President Joe Biden addressed the nation on Tuesday following the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on all three charges. Biden applauded the verdict and said that George Floyd’s death was “murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism.”

Biden said this outcome was a step forward for racial justice, but that Congress should act to pass legislation that would address misconduct in police departments. He said that should be Floyd’s legacy—a legacy of “peace, not violence”:

Peaceful expression of that legacy are inevitable and appropriate. But, violent protest is not. There are those who will seek to exploit the raw emotions of the moment, agitators and extremists who have no interest in social justice, who seek to carry out violence, destroy property, and fan the flames of hate and division, who do everything in their power to stop this country’s march toward racial justice.

We can’t let them succeed. This is a time for this country to come together, to unite as Americans.

Remarks by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were less well-received. As SFGate reported:

Shortly after former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the murder of George Floyd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delivered a bizarre speech that immediately angered and disturbed people following along on social media.

“Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice,” Pelosi said. “For being there to call out to your mom — how heartbreaking was that?” she interjected. “Call out to your mom, ‘I can’t breathe.’ But because of you, thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice. And now we have to make sure justice prevails in the sentencing. But, you know, that’s its own procedure.”

Obviously, the idea that Floyd sacrificed his life for justice is a bit presumptuous. Floyd didn’t choose to be killed. (The Las Vegas Raiders posted a similarly cringeworthy social media statement.)

Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) cast doubt on the notion that Chauvin’s conviction represented some meaningful achievement of justice.

That a family had to lose a son, brother and father; that a teenage girl had to film and post a murder, that millions across the country had to organize and march just for George Floyd to be seen and valued is not justice.

And this verdict is not a substitute for policy change. https://t.co/tiDkhl9Dk4

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 20, 2021

There were also plenty of questionable reactions from the right. Republican Anthony Sabatini, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, described the outcome as “mob justice.” Several other conservative commentators echoed this notion.

Mob justice

— Rep. Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) April 20, 2021

The mob, led by Democrats at the highest level, successfully intimidated the jury into getting the result they wanted before the trial started

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 20, 2021

For a recap of the jury’s decision, read Reason‘s Jacob Sullum.

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FREE MINDS

Columbia University students filed complaints against Dinah PoKempner, an adjunct professor at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and former general counsel at the Human Rights Watch, after she used the word nigger in an educational setting while discussing “the comparative legal treatment of hate speech.” According to The College Fix:

Students attempted to inform PoKempner why her language was out of line, but without success. They ended up taking their complaints to the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Institute for the Study of Human Rights.

According to Columbia’s faculty handbook, professors should “engage their students in discussions about issues that are contentious and emotionally charged” and “challenge them to reexamine deeply held beliefs.” It also notes such discussions should embrace “civility, tolerance, and respect for ideas that differ from their own.”

While the complaints about PoKempner are being looked into, Institute for the Study of Human Rights Director Elazar Barkan “acknowledged” students’ post-episode “anxiety about the course.” Another administrator will handle grading for PoKempner’s class for the rest of the semester.

Adam Steinbaugh of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education urged Columbia to refrain from punishing PoKempner. “A class discussing what the First Amendment protects will naturally raise the likelihood of hearing or seeing words people find offensive,” he said. “While students have the right to criticize those choices or to complain about them, an investigation or punishment by the university would be a marked departure from its commitment to academic freedom.”

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FREE MARKETS

The Senate will hold confirmation hearings on Wednesday for Lina Khan, an associate professor of law at Columbia University who was nominated by Biden to join the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Khan’s appointment is notable because she’s a major intellectual proponent of the idea that the federal government should use antitrust laws to regulate major tech companies. She was the co-author of an influential 2017 paper that argued Amazon’s multiple market functions—as a platform, a retailer, a book publisher, and a web hosting service—create “anticompetitive concerns.”

In essence, Khan is an adherent of the progressive approach to regulating “Big Tech.” What’s interesting is that many conservatives have also soured on tech corporations and some—Sens. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R–Texas) in particular—have signaled an openness to regulating or even breaking up Big Tech. If the Republicans decline to get behind Khan—or even deride her pro-government, pro-regulation approach—it might show that their stated opposition to Big Tech is just for show. Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) has suggested that Khan is too inexperienced for the job, which could be his way of saying he’s not on board.

Assuming that Khan does get confirmed, she is likely to bolster the Biden administration’s misguided efforts to rein in tech companies. Biden previously tapped Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor and close ally of Khan, to join the National Economic Council. This is one area of policy where Biden’s views seem to be well in keeping with far-left progressivism, and there’s plenty of damage that Wu and Khan can do. How Republicans might respond is something of a mystery, given that petty grievances have caused them to abandon free market principles when it comes to tech.

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QUICK HITS

• Former President George W. Bush criticized the modern Republican Party as “isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent, nativist.”
• The Johnson & Johnson vaccine rollout will resume in Europe.
• Things are going very, very badly in India.
• New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg: “There Could Never Be a Female Andrew Yang.“
• A school board in Newark, New Jersey, went “nuclear” and ordered all teachers to return to classrooms by the end of the month.

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Last week I heartily endorsed Kurt Lash’s new two-volume set on the Reconstruction Amendments. Here, let me offer a testimonial.

I am writing about a statute passed after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. During the writing process, I came across a question: did any members of the Reconstruction Congress cite Hamilton’s Federalist No. 60? It was such an obscure, but relevant question. Before Kurt’s book, it would have been virtually impossible to perform this query. I would have had to walk through thousands of pages of documents in various sources. And who knows if I would even find anything of relevant.

But now with Kurt’s book, the query took 5 minutes. I searched my Kindle version of Volume II for “Federalist.” Moments later, I found that a member of Congress from Wisconsin cited Federalist No. 60 during the debates over the Fifteenth Amendment. Indeed, he recited from the exact Hamilton passage I was researching. In an instant, I realize how valuable Kurt’s books are.

We are all much better off for this valuable set. The price is steep–about $95 for each Kindle version. If you can’t afford it, ask your library to get a copy. It will come in handy in ways you cannot even imagine.

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What good is an AR-15 against an oppressive government armed with tanks and bombers? That’s the question gun owners often get asked, as if the destructive power of the modern state is a mic-drop argument against private weapons ownership. That might be a bit more convincing if resistance fighters didn’t repeatedly go up against well-armed troops with whatever weapons they can make or scavenge in hopes of gaining breathing room and forcing change. Sometimes, they even win, and their chances would undoubtedly be better if they had better tools at hand to begin with.

“Every day, when Ko Win Kyaw goes out to demonstrate against the Myanmar military, he carries his slingshot and a supply of rocks as ammunition,” Richard C. Paddock reported for The New York Times on April 17. “What began as peaceful protests after the Feb. 1 coup rapidly grew into a resistance movement, with citizens defending themselves using slingshots, homemade air guns, old hunting rifles and firebombs.”

Despite endorsement for resistance efforts from the pro-democracy shadow government facing off against the ruling junta, Reuters emphasized that a loosely organized group “[a]rmed with a few hunting guns made by village blacksmiths, catapults, some airguns and Molotov cocktails … were no match for forces hardened by decades of conflict and equipped with combat weapons.”

But, despite the paucity of their arms and training, the fighters gave government forces a day-long battle. They had to turn, at least for the time being, to makeshift weapons because the regime spent years trying to keep the population disarmed so that it wouldn’t have to face serious resistance.

“In Myanmar, civilians are not allowed to possess any firearms,” notes the University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org.

“There were gun licenses issued under the [totalitarian Burma Socialist Program Party, or BSPP] government starting from 1977 but only to those who were fully-fledged party members and serving on duty in BSPP,” according to The Irrawaddy, which covers news in the region. “But after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, [the military] revoked gun licenses and recalled guns.”

Denied legal access to guns by a brutal government that feared resistance, the people of Myanmar are still willing to fight, but must scrounge the tools for doing so where they can be found.

“We have no choice but to arm ourselves,” one activist told the U.K.’s Sunday Times.

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong found themselves in a similar situation when China moved to crush the liberties of the semi-autonomous region.

“Hong Kong protesters shot bows and arrows and hurled petrol bombs from a barricaded university campus on Sunday, as police charged and charged again, firing tear gas and blue liquid from water cannon after fiery clashes overnight,” CNBC reported in 2019. “Parts of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus looked more like a fortress with barricades and black-clad protesters manning the ramparts with improvised weapons-like bricks, crates of fire bombs, and bows and arrows at the ready.”

Civilian firearms ownership isn’t entirely banned in Hong Kong, but it is severely restricted and rules were tightened in 1999, after the handover of the territory by Britain to China. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters clearly understand their disadvantage, since at least some have waved signs reading, “We need the 2nd Amendment.”

But Hong Kong residents don’t have legal protections for their right to bear arms, and the pro-democracy movement has faltered under the weight of government force. Headlines now focus on the jailing of activists rather than street protests. Maybe that’s support for the argument that resistance is futile against the modern state.

“[I]t would be a short war my friend,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) snorted in 2018 to a critic promising to defy gun restrictions. “The government has nukes,” he added, raising the prospect of U.S. forces incinerating all of Phoenix or Houston to suppress guerrillas intermingled with the population.

Domestic atomic warfare seems unlikely, though, given that the U.S. never nuked Afghanistan despite two decades of continuing conflict. Nor did the rest of America’s modern arsenal ultimately prevail against insurgents largely armed with variants of the AK-47, Russia’s counterpart to the AR-15.

“There has been no cease-fire agreement and high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite repeated pleas from senior U.S. and international officials to reduce violence in an effort to advance the peace process,” the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s 50th quarterly report to Congress noted earlier this year.

“We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan — hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal and expecting a different result,” President Joe Biden conceded on April 14, as he announced an end to America’s role in the country.

This isn’t to say the Taliban are a sympathetic bunch. Their brutality and authoritarianism make them anything but freedom fighters. But they proved their effectiveness, at great cost, against a modern military force. Pro-democracy forces in Myanmar, Hong Kong, and elsewhere might hope for similar hope of success (though they’d no doubt want a shorter, less-bloody conflict). Their chances would certainly be improved with access to weapons like the AR-15.

True, the United States isn’t Myanmar, nor is any part of it under the thumb of something like China’s totalitarian regime. But just months ago Rep. Eric “the government has nukes” Swalwell insisted that “democracy is under assault” from departing President Donald Trump. Last year, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden insisted his opponent “further threatens the future of our democracy.” They clearly believe—with considerable evidence, though their faction shares blame—that America’s political system isn’t as secure as we like to pretend, and that it risks falling into authoritarian hands.

Just in case their fears come true, people worried that authoritarianism will come to America might want to learn from pro-democracy activists elsewhere. That requires treating efforts at civilian disarmament as even more reason to keep the tools for self-defense close to hand.

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4/21/1800: Justice Alfred Moore takes judicial oath.

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Last fall South Dakota became the first state to simultaneously approve legalization of medical and recreational marijuana. The success of the broader ballot initiative, which passed with support from 54 percent of voters, was especially surprising because the state is mostly Republican and largely conservative. But while voters were ready to legalize marijuana, Gov. Kristi Noem was not. Thanks to a legal challenge backed by Noem, the initiative has been blocked, and it may never take effect.

Seventeen days after the election, Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom and Col. Rick Miller, superintendent of the South Dakota Highway Patrol, filed a lawsuit arguing that the marijuana legalization initiative, known as Amendment A, violated the state constitution’s restrictions on voter-approved amendments. Noem later said Miller was acting at her direction. In February, Sixth Judicial Circuit Judge Christina Klinger agreed with Thom, Miller, and Noem, ruling that the initiative violated the “single subject rule” and amounted to a “revision” of the state constitution, which requires a constitutional convention, rather than an amendment.

On the first point, Klinger concluded that Amendment A improperly “embrace[d] more than one subject” because it dealt with industrial hemp as well as marijuana, allocated the proceeds of a marijuana excise tax, created civil penalties for certain marijuana offenses, and barred disciplinary action against licensed professionals for advising the cannabis industry. In her view, these provisions “are not reasonably germane to the legalization of marijuana.”

On the second point, Klinger noted that “the South Dakota Supreme Court has never directly ascertained the difference between an amendment and a revision.” But based on decisions from other states, she concluded that the distinction depends on “the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the enactment.” Although Amendment A “is not a drastic rewrite of the South Dakota Constitution,” she said, it makes “far-reaching changes to the nature of South Dakota’s governmental plan” by restricting the powers of the governor and the legislature with respect to marijuana. It “is therefore a revision.”

Because of those defects, Klinger said, the initiative is “void and has no effect.” South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, the organization that backed Amendment A, has appealed Klinger’s decision to the South Dakota Supreme Court, where oral arguments are scheduled for April 28. An amicus brief filed in support of the appeal by the Cato Institute (and joined by Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason) argues that blocking Amendment A defies the will of voters and undermines federalism.

“This case arises from the efforts of state officials who, having vehemently disagreed with the substance of Amendment A but having failed to persuade the state’s electorate to adopt their views, now seek to set aside the will of the voters and to overturn the constitutional provisions endorsed and enacted by South Dakotans,” the Cato brief says. “This case implicates matters of central concern to amici, not least the interests of all citizens to advance laws that indisputably increase their individual liberties and freedoms even when doing so diverges from the policies, preferences and practices of the federal government.”

Noem praised Klinger’s decision. “Amendment A is a revision, as it has far-reaching effects on the basic nature of South Dakota’s governmental system,” she said. “Today’s decision protects and safeguards our constitution. I’m confident that South Dakota Supreme Court, if asked to weigh in as well, will come to the same conclusion.”

Noem’s determination to block Amendment A seems to be driven more by her anti-pot prejudices than by her commitment to upholding the abstruse rules governing amendments to the state constitution. “I was personally opposed to these measures and firmly believe they’re the wrong choice for South Dakota’s communities,” she said after voters approved the medical and recreational marijuana initiatives. “We need to be finding ways to strengthen our families, and I think we’re taking a step backward in that effort. I’m also very disappointed that we will be growing state government by millions of dollars in costs to public safety and to set up this new regulatory system.”

State legislators proved more willing to set aside their personal views on marijuana in deference to the policy preferred by voters. “In my mind, [legalization is] inevitable because we’ve already seen the support from the public,” Senate Majority Leader Gary Cammack said after Klinger’s decision. “I didn’t vote for recreational marijuana, but my constituents did,” added Greg Jamison, another Republican senator. “Rarely do we get a chance to enact a law and not for sure know what our constituents think of that. Here we know.”

In response to such comments from members of her own party, Noem threatened to veto any legalization bill the legislature might decide to pass. She also has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to stop the medical marijuana initiative from taking effect.

More recently, Noem suggested she might be open to decriminalizing low-level marijuana possession. A proposed bill that she was mulling last month would make possession of an ounce or less, currently a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $2,000 and up to a year in jail, a petty offense, punishable only by a civil fine, for adults 21 or older. Repeat offenses would remain misdemeanors, although the maximum penalties would be less severe: a $200 fine and 30 days in jail. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports that Noem’s chief of staff “said the governor isn’t necessarily in support of the draft proposal.”

Amendment A, by contrast, would eliminate all penalties for adult possession or sharing of an ounce or less while authorizing the licensing and regulation of commercial suppliers. Adults also would be allowed to grow their own pot if they happened to live in a jurisdiction with no licensed retailers. Kristi Noem is not ready for that world, although she might be willing to support a decriminalization policy that was at the cutting edge of marijuana reform in the 1970s.

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