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Reason Writers on The Alyona Show: Lucy Steigerwald on the 15-Year-Old Intel Science Fair Winner, Schools Tracking Students with RFID Chips, and The Japanese Artist Who Cooked His Genitals

2012-05-25T22:00:00-04:00

Associate Editor Lucy Steigerwald discusses the 15-year-old who won the Intel Science Fair, schools tracking students with RFID chips in their IDs, the Japanese artist who cooked his own genitals, and the phenomenon of "trayvonning" on The Alyona Show's "Happy Hour." Airdate: May 25, 2012.

About 7.30 minutes.

Ron Paul Roundup: Paulites Cement Control in Nevada, More on Progress in Minnesota, Fed Audit Bill Up for Vote, and More

2012-05-25T18:15:00-04:00

The non-Paul factions continue to flee the now largely Paulite official Republican Party in Nevada, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports:

Hours after the top two leaders of the Clark County Republican Party resigned, Ron Paul supporters took complete control.

They changed the locks at party headquarters and announced Thursday they could now focus on electing "genuine" conservatives, leaving infighting behind.

The sudden departure of Chairman Dave Gibbs, Vice Chairman Woody Stroupe and several others completed a purge of establishment GOP officials since Paul backers took over the executive board by sweeping elections at the Clark County Republican Convention this year.

The old guard are forming their own Romneyite "shadow party":

The moves also marked a permanent election year split in the GOP at the county and state levels, with Gibbs and Stroupe both saying they would join forces with "Team Nevada."

The Team Nevada organization is run by the Republican National Committee to help elect presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans. The RNC plans to run its campaign ground game money through Team Nevada to bypass the Clark County GOP and Nevada Republican Party.

The official Party is still doing the business of a political party:

Cindy Lake, the county party secretary and a Paul supporter, was elected acting chair. In a statement, she said the new leaders would focus on electing Republicans who share their values. Paul promotes smaller government, less spending and taxes and more personal freedoms, for example.

"After months of turbulence and instability following the Executive Board elections held at the Clark County Republican Convention, the CCRP Executive Board is now able to concentrate on the task of developing a consistent, accessible message that will allow the Party to take a large role in electing genuine conservative candidates to office," Lake said. "The CCRP Executive Board is looking forward to working together with Republicans across Clark County towards increasing Republican registration, building a strong, robust party, and achieving electoral success in the November elections."

22 of 28 delegates from Nevada to the national convention are expressed Paul supporters, but they are bound by state rules to mostly vote for Romney based on his majority in the state's caucus.

*Paul's latest Fed audit bill heading for House vote.

*One poll: 93 percent have a favorable opinion of Ron Paul.

*Profile of John Ramsey, moneybags behind the latest Paulite SuperPAC Liberty for All, which spent quite a bit on Thomas Massie's primary victory in Kentucky Tuesday.

*Paulites angry at Massachusetts decision to not count provisional ballots from April caucus meetings that could have sent more Paul-leaning delegates to Tampa.

*The Weekly Standard takes a close look at Paul's clean win of control of the delegation in Minnesota. Highlights:

Marianne Stebbins, Paul’s 2012 Minnesota campaign chair and one of the national delegates selected in St. Cloud, is the brains behind the Ron Paul revolution in the Minnesota GOP....

There’s a larger purpose to the “liberty” crowd’s fight. Though they won't have a chance to get concessions by threatening to block Romney's nomination at the August convention, Stebbins and company are looking long-term at remaking the Republican party, state by state, in Paul’s image. Paulites in Minnesota, like those in Iowa, Nevada, and Kentucky, are now in control of their party’s rules and platform. They’ll be recruiting candidates for local, state, and federal offices, too....

Stebbins predicts the Paul delegates won’t cause a fracas in Tampa. “The people who were elected as national delegates are a little more refined,” she says. “I don’t think you’re going to see any disruptions at the national convention.”

My new book, Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired.

Cross posted at dedicated blog/site for Ron Paul's Revolution.

Q and A With California House Candidate Christopher David, a "Ron Paul Republican"

2012-05-25T17:18:00-04:00

Christopher David, a candidate for Henry Waxman's federal House seat in California's 33rd District, who I interviewed for my book Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired, tells me he came into the Ron Paul world in 2007 from the left, attracted to the only candidate speaking a believable antiwar message. At antiwar rallies during the Bush years, he recalls, he was “surrounded by lefties holding signs for every left cause under the sun, which got me thinking I guess I was a leftist; I didn’t see anyone else vocally opposing the warmongering of the Bush administration.” David figured early in the last race he’d vote Obama; he couldn’t vote Kerry in ’04, thinking him just “Bush lite.”

Then he saw Ron Paul’s famous moment (the moment at the start of Ron Paul’s Revolution) at the May 2007 South Carolina GOP presidential debate, speaking intelligently and passionately about blowback and 9/11 and not backing down when Rudy Giuliani bullied him about it. “It was the first time ever I heard any elected official use the term “blowback” and know what they talking about,” David says. “It was amazing to me, and the fact on that it was a Republican doing it was just shocking. That got me looking into Ron Paul, because I knew that took courage for him. Getting familiar with Paul and his philosophy, within two months I was the card-carrying libertarian spouting Rothbard to anyone who would listen.” He was part of the army of youth campaigning for Paul in the blistering cold leading up to the 2008 Iowa caucus.

David went on to live for a while in the Free State of New Hampshire “in a house with seven other Free Staters in the middle of the woods with a firing range in the backyard” and to work with the Paulite youth group Young Americans for Liberty (where he tried to launch a national “Year of Youth” campaign to encourage young people to not just help other candidates but to run themselves, advice he’s now following) and launched the Paulite new media site Revolutimes and moved out to Los Angeles, from which he is running for Henry Waxman’s House seat in the 33^rd district as a Republican. (Among his competitors are Libertarian Steve Collett and Democrat Bruce Margolin, famous for his work as a defense attorney in pot cases.)

Reason: Tell us about yourself.

Christopher David: I am a 25-year-old entrepreneur and activist running for the U.S. House in California’s 33^rd congressional district, which spans the coast of Los Angeles from Malibu to Palos Verdes and includes Beverly Hills. A number of factors brought me to run, one of the biggest is that I believe there are too few advocates in Washington for the kind of real systemic transformative change that I think voters really want, and despite an array of very flawed candidates they have been trying to send that message that they are looking for something completely different. We saw that in 2008 with Barack Obama and the beginning of the Ron Paul movement, saw it more in 2010 with the Tea Party and I think we will see it even more this year. I think the action this year will be with the liberty leaning candidates, candidates inspired by Ron Paul.

It’s completely obvious if you look at Romney and Obama that there is a huge absence of excitement, excitement that only really Ron Paul is channeling, and so I think Ron Paul will go out with a bang at the Tampa convention. This will be a year of Ron Paul passing the baton not to any one person but to a whole movement. The great strength of the Ron Paul movement has been its very decentralization and though it’s obvious Rand Paul will probably be a candidate in 2016 for president, you’re going to see an explosion of people inspired by Ron Paul entering.

Reason: I saw you are being directly attacked in some direct mail by an independent opponent, Bill Bloomfield.

David: A closet establishment Republican running as an independent. He is a wealthy guy spending a lot of his own money, probably well over a hundred thousand, to get out that mailer with my picture on it, so he sees me as his greatest obstacle. I know from talking to people who went to one of his private meet-and-greets that he trashed me as someone who “channels Ron Paul,” and attacks me for being an inexperienced kid who is new to California.

This represents a gambit by the establishment Republicans to adapt to California’s Prop 14 [which has created a system with one general primary for all candidates out of which the two top winners go to the general election in November]. A lot of establishment Republicans are backing Bloomfield either privately or publicly. The state Republican Party did refuse to endorse me despite the fact that I’m the only Republican on the ballot. The county party endorsed me, I have pretty good relations with the county party. But former Gov. Pete Wilson is sending out letters paid for by Bloomfield against me. This will be a great case study for using the liberty grassroots to overcome the structural disadvantages of being a young liberty candidate with no establishment support against a cynical political move to hide one’s status as an establishment Republican who had given over 25 thousand to the national Republican establishment including NRCC and Boehner--will that cynical move [of running as an independent] to fool voters into thinking that this fellow is actually independent work?

I blasted out an email to the Republican Party of L.A. County Central Committee attacking Bloomfield and am about to send out mass emails to individual Republicans all over the district, taking Bloomfield to task for being a coward because he did not show up at either of our two debates, most recently at UCLA, he’s just hiding in his house spending money tearing me down. He’s too afraid to make those accusations in person while he’s trying to buy the race.

Reason: How has the Republican establishment treated you?

David: The county party has been very cordial to me. They endorsed me. I’m not sure to what degree that’s because I’m the only Republican in the race. I made it clear to the party establishment I’m here willing to work with them, I’m a big tent kind of guy even though philosophically and historically I come to the GOP because of Ron Paul. I see it as a big exercise in discovering ways to talk about Ron Paul’s ideas and build coalitions that could actually have political power to implement his ideas, though it’s definitely an incremental process.

I’m placing economic issues front and center, specifically the debt, an issue that very quickly leads to a conversation about how America is in dire need of really systemic transformative change because the current path is unsustainable. America has a political class motivated not by what’s best for America, certainly not what’s best for my generation, but feathering their nests and guaranteeing themselves a nice retirement if they kick the can down the road, so they expect my generation to clean up their mess. If people ask me why I’m running for Congress right now, why don’t I start at the bottom with local office, I say my generation does not have the luxury of waiting 20 years to clean up the mess that the political class is leaving for us because we may well not be a constitutional republic in 20 years. I believe youth deserve a voice on the national level. If we demonstrate that we can unseat incumbent politicians who have been there for years with a new generation of leaders that will put the fear of life into them.

Reason: Was it a given you’d run as a Republican, given your antiwar background?

David: Though my main issue has been antiwar, I also embrace most of the liberty platform as endorsed by Ron Paul and I really value what Ron Paul is trying to do to restore the ideas of non-interventionism and limited government to the Republican Party. So I wanted to run not just for my own sake but to help advance the movement that Ron Paul started.

I do think there is room for liberty candidates with the Democratic Party though. My campaign is all about transpartisan coalition building. The powers that be are so powerful because they keep people divided into red and blue teams and the only real way their grip on power will be lessened is if more people realize that the true battle is the people vs. the establishment. I am open to strategies that build bridges between groups supposedly at odds—I have a huge opportunity to do that because I’m running as a Republican in a very Democratic district, but because of Prop 14 primary system I am only the only Republican in the race, so I have been already in talks with a few of the other candidates from opposing parties and since only one of us is going to make the general against Waxman it allows for a meaningful team effort against the incumbent.

Reason: What does it involve, running for office?

David: Being mentally willing to put yourself on the line, to give up a lot of business opportunities, and just being willing to take the slings and arrows going up as a newbie republican against the Democratic machine of Los Angeles that was named after the guy I’m running against. It’s a very David v. Goliath scenario and I embrace the role of underdog. But I’m confident that aligning myself with rising libertarianism and making use of the cutting-edge political technology and Internet-based tools will give me significant traction.

You need phone banking, I’m about to start walking door to door, online advertising, YouTube video advertising to people in my district. To win the primary I have to rely on Republican votes so I’m going to lots of GOP events and debates. You have to be prepared to do a lot yourself if you aren’t able to attract or afford expensive campaign consultants. But you just file your FEC forms, put up a website and Facebook page and start to spread the word.

Reason: How’s fundraising?

David: Against a guy like Waxman who is so entrenched it’s not easy, especially as a total unknown in the district and also what people perceive to be a 25-year-old kid. But enough for basics like literature and basic advertising. I think people are waiting to see who comes out of the primary to face off against Waxman and then the money will flow more easily and I have some cool tricks for leveraging the power of the Internet like Ron Paul did. But I’m willing to put the time in door to door and pound the pavement every day.

Reason: How about media?

David: Normal media? Short answer, no, almost no media coverage or interest in this race at all. In 2010 there were five Republicans in the GOP primary and the winner of that did not even get Waxman to seriously engage him, Waxman ignored him and still won by 32 points. But if he faces me in the general I will be pulling a Rick Santorum [in terms of diligent retail campaigning] for five months, and I would love to force him to have to really campaign.

Reason: Advice to anyone thinking of maybe running for office?

David: Just run. You will learn so much in the process and if you can learn the basics of running a conventional campaign and learn how to combine that with the best organizational dynamics of the liberty grassroots, whether in this cycle or a future cycle, learn how to turn that combination into a strong competitive edge in a lot of districts could be enough to pull off an upset. We need new leaders to pick up the baton Ron Paul is handing us so the best way to learn is by doing.

David's campaign video:

Ted Stevens' Prosecutors Punished for Withholding Evidence

2012-05-25T16:49:00-04:00

Yesterday the Justice Department announced that it has suspended two prosecutors who sat on evidence they were legally obligated to share with the lawyers representing Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who was convicted of failing to report gifts right before losing his 2008 bid for a seventh term in the U.S. Senate. The following April, the government withdrew all of the charges against Stevens (who died in a plane crash four months later), citing the withheld evidence, which included notes from an interview with a prosecution witness that undercut the government's claims about the value of renovation work on Stevens' home in Alaska—the alleged gift at the center of the case. While a special investigator appointed by the federal judge who oversaw the Stevens case concluded that the prosecutors at fault, Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke, "intentionally withheld and concealed" evidence, the Justice Department's report on the matter attributes their failures to "reckless professional misconduct." They were suspended for 40 and 15 days, respectively, without pay.

Light as those penalties may seem, they are a welcome reminder that defendants have a due process right to evidence that is "material either to guilt or to punishment." Although that has been the law of the land for half a century, prosecutors often seem to forget, and they rarely face consequences for that failure, aside from overturned convictions.

Another positive outcome from the Stevens fiasco: Two months ago, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced the Fairness in Disclosure of Evidence Act, which would require federal prosecutors to share evidence "that may reasonably appear to be favorable to the defendant...without delay after arraignment and before the entry of any guilty plea." Evidence comes to light after then must be shared "as soon as is reasonably practicable." If the prosecution fails to do so, the remedies include "postponement or adjournment of the proceedings," "exclusion or limitation of testimony or evidence," "ordering a new trial," and "dismissal with or without prejudice." If the failure is due to "negligence, recklessness, or knowing conduct," the court may order the government to cover the defendant's legal expenses. Murkowski explained the motivation for the bill this way:

What happened in the trial of Senator Stevens is unfortunately not an isolated incident, but most American do not have the wherewithal that he did to push back against prosecutorial misconduct. While I do believe most federal prosecutors are adhering to the law, it's clear the rules in place are not preventing "hide the ball" prosecutions in cases across the country. There are a few prosecutors out there willing to put a finger on the scales of justice to get more convictions—and this bill seeks to stop that. Justice should be blind, not blindly ignored.

Schumer Shocked Over Push-Back on Ex-Pat Bill, Etan Patz Suspect Arrested, UK Goes on Spending Binge: P.M. Links

2012-05-25T16:30:00-04:00

Senator Charles Schumer is appalled — appalled, he says — that anybody would compare his proposed legislative plan to fleece anybody who wants to leave the country to a similar law enacted decades ago and wielded by a famously nasty regime.
The case that haunted the headlines in 1979 may finally be solved. Pedro Hernandez, a former convenience-store clerk, was arrested and charged with murdering Etan Patz.
Gary Johnson's so-far Internet-only "Peace is Cheaper" advertisement is "red meat" intended to reach antiwar activists and fiscal hawks alike. See it here.
Curt Schilling's 38 Studios is the latest government-favored, taxpayer-subsidized company to go belly-up amidst the stink of fail. The video-game outfit was lured to Rhode Island in by a $75-million loan guarantee from the state.
Berkeley, California, Police Chief Michael Meehan assures critics that he would send ten cops to retrieve anybody's iPhone, just like he did for his son.
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's tolerator-in-chief, says there's no place in his country for homosexuals. Left unspoken is that there's not much place in the country for anybody else, either.
UK government spending hit record levels, despite an official policy of "austerity." With the country's recession worse than anticipated, economists describe the binge as "unsustainable."
The SpaceX Dragon private spacecraft dropped by the International Space Station for a cup of coffee and a chat. Well ... Something like that, anyway. It was historic.

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Brian Doherty on Why Ron Paul Is the Best Hope for Progressives

2012-05-25T16:30:00-04:00

As the presidential field has shaped up to a certain Obama vs. Romney in the major parties, the desire for a challenger championing either the serious right or the serious progressive left grows. And Ron Paul—though he continues to deny any third party plans and his political machine has clearly hitched itself to the GOP for now—is strangely a viable candidate for either role, should he choose to accept it.

As Senior Editor Brian Doherty observes, Paul is in many ways the rightest of right wingers, with his desire to kill the income tax, end government interference in medical care, and get to a balanced budget in three years with no tax hikes. Yet despite Paul’s impeccable Tea Party credentials on tax and spending issues, he would be a more appealing choice to progressives dissatisfied with President Obama. Even while running for the GOP presidential nod, Ron Paul has presented a political vision in many respects to the left of the Democratic Party.

View this article.

Is the Ron Paul the Best Hope for Progressives?

2012-05-25T16:30:00-04:00

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race besides presumptive victor Mitt Romney, even after a strategy statement misunderstood by many as “dropping out.” Since that announcement, Paul has won his second state, Minnesota (Maine was the first), and is on target to end up controlling presidential voting delegations in such states as Iowa, Louisiana, and Missouri. Far from fading as a cultural force, Paul continues to draw huge crowds, sometimes over five thousand students, on campuses as well.

As the presidential field has shaped up to a certain Obama vs. Romney in the major parties, the desire for a challenger championing either the serious right or serious progressive left grows. And Ron Paul—though he continues to deny any third party plans and his political machine has clearly hitched itself to the GOP for now—is strangely a viable candidate for either role, should he choose to accept it.

Paul is in many ways the rightest of right wingers, with his desire to kill the income tax, end government interference in medical care, and get to a balanced budget in three years with no tax hikes. A third party Paul, should he make such a radical choice, would provide a choice for right-wingers dissatisfied with Romney’s small-government bonafides.

Yet despite Paul’s impeccable Tea Party credentials on tax and spending issues, he would be an even more appealing choice to progressives dissatisfied with President Obama. Even while running for the GOP presidential nod, Ron Paul has presented a political vision in many respects to the left of the Democratic Party.

President Obama wants to continue and expand every aspect of the war on drugs, including the war on state-legal medical marijuana operations. Paul thinks government attempts to arrest people for actions that harm only themselves are inherently illegitimate. Obama’s administration has set records in deportations. Paul mocks border walls as un-American in Republican candidate debates.

Obama approves of enormous bailouts to huge financial institutions, and his administration’s high-level economic planning is run almost entirely by insiders from such institutions. Ron Paul is opposed to what he (and leftists) calls “crony capitalism.” Paul’s free-market policies would leave corporations with no more power over the American people than the corporations get by selling people things, things people choose to buy. (Unlike the products of the hated health insurance companies, which ObamaCare mandates that we all purchase.)

Even Paul’s stated environmental policies—certainly very far from implementation even in a world where Paul was president—of imposing liability via tort on people and corporations who harm others through pollution, rather than allowing them to do so but “regulating” them—seem more in line with what a progressive who doesn’t want the fatcats getting away with harming the innocent should want.

Paul’s belief in unfettered free markets is supposed, in the minds of leftists, to mean unbridled corporate power. But America’s plutocracy loves activist government—as long as it’s helping them, as Obama’s programs of giveaways to banks and investment firms does. Paul was thus the only GOP candidate with kind things to say about the Occupy movement, for recognizing the dangers of crony capitalism, and the only candidate whose fans proselytized among them.

Paul’s greater appeal to an honest progressive goes even further. Obama has expanded the president’s powers to unilaterally imprison and even kill American citizens beyond even George W. Bush’s attempts. Paul gets thousands of students who gather to hear him booing any mention of the controversial yet sadly little-known National Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama, giving legal cover to the presidential power of unilateral imprisonment. Obama has started new unauthorized wars, greatly expanded a civilian-killing drone program, and presided over the biggest defense budgets in history. Ron Paul campaigns for peace and withdrawal of the U.S. military from the world. In doing so, he’s done more than Noam Chomsky to normalize discussion of U.S. foreign policy as the behavior of a criminal empire, not as the world’s great defender of liberty.

President Obama loves the Patriot Act and hates whistleblowers; Paul is opposite on both points, including defense of accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.

On a wide range of issues involving individual autonomy and liberty, and protecting people from oppressive concentrations of power, Paul is clearly more progressive than Obama.

Progressives love income redistribution, though, and Paul does not. Still, while Paul is opposed in principle to things like government funding for NPR and even medical care, he mocks his fellow Republicans who act like such programs are the most important place to start practicing austerity—the former because it’s cultural red meat to their base, the latter because it feeds an ugly strain of opposition to “welfare bums” that plays no part in how Paul campaigns.

While Paul is the loudest and most consistent voice for many progressive goals, he rejects their choice of tool to equalize income, which is why progressives' disappointment with Obama hasn’t led them to turn to Ron Paul. But Paul and the movement for peace, civil liberties, and ending government's explicit support for corporate power that he leads offers progressives an alternative, and a dilemma: Are those values more important than fealty to the Democratic Party and hugely expensive income redistribution programs?

Senior Editor Brian Doherty is author of Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (Broadside).

But What Does Every Black Celebrity in America Think About Gay Marriage?

2012-05-25T16:00:00-04:00

Just as the appearance of a black presenter at the Academy Awards prompts the camera to track down the most famous black celebrity in the audience (Will Smith, Samuel L. Jackson or Halle Berry), President Barack Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage has prompted the media to seek out quotes from some black household names in America.

Jay-Z approved of Obama’s evolution in a CNN interview. Smith gave gay marriage a thumbs up while promoting Men in Black III in Germany (just don’t try to kiss him). Other rappers like T.I. and 50 Cent have given their support with a “it doesn’t affect me so why should I care” slant, though in 50 Cent’s case, he’s terribly concerned about gay guys wanting to “grab your little buns” on the elevator and thinks straight guys need a support group for that. The Root even has a slide show of black notables who support gay marriage.

Samuel L. Jackson had already declared his support and participated in activism against Proposition 8 in California in 2008. Then after Proposition 8 passed, blacks were blamed for voting in favor of banning gay marriage in higher numbers than other races, though after the numbers were analyzed, blacks only voted in favor of Prop. 8 in numbers six percent higher than the rest of the population. Given that blacks make up only six percent of California’s population, it seems a bit of a reach to blame it on them, but the narrative has stuck (well, them and the Mormons).

The argument over blame was strange and a little telling. I was left wondering what the 42 percent of the blacks who voted against Prop. 8 felt about being blamed for its passage anyway. But that has always been a problem with collective or tribal politics – the voting booth makes a mockery of it. Looking at blacks or gays as a monolithic group has always been profoundly stupid, and a barrier to actual engagement between individuals within these groups, and yet it continues.

But what the hell do I know? Pundits, playing into collective identity narratives, wondered whether Obama’s position on gay marriage would hurt him with black voters in the polls. Instead, Obama’s evolution on gay marriage is causing shifts in black voters’ positions.

Adam Serwer at Mother Jones reports on major polling number shifts in Maryland, where state-recognized gay marriage is up in the air due to a ballot initiative:

Polls taken since President Obama expressed support for same-sex marriage have shown an astonishing shift in black support on marriage equality. The shift in Maryland is so dramatic that the state may become the first state to actually uphold same-marriage rights in a referendum.

According to Public Policy Polling [pdf], the polling numbers for black voters in Maryland have completely flipped over the past two months. Originally 56 percent said they would vote against recognizing gay marriage (similar to California’s Prop. 8 numbers). In poll numbers released Thursday, 55 percent of black voters said that they would vote in favor of recognizing gay marriage. A Washington Post poll shows similar shifts in numbers nationally.

So am I wrong for thinking it’s inappropriate and counterproductive to look at African-Americans collectively as voters? In another blog entry at Mother Jones, Serwer took note of a relevant study mentioned by John Sides:

Although the polling data thus far generally support the finding that presidents don’t move public opinion very much or very often, there is some reason to believe that Obama himself could move opinion among African-Americans. In a 1994 paper (gated), James Kuklinski and Norman Hurley conducted an experiment in which respondents read a statement urging African-Americans to demonstrate more self-reliance. The statement was attributed to Jesse Jackson, Clarence Thomas, George Bush, Ted Kennedy, or no one.

Among black participants, the most persuasive cue-giver was Jackson, following closely by…? Thomas.

Sides adds: “This is nothing unique to Jackson or Thomas or even African-Americans, of course. Sources of information are generally more credible when they are perceived as sharing our identities, values, etc.”

Indeed, appeals coming from a position of authority are bound to be more effective and feel less condescending when they come from somebody with whom you have commonalities. But is this a good thing? Ultimately, I benefit from the polling shift (assuming it isn’t just lip service), and I believe the “get government out of marriage” crowd will ultimately benefit in the long-term if the “What business is it of mine?” attitude spreads, but isn’t it just a bit creepy?

Reason-Rupe explores changes in public attitudes in gay marriage.

Homicide Isn't Prosecutable When You're a Federal Agent

2012-05-25T15:31:00-04:00

An old joke about committing murders is that "the first is expensive, the rest are free." They can only execute you once, after all. But if they can't even prosecute you, let alone execute you ... Well, then, killings are all pretty much on the house, aren't they? And that seems to be the case with Cole Dotson, who won't be prosecuted for killing three women and injuring two children, because he was on the job at the time as an agent with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement when he decided to play bumper cars at an intersection in Imperial County.

According to the The San Diego Union-Tribune:

U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia said long-standing federal law gives immunity from state prosecution to federal law enforcement officers accused of crimes committed in the course of their duties.

That means Cole Dotson, a special agent with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, will no longer face three counts of gross vehicular manslaughter brought by the Imperial County district attorney.

On December 29, 2009, Dotson was apparently a laggard member of a surveillance team following a suspected meth smuggler. While trying to catch up with his buddies, he drove "his government car at speeds of more than 100 mph, according to the California Highway Patrol. When he went through the stop sign, his speed was estimated at 80 mph. Though the car had lights and sirens, they were not on."

Stop signs are there to modulate the flow of traffic, and people expect that drivers coming from other directions might actually pause, however briefly. When you blow through them doing 80, you tend to do things like piling into vans containing women and children. Killed in the crash were Sandra Garcia, who was driving, along with Maria Nieto and Patricia Reyes. Two children were injured.

The federal government forked over $11 million to the families of the victims in February — an indication that Dotson's actions were not universally considered praiseworthy. Another such indication was the attempted prosecution by Imperial County officials, who said federal agents get immunity only if their actions are "necessary and proper" to their duties, and that Dotson's didn't qualify.

Battaglia disagreed. While he said that Dotson’s actions were negligent, he said making the agent face criminal charges would have a “chilling effect” on all federal law enforcement officers who are in emergency situations.

The most famous such assertion of federal immunity in recent memory is that of Lon Horiuchi, the FBI shooter who ultimately skated away from an attempt by Idaho officials to hold him to account for his lethal conduct at Ruby Ridge only after the case bounced back and forth between courts before being dropped by a newly elected prosecutor.

Spurred by the Horiuchi case, the Yale Law Journal looked for the limits of federal immunity in 2003. Authors Seth P. Waxman and Trevor W. Morrison concluded that there was surprisingly little clear guidance to go on, but that:

[O]nce we are confident that the federal government is competent to act in a certain area, federalism properly imposes few judicially enforceable barriers to that action. Rather, we generally defer to Congress’s judgment about how best to reconcile overlapping federal and state power in areas where both are legitimately exercised. ... [T]he role of federalism in this area properly becomes quite modest. Rather, the governing constitutional rule is simply that of the Supremacy Clause itself, under which federal law is supreme and the only real question is how the federal government has chosen to express that supremacy.

How the federal government has chosen to express that supremacy? Well, Horiuchi was never prosecuted at the federal level, and Dotson still works for ICE, in an administrative capacity, with no hint of a federal prosecution in the wind.

With the federal government involving itself in ever-more aspects of American life, it might be a good time to look around really carefully at stop signs. Or anywhere else. (HT jasno)

Ray Kelly Outlines Measures to Curtail the Illegal Police Stops He Says Are Not Occurring

2012-05-25T15:21:00-04:00

Last week, after a federal judge certified a class action challenging the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly outlined measures he is taking to curtail the unlawful stops that he says are not occurring. In a letter to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Kelly said "we have republished the Department order that specifically prohibits racial profiling." That's good, because Kelly's cops seem to have lost their copies. Last year, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) reports, 87 percent of the people stopped, questioned, and (most of the time) frisked for nonexistent weapons were black or Latino. Kelly says that's because police are focusing their efforts on high-crime neighborhoods that are disproportionately black and Latino. But as NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman notes in today's New York Daily News, that explanation does not quite fit the facts:

Though they make up only 4.7% of the city’s population, black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6% of stops in 2011. The number of stops of young black men exceeded the city’s entire population of young black men.

The commissioner contends that this happens only because officers go where the crime is. But last year, large percentages of blacks and Latinos were also stopped in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, where 77% of people stopped were black or Latino.

The racially disproportionate impact of the stops is especially troubling because the supposedly suspicious people detained by police are innocent nine times out of 10: Only 10 percent of stops result in an arrest or summons. The hit rate for pat-downs is even less impressive: Only 2 percent find weapons of any kind. Although taking guns off the street is one of the most commonly cited justifications for the stop-and-frisk program, Lieberman notes that "guns are recovered in less than 0.2% of stops—an astonishingly low yield rate for such an intrusive, humiliating and often unlawful tactic." Kelly nevertheless claims the program has saved thousands of lives during the last decade by reducing violent crime, an assertion that Lieberman calls "demonstrably false." She notes that homicides were already falling in New York before Kelly launched the stop-and-frisk program in 2003 and that since then they have declined more quickly in other big cities.

The program's meager results also raise constitutional issues. Under the 1968 Supreme Court decision in Terry v. Ohio, a stop must be based on "reasonable suspicion" that someone has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, while a frisk is justified only when there is reasonable suspicion that he is armed.How reasonable is a suspicion that is wrong nine times out of 10, let alone 98 times out of 100? These numbers strongly suggest that police routinely ignore the "reasonable suspicion" requirement (as Mayor Michael Bloomberg has implicitly conceded).

But don't worry: Kelly says the department plans to remind police officers of their constitutional duties. It has a new training curriculum that "provides personnel with an additional level of clarity in determining when and how to conduct a lawful stop." It has approved the script for "the fifth and final part in our series of training videos regarding street encounters." Kelly also plans to keep a closer eye on the stop-and-frisk "report worksheets" that cops fill out for each encounter, which indicate the supposed basis for reasonable suspicion. The most popular excuse: "furtive movement." Finally, in an effort to improve community relations, which tend to be undermined by a decade-long program of hassling and searching innocent people with dark skin, the NYPD is encouraging officers to hand out "informational cards" durings stops that "provide a written description of the legal authority for such stops and a list of common reasons individuals are stopped by the police." Here is the short version of the text on the cards: "WHY WE ARE FUCKING WITH YOU: Because we can."

Robert Zubrin: Radical Environmentalists and Other Merchants of Despair

2012-05-25T15:00:00-04:00

Robert Zubrin: Radical Environmentalists and Other Merchants of Despair

2012-05-25T15:00:00-04:00

"We have never been in danger of running out of resources," says Dr. Robert Zubrin, "but we have encountered considerable dangers from people who say we are running out of resources and who say that human activities need to be constrained."

In his latest book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, Zubrin documents the history of dystopian environmentalism, from economic impairment inflicted by current global warming policies to the Malthusian concern over population growth. "Just think how much poorer we would be today if the world would have had half as many people in the 19th century as it actually did. You can get rid of Thomas Edison or Louis Pasteur, take your pick."

Zubrin sat down with Reason Magazine editor in chief Matt Welch to discuss his book, the difference between practical and ideological environmentalism, and how U.S. foreign aid policy encourages population control.

Runs about 9.30 minutes

Produced by Meredith Bragg. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Josh Swain.

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Is It Even Possible to Lower Property Assessments "Improperly"?

2012-05-25T14:13:00-04:00

A strange political scandal in Los Angeles raises a tough question about real estate and taxes.

L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley is investigating corruption in the office of County Assessor John Noguez. There is some reason to believe that Noguez has made the most of his power to decide how much property owners must pay in taxes.

Earlier this week, former Noguez underling Scott Schenter was arrested up in Oregon on charges of falsifying documents and unlawfully lowering property values. According to the L.A. Times’ Ruben Vives and Jack Dolan, Schenter is accused of “improperly slashing the value on more than 100 Westside” properties, resulting in a tax break of “$172 million for multimillion-dollar homes and businesses.” Property owners reportedly contributed to Noguez’ campaign in payment for the reduced assessments.

Schenter left office in January 2011 after a supervisor got wind of his alleged activities. In the intervening time he spilled the beans to Vives and Dolan, which had the immediate effect of expanding the story to include a local consultant named Ramin Salari who, again allegedly, acted as a middleman/fixer for property owners seeking relief on their tax bills. Schenter also may have incriminated himself with this loose talk, though I have no idea whether his statements to the paper had any impact on his own case. Most recently, Schenter relocated to the Beaver State and was, at age 49, living back in his dad’s house when he was arrested.

Noguez has his own saga, including credible reports of threats and physical harassment against opponents during a 2007 mayoral race in the suburb of Huntington Park. These threats apparently resulted from questions about whether the then-mayor’s real name was John Noguez. It may be Juan Rodriguez or Juan Noguez or Dick Whitman.

The grownup thing might be to say “Hey, even Jesus hung out with corrupt tax collectors,” and leave it at that. But it’s illustrative of how far from a free market real estate has wandered that you have to bribe public officials to get a lower assessment in a county where 30 percent of all mortgages are underwater. It’s true that the West Side, where Noguez’ office is said to have done much of its business, has less negative equity than other parts of L.A. County. But this interactive map from the L.A. Times (a fine national newspaper), shows Santa Monica’s beachfront zip code with 20 percent negative equity, Brentwood with 11 percent, Malibu with 16 percent and Marina del Rey with 21 percent.

Here in the land of the million-dollar starter home and the half-million-dollar teardown, in an era that has given us the deathless phrase “repenetrated bottom,” the idea that real estate can only go up remains so stubborn that we don’t even have language to describe the decline. Predictably, local pols are agitating for re-assessments, and I'm guessing they don't expect those assessments to be lower than Schenter's.

Nationwide, housing will mark its sixth straight year of deflation next month. Yet to this day you only get in trouble if you say a house has lost value. If you pretend the price is still inflated, nobody will bother you.

Well, You Wonder Why I Always Dress in Black...

2012-05-25T13:54:00-04:00

So we have a new Men in Black movie? I've always resented this series. It's not that I object in principle to taking a fantastically creepy piece of American folklore and reducing it to a string of jokes. It's just that if you're going to do that, the jokes had better make me laugh, and most of the gags in the first two MiB flicks fell far short of that. Alex Trebek and Jesse Ventura were far funnier with just a fraction of the screentime when they played Men in Black in "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," and they managed to preserve the eerie weirdness of the legend in the process.

Thankfully, Fortean folklorists are still collecting tales of sinister black-clad beings, and these tend to be much more entertaining than Hollywood's contributions to the genre. As an antidote to what I suspect will be another dull movie, here is an encounter with the Men that purportedly happened in 1955. Not only is it creepy, but there's a goofiness to its creepiness; when the alleged contactee reports his "impression" that one of the Men "was wearing a mask (the elastic band of which I distinctly remember seeing amidst the kinky, red, close-cropped hair of his head)," there's a hint of deadpan humor in the horror -- not surprisingly, since the tale almost certainly began as a prank. A good Men in Black story is both funny and frightening, as though someone crossed the Cthulhu mythos with a slapstick comedy; it suggests a world plagued by conspiracies that will never make sense to human minds because the forces behind them are not human themselves. I'd love to see a Men in Black movie like that. I strongly doubt that one is opening this weekend.

Ryan Ekvall and M.D. Kittle on the Wisconsin Recall Election and Milwaukee’s Crime Stats Controversy

2012-05-25T13:30:00-04:00

The combatants in Wisconsin's historic gubernatorial recall election brought the heat on the campaign trail Thursday, after a newspaper story about the Milwaukee Police Department improperly identifying hundreds of violent crimes. As Ryan Ekvall and M.D. Kittle report, Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign shifted the spotlight on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found that, since 2009, the city's police department misreported more than 500 incidents to the FBI as lesser offenses.

View this article.

Scott Walker Turns Up the Heat on Flawed Milwaukee Crime Stats

2012-05-25T13:30:00-04:00

Milwaukee, Wis.— The combatants in Wisconsin's historic gubernatorial recall election brought the heat on the campaign trail Thursday, after a newspaper story about the Milwaukee Police Department improperly identifying hundreds of violent crimes.

Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign shifted the spotlight on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found that, since 2009, the police department misreported more than 500 incidents to the FBI as lesser offenses.

The city had reported a decline in violent crime last year, and Barrett has trumpeted the lower numbers on the campaign trail.

“The Journal Sentinel found enough misreported cases in 2011 alone that violent crime would have increased 1.1 percent instead of falling 2.3 percent from the reported 2010 figures, which had their own errors,” the newspaper wrote.

Walker’s campaign pounced Wednesday, accusing Barrett of cooking the books on crime statistics.

On Thursday morning, the governor joined a chorus of city and state officials calling for an independent audit of the crime statistics.

Walker said the matter boils down to trust, not just in Milwaukee but in the state recall election.

“As a candidate, I think it’s important for the mayor of Milwaukee to acknowledge that on the one item he highlights as an example of leadership—the claim that violent crime has gone down in the city of Milwaukee—the facts now in this report show that’s not accurate,” the governor said during a news conference at the office of the Milwaukee Police Association. The union, which represents 1,700 law enforcement employees, has endorsed the governor in the June 5 election.

Barrett was on the defense at a news conference Thursday morning in Milwaukee, asserting there was no ill intent in data.

“Of course if the numbers are wrong we will correct them. I think that goes without saying," Barrett said Thursday. "My concern really goes more to that the attacks on what is essentially the rank-and-file members of the Milwaukee Police Department.”

“You’ve got a governor of the state coming in to attack the Milwaukee Police Department,” Barrett added. “If he attacks the integrity of the Milwaukee Police Department, if he attacks the integrity of the beat cops or the supervisors or the chiefs, I will call him on that."

Walker, standing before law enforcement officials, countered that the question was not about policing but rather about Barrett taking political credit for numbers that appear to be wrong.   “That’s important information for not only people across the state to know, but particularly for the citizens here in the city of Milwaukee," Walker said. “We should be able to question whether that’s an example of failed leadership in the city of Milwaukee.”

Michael Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, said he took no offense by the governor's comments, and that he did not perceive Walker's criticisms as an attack on front-line officers.

"I see it as an affront to police officers by the mayor even bringing that up," he said. "Why the mayor would even suggest that is insulting."

Crivello said he has asked police and city leadership for the better part of two years to check the numbers. He said said he has suspected the data hasn't represented the real crime picture in the city, and that becomes a safety issue for the community and police.

"Nothing was taken seriously," he said. That is until the newspaper's crime report came this week.

This article originally appeared on WisconsinReporter.com.

Why Is Banning Private Anti-Gay Discrimination Less Controversial Than Insisting on Equal Treatment by the Government?

2012-05-25T13:16:00-04:00

Damon Root's post about the Defense of Marriage Act's legal troubles in California highlights a puzzling aspect of the debate about gay rights. He notes that the Supreme Court, which may soon decide whether states are constitutionally required to treat gay and straight couples equally, already has said that states may not prevent local governments from adopting bans on private discrimination against gay people. In the 1996 case Romer v. Evans, the Court overturned a voter-approved amendment to the Colorado constitution that prohibited such anti-discrimination laws at the state or local level. In a majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court reasoned that because the amendment "seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects," it "lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests," meaning it failed even the highly deferential "rational basis" test used in equal protection cases that do not involve a fundamental right or a "suspect class" such as race. Although the Court did not quite say that states must ban private discrimination against gay people, it did say they cannot preclude such legislation. But 16 years later, with Kennedy still the swing vote, it is entirely possible the Court, confronted by the equal protection challenge to California's Proposition 8, will allow states themselves to continue discriminating against gay people when it comes to recognizing marriages.

This combination of positions is not at all unusual. Mitt Romney, who promised during his unsuccessful 1994 run for the U.S. Senate to be more gay-friendly than Ted Kennedy, supports banning anti-gay employment discrimination. In other words, if a nosy fundamentalist with a dry cleaning store refuses to hire anyone he considers a sinner, including non-celibate homosexuals, Romney says he must be forced to act against his own deeply held religious beliefs. Yet if a gay couple applies to the government for a marriage license, Romney insists that they should be turned away, going so far as to endorse a constitutional amendment that would prevent any state from taking a more evenhanded approach. Polling data likewise show that Americans are much more willing to compel nondiscriminatory treatment of gay people by employers and landlords than to insist that the government stop discriminating based on sexual orientation. In a 2008 Newsweek survey, 87 percent of respondents supported "equal rights for gays and lesbians in terms of job opportunities," and 82 percent endorsed "equal rights for gays and lesbians in terms of housing." Yet only 39 percent favored "legally sanctioned gay and lesbian marriages."

These opinions seem completely backward to me. Contrary to what Kennedy said in Romer, anti-gay bigotry is not the only reason why people might think that individuals should be free to discriminate based on sexual orientation. Bans on private discrimination impinge on religious liberty, property rights, freedom of contract, freedom of association, and freedom of speech—rights we should not sacrifice simply because we disapprove of the way some people exercise them. By contrast, government discrimination based on sexual orientation should not be tolerated, because the government has an obligation to treat all citizens equally under the law. Why are people more willing to accept bans on private discrimination, which violate liberty, than a ban on government discrimination, which would enhance liberty? Probably because they conflate civil marriage, the legal arrangement recognized by the government, with "the sacred institution of marriage" upheld by religious tradition. Opponents of gay marriage fear they and their religious communities will be compelled to accept homosexual unions that are anathema to them. But this is all the more reason to insist on the freedom of individuals and private organizations to discriminate while demanding neutrality from the government.

I discussed the crucial difference between private and public discrimination against homosexuals in a 2009 column.

“This is an issue of obfuscation, lies and mistrust in the food system,” admit anti-biotech crop activists.

2012-05-25T13:15:00-04:00

Sadly, the headline is really what anti-biotech crop activists are actually trying to achieve in their campaign against modern biotech crops, not what they say they are doing. The New York Times today quotes Stonyfield Farms CEO and organic yogurt purveyor Gary Hirshberg as saying, "This is an issue of transparency, truth and trust in the food system." What he and other anti-biotech crop activists are trying to do is convince consumers that something is wrong with foods made using ingredients from biotech crops. Their nefarious plan is to get state and federal government agencies to mandate labels on such foods, e.g., "Warning: May Contain GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms.)"

The Times identifies anti-biotech vandals, e.g., one Cynthia LaPier, who go around sneaking their own hand-made labels on foods in grocery stores. So what's wrong with labeling foods in this way? This is where the obfuscation, lies and mistrust being peddled by anti-biotechies come into play. In the United States regulators only require labels on foods that provide either nutritional or safety information. In the case of foods made using ingredients from biotech crops, neither applies. Every independent scientific panel that has ever evaluated biotech crops finds that the currently available varieties are nutritionally indistinguishable from conventional crops and that they pose no health risks to human beings. No nutritional differences and no risks mean no labels.

By the way, organic labels are entirely voluntary and are basically used as a marketing technique to extract extra money from unwitting consumers.

However, anti-biotech activists and, dare one add, organic crop and food production competitors know that some signficant portion Americans would innocently mistake required labels on foods made using biotech crops as some kind of safety warning and thus steer clear of them. Because they want to encourage this mistake in consumers, the goal of anti-biotech and organic foods activists can be reasonably characterized as profitably promoting obfuscation, lies, and mistrust.

In the future some biotech crops will provide improved nutrition, e.g., soy beans improved to supply additional health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, at which time foods using these ingredients will be usefully labeled with this nutritional information.

In a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and of the claims made by the organic foods lobby, Rutgers University food scientist Joseph Rosen concluded [PDF]:

Organic food proponents do more than act as unreliable sources of information; they actually cause harm. ... Any members of the media who rely on organic food proponents for information without checking the facts are complicit in defrauding their readers. And any consumers who buy organic food because they believe that it contains more healthful nutrients than conventional food are wasting their money.

It's clear that the organic lobby promotes disinformation to sell its products. It's about time that consumers and reporters wake up to that fact.

J.D. Tuccille Sounds Off About Cops Tracking Your License Plate

2012-05-25T13:08:00-04:00

You can never get too much of a good thing, of course. And that good thing is me sharing my insights about new license plate recognition toys that let law-enforcement agents at the federal, state and local level track your movements by positioning cameras along the side of the road that photograph, identify and record your license plates. I wrote about the creepy-licious phenomenon a few days ago, and yesterday I appeared on RT to have my say.

D.A. Suspends Grand Jury Investigations of Police Shootings in Albuquerque; No Shooting Ever Ruled Unjustified

2012-05-25T13:05:00-04:00

The district attorney in Albuquerque will be suspending the practice of sending police shootings to grand juries to determine that they were justified, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

There were 24 cop shootings since 2010; 17 were fatal. While cop shootings will no longer be handled by a grand jury, there are nine cop shootings still pending with the D.A.’s office, including one by a cop who listed his job description on Facebook as “human waste disposal.”

The Journal on what the D.A. (who’s up for re-election!) might do next:

“I think what we have done in the past has a lot of integrity, but times are changing,” [Kari] Brandenburg [the District Attorney] said in an interview. “More transparency is always a good thing, and I am going to do what I said I would do and look for alternatives.”

Brandenburg said a preferable alternative would be to take each police shooting case before a judge in a preliminary court hearing. But that option would require charging each officer with a crime, she said.

“Ethically, we just can’t charge someone with a crime if we don’t believe a crime has been committed,” she said. “So if we were to try and go that route, we would have to have a rule change.”

Other options include appointing a special prosecutor for each case, which Brandenburg dismisses as too expensive, or forming a “review board” composed of citizens, attorneys, judges and law enforcement officials.

Brandenburg’s opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary race for the DA’s Office, public defender Jennifer Romero, has joined critics in denouncing the practice.

Brandenburg, who is seeking a fourth four-year term, has said the special grand jury process provides a second set of unbiased eyes to look at the work prosecutors in her office have done to determine whether police shootings are justified.

Reason-Rupe: Wisconsinites Favor Increasing Public Union Retirement Contributions to Address Budget Deficit

2012-05-25T13:00:00-04:00

The latest Reason-Rupe poll of 708 Wisconsin adults on landline and cell phones suggests Wisconsin voters favor reforming public employee unions, over raising taxes and cutting education and health care spending, to address the state budget deficit.

When Governor Scott Walker took office in 2011, the state faced a projected $3.2 billion deficit. The approach Walker took to close the budget gap included reducing state spending on public employees. To do so required government workers to contribute more toward their own health care and retirement benefits. However, this also effectively served as a pay cut for many public employees.

The Reason-Rupe poll asked Wisconsinites how the state should raise funds to pay government employee retirement benefits if the state did not have enough money to fund these benefits.

72 percent oppose “increasing sales, income, or property taxes” to help fund government worker retirement benefits, 25 percent favor.

75 percent oppose “cutting spending on government programs, such as education and health care” to help fund public employee retirement benefits, 23 percent favor.

49 percent oppose and 46 percent favor “reducing public employee benefits.”

However, 74 percent favor “requiring public employees to contribute more toward their own pensions and health care,” and 24 percent oppose.

The poll followed by asking “if the state and local government had to reduce spending, which of the following areas would you reduce spending on first?” The plurality of Wisconsinites (38 percent) chose reducing spending on “pensions and benefits for public employees” followed by “prisons and courts” (29 percent).

These results suggest that when tough trade-offs have to be made to fund public employee retirement benefits, the public favors requiring public employees to contribute more over raising taxes, or cutting spending on education and health care.

Full poll results can be found here and cross tabs here.

ORC International conducted fieldwork for the poll, May 14th-18th 2012 of both mobile and landline phones, 708 Wisconsin adults, margin of error +/- 3.7%. Likely Wisconsin voters (609, MOE +/-4%) include registered respondents who said they are absolutely certain to vote or very likely to vote in the June 5th recall election for governor.

Emily Ekins is the director of polling for Reason Foundation where she leads the Reason-Rupe public opinion research project, launched in 2011. Follow her on Twitter @emilyekins.

Reason-Rupe: Wisconsinites Favor Increasing Public Union Retirement Contributions to Address Budget Deficit

2012-05-25T13:00:00-04:00

The Reason-Rupe poll asked Wisconsinites how the state should raise funds to pay government employee retirement benefits if the state did not have enough money to fund these benefits.

72 percent oppose “increasing sales, income, or property taxes” to help fund government worker retirement benefits, 25 percent favor.

75 percent oppose “cutting spending on government programs, such as education and health care” to help fund public employee retirement benefits, 23 percent favor.

49 percent oppose and 46 percent favor “reducing public employee benefits.”

However, 74 percent favor “requiring public employees to contribute more toward their own pensions and health care,” and 24 percent oppose.

Full poll results can be found here and cross tabs here.

Emily Ekins is the director of polling for Reason Foundation where she leads the Reason-Rupe public opinion research project, launched in 2011. Follow her on Twitter @emilyekins.

Barack Obama Punishes People for Getting High; It Used to Be, He Punished Them for Not Getting High Enough

2012-05-25T12:51:00-04:00

As Nick Gillespie noted below, President Barack Obama was a serious pot smoker in his younger days back when it was legal. We know more about this golden age of abandon thanks to David Maraniss' new book, Barack Obama: The Story. BuzzFeed has put together a list of a young Obama's pot techniques and habits. Perhaps the most striking, considering Obama's current role as chief drug warrior? He used to punish people for not getting high enough:

When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

Read all the pot excerpts from Maraniss' book here.

Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Men in Black III

2012-05-25T12:35:00-04:00

Writing in The Washington Times, Senior Editor Peter Suderman reviews the sci-fi action comedy Men in Black III:

Men in Black 3” marks the third weekend this month that Earth has been invaded by aliens — following “The Avengers” and “Battleship” — thus making failed extraterrestrial takeovers an official journalistic trend. It’s as if Earth was recently ranked at the top of this year’s list of must-invade interstellar hotspots by “Galactic Conqueror” magazine.

The good news is that Will Smith is on hand to respond. As one of Hollywood’s most practiced defenders against alien threats — in “Independence Day” as well as two previous “Men in Black” films — he’s demonstrated his effectiveness and reliability in situations that require swift action to repel space invaders in about two hours, give or take. You hire Mr. Smith because you know he can get the job done.

Which is exactly what he does here, no more, no less. “Men in Black 3” is an exercise in competence — amiable, enjoyable and entirely forgettable.

Read the whole thing here.

Michele Leonhart's Office Declines to Comment on Reports That DEA's Mexican Law Enforcement Partners Are Murdering and Torturing People

2012-05-25T12:20:00-04:00

The Drug Enforcement Administration has offices in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Hermosillo, Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros, Mazatlan, Merida, Monterrey, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, and Tijuana, but it doesn't have anything to say about a recently issued State Department report that says its partners in Mexico's security forces have "engaged in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and instances of physical abuse and torture" while fighting the war on drugs.

Earlier today, I emailed the DEA's public affairs office with this request:

The State Department recently released a report on human rights abuses in Mexico. That report found that Mexican military and LEOs "engaged in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and instances of physical abuse and torture" while fighting TCOs.

I was wondering if your office could provide me with a statement about the new report in light of Administrator Michele Leonhart's earlier claim, made to the Washington Post, in which she said, "It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs....[cartels] are like caged animals, attacking one another," as it seems cartels are not the only people in Mexico committing violence.

Here is how the DEA responded:

We will let the State Department and Mexico speak to this rather than us

I wrote back:

If the DEA won't comment on the report, can you at least tell me if Administrator Leonhart stands by her claim that the "the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success" in the war on drugs?

The DEA:

She has been consistent that the violence represents the pressure cartels feel from Mexican law enforcement/military and the U.S.

Me:

But [she] has no comment on violence perpetrated by DEA partners in Mexican military and law enforcement?

The DEA:

nope

The agency's silence is a bit surprising, considering that in January 2010, a U.S. diplomat praised the DEA's training of the Mexican military: "Our ties with the military have never been closer in terms of not only equipment transfers and training, but also the kinds of intelligence exchanges that are essential to making inroads against organized crime."

Friday Fun Utterly Horrifying Link: Meet Blasty the Drone!

2012-05-25T12:13:00-04:00

(Apologies for annoying non-embeddable video. Click on the image to watch.)

More Reason on drones.

Steven Greenhut on When Government Privileges Trump the Rights of Citizens

2012-05-25T12:00:00-04:00

Democrats and Republicans in the California Legislature have once again broadcast this troubling fact: They are far more concerned about the ever-expanding demands of a relatively small group of public sector union members than they are about the public welfare of the citizenry. As Steven Greenhut reports, the latest outrage comes courtesy of AB 2299, a bill that would allow a broad swath of public officials—police, judges, and various public safety officials—to hide their names from public property records. So much for transparency and accountability. As Greenhut notes, the state is about to destroy the most significant source of public records, and create an open invitation to fraud and theft.

View this article.

When Government Privileges Trump the Rights of Citizens

2012-05-25T12:00:00-04:00

On May 17, the state Assembly voted 68-0 to support the most despicable piece of legislation that’s come through the halls in a while, which is saying a lot given the foolhardy proposals routinely on display in Sacramento. (It still requires approval by the Senate and the governor.)

The bill, AB 2299, allows a broad swath of public officials—police, judges, and various public safety officials—to hide their names from public property records. It is based on the unproven notion that criminals use such records to find the homes of law enforcement officers, then track them down to commit harm. This could theoretically happen, but even the most overheated advocates of the bill can’t point to specific instances. Lots of things can happen, theoretically.

The Sacramento Bee editorial page, hardly a font of anti-government-worker thinking, made the obvious point: “None of the testimony presented in committee indicated criminals seeking to harm law enforcement officials actually got information about where their targets lived from property records. Most just followed them home from work.”

The state is about to destroy the most significant source of public records, and create an open invitation to fraud and theft in order to combat a phantom threat. The bill was introduced by a legislator who ought to know better, Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles). Not long ago, Feuer argued that openness is the key to stopping abuse in his city’s terminally troubled children’s court system, but now he is the champion of secrecy.

“AB 2299 would bar journalists and the public from investigating the situation unfolding in Los Angeles where the assessor is accused of collecting campaign contributions from property owners in exchange for lowered property assessments,” wrote the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Jim Ewert in a letter to Feuer. “The bill would completely insulate and protect any public safety official who might be involved in this type of scheme … .”

Public officials and their family members will be able to hide their identities, which will undermine the reliability of property transactions. Dirty officials will pull off real estate scams without scrutiny. If an assessor did mistakenly release a record, those officials could receive financial judgments paid by the taxpayers. As the Bee asked, “If names are redacted, could law enforcement officials prevent their estranged wives or husbands from asserting a legitimate legal interest in the property?” The property system will become far less reliable. Buyers will be less able to guarantee that the title they receive is free and clear.

What a mess we are creating, and all because union officials are constantly pushing for new and expanded privileges for their members, and because legislators never have the courage to say no. Law enforcement advocates constantly trumpet the dangers their members face, but they often exaggerate such dangers. They ignore that many other people who work outside government face dangers, too. Bail bondsmen face potential dangers from criminals, as do various attorneys and average citizens going about their lives. It’s not right to bolster the idea that public officials are members of a separate caste with rights and protections that exceed those enjoyed by the citizenry at large.

It’s fundamental to our democratic society that government officials are held to the same standards as the rest of us. Yet we see many scandals involving public officials, many crimes committed by duly sworn officers. Do we really need yet another privilege that exempts “them” from the standards that apply to the rest of “us.”

One can be sure that the number of protected categories will expand rapidly and quietly. Even the original list is fairly broad. Within weeks, lobbyists for other public-sector unions will insist that code enforcers, billboard inspectors, and milk testers receive the same protections given the dangers these officials supposedly face. If you think I'm overstating this, then consider that the latter categories made that same argument to gain expanded “public safety” pensions.

Many officials will abuse this, just as police and their families routinely abuse the “professional courtesy” granted by other officers to evade traffic tickets and DUIs. In 2008, the Orange County Register published an investigation about a special license plate program “designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, [that] has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees—from police dispatchers to museum guards—who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too. This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.”

The newspaper found that these public servants often run red lights and drive on toll roads without paying the tolls because the agencies cannot access the addresses, which are in a protected database. When these scofflaw government employees are pulled over by police officers, the newspaper reported, they often are let go with a warning because their protected plate status signals that they are part of the law enforcement fraternity. After the Register article, the Legislature actually voted to expand the number of categories of employee eligible for the program.

Now this two-tier craziness will expand to our property ownership system, undermining public records and allowing corrupt public employees to exploit other people. We know from history that free and open societies are the ones least susceptible to corruption. Yet the California Assembly has decided to cast aside those time-tested lessons and put the demands of unions above the needs of the public. So what else is new?

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

Drug Busts As Make-Work for Superfluous Cops

2012-05-25T11:46:00-04:00

A new report from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) shows that as violent and property crime rates have fallen since their peaks in the early 1990s, arrests have not fallen commensurately. Instead police have shifted their resources to drug offenses:

Violent and property crime rates have fallen 47 percent and 43 percent since 1991, when the crime rate was at its highest, but arrests have fallen only 20 percent. Instead of making arrests for violent and property crime, police focus on drug offenses, especially small amounts of drugs. Arrests for drug offenses have increased 45 percent between 1993 and 2010, while arrests for violent and property crime have fallen 27 and 22 percent, respectively.

While "crime is at the lowest levels it has been in over 30 years," the JPI notes, "funding for police has increased 445 percent between 1982 and 2007." That's in nominal dollars; taking inflation into account, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, the increase was 171 percent. During the same period, the U.S. population grew by about 30 percent. Since the violent crime rate today is substantially lower than it was in 1982, something seems to be out of whack, presumably a ratchet effect that drives spending up when crime rates rise but does not allow spending to decline when crime rates go back down. The JPI report notes that the increase in spending on law enforcement has been driven largely by federal initiatives such as Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, but crime rates were already declining when these programs were established. As the amount of money devoted to policing has risen, so has the incarceration rate, which was 732 per 100,000 in 2010, 39 percent higher than in 1993.

In this context it is easier to understand why marijuana arrests have skyrocketed since the early 1990s, rising from about 327,000 in 1990 to a peak of more than 858,000 in 2009 before falling slightly the following year. Even if it made sense to treat pot smokers like criminals (and most Americans seem to think it doesn't), this trend cannot be explained by an increase in marijuana consumption. Nor has it led to a decline in marijuana consumption, although it has roughly doubled the risk that any give pot smoker will be busted. All those cops need something to do.

For more on the policies that have given the United States a world-beating incarceration rate, see our July 2011 "Criminal Injustice" package.

Obama Still Bogarting Nation's Joints, Man.

2012-05-25T11:43:00-04:00

David Maraniss' forthcoming biography of Barack Obama tells tales of a young dope-smoking president-to-be who was always quick to bogart that joint:

Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

As Mediaite's Andrew Kirell notes, the president is still "intercepting" the nation's drug supply.

Stories like these about a young adult are actually kind of funny, even humanizing — like something straight out of a stoner comedy. But when you realize it’s about President Obama, it becomes a little less humurous.

Less humorous because President Obama has repeatedly laughed off and dismissed serious discussion about drug policy, like in that 2009 virtual town hall where the president mocked online voters for picking a question about marijuana legalization.

Less humorous because the president shuts down medical marijuana dispensaries with a frequency that would make Richard Nixon stand up and cheer. He presides over a DOJ, IRS, and DEA that have threatened, audited, and shut down legal pot sellers in California, Colorado, Montana, and Washington. All this despite once promising to respect state laws regarding medical marijuana.

More here.

The good news is that an increasing majority of Americans are starting to push back. Rasmussen polls show that a healthy 56 percent of likely voters think pot should be treated like booze rather than a Schedule I drug.

Sing along, America: