The Parkland Shooting Screw-Ups Go All the Way to the Top: Podcast
On today's podcast: Mona Charen gets booed, the gun control debate reignites, public sector unions suck, and Olympic curling is surprisingly awesome.
In today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie, Eric Boehm, Robby Soave, and yours truly discuss Mona Charen getting booed at CPAC and the strange new respect she's now getting from the readers of The New York Times, plus why the National Front scion Marion LePen is not a "classical liberal."
We also take on Donald Trump's claim that if he'd been on the scene in Parkland during the shooting, "I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon," plus the Parkland sheriff's belief that "lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." What would it be like, we wonder, to live in a world where "the authorities [can] just stop someone who has guns and is weird"—and how much trouble would the Reason staff be if that were true?
We also dig into Janus v. ASFCME, the Supreme Court case that may determine the fate of public sector unions in the United States, and we discuss why it's coming so soon after 2016's Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
Stay to the end for the moment when Eric Boehm, Reason's resident curler, describes the inevitable glorious movie adaptation of this year's Olympic curling Miracle on Ice and manages to get Soave to care about a sport for a couple of minutes.
A few handy links from today's conversation:
"Curling Is the Closest the Olympics Ever Get to Anarchy," by Eric Boehm: The culture of curling rejects appeals to authority and encourages civility even in the midst of intense competition. That's a lesson for American politics.
"Doe-Eyed Youngsters for My Preferred Policies," by J.D. Tuccille: The benefits and flaws of policy disputes get sidelined when activist movements adopt kids as human shields.
"Monday's Big Supreme Court Case Will Decide the Future of Public Sector Unions," by Eric Boehm: Janus v. AFSCME could end mandatory public-sector union dues. Counterintuitively, it might strengthen the labor movement too.
"Broward Co. Sheriff Israel: 'Not My Responsibility' That His Employee Failed to Confront Parkland Shooter," by Nick Gillespie: "I gave him a gun. I gave him a badge. I gave him the training. If he didn't have the heart to go in, that's not my responsibility."
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