Are You a Journalist or Filmmaker? Apply to Win Money and Fame at the Reason Media Awards!

Are you good enough to join Daniel Hannan, Amity Schlaes, and Mary O'Grady in the winners' circle?

Attention writers and filmmakers of distinction! Enter to win recognition and money at the 2015 Reason Media Awards!

• The Bastiat Prize for Journalism honors writers from around the globe who explain the importance of freedom with originality, wit, and eloquence.
• The Reason Video Prize honors short-form video and film that explores, investigates, or enriches our appreciation of individual rights, limited government, and the free market.

Notable past winners of the Bastiat Prize include journalist and European Parliament member Daniel Hannan; Bloomberg View's Amity Shlaes, who said, "It was a bleak landscape for free market writers until the Bastiat Prize came along;" Mary Anastasia O'Grady of The Wall Street Journal, whose in-depth knowledge of Latin America is the focus of her weekly column "The Americas;" and former Reason editor Virginia Postrel.

First place for each prize is $10,000.  The deadline to enter is July 31, 2015.

Find out more and enter at www.reasonmediaawards.com.

Questions? Email [e-mail].

Comments

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

OT: But here's an actual comment from Althouse's blog regarding the McKinney cop:

"First of all, the cop clearly tripped.

Later, when he pulled his gun (and re-holstered once the threat was gone), it was in response to seeing a threatening act in his peripheral vision. Black dude clearly struck a pose that could have been prelude to pulling a gun.

Get the fuck off the cop's backs, you despicable SJWs.

This was clearly another incident of feral Blacks, resisting lawful police commands, that actually should have been put down much harder than it was.

Thanks, half-Black President, for the climate you have created. I hope it's gonna be a long fucking time before we make that mistake again."

Just another case of feral blacks kept in control by the animal tamers...er...I mean police officers who are there to protect God-fearing white America from the scary negroes and their demon weed. I especially love blaming Obama for the actions of random African Americans at a Texas pool.

Where on Earth do people like this come from?

[Xeones]

Rachel Maddow's fantasies?

[Chilled Speech]

Don't say anything too negative guys. "Nice life you got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

But the black guy STRUCK A POSE that COULD HAVE BEEN A PRELUDE to pulling a gun! He struck that pose ferally, like a member of an ignorant cannibal tribe or something. /racist ass Althouse commenter

[Heroic Mulatto]

Poe's Law?

[Rich]

Nice.

[Sudden]

The two kids kinda ran up behind the officer to help the girl while he was wrestling her to the ground. Within the context of the moment, there is some rationale for the cop seeing that as at least having some potential for spiraling out of control. I don't think that rises to the level of threat where pulling a pistol is necessary (and a credit to his fellow officers who immediately went up and made sure he didn't do something truly horrific).

That guy mismanaged the situation horribly and his rageboner and temper caused an already volatile situation to escalate into something where I have to be lectured on my fucking privilege of having 60% of my income stolen all over again.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Stormfront?

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

I also love Twitchy's coverage of this where their basic editorial line appears to be "Why are people upset about this cop pulling his gun on unarmed people when x number of blacks shot each other recently?!?!"

No one is allowed to complain about police abuses until zero black people are shot in America by non-cops. Twitchy has spoken.

[Heroic Mulatto]

This whole affair must have progressives curled up in epileptic seizures:

White Guy: It was all about race

Black Guy: It had nothing to do with race

Poetic justice would be if Mr. Embry was the one who called the police.

But fuck that morbidly obese sea creature that waddled out into the street to taunt the teenagers.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Seriously. I gave up on them. When it comes to law enforcement, conservatives are just like progs on climate change. Insufferably irrational.

[Pro Libertate]

"Feral blacks?"

[Idle Hands]

If you wanna be truly depressed read this. The worst part of that whole retarded post might be the comments. There is no way any sane person could watch the video and think that the police officer shouldn't be indicted and charged.

[Idle Hands]

*some of the comments.

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

Oh goddammit, I was so happy before I knew that existed. And of course it's cop fellator Jazz Shaw doing the vigorous deep throating at which he is such an expert:

"The Tamir Rice case has been a horrible mess from the beginning. A dead child is not the outcome that anyone wants to see, which should go without saying. But given the radio traffic the cops were dealing with at the time and the lack of critical information received by them, their reactions upon charging onto the scene of what they believed was an armed shooter on the street seems unlikely to produce a conviction. The video is awful to watch, but the entire thing unfolded so quickly that a malevolent motive looks unlikely to emerge in court. And when the report involves what they seem to honestly have believed was a guy pointing a handgun at motorists, well? that's not the sort of call where you sit around at a great distance and wait to see what he's going to do."

Cop rolls onto the scene and shoots a twelve-year old in the chest without even pausing to see if he actually has a gun. Firearm instructors had said the cop would cry after shooting his weapon and the cops mother said he would sometimes cry while doing his academy homework.

So this totally negligent cop shot a kid without giving him an opportunity to drop the alleged weapon, and Shaw thinks the guy should skate cleanly.

[Sudden]

One sentence within this does stand out to me:

The video is awful to watch, but the entire thing unfolded so quickly that a malevolent motive looks unlikely to emerge in court.

We have a remarkably difficult situation here insofar as people want to see the guy tried on murder one (an aggravated manslaughter charge is generally considered a cop out, pardon the pun, to the community at large) but fail to realize that a murder one charge requires considerable evidence of premeditation and intent. The reality is these situations usually involve pants-shitting more than malice and a murder one charge is an easily beaten rap in such circumstances.

[Idle Hands]

It's pretty clear that the officer intended to use his weapon the second he got the call based on the video.

[Sudden]

He was responding to multiple reports of a kid pointing a handgun at pedestrians. That the gun in question ended up being an airsoft gun was not known to the people Rice pointed the gun at, the 911 dispatchers, nor the cop himself. In light of that, he's likely to be in full pantshitting mode and ready to unload his firearm at the slightest sudden movement. The difference is that it looks like from the video he didn't even give Rice the ability to make a sudden movement.

I'm not excusing his actions whatsoever; I'm commenting on the difficulty of getting a murder one conviction in this circumstance.

[Idle Hands]

I know I was being snarky.

[Heroic Mulatto]

The man unironically wears an Indiana Jones fedora.

This is ipso facto evidence that he shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Charles Easterly]

Irish,

How, exactly, does one prepare a prelude with a pre-prelude?

*carefully rereads the account*

I see it clearly now, Irish, and I think I may be able to explain this.

"struck a pose" = "threatening act"

"threatening act" = possible "prelude"

Now, if it is not an "actual prelude" then there is no need for lethal action

If, however, it is an "actual prelude" then there is an immediate need for lethal action

Now, if I am correct thus far...

"struck a pose" check
"threatening act" check
possible "prelude" Check

police officer pulls firearm in response to threat

then the police officer determines that the suspect's actions were not in fact an "actual prelude" and the officer re-holsters his firearm once the threat is gone

Win/Win because the officer acted professionally and with everyone's safety in mind.

Booyah AND smooches!

/Winning

[MJGreen]

It's a helpful reminder that, yes, a lot of conservatives out there are racist pieces of shit.

[Muzzled Commenter]

Yes.

But there are no more racist elephants than donkeys.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Think Milton Friedman on Donahue meets AMC's The Walking Dead. I call it Boobs of Desire.

Crowdfund me.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Get SF on as an executive producer and it's on like Monkey Kong.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

What about a prize for Commenters who put their lives at risk every day exercising the right to free speech and expression in the face of evil from the Office of Tyranny?

/Nick's 34th face palm.

[RBS]

{Redacted}

[Heroic Mulatto]

Perhaps I'm a bit too cynical, but I wouldn't be surprised if Nick was doing cartwheels upon learning of the subpoena. He gets to have the authorities take away the embarrassing, crazy, racist uncle from the family gathering with no harm to his utterly affected posture of Punk Oi! Oi! Oi! rebellion.

[Paul.]

Are you referring to the first thing about the thing on the other site which talked about the first thing?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Shhhhhh!

Yes.

About the DOJ, right? Just making sure.

SHHHHH!

[Anomalous]

You mean on White Mitre?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Know what 7:01 reminded me of?

Remember in class when you were minding your own business and the teacher warned you not to do something you had no intention of doing? Suddenly it aroused the class (mostly boys) like a bunch of lemurs and next thing you know mayhem.

In one incident, the poor teacher said something that riled us up and we for some reason broke out in Djobi, Djoba for minutes on end in rebellion; stomping of feet and all. Not even the principal could settled us down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gtDha8qD6U

Good times.

7:01 rekindled that moment.

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

So is Nick on suicide watch yet and, given the recent Troubles, is my mention of suicide watch enough to get me subpoenaed for engaging in threatening rhetoric?

[Idle Hands]

Not if you live in Oregon.

[Anomalous]

Bastiat Prize was so much better when Postrel won it.