Category: reason

House Democrats on Monday released the impeachment inquiry transcript of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, who testified that President Donald Trump subverted legal protocol this summer when he froze a congressionally authorized $400 military aid package to Ukraine without informing Congress.

Cooper, who appeared before congressional investigators on October 23, is responsible for shoring up the U.S. relationship with Ukraine amidst Russian aggression. Her role includes helping disburse aid funding to the country.

The Pentagon official testified that her department received guidance to hold the aid in mid-July, 2019 and that it “was a source of concern.”

At a July 26 meeting, the day following Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, Cooper said that “it was stated very clearly” that the interruption of aid was related to Trump’s desire for a corruption investigation, and that “deputies began to raise concerns about how this could be done in a legal fashion.”

There were “only two legally available options” to freeze the aid, she testified: the Department of Defense needed to complete “a reprogramming action,” or Trump needed to submit a rescission notice to Congress. In either case, congressional notification is needed, which “did not occur.”

The impeachment probe is looking into allegations that Trump misused his position to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into publicly undertaking politically-motivated investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his family, as well as whether Ukraine intervened in the 2016 U.S. election in order to assist former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

On August 20, Cooper met with former special envoy Kurt Volker, who she says detailed “an effort that he was engaged in to see if there was a statement that the government of Ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in U.S. elections and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference.” According to Cooper’s account, Volker wanted Ukrainian officials to publicly announce the desired anti-corruption investigation in exchange for military aid to the country.

“The context for the discussion that I had with Ambassador Volker,” Cooper continued, “related specifically to the path that he was pursuing to lift the hold would be to get them to make this statement.”

Cooper also testified that, by mid-August, it was clear that “there were Ukrainians who knew about this.” That statement contradicts claims made by Trump that Ukraine’s government was not aware of the hold-up until later in the month, when they learned it from publicly available news reports.

“Neither he (Taylor) or any other witness has provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld. You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo,” Trump tweeted on October 23, quoting Rep. John Ratcliffe’s (R–Texas) appearance on Fox and Friends.

Cooper’s deposition originally made headlines after a group of Republicans stormed the space in protest of the closed-door hearings, delaying her testimony by five hours.

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The Foreign Agent Registration Act is having a moment – in fact its best year since 1939, as the Justice Department charges three people with spying on Twitter users for Saudi Arabia. Since they were clearly acting like spies but not stealing government secrets or company intellectual property, FARA seems to be the only law that they could be charged with violating. Nate Jones and I debate whether the Justice Department can make the charges stick.

Nick Weaver goes off on NSO Group for its failure to supervise the way its customers intrude on cell phone contents. I’m less sure that NSO deserves its bad rap, and I wonder whether WhatsApp should have compromised what looks like 1100 legitimate law enforcement investigations because it questions 100 other investigatons using NSO malware.

Speaking of Facebook’s judgment, Paul Rosenzweig and I turn out to be surprisingly sympathetic to the company’s stand on political ads and whether “Mama Facebook” should decide their truthfulness. Meanwhile, Twitter, darling of the press, has gotten away with a no-political-ads stance that is at least as problematical.

Nate, Paul, and I go pretty far down the rabbit hole arguing whether search warrants should give police access to DNA databases.

The National Security Commission on Artificial intelligence has published its interim report, and Nick, Nate, and I can’t really quarrel with its contents, except to complain that it doesn’t break a lot of new ground.

And maybe all this AI is still a little overrated. Remember that AI fake news text generator that OpenAI claimed was “too dangerous to release”? Well it’s been released, and it turns out to be bone stupid. We test it live, and the tool has a long way to go before it can scratch its way up to “underwhelming.”

Nick tells us why nobody who ever worked with the US government should even change planes in Russia these days.

In the lightning round, Paul and I ask when blowing off Congress became a thing anybody could do. Nick dumps on both sides in the Great DOH debate. I note that Ted Cruz has called out USTR for sticking Section 230 into trade deals.

We close with This Week in Pew! Pew! Pew! It really is the 21st century now that we’re using lasers to attack talking computers. Nick explains how to order fifty copies of Skating on Stilts using your neighbor’s Amazon account and a laser.

Download the 287th Episode (mp3).

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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the participants’ firms, clients, or relatives.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) tells Amy Goodman that “Markets without rules are theft.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) tweets that “billionaires should not exist.” The conversation gets people so excited that soon former cabinet secretaries are tweeting that there are no honest ways to accumulate a billion dollars, commentators are warning that “these fortunes will destroy our democracy,” and The New York Times is publishing entire news articles taking at face value the numerical fantasies of Warren’s economic advisers.

It was just another week in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, in other words, albeit with one main exception—the race saw the entrance of a brand new (though also old) billionaire! All of which gets a thorough round of yakking from Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, and Katherine Mangu-Ward on today’s Reason Roundtable podcast. The gang also talks about the latest impeachment dramedy, the best arguments in favor of capitalism, and the life well lived of the late libertarian philanthropist and financial-markets investor Don Smith.

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

‘Amazing Plan—Distressed’ by Kevin Macleod is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Relevant links from the show:

“The Reason Podcast Is Now 3 Great New Podcasts. Subscribe!” by Katherine Mangu-Ward

“Democratic Wealth Tax Proposals Demonstrate Economic Ignorance,” by Veronique de Rugy

“Elizabeth Warren Wants To Raise Taxes by $26 Trillion,” by Peter Suderman

“Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Wealth Tax’ Is Punishment, Not Taxation,” by Ira Stoll

“Leftist Tax Schemes Bash the Rich, but Depend on Their Success,” by Steven Greenhut

“Warren’s Presidential Bid Aims to Blame ‘the Rich’ for America’s Problems,” by Ira Stoll

“Are Billionaires a Policy Failure?” by Matt Welch

“Are Billionaires Immoral? Democrats Are Staking Out Aggressive Anti-Wealth Platforms Ahead of 2020,” by Ira Stoll

“Michael Bloomberg’s Centrism Combines the Worst Instincts of the Right and Left,” by Jacob Sullum

“Michael Bloomberg’s Chances of Becoming President: Slim, None, and Fat,” by Matt Welch

“Reason.tv: Investor Don Smith on the Economy,” by Nick Gillespie

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Two Hongkongers were sent to the hospital in critical condition Monday following separate violent incidents. In one, police shot a protester at close range. In the other, protesters doused a Beijing sympathizer in gasoline and set him on fire.

Many Hongkongers are still mourning the Friday death of a 22-year-old student protester, Chow Tsz-lok, who had been hospitalized following a police encounter. The protests, now in their sixth month, have been mostly peaceful (with some notable exceptions); that’s less true of the police response. Today’s events mark a notable shift: The violence was particularly severe, it occurred during the daytime, and it spilled over into the business district, with tear gas harming those who have not taken part in protests.

Video footage of the shooting, which took place in Sai Wan Ho neighborhood, shows a police officer grabbing one black-clad protester while a second approaches the cop. The officer fired at the approaching protester, identified as 21-year-old Patrick Chow, who clutched his stomach and immediately fell to the ground. Chow remains in critical condition, according to the Hospital Authority.

That marks the third time police have fired live rounds at protesters. In early October, police shot an 18-year-old student protester named Tsang Chi-kin. Several days later, police shot a 14-year-old protester in the leg. Both survived their injuries.

Two more #HongKong protesters shot with live rounds. A riot officer then starts cuffing the wounded protesters and moving one around like a rag doll as he bleeds out. pic.twitter.com/77i1ycGBuX

— Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) November 11, 2019

Video footage of the burn victim shows a lengthy altercation between a group of Hong Kong supporters and what appears to be a single Beijing sympathizer. It escalated when a protester douses the lone Beijing supporter with gasoline and lights him on fire. The Beijing sympathizer is also in critical condition.

A man was doused in fluid and set on fire after what appears to be a confrontation during the #HongKongProtests Monday

He is in critical condition in the hospital, according to Hong Kong police #香港 pic.twitter.com/Tgs2U7Uibw

— Bloomberg TicToc (@tictoc) November 11, 2019

A third video from today shows a police officer on a motorcycle attempting to ram his vehicle into crowds of protesters. John Tse, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Police Force, says that the officer has been placed on leave and that he was just trying to separate protesters from police.

Hong Kong’s police force has been under scrutiny for use of excessive force against protesters, especially misuse of tear gas, which has been fired near public housing and into enclosed spaces, such as subway stations.

Hong Kong police trying to mow protesters down on a motorbike. pic.twitter.com/AC8OsSFOyy

— Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) November 11, 2019

As a result of the violence, several universities have canceled classes; medics have treated several commuters who were exposed to tear gas.

The protests initially centered around a now-revoked extradition treaty proposed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam. The bill would have allowed Hongkongers to be extradited to Taiwan and mainland China, where the criminal justice system is arbitrary and harsh—a far cry from the due process protections that Hongkongers currently enjoy. Though Hong Kong is technically part of China, the territory operates under a “one country, two systems” policy that allows its citizens free speech, a free press, and the ability to elect some of their representatives. The policy is set to remain in place until 2047, at which point the city will be fully absorbed by the mainland. Many Hongkongers are worried that the Communist Party of China is prematurely encroaching on their rights.

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Australia’s war on drugs has led to the repulsive but perhaps inevitable spectacle of cops leering at the bodies of girls as young as 12.

Data released last week about police tactics in New South Wales, provided in response to a records request by the Redfern Legal Centre, show that law enforcement’s obsession with stamping out drug use at outdoor festivals has produced a twentyfold increase in strip searches over the course of a decade. They have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last four years. And most of the time, the cops are finding nothing.

According to the date, nearly two-thirds of the 5,400 strip searches performed by New South Wales police from 2017 to 2018 found absolutely nothing. In the past three years, more than 600 people under 18 were subjected to police strip searches. Three of them were 12 years old. Seven were 13.

More than 90 percent of these strip searches stemmed from suspicion of illegal drug possession. The New York Times and The Guardian both report that festivals in New South Wales are now thick with police and their dogs sniffing around for drugs—and, apparently, for reasons to look inside young people’s underwear.

The Guardian details the story of one 19-year-old man’s strip search. It’ll sound familiar to anybody who has experienced or read about America’s sorry handling of people who police suspect of getting high‚and about our overdependence on the flawed noses of drug-sniffing dogs:

“I knew I didn’t have anything on me, no drugs or anything, so it was no problem,” [Camille Elies] says.

“But then the dog started sniffing around the car and she started saying ‘you look a bit nervous mate, you look nervous, if you have drugs on you then you might as well tell me now or I’ll take you to the strip-search tent and we’ll find them that way.'”

Elies says the officer started recording him using her body-worn camera. While he continued to deny he had any drugs, she continued to press him on why he looked “nervous”.

“I said, ‘because you are interrogating me and you have the dog there.’ She was being so rude about it as if I had done something wrong already,” he says.

Elies was eventually strip searched in a makeshift tent. Two male officers instructed him to lift his shirt, drop his pants and hold on to his genitals while they “walked around” him.

“I was a bit shook up,” he says. “I don’t know. I just, yeah, I was shook up by it to be honest.”

These intrusive searches are supposed to be justified by a recent increase in deaths by festival attendees who had taken MDMA. New South Wales has seen six such deaths in the past year, as opposed to 12 in the entire prior decade. But there are other, better methods of dealing with overdose deaths. New South Wales’ deputy coroner, Harriet Grahame, argues that the police presence actually increases, not decreases, the likelihood that somebody will get hurt. She’d rather introduce pill testing at these outdoor festivals so that people can check to make sure their MDMA is safe. After all, overdose deaths frequently happen not because people have taken too many pills, but because they aren’t aware that the pills have been adulterated, often with fentanyl, or because the drugs are much more powerful than they realize. Drug-testing stations would help users make sure they’re not taking something that will kill them.

Unfortunately, many public officials are standing fast. Here’s how New South Wales’s police minister, David Elliott, defends the police practice of leering at teens’ naked bodies:

I’ve got young children, and if I thought that the police felt that they were at risk of doing something wrong, I’d want them strip-searched.

One wonders what his children think about that.

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Donald Trump Jr. spoke at the University of California, Los Angeles, yesterday to promote his new book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.

An ideological group of hateful silencers did indeed interrupt the proceedings, forcing Trump to cut short the Q&A period. But these were not intolerant, triggered leftists. They were far-right activists.

This is a reality that a more mainstream conservatism must take seriously. While criticism of the campus left is often justified—I’ve penned two articles on the subject just today—for too long the right has treated alt-right-adjacent trolling as trivial or insignificant when compared with progressive activism.

The irony of Trump Jr. promoting a book about leftist shutdown culture and instead finding himself interrupted by the right was not lost on the media outlets who covered the incident. Trump Jr. even challenged his audience to “name a time when conservatives have disrupted even the furthest leftist on a college campus.

“It doesn’t happen that way,” he insisted. “We’re willing to listen.”

Well, it depends who the “we” is. Indeed, a number of conservative campus events in recent days have been targeted by supporters of Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old YouTuber and far-right gadfly. Fuentes describes his views as nationalist and “America First,” though he has a long history of making racist and anti-Semitic statements. His movement has recently hijacked events featuring Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R–Tex.) and folks in the Daily Wire orbit over their support for Israel and their refusal to avow that the U.S. should remain a culturally “European”—i.e., white—nation. Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro recently inveighed against this movement in his remarks at Stanford University, and was right to do so.

Trump’s talk was sponsored the young conservative group Turning Point USA, which has raised the Fuentes gang’s ire for being too moderate on social issues. At a recent TUPUSA event at Ohio State University, a Fuentes activist asked Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Rob Smith, “How does anal sex help us win the culture war?” The only point of this bizarre non sequitir was to shame Kirk for featuring Smith—a gay, black conservative—in his campus tour. Kirk and Smith justly mocked the questioner.

It’s great to see conservatives denouncing this racist, anti-gay, white identitarian nonsense. When the right inveighs against progressive censorship and intolerance, it really needs to stress that this is a serious problem on its radical flank as well. Far-Right Trolls Sabotage Event might not generate as many clicks in the conservative media environment as Triggered Left Wants to Silence You, but it is no less important to say.

For more on this subject, check out my book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.

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