Reason Magazine - Staff

Breaking Curfew

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST

When Britain's Labour Party was re-elected in May with a majority large enough to conduct the business of government without bothering to consult the opposition, Prime Minister Tony Blair had little reason to expect any obstacles to expanding his crackdown on "yobbish anti-social behaviour." (Yob means a rude or thuggish young male, for those of you who don't speak British.) But only two months into Blair's third term, a 15-year-old boy, known only as W, managed to do what Britain's feeble Tories have not been able to accomplish since Labour came to power in 1997: overturn a Blair policy.

At issue are the U.K.'s child curfew laws, which permit police to forcibly send home anyone under the age of 16, whether behaving socially or anti-socially, who is caught outside after 9 p.m. without an adult. Citing the European Convention on Human Rights, W brought suit against the London suburb of Richmond and the Metropolitan Police, and convinced Lord Justice Brooke that he has the right to "walk the streets without interference from police."

The boy stated his reasons with childlike simplicity: "Of course I have no problem with being stopped by the police if I've done something wrong....But they shouldn't be allowed to treat me like a criminal just because I'm under 16." Unconvinced, the Home Office plans to appeal the ruling. "Instilling more respect in the youth" was one of Labour's campaign planks, and being bested by a teenager apparently isn't enough to instill humility in the British government.�

Passing Gas

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EDT

Presented last summer with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, only 12 senators dared vote against a measure that promised to "ensure jobs for our future with secure, affordable, and reliable energy." The cost of all that assurance: $36 billion over five years. In addition to authorizing a $6 million program to promote bicycle use, the energy bill mandates that the national gasoline supply contain 8 billion gallons of "renewable fuel" (i.e., ethanol) by 2012, and more as consumption increases.

Ethanol-blended fuels are considerably more expensive to produce and risky to transport than nonblended fuels, a cost that will undoubtedly be passed on to consumers. Ethanol also happens to be derived from corn, making the requirement--by pure coincidence--a huge boon to the subsidy-soaked agricultural sector. Americans who avoid higher prices at the gas pump may encounter them at the grocery store; the Congressional Budget Office projects a 10 percent increase in corn prices between 2007 and 2015.

The "secure, affordable, and reliable energy supply" plank of the bill consists of various targeted tax breaks and credit assistance programs. Among the bill's many allocations are $3.8 billion toward putting hydrogen-powered automobiles on the road by 2010. (The National Academy of Sciences expects it will be 20 to 30 years before there is a commercially viable hydrogen-powered car.) Last but by no means least, the bill offers loan guarantees of up to $250 million per project to produce fuel from cellulosic biomass and cane sugar. The Energy Policy Act places no limit on the number of projects that could receive such assistance. The fuel to be produced is--of course--ethanol.�

Honest Agents

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EDT

It's no shock to stumble on an Internet forum devoted to uncovering government conspiracies, but you don't generally expect to find that the contributors are actual agents of the government. At DEA Watch (members.aol.com/deawatch/daily.htm), anonymous narcs gather to share rather disturbing musings on politics and public policy. Typical fare includes suggestions for solving the U.S. Army's recruitment problems ("there are a lot of black street preachers who can be commissioned Major or Lieutenant Colonel Chaplains") and allegations about secret deals between the World Bank and illegal Israeli settlers.

What sets DEA Watch apart from the average crackpot site is the insight it offers into the minds of some of the officials commissioned to protect us from the scourge of drugs. Posters don't even make a perfunctory effort to conceal or deny the fact that the drug war as an industry depends upon a robust black market in drugs. One contributor writes: "Should cocaine and all of its related narcotics disappear, our nation, and others, could suffer a serious economic recession." Another responds: "we need to get behind President Bush's goal of outlawing all, repeat all, forms and reasons for abortion....The illegal abortion industry will do for DEA what cocaine and heroin never could."

When not arguing about what to prohibit next, the site's contributors often ponder life after the DEA. Though some ex-agents are now considered fugitives--their dossiers are compiled at dea.gov/fugitives/fuglist.htm--most apparently settle into mundane careers as privately employed snitches and invigilators. "The great majority of our retirees," a contributor reports, "continue...doing PI work following wayward husbands, snooping on insurance scammers, and driving limos on grad night for concerned parents."�

Grand Theft Scapegoat

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EDT

A Theory in Crisis

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:53:49 EDT

Those Gravitists have pushed their biases unchallenged for too long:

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

From The Onion.

Next up: "Intelligent Relativity," whereby the conversion of mass into energy is proven to be an epiphenomenon of Jesus's conversion of water into wine.

"Public Use" Hits the Road

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:17:00 EDT

So New London's right to charge back rent to the residents whose land it's confiscating has been upheld as a constitutional principle, and "disastrous consequences for the country" have been averted. Bully.

No need to be outraged, then, over local governments in Colorado deliberately screwing with traffic regulations in order to increase toll revenues:

When E-470 opened in 2002, some people thought it was a strange coincidence that, about the same time, the speed limit on nearby Tower Road, a paved, 2-lane, rural highway, dropped from 55 MPH to 40 MPH. Several apparently unnecessary traffic signals also appeared. This, in spite of the fact that after the toll road opened, Tower Road would have even less traffic than it did before.

Well, it was no coincidence.

The lower speed limit and extra traffic signals, which make Tower Road slower and less convenient to use, are required by a "non-compete" clause in an agreement between the E-470 Public Highway Authority and nearby Commerce City.

The goal is to impede traffic on Tower Road so drivers will decide they are better off using the toll road. This protects the revenue stream from the tolls, thereby protecting the interests of the toll road's investors.

The story was uncovered by bloggers at unbossed.com, who unfortunately miss the point that a market isn't exactly free when government arbitrarily sets controls for, in this case, traffic flow; link via Jalopnik.

New Study Finds that Dog Bites Man

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:58:11 EDT

Not that any of this will get the Concerned Senators for America to back off the video game crusade, but maybe someone could forward them this headline: No Strong Link Seen Between Violent Video Games And Aggression.

To wit:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with "Asheron's Call 2," a popular MMRPG, or "massively multi-layer [sic] online role-playing game," researchers found "no strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game," said Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

More about the study here; link via Shakespeare's Sister.

Skeptical vs. Gullible Environmentalism

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:46:06 EDT

The July/August issue of Foreign Policy features a debate between Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director, and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Global Crises, Global Solutions. Unsurprisingly, Pope accuses Lomborg of promoting false choices, while Lomborg thinks Pope is just not thinking. Money quote from Lomborg:

Prioritizing really means some things must come last. Of course, we can make some investments in the environment without sacrificing economic progress, but we cannot make them all. Because the United States can afford F-16s does not mean it can also afford all environmental initiatives. We have to carefully spend our resources where they will do the most good. The solar installations you champion easily cost $450 apiece. Better-constructed $10 stoves can significantly reduce indoor air pollution. Do we want to help one family a little or 45 families a lot?

Ronald Bailey reviewed The Skeptical Environmentalist and uncovered the agenda behind the attacks on Lomborg's science in 2002. Charles Paul Freund deflated the PC attacks on Lomborg's honesty in 2003.

(Thanks to Johan Ugander for the link.)

Colonial America

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 15:18:46 EDT

The people of Washington, D.C., who don't rule themselves because Congress is nice enough to do it for them, might need to start relearning their local geography. Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) proposes renaming 16th St. NW "Ronald Reagan Boulevard." His rationale:

Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon...He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation's capital.

Clearly, Reagan National Airport and the Ronald Reagan Federal Building aren't sufficient honors. As long as "most people agree," who cares what the locals think, let alone how much they'll have to pay ($1 million according to D.C. mayor Anthony Williams) so that non-Washingtonians can feel like they've properly smooched the old man's ring.

Tom Davis (R-VA), perpetually aggrieved chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, doesn't win much praise round here, but he did tell a local radio station that he had an "appropriate file" for Bonilla's proposal, and added:

If Congressman Bonilla wants to name anything else, he has to look at his own district in San Antonio.

On the other hand, given Davis's view of what "government reform" encompasses, changing street names in Washington isn't a huge stretch.

Full story here. Franklin Foer, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, observes that

the District of Columbia was one the few places to thoroughly reject Reagan's reelection. They won't let that drop. It's seems they'll keep forcing the Great Leader's name on us until we recant our decision in the 1984 election.

In July 1975, Ronald Reagan told Reason that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." Times a'change.

No Cure for Meth-Mouth

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 15:12:32 EDT

The Arkansas State Assembly is considering a bill to

limit the expenditure of state moneys for dental procedures for inmate methamphetamine users; to provide time for inmate methamphetamine users to confront the damage to their health that results from methamphetamine use

So, take that Jack Shafer and Jacob Sullum. Meth use must be destroying the heartland because Arkansas' General Assembly finds that

(1) The illegal use of the drug methamphetamine has become an epidemic in this state;

The Arkansas proposal does raise an interesting theoretical question: should Guantanamo detainees receive their promised dental care if their tooth malaise are the result of tweaking?

It Must Be The Robes

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:24:04 EDT

A few days ago, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick pondered several of the theories as to why so many Republican appointees to the Supreme Court--like Brennan, Warren, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, and of course, Souter--wind up in the court's ideological center or left. Whatever the explanation, Ann Coulter may feel a touch of insomnia when she reads in today's LA Times that John Roberts worked pro-bono on behalf of gay rights activists seeking to strike down a Colorado law permitting employment and housing discimination against homosexuals. Jean Dubofsky, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, described Roberts' advice as "absolutely crucial," adding:

"John Roberts...was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue," she said. "He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Conservatives fretful about another Souter might be comforted by LAT reporter Richard A. Serrano's reminder that Roberts "has stressed...that a client's views are not necessarily shared by the lawyer who argues on his or her behalf." On the other hand, Roberts' emphasis on the distinction between his and his clients' views came up when he was trying to distance himself from criticisms he made of Roe v. Wade while working for the first Bush administration.

The People's Dear Leader

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:22:51 EDT

Via Chelsea Peretti at the HuffPost comes this partial recounting of Kim Jong Il's superhuman feats and abilities. Did you know?

Kim pilots jet fighters, pens operas, produces movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf by shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played.

11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played? That does set Kim apart from the masses. Maybe that's why he's so, um, ronery.

Movin' On Up

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 15:32:45 EDT

Congressman Jon Porter (R-Nevada) takes a broad perspective on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay:

"Many of these detainees have never had dental treatment ever," Porter said. "Now they have anesthesia and they have all the modern technology treatments, so a lot of them are actually very pleased because they are living better than they ever have. Many of them are happy to be there."

Someone needs to remind Porter that words have consequences. It's bad enough that the newly released JAG memos accurately detail military officers' objections to the administration's loosening of rules on prisoner detention. Now Porter has to go ahead and create an incentive for terrorism--dental care!

Story here; link via Josh Marshall.

"Gays are OK" is OK

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:56:01 EDT

Elizabeth Solomon had to go to court to win the right to express herself on a vanity license plate. Apparently, the state of Utah takes exception to the notion that "GAYSROK," and even to the concept of "GAYRYTS." Judge Jane Phan disagrees:

"The narrow issue before us is whether a reasonable person would believe the terms 'gays are OK' and 'gay rights' are, themselves, offensive to good taste and decency. It is the conclusion of the commission that a reasonable person would not," Phan wrote.

But the story isn't over, as Utah is considering an appeal. A public servant at the Utah DMV explains why:

"It kind of opens up the door for all types of people who want to make a license plate a public forum, for every initiative," he said.

I'm sure Rick Santorum would agree that once the courts approve of GAYRYTS, it won't be long before license plates start promoting BSTLITY and PLYGAMY.

Story here; link via Lindsay Beyerstein.

Nutty Little Pundit Turf Wars

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:44:36 EDT

Christopher Hitchens calls the Intelligence Identities Protection Act a nutty little law. Ted Barlow calls Hitchens' piece a nutty little argument and asks

What kind of a man responds to the exposure of a CIA agent by attacking the law that makes it illegal to expose CIA agents?

Well, Reason's own Jesse Walker for one, although he was not so much responding to the exposure of a CIA agent as arguing against a bad law that happened to be getting a lot of attention because of the exposure of a CIA agent.

Civil liberties-minded folks should be wary of laws that make it difficult to expose the terrible things that the CIA has been known to do, and the IIPA ought to be junked even if there are any number of bad arguments for doing so. Hitchens, for example, can't help but indulge in some highly dubious score-settling over the Iraqi WMD issue:

This government [Niger], according to unrefuted intelligence-gathering from British and other European intelligence agencies, is covertly discussing sanctions-breaking sales of its uranium to a number of outlaw regimes, including that of Saddam Hussein.

And

The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq.

Ted Barlow helpfully pointed out that the intelligence on Nigerien uranium sales to Iraq has been refuted, at least if you believe the Iraq Survey Group's claim that it

has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991.

In any case, if Hitchens were purely concerned with arguing against a bad law, there would be no need for him to pre-emptively absolve Karl Rove of having violated that law:

And it appears that [Rove] did [observe the law], in that he did not, and did not intend to, expose Valerie Plame in any way [emphasis added].

The general claim is one that Hitchens can't possibly know, and the qualification, that Rove did not intend to expose Plame in any way, can't possibly be true. Provided 1) Rove was in full control of his mental faculties, and 2) "Plame" and "Wilson's wife" refer to the same person, Rove obviously intended to expose her in some way when he told reporters that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Unless, perhaps, when Rove said that Wilson's wife/Plame worked for the "agency," it's impossible to say which agency he meant to convey.

As Jesse Walker aptly put it, "Rove's apologists have been reduced to splitting semantic hairs to deny he violated the law."

The (Federal) Case of Hot Coffee

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:22:24 EDT

For those still in the dark, "Hot Coffee" is the name for hidden coding in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. If a player unlocks Hot Coffee, the game will respond with a bit of hardcore pixillated sex. A couple of weeks ago, Hillary Clinton urged the FTC to investigate Rockstar Games, the producers of GTA, for their alleged role in designing the explicit content.

Yesterday the House of Representatives got into the act. Gamespot reports that the House voted to support an FTC probe into the Hot Coffee "scandal" by a whopping margin of 355 to 21. (Go here to see the list of nay votes.) The House vote is not binding on the FTC, but would anyone be surprised, at this point, if Congress decided to hold hearings on video game content? On the upside, such a spectacle would make the steroid hearings seem almost reasonable.

Bush Dusts Off Veto Pen

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:59:46 EDT

A handful of Republican senators would like to determine:

(i) What is the definition of an "enemy combatant" who may be detained by the military outside the ordinary civil justice system?; (ii) What procedural rules should be employed by military tribunals?; and (iii) Which interrogation techniques should be authorized, and which prohibited?

Since these are questions the Supreme Court declined to answer in its rulings on prisoner detention, it's nice to see that other branch of government assuming a slightly less supine position--almost as if the Constitution established it as a counterweight against the executive and the judiciary.

Without delay, we have a response in the form of a Statement of Administration Policy:

If legislation is presented that would restrict the President's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice, the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.

So while Bush might not (ever) be prepared to veto an omnibus spending bill, at least he's aware that he has a veto power. Let that be a lesson to anyone attempting to delineate (not even limit) the powers of the executive. Lots of analysis from Marty Lederman here; link via Andrew Sullivan.

Grand Theft Scapegoat

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EDT

This May, by a vote of 106 to 6, the Illinois state legislature passed a measure banning the sale of "violent" and "sexually explicit" video games to minors. The state's Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, is not about to veto a bill that he himself introduced and lobbied for, so its ratification as law is a forgone conclusion. The California Assembly is currently considering its own version of a prohibition on game sales to the underaged, and Washington, Indiana, and Missouri have already enacted similar laws only to see them struck down by courts on First Amendment grounds.

The Illinois proposal, ominously, pays no heed to the existing range of voluntary content ratings by the video game industry, which runs from Early Childhood (EC) to Adults Only (AO) and ostensibly allows game sellers to decide for themselves what constitutes "violent" or "sexually explicit" material. But statements by the prohibition's backers suggest an alternative reason for not simply specifying which Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) categories are off-limits to children.

In his message "to the parents of Illinois" Governor Blagojevich asserts that "Ninety-eight percent of the games considered suitable by the industry for teenagers contain graphic violence." In the unlikely event that Blagojevich is not simply abusing statistics—even Super Mario Bros. contains what you could describe as "graphic violence"—the upshot of his claim must be that the proposed legislation's content restrictions could apply to games approved by the ESRB for teens.

Video games are an appealing target for an itinerant public figure in search of a cause. Movies and music have energetic advocates, but it's difficult to find anyone who will defend content in games for their artistic value, or even on the on the grounds of freedom of expression. Often enough, the best argument made for games is that they are merely benign; but that's not the most effective response when the governor of Illinois claims, "Too many of the video games marketed to our children teach them all of the wrong lessons and all of the wrong values," or when a talk show host who frequently books strippers and porn stars musters the moral courage to blindside a gaming journalist about the injury that video games inflict on children.

It would not be fair to say that the arguments for video game criminalization are completely uncontaminated by evidence. But prohibitionists are highly selective about the data they present and careless once they've presented it, hoping to substitute raw emotional appeal for a plausible explanatory framework. Blagojevich, for example, points out that "experts have found that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors"—as if no more need be said about the causal relationship between playing video games and engaging in anti-social or criminal behavior. Video game players, in this mindset, are simply empty and infinitely corruptible ciphers.

There is no shortage of readily available, peer-reviewed literature on the relationship between media exposure and behavior, and the evidence does not support the prohibitionists' case. A 2004 study on "Short-Term Psychological and Cardiovascular Effects on Habitual [video game] Players" conducted by researchers at the University of Bologna concluded that "owning videogames does not in fact seem to have negative effects on aggressive human behavior." A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted, "If video games do increase violent tendencies outside the laboratory, the explosion of gaming over the past decade from $3.2 billion in sales in 1995 to $7 billion in 2003, according to industry figures would suggest a parallel trend in youth violence. Instead, youth violence has been decreasing." In the absence of a wave of real-life, game-inspired carnage, Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor Cheryl Olson, writing in the journal Academic Psychiatry in the summer of 2004, advised that "it's time to move beyond blanket condemnations and frightening anecdotes and focus on developing targeted educational and policy interventions based on solid data."

Unfortunately, blanket condemnations and frightening anecdotes are likely to be with us as long as they prove electorally profitable. Any proposed limitation on the freedoms of minors has an immediate cunning to it: No one who would be directly harmed by such an initiative is old enough to vote, while the voting-age citizens who are susceptible to for-the-children appeals tend to outnumber those who treat such appeals with skepticism.

Moreover, since neither party contains a core of activists particularly concerned with the freedom to produce and distribute video games; since protecting games ranks decidedly lower on the agenda of most civil libertarians than protecting books, movies, or music; and since the gaming industry itself is too new to match the organizational strength of older media, politicians can attack the pernicious influence of Doom 3 and Halo 2 at minimal risk to themselves.

In addition to encouraging the parties to outdo each other in symbolic gestures about children's moral welfare, fears of explicit video game content offer an opportunity for bipartisanship, as when, in March, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sam Brownback (R-Kans.), and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) jointly proposed a $90 million appropriation to study the effects of games and other media on children. Either no one on any of the senators' staffs could be bothered to point out that there already is a tranche of credible research on precisely that question (see above) or a group of presidential aspirants, who might otherwise be comparing one another to Nazis or Mad magazine caricatures, calculated that bashing game creators and merchants could be a cheap way for the Republicans to endear themselves to their socially conservative base or for the Democrats to pry away some of the family-values vote from the other side.

The scapegoating of video games is hardly the first instance of politicians attempting to bludgeon popular culture into submission, but what separates efforts to curb children's exposure to video games from older, parallel campaigns is how profoundly out of touch they are with the realities of the entertainment choices available to children.

Hillary Clinton, for example, fresh from her collaboration with Santorum and Brownback, and consistent with her advertised principle of "fighting the culture of sex and violence in the media," decided in mid-July to intervene in the controversy over the so-called "Hot Coffee" mod for the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. "Hot Coffee" is a hidden component of the game's coding that, if unlocked via a program that can be freely downloaded from the Internet, will treat a player to scenes of uncensored (but still polygonal) sex. Outraged, Senator Clinton wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging it to investigate whether Rockstar (the company that produces GTA) created the Hot Coffee content. She refrained, however, from commenting on one of the first lessons that a new web surfer learns, namely, that there is a universe of free Internet pornography that anyone looking online for explicit sex will access before ever bothering to import animated sex into video games.

The sheer scope of media choices available to both children and adults, exponentially vaster than it was even a few years ago, renders efforts to reign in content by means of regulatory mechanisms predictably futile. The occasional pixilated displays of violence and sex in some games that are sometimes sold to children (16 percent of games are "Mature"-rated, and 16 percent of game buyers are under 18, according to the Entertainment Software Association), comprise a tiny part of the total array of media content freely available to anyone. Nevertheless, legislators have begun drafting righteous bills that practically beg to be overturned in court. With any luck, that will keep the prohibitionists occupied until they discover the next dire threat to our children.

Fighting the Man

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:11:17 EDT

A 15-year-old took Tony Blair's government to court over curfew laws that allow police to force home anyone under 16 who is out at night without supervision. And the boy won. His rationale for putting up a fight:

"Of course I have no problem with being stopped by the police if I've done something wrong," he said in a statement. "But they shouldn't be allowed to treat me like a criminal just because I'm under 16."

That's a principle so simple even a child can understand it. Even if political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have trouble.

The British High Court's ruling is a clear setback for Blair's campaign to curtail--I hope he actually used this phrase--"yobbish anti-social behaviour." But even if it fails completely, the PM can undoubtedly console himself by finding something else to outlaw. More here; link via Sploid.

A Reason for Pessimism about John Roberts

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:07:59 EDT

A couple of weeks ago Michelle Malkin aptly noted that

There is one fundamental issue that matters more than any other in choosing the next Supreme Court justice--a wartime Supreme Court justice. More than abortion. More than affirmative action. More than the Ten Commandments in courtrooms.

That's exactly why Judge Roberts' ruling last week in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case should be troubling to civil libertarians and folks generally concerned with executive branch abuses of power under the guise of national security.

Back in 2004, the Supreme Court decided the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case (the similar names are coincidental) in a way that raised as many questions as it answered. As Robert Burt of the Yale Law School put it to me in an interview last week, in Hamdi the court hedged its bets, on the one hand rejecting the government's claim of inherent, unreviewable authority to detain prisoners, but also failing to determine just what an adequately impartial review of a detainee's status would consist of. Specifically, the court did not declare that detainees were entitled to review in an Article III (civilian) court, an omission that has at least for now legitimized the executive branch's preferred venue for review--military tribunals.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the petitioner in the case that Roberts ruled on, is the former bodyguard to Osama bin Laden and therefore probably very, very guilty. However, as the Hamdi ruling re-emphasized, he is entitled to a day in court. But when there are no established criteria of impartial review and no guarantees of appeal to an Article III judge, his day in court will look like this:

Hamdan has no right to be present at his trial. Unsworn statements, rather than live testimony, can be presented as evidence against him. The presumption of innocence can be taken away from him at any time; so can his right not to testify to avoid self-incrimination. If Hamdan is convicted, he can be sentenced to death.

Roberts approved of that sort of trial on the grounds, in the words of the opinion written by his co-panelist A. Raymond Randolph, that Congress' enabling of the executive branch to use "all necessary and appropriate force" after September 11 was in effect an authorization of review by military tribunals.

Full story on Roberts and Hamdan at Slate. Back in January, Harvey Silverglate unpacked the Supreme Court's rulings on prisoner detention.

Vice Squad

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 19:22:02 EDT

Here is something that should never happen in a free country:

Officers searched the Miami home of Andrew Calderon on May 18 and found a sexy calendar, a racy poster and a few copies of Maxim magazine. Calderon, 23, was jailed for six days before a judge ordered his release.

Calderon is a convicted sex offender, and according to the Florida Department of Corrections, sex offenders who possess anything deemed "sexually stimulating" are in violation of the terms of their probation. Although Calderon was released, there is a hearing pending to determine the status of his probation. Joseph Conte, another sex offender, was arrested for possession of the Kama Sutra (a judge later threw out the complaint against him).

If corrections officers are determined to prevent any potentially stimulating material from getting to sex offenders on probation, they could at least have the grace not to sound so damn sexy when they defend their policy:

"Anything that is sexually stimulating, we are going to violate them on, and the judges are going to make those decisions," said Debbie Buchanan, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman. "If there's any question at all, we're going to violate them."

Whole story here; link via Sploid.

No Criminals Need Apply

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:11:42 EDT

In the latest chapter of the Rove/Plame/Wilson/Novak/Cooper/Miller affair, President Bush has promised to fire anyone in his administration who is found to have committed a crime. That's not quite the same as his earlier pledge to fire anyone responsible for the leak that spawned the investigation, but it at least establishes a bottomline standard of conduct for White House officials. MSNBC's gloss on the new Bush pledge is "President appears to qualify standard for firing in CIA-leak case," while Fox calls it a "reiteration" of the old pledge. (We report, you decide.)

Links via Josh Marshall, who asks, pertinently:

If you committed a crime during Iran-Contra, can you work in this administration? Or does the rule -- presumably -- only apply to felonies commited in the course of employment[?]

A couple of years ago in the National Post, Matt Welch wondered just what Iran-Contra felons were doing in the Bush administration.

It Takes a Village (and the FTC)

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:32:29 EDT

News that freelance programmers uncovered hidden explicit sexual content in the latest Grand Theft Auto game has finally reached Senator Hillary Clinton, and what is a senator in her position to do but make a federal case out of it:

In a letter she is sending Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission, Mrs. Clinton expressed concern over reports that anyone who used a free code downloaded over the Internet could unlock sexually graphic images hidden inside the game, called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Full NYT story here, including a priceless observation about whether or not Mrs. Clinton's posturing could have anything to do with Democrats' hopes of breaking into the family-values vote.

Gamespot, going a bit more in-depth than the Times, notes that Senator Clinton has

joined with Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Rick Santorum (R-PA) to cosponsor legislation seeking $90 million over five years for research into how viewing different types of media (television, video games, and the Internet in particular) affects children's development.

It's always good to see partisan differences put aside for the sake of the children. And who knows: today, kids might only be able to download explicit content into their video games, but given a few years and a couple of leaps in technology, they might even be able to find hardcore pornography on the Internet.

Bamboozled by the Big Idea

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 18:34:32 EDT

A few weeks ago, ad-guru turned chat show host Donny Deutsch invited John Davidson, editor of the gaming website 1up.com, onto his CNBC show The Big Idea, ostensibly to represent "the gaming media" in a discussion on everything from "the future of videogames" to "online clans and community." Davidson was told that the conversation might drift into "the violence thing," but that he should feel free to say "that's been done to death, it's boring," and move on.

Here is how Davidson recounts his Big Idea experience:

It kicked off with Donny holding up a copy of Computer Games magazine declaring that there wasn't a single game in there that wasn't violent, and they then immediately cut to scenes of CJ stamping on a girl until she bled over the pavement in San Andreas. I was introduced as pretty much the bad guy who thinks this doesn't have an effect on kids, and...well...things just deteriorated from there.

Things did indeed deteriorate. Just in case Deutsch's evidence-free (and blatantly wrong) insistence that "[a]ll games are violent" left some audience members unpersuaded, the show's producers made certain to book a former student at Columbine--where more people died than watch CNBC--to drive the point home.

Incidentally, the student--who in fact wanted to defend violence in games and who had been promised that his "history with Columbine wouldn't be beaten to death"--later complained to Davidson that "[t]hey actually edited the show's content so my points weren't let in." Imagine: a show that seeks to prove a presupposed conclusion and makes sickening use of the Columbine massacre in lieu of data would stoop so low as to tamper with its guests' statements.

Read the rest of Davidson's account here; link via Kotaku.

The Joys of Chosenness

info@reason.com (Daniel Koffler) — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:56:17 EDT

Dennis Prager had an op-ed in the LA Times this weekend indulging in positively volkish glorifications of Jewishness. Prager opines—this is not a caricature—that the Jews obviously are "the chosen people" (a term he never defines) and only a misguided atheist could believe otherwise. He pre-emptively combats any insinuation of racism on his part by observing:

[T]he claim of Jewish chosenness could not be racist because a) The Jews are not a race. There are Jews of every race. And b) Any person of any race, ethnicity or nationality can become a member of the Jewish people and thereby be as chosen as Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah or the current chief rabbi of Israel.

There was a time when many of the Jews' persecutors claimed that they would love and welcome the Jews, just as soon as they converted—which is one of the reasons that so many Jews have wondered for so long just what they were chosen for.

Several weeks ago, Louis Sigel, the former long-time rabbi of my synagogue, passed away. The New York Times profile of Rabbi Sigel noted his role in motivating Teaneck, NJ to be the first town to integrate its schools voluntarily:

A law professor who was a member of Temple Emeth stood and asked why the whole community had to be "disturbed" by a problem that he said black residents had created themselves by moving into one end of town.

"The temple's rabbi, Louis J. Sigel, rose," Mr. Damerell wrote. "His rich voice carried throughout the auditorium" as he narrated a story from the Talmud about a man who sees a fire in another part of town and asks, "What have I to do with the needs of the community?"

"Sigel's voice rose in emphasis, 'Such a man destroys the world!'" Mr. Damerell wrote. "Applause exploded through the auditorium."

Whole thing here.

Whether you believe an individual has an unavoidable responsibility to the community or not, there's a lesson here, and not just a rabbinical lesson. The special responsibility of the Jewish people, whatever it is, must have something to do with overcoming the sort of tribalism and racial exceptionalism Prager is peddling.