Category: reason

Police Abuse Breeds Disrespect

The day before Attorney General William Barr complained about disrespect for the police, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg announced that her office had identified 69 more convicted drug offenders who may have been framed by a veteran Houston narcotics officer. The skepticism that Barr decries cannot be understood without taking into account the sort of corruption that Ogg is investigating.

Speaking to police officers in Miami last Friday, Barr condemned “a deeply troubling attitude” toward police. “Far from respecting the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect us,” he said, overzealous critics “scapegoat and disrespect police officers and disparage the vital role you play in society.”

While Barr may prefer to believe that attitude has no basis in fact, every day brings news of police officers who foster such disrespect by lying, using excessive force, and abusing their power for personal gain. Although it is unfair to portray those cases as an indictment of the entire profession, the way police officials respond to such revelations often invites that conclusion.

The former officer at the center of Ogg’s inquiry, Gerald Goines, was employed by the Houston Police Department (HPD) for 34 years. He faces state murder charges and federal civil rights charges because he invented a heroin purchase by a nonexistent confidential informant to obtain a no-knock warrant for a 2019 raid that killed a middle-aged couple, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, in their home on Harding Street.

As a result of that disastrous operation, which discovered no evidence of drug dealing, Ogg’s office is reviewing thousands of cases handled by Goines and his colleagues in the HPD’s Narcotics Division. So far prosecutors have dismissed dozens of pending cases and backed the claims of two men arrested by Goines in 2008 who were recently declared innocent.

“We need to clear people convicted solely on the word of a police officer whom we can no longer trust,” Ogg said last week. But the HPD’s problems clearly go beyond the crimes of one rogue cop.

Another narcotics officer, Steven Bryant, faces state and federal charges in connection with the deadly Harding Street raid because he backed up Goines’ fictional story. If Goines falsely implicated people in drug crimes for a dozen years or more, it seems likely that other officers actively helped him or looked the other way, which would make their testimony suspect as well.

Goines’ supervisors also deserve a share of the blame for failing to properly monitor his use of warrants, informants, and department money. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who initially hailed Goines as a hero while posthumously tarring Tuttle and Nicholas as dangerous heroin dealers, has announced several belated reforms, including limits on no-knock warrants, using body cameras during drug raids, and a new commitment to the oversight that HPD supervisors were supposed to provide.

Acevedo nevertheless insists that Goines’ crimes did not reveal a “systemic” problem, and he wants credit for not sweeping them under the rug. “What would have been more tragic for this community, and for this department, than the incident itself is for the department to have failed to investigate it to the extent that we did,” he said in a recent Texas Monthly interview.

At the same time, Acevedo wants the public to accept the inevitability of outrages such as the senseless deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas. “I don’t think there’s a policy or a process that can guarantee 100 percent that something like this would not happen,” he said. That’s the message Acevedo is sending Houstonians looking for reassurance that they can trust police to respect their constitutional rights.

After three interview questions about the biggest scandal to hit his department in decades, Acevedo lost his patience. “This is the last I want to talk about it,” he said. “We need to move on to something else.” That attitude is at least as troubling as the one that bothers Barr.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Joe Biden Deals a Blow to Bernie Sanders’ Socialist Revolution on Super Tuesday

Joe Biden is the comeback kid tonight, winning at least 8 of the 14 states that were in play tonight on Super Tuesday. That’s a major rebound for a campaign that until just a few days ago seemed to be sliding into irrelevance.

The former vice president capitalized on his strengths in the South to win outright majorities in Alabama and Virginia, as well as commanding pluralities in North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. He also scored surprise victories in Minnesota and Massachusetts, where his main rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) was favored to win.

“We were told when we got to Super Tuesday it would be over. Well it may be over for the other guy,” said Biden in a victory speech in Los Angeles, making a veiled swipe at Sanders. “People are talking about a revolution. We started a movement. We increased turnout. We increased turnout for us!”

Sanders, the presumptive frontrunner coming into tonight, picked up his home state of Vermont as well as Colorado and Utah. The Associated Press called California (which awards 415 of the 1,357 delegates up for grabs tonight) just before midnight for Sanders, but it will be a while before we have final vote and delegate counts from the Golden State.

With under 50 percent of the vote in, Biden is expected to win Texas too, according to Cook Political Report.

Even without California, Biden is expected to come out of tonight with as much as a 90 delegate lead.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who is still running for president, won no states, not even the one she represents in the U.S. Senate. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also won no states, and only one territory (American Samoa).

After months of turmoil, the race is back to where it started: Biden in the lead with Sanders in a strong second.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

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Democratic Primary Voters Decisively Rejected the Media’s Favorite Candidates

As Super Tuesday finally transfigures the Democratic presidential nomination process into a binary choice between two old, occasionally problematic white men whose enduring popularity is consistently underrated by a baffled mainstream press, it’s worth reflecting on just how poorly the media’s preferred candidates performed in the 2020 race.

In the end, The New York Times‘ dual Democratic presidential endorsements—bestowed upon both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—were like the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway?: They just didn’t matter.

Nor did the media’s fawning over South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, early flirtation with Beto O’Rourke, and absolute worship of Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) resonate with the millions of Americans living outside the Acela corridor.

Instead, Democratic voters indicated over and over again that they were most interested in the popular former vice president and the iconoclastic but well-respected runner-up from the 2016 Democratic race. Before the actual primaries, Biden consistently led in polls and Sanders performed well—and then the eventual voting followed this pattern, with early wins for Sanders and a comeback surge from Biden. The idea that any other candidate had a particularly likely shot at the nomination was always pundit-driven misdirection from a class of commentators demanding more interesting, intersectional characters, because the commentators themselves are more interested in identity-based diversity than the rest of the country.

Indeed, the media stumped for Warren so hard that Vox‘s Matt Yglesias recently had to write a post explaining to people why she was losing “even if all your friends love her.” By your friends, he meant friends of people like you, a reader of Vox. Yglesias famously described Vox‘s audience as “a graduate of or student at a selective college (which also describes the staff and our social peers)” and lamented that “if you assigned me the job of serving a less-educated audience [I’d] probably need to think about how to change things up.” He’s right; outside the Vox bubble, there was little interest in the kind of cultural progressivism represented by Warren.

At present, Biden and Sanders are locked in a battle for delegates. Both men have a good shot at the nomination. But this was true a year ago as well. They were both better-known and better-liked than many in the media seemed to grasp, and an endless series of magazine covers, fluff pieces, and editorial board endorsements aimed at other candidates couldn’t make any difference whatsoever.

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Democratic Primary Voters Decisively Rejected the Media’s Favorite Candidates

As Super Tuesday finally transfigures the Democratic presidential nomination process into a binary choice between two old, occasionally problematic white men whose enduring popularity is consistently underrated by a baffled mainstream press, it’s worth reflecting on just how poorly the media’s preferred candidates performed in the 2020 race.

In the end, The New York Times‘ dual Democratic presidential endorsements—bestowed upon both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—were like the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway?: They just didn’t matter.

Nor did the media’s fawning over South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, early flirtation with Beto O’Rourke, and absolute worship of Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) resonate with the millions of Americans living outside the Acela corridor.

Instead, Democratic voters indicated over and over again that they were most interested in the popular former vice president and the iconoclastic but well-respected runner-up from the 2016 Democratic race. Before the actual primaries, Biden consistently led in polls and Sanders performed well—and then the eventual voting followed this pattern, with early wins for Sanders and a comeback surge from Biden. The idea that any other candidate had a particularly likely shot at the nomination was always pundit-driven misdirection from a class of commentators demanding more interesting, intersectional characters, because the commentators themselves are more interested in identity-based diversity than the rest of the country.

Indeed, the media stumped for Warren so hard that Vox‘s Matt Yglesias recently had to write a post explaining to people why she was losing “even if all your friends love her.” By your friends, he meant friends of people like you, a reader of Vox. Yglesias famously described Vox‘s audience as “a graduate of or student at a selective college (which also describes the staff and our social peers),” and lamented that “if you assigned me the job of serving a less-educated audience [I’d] probably need to think about how to change things up.” He’s right; outside the Vox bubble, there was little interest in the kind of cultural progressivism represented by Warren.

At present, Biden and Sanders are locked in a battle for delegates. Both men have a good shot at the nomination. But this was true a year ago as well. They were both better-known and better-liked than many in the media seemed to grasp, and an endless series of magazine covers, fluff pieces, and editorial board endorsements aimed at other candidates couldn’t make any difference whatsoever.

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Tulsi Gabbard Wins a Delegate. The DNC Might Still Keep Her Off the Debate Stage.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D–Hawaii) presidential campaign hasn’t made a lot of headlines lately. Until today! The Hawaiian representative has just won her first delegate.

Gabbard scored 103 of the 351 votes cast in the American Samoa caucus. At just shy of 30 percent of the vote, that is enough to win her one of the island territory’s six delegates.

That wasn’t enough for Gabbard to win the caucus outright. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won 49.9 percent of the vote, giving him four delegates.

It’s still a victory for Gabbard’s long-shot presidential bid that’s so far failed to expand outside an eclectic base of voters who have responded to the candidate’s laser-like focus on opposing intervention abroad.

Winning a delegate has an added benefit for Gabbard. It might earn her a spot on the next Democratic debate.

Already, staffers for the Democratic National Committee are throwing cold water on that idea, saying the threshold for future debates will be raised.

It would be a shame to keep Gabbard off the stage. Despite her failure to gain traction with voters, Gabbard’s presence at the debates has allowed her to inject an anti-war message into conversations that have focused almost entirely on domestic issues.

If allowed onstage, she could even reprise her role as debate stage assassin, issuing devastating takedowns of other candidates. (It happened to Kamala Harris. It could happen to you, Michael Bloomberg.)

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Tulsi Gabbard Wins a Delegate. The DNC Might Still Keep Her Off the Debate Stage.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D–Hawaii) presidential campaign hasn’t made a lot of headlines lately. Until today! The Hawaiian representative has just won her first delegate.

Gabbard scored 103 of the 351 votes cast in the American Samoa caucus. At just shy of 30 percent of the vote, that is enough to win her one of the island territory’s six delegates.

That wasn’t enough for Gabbard to win the caucus outright. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won 49.9 percent of the vote, giving him four delegates.

It’s still a victory for Gabbard’s long-shot presidential bid that’s so far failed to expand outside an eclectic base of voters who have responded to the candidate’s laser-like focus on opposing intervention abroad.

Winning a delegate has an added benefit for Gabbard. It might earn her a spot on the next Democratic debate.

Already, staffers for the Democratic National Committee are throwing cold water on that idea, saying the threshold for future debates will be raised.

It would be a shame to keep Gabbard off the stage. Despite her failure to gain traction with voters, Gabbard’s presence at the debates has allowed her to inject an anti-war message into conversations that have focused almost entirely on domestic issues.

If allowed onstage, she could even reprise her role as debate stage assassin, issuing devastating takedowns of other candidates. (It happened to Kamala Harris. It could happen to you, Michael Bloomberg.)

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On Super Tuesday, Dems Pick Between a Biden Restoration and a Sanders Revolution. Both Are a Disaster for Liberty.

Today’s Super Tuesday contests present Democratic primary voters with a stark choice between the Democratic Party of old, represented by former Vice President Joe Biden, and a radical vision of what the party could be, offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Neither is good news for liberty.

Sanders heads into Super Tuesday as the presumptive frontrunner, having come in first or second place in every primary and caucus held so far, and leading the delegate count by a slim margin.

Biden’s 30-point blowout in South Carolina on Saturday, meanwhile, has breathed fresh life into his once-flagging campaign, pushing him to first place in the popular vote count, and convincing his moderate rivals Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) to drop out and endorse him.

Of the 14 states that vote today, Sanders leads in California (which awards 415 of the 1,357 delegates up for grabs) and his home state of Vermont. FiveThirtyEight has Biden the heavy favorite in North Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama.

Still holding out hopes of winning a few delegates are Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) is also still in the running.

Effectively, we’re down to a two-person race. Or as New York Times columnist David Leonhardt put it, it’s “Bernie or Biden. Period.”

The candidates offer Democratic-leaning voters a clear choice: Restore the Democratic Party or revolutionize it.

Biden is the self-styled candidate of restoration. His oft-repeated line is that he is running to “restore the soul of this country” after the damaging aberration that has been the presidency of Donald Trump. His campaign literature is peppered with references to the successes of the “Obama-Biden” administration, an implicit promise that a Biden presidency would be a return to the Democratic-led normalcy of the pre-2016 word.

On policy, the former vice president isn’t above proposing expensive new initiatives. Yet, when making the case for his candidacy, he talks almost exclusively about what he’s already done.

Take his answer in the last CBS debate, when asked why voters should trust him to take on the issue of mass shootings. “Because I am the only one that’s ever got it done nationally. I’ve beat the NRA twice. I’ve got assault weapons banned. I got magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds, I got them eliminated,” said Biden.

He’s taken the same tack on healthcare. After his opposition to Medicare for All surfaced prominently in the first Democratic debate, Biden released a video in which he told voters, “I understand the appeal of Medicare for All. But folks supporting it should be clear. It means getting rid of Obamacare, and I’m not for that.”

There’s nary an issue on which Biden doesn’t pitch his presidency as a return to the best parts of a past he helped create.

That is in complete contrast with Sanders. His campaign is predicated on the idea of overthrowing a long-outdated status quo. The Vermont independent proudly wears the label of “democratic socialist.” He talks openly of taking on the Democratic establishment, right alongside Republicans.

The pre-Trump past that Biden likes to cast in positive terms is, to Sanders, just decade after decade of wage stagnation for the working class. Low unemployment and GDP growth are, to Sanders, just more indicators that the rich are getting richer.

“The economy is doing really great for people like Mr. Bloomberg and other billionaires,” said Sanders at last Tuesday’s debate, when asked if his message of radical change could succeed during good economic times. “In the last three years,” Sanders said, “billionaires in this country saw an $850 billion increase in their wealth. But you know what? For the ordinary American, things are not so good.”

Sanders’ policy proposals are radical. He wants a Green New Deal. He wants national rent control. He wants a federal jobs guarantee and protectionist tariffs. He wants to raise middle-class taxes to pay for a $32 trillion health care plan that also bans private insurance.

When asked how he’ll get any of this ambitious agenda passed, Sanders answer is that he’ll mobilize a flood of new voters who’re chomping at the bit for real, socialist change. A New York Times article from last week quotes Sanders on the campaign trail promising he can “bring millions of people into the political process who normally do not vote.”

The differences between Biden and Sanders couldn’t be more apparent. For libertarians, however, it’s a hard call determining which is the lesser of two evils.

For each of Sanders’ budget-busting, property rights-destroying proposals, there’s another one that reveals a genuine appreciation for civil liberties. He’s in favor of radical criminal justice reform and of bringing the troops home. His immigration plan is pretty good, past statements about wage suppression and billionaire conspiracies notwithstanding. While Biden is still flip-flopping on marijuana, Sanders is promising to legalize pot on day one by executive order.

Biden’s aversion to anything even remotely radical means the country would likely be safe from socialism with him in the White House. But his absence of a radical vision for the future is undercut by a past record that’s been none too good for liberty.

The long-serving Delaware senator helped pass major federal tough on crime legislation that contributed to mass incarceration. He supported the Iraq war and the PATRIOT Act. He’s a drug warrior and a gun grabber. Sanders’ Medicare for All plan is currently just a promise. Biden helped give us Obamacare, which remains the law of the land.

As Reason‘s Eric Boehm has documented, Biden’s career “is one long lesson about the dangers of bipartisan consensus politics.”

Today, Democratic voters will choose between these two visions. Unfortunately, neither one leaves much room for limited government.

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On Super Tuesday, Dems Pick Between a Biden Restoration and a Sanders Revolution. Both Are a Disaster for Liberty.

Today’s Super Tuesday contests present Democratic primary voters with a stark choice between the Democratic Party of old, represented by former Vice President Joe Biden, and a radical vision of what the party could be, offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Neither is good news for liberty.

Sanders heads into Super Tuesday as the presumptive frontrunner, having come in first or second place in every primary and caucus held so far, and leading the delegate count by a slim margin.

Biden’s 30-point blowout in South Carolina on Saturday, meanwhile, has breathed fresh life into his once-flagging campaign, pushing him to first place in the popular vote count, and convincing his moderate rivals Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) to drop out and endorse him.

Of the 14 states that vote today, Sanders leads in California (which awards 415 of the 1,357 delegates up for grabs) and his home state of Vermont. FiveThirtyEight has Biden the heavy favorite in North Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama.

Still holding out hopes of winning a few delegates are Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) is also still in the running.

Effectively, we’re down to a two-person race. Or as New York Times columnist David Leonhardt put it, it’s “Bernie or Biden. Period.”

The candidates offer Democratic-leaning voters a clear choice: Restore the Democratic Party or revolutionize it.

Biden is the self-styled candidate of restoration. His oft-repeated line is that he is running to “restore the soul of this country” after the damaging aberration that has been the presidency of Donald Trump. His campaign literature is peppered with references to the successes of the “Obama-Biden” administration, an implicit promise that a Biden presidency would be a return to the Democratic-led normalcy of the pre-2016 word.

On policy, the former vice president isn’t above proposing expensive new initiatives. Yet, when making the case for his candidacy, he talks almost exclusively about what he’s already done.

Take his answer in the last CBS debate, when asked why voters should trust him to take on the issue of mass shootings. “Because I am the only one that’s ever got it done nationally. I’ve beat the NRA twice. I’ve got assault weapons banned. I got magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds, I got them eliminated,” said Biden.

He’s taken the same tack on healthcare. After his opposition to Medicare for All surfaced prominently in the first Democratic debate, Biden released a video in which he told voters, “I understand the appeal of Medicare for All. But folks supporting it should be clear. It means getting rid of Obamacare, and I’m not for that.”

There’s nary an issue on which Biden doesn’t pitch his presidency as a return to the best parts of a past he helped create.

That is in complete contrast with Sanders. His campaign is predicated on the idea of overthrowing a long-outdated status quo. The Vermont independent proudly wears the label of “democratic socialist.” He talks openly of taking on the Democratic establishment, right alongside Republicans.

The pre-Trump past that Biden likes to cast in positive terms is, to Sanders, just decade after decade of wage stagnation for the working class. Low unemployment and GDP growth are, to Sanders, just more indicators that the rich are getting richer.

“The economy is doing really great for people like Mr. Bloomberg and other billionaires,” said Sanders at last Tuesday’s debate, when asked if his message of radical change could succeed during good economic times. “In the last three years,” Sanders said, “billionaires in this country saw an $850 billion increase in their wealth. But you know what? For the ordinary American, things are not so good.”

Sanders’ policy proposals are radical. He wants a Green New Deal. He wants national rent control. He wants a federal jobs guarantee and protectionist tariffs. He wants to raise middle-class taxes to pay for a $32 trillion health care plan that also bans private insurance.

When asked how he’ll get any of this ambitious agenda passed, Sanders answer is that he’ll mobilize a flood of new voters who’re chomping at the bit for real, socialist change. A New York Times article from last week quotes Sanders on the campaign trail promising he can “bring millions of people into the political process who normally do not vote.”

The differences between Biden and Sanders couldn’t be more apparent. For libertarians, however, it’s a hard call determining which is the lesser of two evils.

For each of Sanders’ budget-busting, property rights-destroying proposals, there’s another one that reveals a genuine appreciation for civil liberties. He’s in favor of radical criminal justice reform and of bringing the troops home. His immigration plan is pretty good, past statements about wage suppression and billionaire conspiracies notwithstanding. While Biden is still flip-flopping on marijuana, Sanders is promising to legalize pot on day one by executive order.

Biden’s aversion to anything even remotely radical means the country would likely be safe from socialism with him in the White House. But his absence of a radical vision for the future is undercut by a past record that’s been none too good for liberty.

The long-serving Delaware senator helped pass major federal tough on crime legislation that contributed to mass incarceration. He supported the Iraq war and the PATRIOT Act. He’s a drug warrior and a gun grabber. Sanders’ Medicare for All plan is currently just a promise. Biden helped give us Obamacare, which remains the law of the land.

As Reason‘s Eric Boehm has documented, Biden’s career “is one long lesson about the dangers of bipartisan consensus politics.”

Today, Democratic voters will choose between these two visions. Unfortunately, neither one leaves much room for limited government.

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