Americans and the latest iteration focused on transportation issues.
Among the main results:
-Nearly 50 percent of respondents say that for them congestion has worsened over the last five years, and over 50 percent think it will get even worse in the next five years.
-Only 12 percent use transit with any regularity and the number who telecommute is about the same
as those who carpool.-65 percent think the government generally spends transportation funding ineffectively.
-77 percent oppose raising the federal gas tax.
-58 percent think new lanes or new highways should be funded with tolls rather than tax increases, and 59 percent say they would pay a toll if it would save them a significant amount of time.
The full results, along with an explanation of methodology and analysis by poll director Emily Ekins, is online here.
About 10 minute; filmed by Zach Weissmueller and Sharif Matar, and edited by Matar.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Why Solyndra Hasn't Killed Government's Appetite for Green Pork: Cavanaugh on Russia Today
The other day I appeared on Russia Today to talk about the green lobby and the unwinding of the environmental consensus with Headline News host Kristine Frazao.
Topics we got to in the eight-minute segment:
Why isn't the Keystone pipeline in Pennsylvania?
Is the Green Lobby a special interest?
How many more Solyndras are out there?
Does nuclear power really need subsidies to survive?
How far has the Energy Department (formerly Atomic Energy Commission; please excuse my flubbing of the old name on camera) strayed from its mission when Secretary Steven Chu's energy plan [pdf] spends more than half the budget on Solyndra-style loan guarantees, subsidies for industries that don't need help, and a "science" slush fund that will provide more money for college professors to take sabbaticals? Could somebody with more wit than Chu do a better job of defending the energy package?
How many millisieverts of political radiation are being emitted by the failure of the Obama Administration's green energy programs?
Topics we did not get
to in the eight-minute segment:
Why did President Obama ignore the greatest genius on earth when His Fullness expressed concerns about the still-aborning the Solyndra debacle? Were OMB staffers' jokes about Solydra funny ha-ha or funny strange? If Jared Bernstein avoids talking about a problem does it make a sound?
Who's smearin' who in this East Anglian Heartlandian trash-talkin' hill o' beans world? (Actually we seem to have gotten an answer to that one.)
From bringing unemployment back up to 9 percent to explaining why Solyndra was a good investment: Is there anything Tim Geithner can't do?
Was Club For Growth justified in criticizing Rep. Fred Upton (R-Michigan) even though Upton has a smoking hot niece? Does smoking hotness contribute to carbon emissions?
Topics that have come up in the few days since the eight-minute segment:
If 2.7 million imaginary workers lost 2.7 million imaginary green jobs, would the proper environmental response be to give them an imaginary 99 weeks of unemployment?
Why do environmentalists hate kit foxes?
Is Chu going down over new documents that indicate he intervened to make sure industrial real estate giganticorp Prologis got a $1.4 billion loan guarantee for installing Solyndra's fragile, overpriced, inefficient solar panels on its own roofs?
View the whole segment above or go to YouTube.
Iran: Is the Media Ready to Supply the War?
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi thinks he's seeing deja vu all over again in the way the Iranian threat is being spun. Some details:
As a journalist, there’s a buzz you can detect once the normal restraints in your business have been loosened, a smell of fresh chum in the waters, urging us down the road to war. Many years removed from the Iraq disaster, that smell is back, this time with Iran.
You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms....
The news “hook” in most all of these stories is that intelligence reports reveal Iran is “willing” to attack us or go to war – but then there’s usually an asterisk next to the headline, and when you follow the asterisk, it reads something like, “In the event that we attack Iran first.”
An NBC report [Salon's Glenn] Greenwald also wrote about put it this way: “Within just the past few days, Iranian leaders have threatened that if attacked, they would launch those missiles at U.S. targets.”
There’s a weird set of internalized assumptions that media members bring to stories like this Iran business. In fact there’s an elaborate belief system we press people adhere to, about how a foreign country may behave toward the U.S., and how it may not behave....
We have a....gentleman’s code, a “Westernized industrial power” code if you will, that operates the same way. In other words, our newspapers and TV stations may blather on a thousand times a day about attacking Iran and bombing its people, but if even one Iranian talks about fighting back, he is being “aggressive” and “threatening”; we can impose sanctions on anyone, but if the sanctioned country embargoes oil shipments to Europe in response, it’s being “belligerent,” and so on....
now the public openly embraces circular thinking like, “Any country that squawks when we threaten to bomb it is a threat that needs to be wiped out.” Maybe I’m mistaken, but I have to believe that there was a time when ideas like that sounded weird to the American ear. Now they seem to make sense to almost everyone here at home, and that to me is just as a scary as Ahmadinejad.
A specific New York Times story from over the weekend seems to feed into a "We gotta do something about Iran" narrative, pointing out that while many mumble that, well, Israel can take care of Iran if it's really a mortal threat to them (which not all Israeli decisionmakers believe is true, and one former Mossad chief thinks such an attack on Iran would be a terrible idea) by arguing that Israel just doesn't have what it takes to take them out:
Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.
That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.
“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.
Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries have escalated....
The possible outlines of an Israeli attack have become a source of debate in Washington, where some analysts question whether Israel even has the military capacity to carry it off. One fear is that the United States would be sucked into finishing the job — a task that even with America’s far larger arsenal of aircraft and munitions could still take many weeks, defense analysts said. Another fear is of Iranian retaliation.
“I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’ll say, ‘Here’s how it’s going to be done — handful of planes, over an evening, in and out,’ ” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a former Pentagon official who is now director of the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force, which does extensive research for the United States Air Force.
Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009, said flatly last month that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program were “beyond the capacity” of Israel, in part because of the distance that attack aircraft would have to travel and the scale of the task.
Still, a top defense official cautioned in an interview last week that “we don’t have perfect visibility” into Israel’s arsenal, let alone its military calculations....
The rest of the story has more on the technical and logisitical difficulties, but to me the political point of this story is more important than those details: that various U.S. military-industrial complex pundits wanted the New York Times to let us know an Iranian war likely can't be just an Israeli thing.
Earlier this month, a Bipartisan Policy Center report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obama administration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well as three advanced refueling planes.
The two said that they were not advocating an Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improve Israel’s credibility as it threatens a strike.
Should the United States get involved — or decide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.
Nonetheless, defense officials say it would still be tough to penetrate Iran’s deepest facilities with existing American bombs and so are enhancing an existing 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” that was specifically designed for Iran and North Korea.
“There’s only one superpower in the world that can carry this off,” General Deptula said. “Israel’s great on a selective strike here and there.”
Steve Chapman questioned the threat of Iran here at Reason earlier this month.
400 Veterans March for Ron Paul, Peace, and to Memorialize Lost Comrades
[Update: Edited the quote regarding veterans who have committed suicide.]
On February 20, libertarian activist and Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh, and Nathan Cox, co-founder with Kokesh of Veterans for Ron Paul, hosted a rally and march for veterans and active duty service members who support the Texas Congressman for the 2012 Republican nomination. The "Ron Paul Is the Choice of the Troops" rally began at noon in the Sylvan Theater by the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.. Troops marched on the White House in a 48 x 8 formation, totaling 384, and they were joined by roughly a hundred supporters and observers.
Many people at the event were new to politics, yet they had traveled from out of state to participate in the rally. I spent some time with John, a teacher from Long Island, who told me that he came to support Ron Paul because of the financial meltdown of 2008. "I worked for Morgan Stanley in 2007. That's how I saw it coming. All that reckless betting." He said that in the aftermath of September 11, he supported the Iraq War. "I was eighteen. My dad is a fireman. But I got duped in the Iraq War. Most of us did. The same thing is happening now with Iran." He cited the rational self interest of Iranian authorities as reason to discount them as a threat to the United States, a much more powerful entity capable of causing disproportionate damage in response to any provocation. "That's what I try to teach my students. I say, they're crazy, but they're not stupid. You don't get to be a dictator by being stupid." John said he won't vote for any candidate who supports war at this point. "Look, I don't want to fight, so why am I going to vote for someone who's going to make someone else go and fight?"
I also spoke to Kristin from Toms River, New Jersey, who was at the rally "to support the troops and Ron Paul" with her husband and four of their children. She told me she has two nephews in the military, one in the Marines and one in the Air Force. When asked if she and her husband had been libertarian before hearing about Ron Paul's political platform, she smiled and said, "We are now." Like John, the teacher from Long Island, Kristin and her husband had never donated to a campaign or cared about politics before, "but now, every time there's a money bomb, we're right there."
To Kristin, the presidential candidate's ethos of sound money, free enterprise, and a peaceful foreign policy trumps her prior disinterest in elections. "Ron Paul's message is so clear. It's back to the basics. It's the same as it was twenty or thirty years ago, and it's as true as it was when Thomas Jefferson said it before him. It stands the test of time."
It's clear that Paul's messaging galvanizes the support of the idealistic. I was able to speak to a young man who asked not to have his name published after the controversy over the participation of active duty service members in the march. He first read the United States Constitution in French in his home country of Senegal when he was a teen. This is why, he said, he chose the United States as his new home when President Abdoulaye Wade came to power in 2000. "I love freedom," he said. He came here to learn about a people who support "truth, being free, and not telling lies," but that he has come to see a less virtuous side after twelve years. "I really believed in that. I miss that. I call it a mirage."
Ron Paul has
restored the service member's belief in his own ideals. "He was the
first person I heard talking about the Constitution, about the real
America. I'm taking time to look at it even more now because of Ron
Paul...." It was worth it, he said, to fly up for the day from his
base in the South, because "if we don't figure this out, someone
else will come in and show us. That's how empires are. They go up
and then they go down."
The Troops for Ron Paul followed their rally with a march on the White House at around 2:30 PM. When they got there, their chant of "Ron Paul Revolution" overpowered other, smaller protests taking place, including this one by Iranian U.S.-designated terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK):
The troops did an about-face in front of the White House and held a salute for over half an hour; one second of salute for every soldier who has died in the global war on terror. Different durations of the salute were dedicated to different causes within the issue of needless loss of life, including "every soldier who has committed suicide while Barack Obama was their commander in chief" and a period of prayer for the dead. The crowd of over five hundred people stayed silent; there was only the wind, the click of cameras and the wail of a crying baby somewhere behind the formation.
Read about Ron Paul's ideas, public demonstrations, and how not to support the troops.
Santorum 2008: "Satan has his sights on the United States of America"
From Drudge comes this
blast from Rick Santorum's past. In 2008, the current GOP
presidential frontrunner (kinda/sorta) dropped into Ave Maria
University in Florida and told a group of folks:
"Satan has his sights on the United States of America!...Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."
Hat Tip: Washington Times 24/7
This may well round out the Santorum trifecta. Previously, the former senator had railed against non-marital sex and the dangers of online gambling.
Fact-Checking the Fact Checkers: Mitt Romney, President Obama, and the Stimulus
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column takes Mitt Romney to task for claiming that “three years ago, a newly elected President Obama told America that if Congress approved his plan to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, he would hold unemployment below 8 percent.” After all, it wasn’t President Obama who said this, but his economic advisers, and they didn’t even know that we actually needed roughly a zillion times more stimulus! Here’s the Post:
Far from being anything that Obama said, the Romney campaign acknowledges that this 8 percent figure comes from a staff-written projection issued Jan. 9, 2009 — before Obama had taken the oath of office.
…Romer, after she left the White House in 2010, said that the estimate of the impact of the stimulus bill was accurate but that the 8 percent “prediction was so far off” because economic conditions were so much worse.
“We, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP [gross domestic product] and unemployment would break down,” Romer said.
The bottom line? The Bernstein-Romer report “was not an official government assessment or even an analysis of an actual plan that had passed Congress.” Three Pinocchios!
Romney’s statement probably
wouldn’t make it through a decent magazine fact checking without
being reworded. But the same essential point could be made without
introducing errors: Even if Obama himself didn’t tell America that
an economic stimulus package would reduce unemployment to 8
percent, top administrations officials projected that figure in a
report that was released to the public.
The Post is correct that Romney gets at least one detail wrong: Obama himself did not explicitly make the claim. But after he’d won the election, Obama’s top advisers projected, in an official capacity, that an economic stimulus of almost exactly the size of the one that eventually passed would reduce unemployment to 8 percent before the end of 2011.
The report in question was released on January 9, 2009, just a few days before President Obama was sworn into office, when both he and his team were already busily working on their plans for the country. The very first page lists Romer as the “Chairman - Nominee - Designate” of the Council of Economic Advisers, the the top job on president’s team of official economic counselors; Bernstein is listed as representing the “Office of the Vice President elect.” There’s no question, in other words, that this was a report produced by representatives of an incoming administration working in an official capacity.
The report’s projections, meanwhile, were based on a $775 billion stimulus plan, and the opening line refers to key employment goals “enunciated by the President-Elect concerning the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” It would be absurd to suggest that the plan considered in the Romer-Berstein report was anything other than an early version of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the economic stimulus package, that would pass just a few weeks later.
Does it matter that Romer, along with other defenders, have since attempted to excuse their projections by arguing that they didn't know the true depth of the economic collapse? Not really. It shouldn't even provide much comfort to diehard stimulus backers, as it reveals the weakness of the macroeconomic forecasting that stimulus plans rely on.
Sure,
Romney is wrong in the particulars of his criticism of how the
president sold the stimulus. But he’s wrong in all the ways that
don’t matter, and right in the way that does.
That said, Romney is far less of a stimulus critic that he appears to want potential voters to believe. In fact, as I noted in my March feature story on Romney, he seems to be fine with economic stimulus just as long as it’s designed to his specifications. In his 2010 book, No Apology, Romney has no apparent complaints about the $152 billion stimulus plan passed in 2008 by President Bush; he also says that following that plan, “another stimulus was called for.” He even has some nice things to say about the stimulus legislation passed by President Obama, writing that “the stimulus that was passed in early 2009 will accelerate the timing of the start of the recovery”—just not as much as it would have if it had been designed differently.
The line Romney takes on the stimulus in his book barely counts as a complaint. Yes, the initial stimulus projections made by incoming Obama administration economic staffers turned out to be bunk. But it's not clear what Romney would have done differently, except perhaps tweak the tax and spend balance and some of the implementation details. But as campaign trail attack lines go, "I would have implemented the stimulus somewhat differently!" isn't much of a rallying cry.
Update: The Examiner's Philip Klein reminds me via Twitter that President Obama did say in a speech pushing passage of his recovery plan that "if nothing is done...unemployment will reach double digits."
ABC Calls Unmanned Drones "Robot Heroes," Fails to Mention They Sometimes Kill Innocent Children
Due to the wall-to-wall
coverage of Whitney Houston's death, I almost missed ABC
Nightline's
report last week on the domestic use of unmanned drones. Titled
"Who is Watching You? Military drones are being used by everyone
from real estate agents to paparazzi," the report attempts to
highlight privacy concerns about the use of unmanned drones on
domestic soil. In the process, reporter Jim Avila shamelessly
glorifies our use of armed drones elsewhere.
"Drones: Once our unmanned heroes in war zones, are now in the hands of real estate agents," Avila intones as ABC plays footage of a realtor using a drone to show a property. “These are the closest cousins of terrorist-fighting, robot heroes in Agfhanistan and Iraq,” Avila says later in the segment. (More Avila drone euphemisms: "An engineering marvel"; "a rare secret weapon.")
The privacy issue, Avila says, "makes the new domestic drones as unintentionally dangerous to Americans and their privacy as they are intentionally lethal to terrorists overseas.” It would behoove ABC, in a five-minute segment, to illustrate our ocassional misuse of these "rare secret weapons," and the fact they sometimes kill people who are not terrorists.
In November, Clive Stafford Smith did exactly that for The New York Times when he reported on the tragic death of 16-year-old Tariq Aziz:
The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them.
When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision.
I told the elders that the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed. Three of the men, at considerable personal risk, had collected the detritus of half a dozen missiles; they had taken 100 pictures of the carnage.
In one instance, they matched missile fragments with a photograph of a dead child, killed in August 2010 during the C.I.A.’s period of supposed infallibility. This made their grievances much more tangible.
Collecting evidence is a dangerous business. The drones are not the only enemy. The Pakistani military has sealed the area off from journalists, so the truth is hard to come by. One man investigating drone strikes that killed civilians was captured by the Taliban and held for 63 days on suspicion of spying for the United States.
At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward; if he carried a camera he might attract the hostility of the extremists.
But the militants never had the chance to harm him. On Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.
"Hero" is perhaps too strong a title for a piece of technology, especially considering that it ocassionally kills children.
Futhermore, the privacy threat posed by aerial surveillance is not hypothetical. We've already seen, as in the case of New Mexico man Norman Davis, whose home was raided after a National Guard helicopter spotted marijuana plants on his property, that law enforcement agencies currently use aerial surveillance technology in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It's probably even fair to say that challenges to domestic use of unmanned drones by law enforcement will be on Fourth Amendment grounds; yet Avila makes no mention of that amendment in his report.
No Explanation but Corruption for Wanting to Cut Beer Taxes?
Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy
notes that Rick Santorum supported cutting the federal excise
tax on beer when he was a Pennsylvania senator and attributes that
position to campaign donations from the industry:
From 1995 through 2006, Rick Santorum was one of the upper chamber's biggest beneficiaries of beer industry cash. Wholesalers, brewers, and their top executives filled Santorum's coffers with at least $80,000 in campaign donations. And they got their money's worth: Four times during his two Senate terms Santorum pushed to cut the beer excise tax [which had been doubled in 1990] by half, over the protests of economists and public health experts who say that a lower tax would lead to a loss of revenue and lives.
In practice, it is hard to distinguish between the quid pro quo corruption Murphy suggests and the common (and usually lamentable) legislative impulse to defend the interests of local employers. Murphy notes that "Big Beer is big business in Pennsylvania, home to major breweries like Rolling Rock, Yuengling, and Keystone." Either way, the goal—retaining power by getting re-elected—is pretty much the same.
For all I know, Murphy is right about Santorum's motivation. But it seems strange that he does not even entertain the possibility that Santorum supported lower beer taxes because he thought beer taxes should be lower. Why dismiss that explanation out of hand? Because everyone knows that beer taxes should be raised, not cut (emphasis added):
"The name of the game is to deflect attention at all costs from the fact that really we should be raising beer taxes and the most brilliant way to do that was devised by the beer industry by creating this 'roll back the beer tax' campaign," explains Michele Simon, president of the industry watchdog Eat Drink Politics....
According to public health researchers, when the beer industry saves money, the rest of society ends up picking up the tab.
Lowering the beer excise tax "would lead to an increase of sales of alcohol and an increase in drinking, and that would lead to an associated or proportionate increase in the health problems associated with alcohol," says Alex Wagenaar, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida who has studied the impact of the tax on public health. "It's chronic disease for people that drink heavily, it's also, just for people that occasionally drink more than a very small amount, [an] increased risk for car crashes, pedestrian injuries, fights and assaults and things like that."
That's one way of looking at it. But as someone who has given the beer industry a lot of money over the years but has never received any of it back, I disagree with this collectivist analysis. It seems to me that "sin taxes" are fundamentally unjust because they punish the responsible majority for the misdeeds of a minority. If my own beer consumption does not impose costs on others, why should I have to pay a levy supposedly aimed at recouping those costs? In my view, Santorum took the wrong position because he called for cutting the beer tax in half, as opposed to eliminating it altogether. I realize Tim Murphy, Michele Simon, and Alex Wagenaar disagree. But the strength of their conviction does not transform an opinion into a fact.
New Rasmussen Poll: 58 Percent Oppose $10,000 Subsidies to Electric Car Buyers
A recent Rasmussen poll finds 58 percent of Americans are opposed to providing $10,000 subsidies to those who buy electric cars. This is at odds with President Obama’s recent budget proposal to provide $10,000 subsidies to Americans who purchase electric cars to offset the typical cost of $32,000-$42,000 per car. The President hopes that this policy endeavor will result in getting one million electric cars on the road by 2015.
Opposition to this policy increases to 65 percent when the total cost of the program ($10 billion dollars) is considered. 73 percent oppose allowing those making over $150,000 a year eligible for this subsidy. This is quite relevant given that General Motors CEO Dan Akerson reports the average Chevy Volt buyer makes $170,000 per year. Only 13 percent approve of a subsidy to this income group.
It remains unclear whether Americans oppose this subsidy policy because they believe the electric car industry can make money on its own. Although 58% oppose the subsidy, only 46% believe the electric car industry can make money without government subsidy. Instead, Americans seem to oppose the subsidy regardless of whether they believe the industry needs government subsidies to continue.
Partisan breakdowns reveal that Republicans oppose the subsidy 77 percent to 14 percent, but Democrats favor it 46 percent to 39 percent. Primary support comes from self-identified liberals with 63 percent favoring. In comparison 78 percent of conservatives and 53 percent of moderates oppose the subsidy.
Question Wording
Electric cars are more expensive than traditional cars, with base costs ranging from $32,000 to 42,000. A proposal has been made to give $10,000 government subsidies to the purchasers of electric cars. Do you favor or oppose government subsidies to encourage the purchase of electric cars?
29% Favor
58% Oppose
13% Not sure
The Obama administration hopes to have one million electric cars on the road by 2015. To reach that goal, the subsidy program could cost the federal government $10 billion. Do you favor or oppose having the federal government spend $10 billion over four years to subsidize the purchase of electric cars?
26% Favor
65% Oppose
10% Not sure
Should people who earn more than $150,000 per year receive a $10,000 grant from the government to reduce the cost of purchasing an electric car? Or should people who earn more than $150,000 a year pay for the full cost of the car themselves?
13% Yes, they should receive a $10,000 grant from the
government
73% No, they should pay for the full cost of the electric car
14% Not sure
Will the electric car industry ever make money on its own or will it always require government subsidies to stay in business?
46% Electric care industry will make money on its own
28% Electric care industry will always require government
subsidies
26% Not sure
Source: Rasmussen
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 18-19, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Pretzel Crisps: A Brand or a Generic Term?
Trademark disputes that make
the news usually involve an upstart allegedly infringing on the
rights of an established company. But in a case
noted by The New York Times, a small company is
seeking to protect trademark rights that are disputed by a big
competitor. Frito-Lay, the snack food giant, is trying to stop
Warren and Sara Wilson from obtaining a trademark for Pretzel
Crisps, the thin, cracker-like pretzels they invented. Frito-Lay,
which "has tried unsuccessfully to sell its own flat pretzels,"
argues that pretzel crisps is a generic term that cannot
be registered as a trademark. "Like ‘milk chocolate bar,'" it told
the Patent and Trademark Office in 2010 , "the combination of
'pretzel' and 'crisp' gains no meaning as a phrase over and above
the generic meaning of its constituent terms." That seems dubious
to me, since I have encountered the phrase only in the context of
this particular product, which was introduced in 2004. Before then,
according to the Times, there was no such thing as a
cracker-thin pretzel. But an expert consulted by the
Times says Frito-Lay might have a case:
F. Scott Kieff, a law professor at George Washington University, said the case could go either way. Princeton Vanguard, he said, "will have to show that there is some secondary meaning to the term ‘pretzel crisp’ out there in the relevant population that goes beyond simply provoking thoughts of thin pretzels that are crispy and refer to something specific."
In any case, it seems clear that Frito-Lay (which declined to comment for the Times story) is mainly interested in hurting a competitor, as opposed to preserving the freedom to call its own future entrant in this category (assuming it ever comes up with a version people want to buy) "pretzel crisps":
"The big companies will do this to rough up their competitors," said Barton Beebe, a professor at the New York University Law School who specializes in intellectual property law. "If they can't win in the marketplace, they try to soften them up with legal fees and distract them. Even if they lose the case, it's a Pyrrhic victory because the small company has wasted so many resources.”
For Pretzel Crisps, Princeton Vanguard [the Wilsons' company] already has spent $1 million on legal fees.
"This fight," Warren Wilson tells the Times, "is about a big company that wants to dominate the snack food category by crushing a little company like ours rather than by competing with us."
Ron Paul Hits the Coastal Elite Big Time: A Mostly Positive Profile in the New Yorker
Former pop music critic and successful warrior against "rockism" Kelefa Sanneh delivers a long, long profile of Ron Paul in the New Yorker, hitting the campaign trail with him in Maine and Nevada and surveying the shape of his career. Newsletters are mentioned without being treated as the most important issue about Ron Paul, and intelligent questions are raised about his mysterious lack of appeal to the mysteriously departed "Tea Party" movement.
Some highlights that pick up the flavor of the piece:
During Paul’s visit to Maine, he paid a visit to Colby College, in Waterville, where he was introduced by Paul Madore, a conservative activist and his state campaign chair. Madore began his introduction on a combative note, assailing “the A.C.L.U. and other leftist organizations” for “forcing us to constantly apologize for our Christian heritage.” In fact Paul and the American Civil Liberties Union agree at least as often as they disagree, and they have worked together in the past. (In 2009, the A.C.L.U. sued the Transportation Security Administration on behalf of a staffer for Ron Paul’s nonprofit organization, Campaign for Liberty, who was briefly detained in an airport after hesitating to explain why he was carrying a box of cash.) When Paul got to the podium, he thanked Madore for the introduction, but, near the end of his speech, he pushed back. “Liberty is liberty,” he said. “Some people would use it for different religious values or no religious values—just so they get to make their choices.” A few minutes later, before inviting his supporters to pose for pictures with him, he remembered something important. “I forgot to talk about the campaign,” he said, grinning. “I’d like to get your vote next week.”
My own experience on the (lack of) branded or self-conscious "Tea Party" action while on the road with Paul in the past year supports what Sanneh writes here:
In “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism” (Oxford; 2012), the political scientists Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson take the measure of the recent amorphous uprising. They find that, despite a focus on economics, Tea Party groups often entertain “socially conservative moral arguments” and don’t generally identify as libertarian. “The Tea Party came, during much of 2010, to be (misleadingly) portrayed as a formidable, independent political movement that threatened to overturn the two-party system,” they write. In fact, Tea Party supporters tended to be indistinguishable from conservative Republicans—the energy was new, but not the ideology. Individual Tea Partiers have become influential within the Republican Party, especially at the local level, but few people now view the movement as a threat to the political duopoly. This election season, no viable Tea Party Presidential candidate has emerged, and the Tea Party itself has been all but invisible, subsumed within the broader Republican electorate.
And Sanneh hits home why the much-feared Obama-elevating Paul third party run is unlikely:
There is only one politician whom Paul regularly praises in his speeches—a man he coyly refers to as a “senator from Kentucky.” If Paul sees a future for himself in the Republican Party, it is through his son Rand, who might have an easier time than his father in attracting traditional conservatives to his cause. (During his campaign for the Senate, for example, Rand Paul declined to rule out using force to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.) Unlike most politicians on the verge of retirement, Paul can’t accurately claim that he has nothing to lose by breaking with the party that has been his home for all but one of his years in politics. Hope for his son’s prospects—and a disinclination to put him in an awkward position—might be enough to keep Paul from ending his political career with another third-party campaign. If he split the vote, indirectly helping to reëlect Obama, it might be a long time before Republicans were willing to get behind anyone named Paul.
That this long, detailed, mostly accurate and fair piece appears in such a bastion of establishment cultural and non-professional intellectual chatter as the New Yorker is yet another sign of the mainstreaming of libertarian ideas that has been encouragingly moving forward for the past decade or so, and a sign of how the Paul campaign, while not the only force behind that mainstreaming by any means, is at the very least an important and positive part of it.
For much, much more on all this, read my out-in-May book on Paul and the Paul movement, Ron Paul's Revolution, and my April cover story in Reason magazine.
Extremism in the Defense of Climate "Alarmism" Is No Vice?
Last week, climate change
"alarmists" were
deliriously claiming to have uncovered the dastardly plans of
the climiate change "deniers"* at the free-market Heartland
Institute to "undermine" true climate science. At the center of
this new "scandal" were supposedly internal documents from the
Institute outlining its nefarious plans and exposing its evil
paymasters. Now comes prominent "alarmist"* Peter Gleick, founder
of the Pacific Institute, who admits that he deceitfully posed as
someone else in order to obtain documents from the Heartland
Institute. As the New York Times
reports:
Dr. Gleick distributed the documents to several well-known bloggers and activists who support the work of mainstream climate scientists and who have denounced the Heartland Institute as a center of climate change denial. The document release, which lit up the Internet last week, was cast by some bloggers as the work of a whistle-blowing Heartland employee or ex-employee who had access to internal papers, when it was in fact orchestrated by Dr. Gleick, a Yale- and Berkeley-trained scientist and environmental activist who says that he was frustrated with Heartland’s anti-climate-change programs.
Dr. Gleick denied authorship of the most explosive of the documents, a supposed strategy paper that laid out the institute’s efforts to raise money to question climate change and get schools to adjust their science curricula to include alternative theories of global warming.
The "strategy paper" was the most explosive since it explicitly outlined what would appear to be a self-consciously dishonest effort to "undermine" climate science. The Heartland Insitute has strongly denounced the "strategy paper" as a fake. At the Huffington Post, Gleick admits:
At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.
Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.
The upshot is that it would appear that Gleick was so excited by the anonymously sent "strategy paper" that he decided that he must resort to "a serious lapse of [his] own and professional judgment and ethics" to further expose the wicked plans of the Heartland Institute. Basically, it looks like Gleick's confirmation bias ("I just know that the Heartland folks are wittingly evil") overcame whatever sense of morality and fair play that he may harbor. To paraphrase, Gleick apparently concluded that extremism in the defense of climate "alarmism" is no vice.
Atlantic Senior Editor Megan McArdle has done two really insightful and careful analyses, here and here, of the "strategy document" in which she pretty much proves (to my satisfaction at least) that it is a fake.
It does bear mentioning that the "alarmists" often claim that the shadowy campaign attacking true climate science (it is "settled") is being paid for by Big Oil. The Heartland documents reveal no donations from Big Oil, and the Koch Foundation (see Koch derangement syndrome) donation appears to be targeted toward health policy, not energy or climate policy.
This is just the latest episode in the sorry and increasingly poisonous politics of global warming.
Update: Heartland Institute press release on Gleick's confession:
"Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.
"Gleick's crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.
"An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with.
"A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.
"In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a "rational debate" from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.
"Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.
"We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days.
"We are consulting with legal counsel to determine our next steps and plan to release a more complete statement about the situation tomorrow. In the meantime, we ask again that publishers, bloggers, and Web site hosts take the stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites, remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions."
*What each side calls the other.
A. Barton Hinkle on the Underwear Bomber and Civilian Trials
Something remarkable didn’t happen last week:
Nobody blew up Detroit. This is a stunning development.
It is stunning because Detroit is the city where, on
Thursday, a federal judge sentenced Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to
life behind bars. This is not what was supposed to happen,
writes A. Barton Hinkle. Three years ago, a lot of
people—Republicans and conservatives, mostly—were pulling their
hair out in (pardon the term) sheer terror at the very thought of
trying terrorist suspects in civilian court.
D.C.'s "Love Affair With Marijuana"
There's a pretty darned good
cover package in the current issue of Washingtonian
magazine about "Washington's Love Affair With Marijuana." Here's a
fun
quote:
"This is a town where I could probably kill 200 major careers if I wanted to be a complete prick," says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which is headquartered on K Street. "Politicians, members of Congress and the Senate, many of their principals—legislative directors, chiefs of staff, communications directors—people in the private sector, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Brookings, police, any number of notable journalists from television, print, radio, many brand names most Americans would recognize pretty quickly—I've smoked with all of them. There is more smoke in DC closets than there is sex."
Disclosure: I have never smoked pot with Allen St. Pierre. Least not that I remember.
More:
For many, a hit before bedtime eases insomnia. "Better pot than Ambien," the PR exec says. For others, it calms the tensions of the 80-hour workweek.
"For people who have really high-producing, high-stress jobs, it's like this is my break in order to release a lot of the stress," says a 37-year-old who used to work in politics. She smokes with friends "in high-ranking government positions, including a friend who interacts with the President every day." [...]
Washington is "schizophrenic" when it comes to marijuana, says Allen St. Pierre: There are plenty of people here who smoke pot, but not many who will talk about it.
"We wear gold marijuana lapel pins when we lobby," St. Pierre says. "In DC, everyone thinks I'm Canadian. They'll go, 'Oh, hey—maple leaf!' And I go, 'No, no, cannabis leaf,' and the immediate facial reaction is either a quirky smile or a furrowing brow as if someone just put a stinky cheese under their nose."
Snoop Dogg, Ayn Rand, & Amnesty for Immigrant Marijuana
Libertarian columnist Ron
Hart recounts his travels:
On this trip to L.A., I sensed that there is a growing, but still closeted, group of entertainers who will confess to being libertarian after a drink or two. They tell you this with faces that say, "Please, I beg of you, just don't tell Clive Davis, Harvey Weinstein or Stephen Spielberg."
None other than Snoop Dogg, whose lyrics might expose him as a free-market capitalist, famously said that he had his "mind on my money and my money on my mind" (Ayn Rand would be proud of him). Snoop is leading the change for celebs.
Furthering the evolution of thought by Snoop Dogg, he boldly came out and said he backed libertarian Ron Paul for president. Snoop agrees with Ron Paul on a broad range of positions, from the legalization of pot to making marijuana legal. He also likes Paul’s immigration policy in that if a bail of pot washes up an U.S. shore from Mexico, it is immediately granted asylum.
It may not be raining libertarianism in the entertainment business, but thank Snoop Dogg for drizzle.
When Not to Taser a Frantic and Handcuffed Suspect
The Florida Highway Patrol
officer who put Danielle Maudsley in a coma was only steps behind
her as she fled the FHP station, her hands cuffed in front of
her.
Officer Daniel Cole was close enough, and—at 267 pounds—big enough, that had he simply heaved himself in her general direction, he likely could have tackled Maudsley. Or, if he wanted to keep his uniform clean, he could've broke into a run and grabbed her.
Instead, he Tasered her in the back, sending Maudsley into a fall that ended with her head cracking against the asphalt.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, "doctors have told Maudsley's family she likely will never wake up." According to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson, "the trooper's actions were legal and within the scope of his duties."
The video of the incident is below.
Robert Poole on Fixing America’s Freeways
If you work anywhere in America outside of New
York City, chances are you drive to work. That means you battle
congestion twice every weekday. Rest assured that it’s not your
imagination: traffic is much worse than it used to be. Is there a
solution to this growing problem? From our March issue, Robert W.
Poole Jr., director of transportation policy at the Reason
Foundation, explains how the private sector is reinventing our
expressways, one lane at a time.
Watch Matt Welch Debate Jonah Goldberg About Libertarians and Conservatives
On Feb. 8, Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch debated National Review/American Enterprise Institute author Jonah Goldberg on the topic of "Are Libertarians Part of the Conservative Movement?" You can now watch the hour-long debate in its entirety:
Is It Steak Yet? No, But Vat-Grown Burgers Might Be Hitting Your Plate By Year's End
For those of who expected the 21st century
to be a world of wonders as limned in David Bowie songs and Josie
and the Pussycats in Outer Space, the cavalry may be arriving. And
by cavalry, I mean test-tube White Castles:
Speaking at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Vancouver yesterday afternoon (SUNDAY), Prof [Mark] Post [of Maastricht University] said his team has successfully replicated the process with cow cells and calf serum, bringing the first artificial burger a step closer.
He said: "In October we are going to provide a proof of concept showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat."
Hopefully tastes like meat...where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, at Burger King's drive-thru. Burgers may be in the pipeline but it's gonna take steak a while longer:
Creating different cuts, such as steaks, would be more problematic because to grow thicker strips of meat would require an artificial blood supply, he added....
The only person to have tried the lab-grown meat so far is a Russian journalist who snatched a sample of pork during a visit to Prof Post's lab at Maastricht University last year and declared himself unimpressed.
That first burger won't come cheap. The research behind it is expected to run a total about 250,000 euros. But just to make the whole situation a wee-bit more disturbing than it needs to be, there's this:
The work is being financed by anonymous and extremely wealthy benefactor who Prof Post claims is a household name with a reputation for "turning everything into gold".
We at Reason have been licking our chops for vat-grown meat since at least 2005, when we raised questions about whether vegans could eat the stuff and whether celebrity meats were in the offing. Get your stomach churning by reading our list of articles about what will certainly become one of the next great battlegrounds in a world where salt, butter, and soda pop are on a culinary hit list.
And check out what happened when lobsters invaded DC - in the form of very tasty sandwiches:
A.M. Links: Afghans Rally Over Burned Korans (Again), Greece Gets Eurozone Bailout (Again), Dominique Strauss-Kahn Questioned About Hotel Sex (Again)
U.S. troops burn Korans,
Afghans throw rocks, shoot guns.- Greece gets a second bailout, this one worth $173 billion.
- Sheldon Adelson: "I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich."
- French Police question Dominique Strauss-Kahn about expensive hotel sex.
- Mexican prison guards helped orchestrate riot that served as cover for jail-break.
- Obama targets Santorum.
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New at Reason.tv: "Reason with Kennedy"
Shikha Dalmia on Mitt Romney’s Troubled Michigan Homecoming
Michigan was supposed to be the state where Mitt
Romney cakewalked his way to the Republican nomination. After all,
he was born and brought up here by a father who served as a
three-term governor. Instead, observes Shikha Dalmia, Romney is
stumbling. And whether or not he recovers might depend on his
ability to do something that so far has completely eluded him:
offer a vision. Making tribalistic appeals and brandishing his
resume, as he’s been doing, isn’t working so far—and might never
work.
Ira Stoll on Why Capitalism Is Here to Stay
At the height of the financial crisis in late
2008 and early 2009, a wave of articles declared the end of
capitalism. A half-dozen reporters writing about the issue called
Allan Meltzer, who since 1957 has been teaching about capitalism at
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Five of the calls he
answered. The sixth was from a reporter of Die Zeit,
the German weekly, who, as Professor Meltzer recalls it, asked,
“Professor, what do you think about the end of
capitalism?” Professor Meltzer replied that that was the
stupidest question he’d been asked in 50 years. Meltzer's new book,
Why Capitalism?, reviewed by Ira Stoll, explains why
capitalism is actually here to stay.
Romney Up But Santorum Not Down in the Wolverine State
Public Policy Polling, the polling outfit that last week had Mitt Romney 15 points behind Rick Santorum in Michigan, one of Romney’s multiple home states, now has him behind by “only” four points. This is certainly hopeful for the Romney camp because a Michigan loss will essentially eviscerate his main claim for being the Republican nominee: electability. But a Michigan win won’t necessarily mean that Romney is more electable than Santorum (although, for the record, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Santorum, his electability or his sweater vests). That’s because Romney’s improving prospects in the Wolverine State might have more to do with Newt Gingrich than Romney himself. Here’s what the PPP found:
Gingrich's continued presence in the race is helping Romney a lot. If he dropped, 45% of his supporters would go to Santorum, compared to only 29% for Romney and it would push Santorum's lead over Romney up to 42-33. 47% of primary voters think Gingrich should drop out while only 40% believe he should continue on, but he's certainly not showing any indication he'll leave.
Santorum's advantage over Romney seems to be a reflection of voters being more comfortable with where he is ideologically. 48% of voters think Santorum has more similar beliefs to them, compared to only 32% who pick Romney on that question. 63% of primary voters think Santorum's views are 'about right' compared to only 42% who say that for Romney. 37% believe that Romney is 'too liberal.'
Point to note: Gingrich keeps inviting other candidates to get lost while Michigan voters want him to get lost.
Other interesting poll highlights:
- The tightening over the last week is much more a function of Romney gaining than Santorum falling. Santorum's favorability spread of 67/23 has seen no change since our last poll, and his share of the vote has dropped only 2 points from 39% to 37%. Romney meanwhile has seen his net favorability improve 10 points from +10 (49/39) to +20 (55/35) and his vote share go from 24% to 33%.
- Romney's bailout stance isn't hurting him. 34% of voters say they're more likely to vote for someone opposed to the bailout, while only 27% consider that opposition a negative. 35% say it doesn't make a difference to them either way.
- Romney's still not convincing anyone that he's a Michigander- only 29% of voters consider him to be one, while 62% do not. But given that he's risen in the polls over the last week without making any progress on that front, it looks like it doesn't really matter whether or not Michigan Republicans consider him to be one of their own.
- This is still an extremely volatile race. 36% of voters say they could change their minds in the next week. 69% of Romney's supporters are strongly committed to him, compared to only 63% of Santorum's backers. With momentum on his side and a more reliable group of supporters there are plenty of reasons to think Romney can continue this comeback and win next week.
Steven Greenhut on Pro-Union Activism by California’s Attorney General
California Attorney General Kamala Harris is a
close ally of the public sector unions, who are doing all they can
to stop the state's burgeoning pension reform movement. So when the
group California Pension Reform submitted two voter initiatives
that would rein in the unsustainable costs of the state’s pension
system, Harris decided to behave as a political operative and
besmirch the office she holds by distorting the official
descriptions that most voters rely upon when making their voting
decision. It’s certainly OK to hire a Democratic hack to wage a
slash-and-burn anti-reform campaign, writes Steven Greenhut, but
it’s another thing entierly to abuse the office of attorney general
and rig the process.
Protect the Dead; Screw the Living (Definitely Not the Dead)
Problem: Fearing criminal charges, people
sometimes move the bodies of friends or acquaintances who die of
drug overdoses, complicating official investigations. Solution:
Make it a crime to move the bodies.
An Illinois bill sponsored by state Rep. Dan Beiser (D-Alton) would make "unauthorized removal of a corpse" a Class 4 felony, punishable by up to three years in prison. "In recent months," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, "Metro East prosecutors have filed charges of drug-induced homicide against several people who allegedly supplied drugs to people who died of overdoses. Police regard the sites as crime scenes." If police were not so eager to file charges in such cases, some of these people might still be alive, because bystanders would be less afraid to call for help or bring overdose victims to the hospital. Then there would not only be less incentive to move corpses without authorization; there would also be fewer corpses.
While coming up with exactly the wrong solution to the overdose problem, Beiser noticed that Illinois had never bothered to criminalize sex with a corpse. His bill would correct that oversight, making it a Class 2 felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison, to do the deed with the dead. Madison County, Illinois, State's Attorney Tom Gibbons "said a law prohibiting sex with a corpse is needed out of respect for the dead." How many unprosecutable cases of necrophilia have Illinois police come across in the state's entire history? At least one. Gibbons "said he has been told there was one such case in the county many years ago that could not be prosecuted for lack of such a law."
In 2010 Brian Doherty noted the movement to protect Good Samaritans from criminal liabiity in drug overdose cases.
[Thanks to Richard Cowan for the tip.]
Joshua Swain and Katherine Mangu-Ward on How to Save a Tree House from the Zoning Board
When Spc. Mark Grapin returned from a tour of
duty in Iraq with the Army National Guard in 2011, he promised his
sons—Sean, 9, and Eric, 11—that he would build them a tree house
before he shipped out again. Grapin, who lives in Fairfax County,
outside Washington, D.C., called the county and asked about any
building codes that might apply. “The guy kind of laughed me off
the phone,” he says. So Grapin got to work, spending dozens of
hours and $1,400 on materials. But little did he know that a second
set of bureaucrats, the Fairfax County zoning board, should have
been consulted before construction began. An anonymous complaint
from a neighbor triggered a county investigation into the
unapproved structure, and in September the Board of Zoning Appeals
voted 4-3 to deny Grapin the necessary permit. The tree house was
then slated for the wrecking ball. With time running out before the
veteran would be sent back into the field, he went to the local
media for help, triggering outrage nationwide.
Montana Medical Marijuana Providers Get What Passes for Lenience Under Our Drug Laws
The
Missoulian reports
that medical marijuana providers who were raided by the feds last
year in Montana are receiving sentences somewhere between what they
deserve (not time at all) and what federal law prescribes (five to
40 years in prison). Since compliance with state law is no defense
in federal court, their convictions would be pretty much assured if
they went to trial, where they would not even be permitted to say
why they were growing or distributing marijuana. Hence all of them
so far have opted for plea agreements, under which prosecutors and
judges are letting them serve much less time than they would if
convicted of drug offenses carrying mandatory minimum
sentences:
They faced mandatory minimum sentences of at least five years in prison on some charges, with maximum penalties of 40 years and fines ranging as high as $5 million.
But the sentences handed down so far, all the result of plea agreements that saw some charges dropped, have been considerably shorter, ranging from six months to 18 months.
And in one case where attorneys agreed on sentencing guidelines of 24-30 months for each of three men, a federal judge in Helena halved the minimum, sentencing them instead to a single year. Senior Judge Charles Lovell criticized the guidelines as "excessive," making particular mention of the fact that the three men, who operated businesses in Helena and Great Falls, believed their work to be legal under state law.
As I noted in a 2009 column, complying with state law (or sincerely believing that you are) does not get you off the hook in federal court, but it can earn you some lenience at the sentencing stage compared to ordinary marijuana offenders. In 2003 U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sentenced Ed Rosenthal, who grew marijuana for patients in Oakland, California, with the city's approval, to a day in jail (which he had already served). In 2009 U.S. District Judge George Wu sentenced Charlie Lynch, who ran a dispensary in Morro Bay, California, to a year and a day. Both judges used a "safety valve" provision for low-level offenders to avoid the five-year mandatory minimum triggered by the amount of marijuana involved.
When your crime involves nothing more than growing a plant or selling its produce, of course, your freedom should not hinge on your customer's health or a judge's sympathy. What a sad commentary on our legal system it is when prison sentences of six months, a year, or a year and a half for doing something that violated no one's rights seem almost enlightened compared to the usual practice.
[Thanks to Richard Cowan for the tip.]
Coulter vs Gillespie at The Independence Institute's Founder's Night in Colorado
Last Thursday, I had the honor
of participating in a live debate with Ann Coulter at the 27th
annual Founder's Night event for Colorado's Independence Institute, one of the most
truly awesome state-based think tanks in this sweet land of
liberty.
If and when audio, video, and secret drone footage becomes available, we''ll post it here. In the meantime, here's a report from The Colorado Observer that gets the flavor of the friendly but often spirited argument between myself and the author, most recently, of Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America.
Snippets from the Observer:
Drawing both admiration and occasionally scorn from the diverse audience due to their widely varying opinions, both could agree on the most important issue in the 2012 election cycle.
“I object to having this discussion at all when we’re facing financial Armageddon,” said Coulter in her opening remarks. “It’s silly to even talk about these things, whether it’s gay marriage or contraception.”
“The spending problem is not due to women, it’s not due to men, it’s due to humans, mostly politicians. It’s in the form of entitlements,” declared Gillespie. He pointed to Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. “That’s what we need to be focusing on if we want to reduce the amount of government, the amount of borrowing, and hence the amount of future control over our lives via taxes and redistribution.”
Coulter and Gillespie...tackled civil unions and gay marriage, one of the hot button social issues at both the national and local level. Colorado’s state Senate passed legislation supporting civil unions out of committee this week.
“I don’t think there is a difference,” Coulter argued when asked if civil unions and gay marriage remained substantially different. “Protecting gay rights is done by contracts,” said Coulter. She said she respected the collective wisdom of state referenda that have consistently shot down such legislation, favoring the “civilizing” effect of the institution of marriage. “Marriages should be protected.”
“The difference between same sex marriage and civil unions is what you pay the caterer,” quipped Gillespie. “Gay marriage is upon us and will continue in the future. The poll numbers are there. Gays are moving into a place of legal equality under the law. That is right and proper and good,” Gillespie maintained....
The speakers differed on the impact of third parties in presidential elections. “Whoever wins this election, it’s not the Libertarians’ fault,” joked Gillespie, who quickly added the important caveat that voters should stay true to their principles. “If you can’t vote what you believe in the privacy of the ballot, move to Russia.”
“No one is saying you can’t vote what you believe. This country is going to be Russia if you don’t get rid of Obama,” Coulter countered.
Nick Gillespie, Judge Napolitano Bust Myths of US Presidents
Note: A year ago on the late, lamented Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano, I sat down with the judge, Fox News' Monica Crowley, and historian Tom Woods to discuss the best and worst of U.S. presidents. Click above to watch the lively discussion and read the original writeup below.
Reason.tv editor in chief Nick Gillespie appeared on a special President's Day episode of Jude Napolitano's Freedom Watch alongside author Monica Crowleyand historian Tom Woods to discuss the perceived legacies of several U.S. presidents. Is Jefferson really a suitable libertarian icon? Was Woodrow Wilson the country's first technocratic president? Why is FDR revered by Progressives? Who really killed JFK? And did Reagan's governance match his small-government rhetoric? Gillespie and his fellow panelists discuss these topics, and more. Air Date: February 21, 2011.
Approximately 27 minutes.
Go to Reason.tv for HD, iPod and audio versions of this video and subscribe to Reason.tv's Youtube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.
A.M. Links: Nuke Inspectors Pressure Iran, Greece Nears a Second Bailout, MSM Discovers Ron Paul's Delegate Strategy
U.N. nuke inspectors begin
scenic
tour of Iran. - The AP discovers Paul's delegate strategy.
- Greeks await a second bailout.
- More countries beg Israel not to start a war with Iran.
- Things are changing at Foxconn.
- China accuses Western countries of starting a Syrian civil war.
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New at reason.tv: "Kennedy on Whitney Houston, Adele, &...Michelle Obama?"
Reason.tv Replay: Whitney Houston, Adele, &...Michelle Obama?
Original release date: February 17, 2012
What do Whitney Houston, Adele, the First Lady - plus crooner Tony Bennett and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld - have in common?
KYSR DJ and former MTV VJ Kennedy connects the dots as Houston fans prepare for the songbird's funeral, Adele polishes her six Grammys, and Michelle Obama hula-hoops her way across the nation, pushing kids to eat less and exercise more.
About 3 minutes.
Written by Nick Gillespie and Kennedy, who also hosts. Edited by Meredith Bragg.
Visit Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Steve Chapman on China Phobia
Among those who sorely miss the Cold War, China
serves as an endless source of fear and loathing. And while it's
true that as long as it remains an authoritarian state, China is
not going to be our BFF. But it is not fated to be an enemy, writes
Steve Chapman, unless we decide to make it one.
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