Category: reason

I am truly sorry that DeWayne Johnson is suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), but years of scientific research has determined that it is exceedingly unlikely, despite the outrageous verdict of a California jury on Friday, that he contracted NHL from using the herbicide glyphosate. Applying the relatively low standard of proof required in California civil courts that a claim is “more likely to be true than not true,” the jury awarded Johnson a $289 million judgment including $250 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, the maker of the herbicide.

This is an injustice. So far every regulatory agency that has assessed the safety of glyphosate has concluded that it is unlikely to be a human carcinogen at doses at which people encounter the herbicide. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s December, 2017, draft human health risk assessment concluded that “glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” The agency’s assessment additionally found “no other meaningful risks to human health when the product is used according to the pesticide label.”

Similarly, a 2015 evaluation of the herbicide by the highly precautionary European Food Safety Authority concluded that “glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.” Another EFSA review in May covering all crops treated with glyphosate included “a risk assessment which shows that current exposure levels are not expected to pose a risk to human health.”

Specifically relevant to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a long run study of more than 50,000 licensed agricultural pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa published in May reported that “in this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes.”

So given the reams of solid scientific evidence for the safety of glyphosate, how did the jury get their verdict so wrong? Among other things, the court allowed Environmental Defense Fund activist Christopher Portier to mislead them by permitting him to serve as an expert witness for the plaintiff Johnson.

As I reported earlier, Portier chaired the Advisory Group to Recommend Priorities for the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which recommended that the agency evaluate glyphosate. He subsequently served as an invited specialist to the IARC group that evaluated studies related to glyphosate and the risk of cancer. In 2015, the IARC issued, partly as a result of Portier’s influence, a scientifically flawed monograph that classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

After he retired from National Center for Environmental Health, Portier began working in 2013 as a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an activist group that has long opposed many aspects of crop biotechnology and the use of glyphosate. In a 2014 letter to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives defending a scientifically discredited study on biotech corn, Portier listed only his affiliation with the IARC. The IARC did later disclose Portier’s affiliation with EDF, but the agency apparently failed to consider the possibility that his work with anti-pesticide activist group might amount to a conflict of interest.

Just after the IARC issued its glyphosate monograph, Portier signed lucrative contracts with a couple of big civil litigation law firms to work as an expert witness asserting that glyphosate likely caused specific cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These same law firms have now lined up thousands of clients claiming that glyphosate caused their cancers.

Jurors see the sympathetic plaintiffs before them and understandably want to help them and punish those who putatively caused them harm; thus a verdict of $289 million. But the jurors do not see the substantial harms caused by the possible removal of a safe herbicide from the market including lower crop productivity, increased soil erosion, additional deforestation, lower farm incomes, increased food prices, and the deployment of more dangerous herbicides.

Given the overwhelming scientific evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, it is well beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury has been badly misled into getting its verdict wrong in this case.

Disclosure: The 100 shares of Monsanto that I bought with my own money have now been sold to Bayer.

Joseph Curtatone, the Democratic mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, is calling on city residents to boycott the beer company Sam Adams for profiting off President Trump’s “white nationalist agenda.”

Boston Business Journal reports that Sam Adams founder Jim Koch and other business executives dined with the president last Wednesday. During dinner, Koch reportedly thanked the president for a tax cut that would greatly help his business compete against foreign brewers. According to the report, Koch told Trump, “The tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies.” He added that American beer companies paid 38 percent in taxes while foreign competitors paid 20 percent.

An angered Curtatone tweeted a promise to boycott Sam Adams beer. He also wrote, “We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump’s white nationalist agenda accountable.”

I will never drink Sam Adam’s beer again! https://t.co/UCywb9I7xE

— Joseph A. Curtatone (@JoeCurtatone) August 12, 2018

We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump’s white nationalist agenda accountable ! https://t.co/UCywb9I7xE

— Joseph A. Curtatone (@JoeCurtatone) August 12, 2018

There have been significant changes in favor of American beer recently. Last year, Reason‘s Christian Britschgi reported that a bipartisan Senate tax reform bill cut taxes for brewers, vintners, and distillers—in some cases by half. Additionally, the bill would ease some regulations on things such as bookkeeping and easier transportation between distilleries. The law went into effect at the beginning of 2018.

“That would have a huge impact on our business,” Julie Verratti, co-founder of Denizens Brewing Company, said. “Any type of alleviation is huge for us.”

As Reason‘s Scott Shackford previously reported, this is not the first time a popular beer faced criticism from a Democratic politician for its proximity to Trump. After Dick Yuengling Jr. of the Yuengling brewery welcomed Eric Trump to the brewery in 2016, Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims responded with, “Goodbye Yuengling and shame on you.” Though Yuengling Jr. said a Trump presidency would help create more companies like his, Sims dismissed his support as “anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-racial minority and anti-equality.”

Following the tweet storm, Curtatone addressed critics who promised to make Sam Adams their beer of choice.

Got some people insisting they’re going to make Sam Adams their beer of choice now because of something I tweeted. No, they won’t.

— Joseph A. Curtatone (@JoeCurtatone) August 14, 2018

In 2013, Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey co-authored a business history-cum-manifesto titled Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Drawing on his experiences with Whole Foods, Mackey outlined an unapologetically free market approach to commerce that also stressed far more than simply maximizing returns to shareholders.

“We believe that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity. Free enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived. It is one of the most compelling ideas we humans have ever had. But we can aspire to even more,” reads the credo of Conscious Capitalism, a nonprofit Mackey created to help popularize his ideas and engage entrepreneurs and policymakers.

I sat down with Mackey and Alexander McCobin, the CEO of Conscious Capitalism, to talk about the group’s goals, activities, and reception on both the right and the left. The podcast was taped at FreedomFest, the annual gathering of libertarians held each July in Las Vegas, and we talked about everything from the Industrial Revolution to the human potential movement to McCobin’s role in creating Students for Liberty, one of the largest libertarian organizations in the world.

For more on Mackey, including his legendary 2005 Reason debate with Milton Friedman and T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor about the social responsibility of business, go here.

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Photo credit: Kris Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Newscom

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Few straw ban bills have proven as controversial as the one being considered in Santa Barbara, California.

On July 17, a bill was introduced into the Santa Barbara City Council that would prohibit restaurants from giving their patrons single-use plastic straws. The proposed ordinance made every illicit straw handed out—save for the first straw—a violation of the municipal code, and empowered the city to levy fines or even bring criminal charges.

That July 17 meeting saw the bill discussed, and orally amended to include an exemption for disabled people, after which the city council voted 6-to-1 to place the straw ban bill on the “consent calendar” for the next meeting, meaning that it would be voted on the following week.

Voting to put something on the consent calendar typically suggests support for the underlying bill, so local media—including the Santa Barbara Independent, ABC affiliate KEYT, and local news website Noozhawk—reported the straw ban as passed.

When I wrote about the bill on July 19, I said it had passed as well. Operating off the text of the bill that the council had voted on—which did not include the orally-added disability exemption—I also said the bill did not include a carve out for disabled people.

Saying that the bill had passed was incorrect, as it required another, final vote before it officially became law. This falsehood might have been missed had it not been for two things.

Firstly, other outlets started picking up on my reporting, and saying, as I did, that the bill had been passed. This in turn sparked a wave of counter-reaction to Santa Barbara’s still proposed straw ban, including segments on Fox News, countless straw ban memes, and a flood of outraged calls to the city government about the bill. People even started to mail straws to city hall in protest.

Secondly, on July 24, the Santa Barbara city council voted not to approve its straw ban as written, but rather to send it back to the council’s Ordinance Committee so that plastic stirrers could be included in the ban.

“I can understand how folks would be asking for plastic cutlery in certain circumstances, but I cannot … understand why we need plastic stirrers,” said Councilman Gregg Hart at that meeting.

The city also used the occasion of sending its straw ban back to committee to do some damage control. On July 26, the city issued a press release stating that a vote on the proposed ban was being delayed (while omitting any mention of the reason for the delay). This press release also stated that “jail time and fines are not proposed for anyone who uses a plastic straw or provides one to a customer.”

The claim that jail time and fines are not part of Santa Barbara’s straw ban as currently written is not true. As I explained in my initial post, by prohibiting the provision of plastic straws by food service businesses, the city council was giving the city government the power to pursue criminal charges against straw providers should it want to.

Bryan Latchford, Santa Barbara’s outreach coordinator for environmental services, stressed to me that regardless of the potential penalties allowed by the bill, the city council had no intention of criminalizing scofflaw straw providers.

“The intention was never to issue fines or jail time,” says Latchford, telling Reason that the drafting of the straw ban as an ordinary code violation—any violation of which is a misdemeanor by default—was a decision made by the Santa Barbara city attorney (who’s tasked with writing up all ordinances in formal legal language) for reasons of expediency. In short, it was so outside Santa Barbara’s intentions to fine or jail someone for straws, it was a waste of time to make that explicit in the text of the ordinance they were considering.

Latchford also cited the city’s plastic bag ban and its prohibition on jaywalking as examples of things that are technically misdemeanors under the city’s code, but which would never be charged as such. Santa Barbara’s mayor, as well as a number of commenters, have made a similiar point to argue that the focus on the maximum penalties allowed for straw possession are misplaced, if not inaccurate.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that laws, once passed, become separated from the intentions of those who voted for them.

Latchford’s example of jaywalking speaks to this. I seriously doubt, for instance, that when nearby Los Angeles passed its jaywalking ordinance in 1925, the intention was to fine, arrest, and otherwise harass the city’s homeless residents. Nevertheless, that is exactly what has played out, as Reason‘s Brian Doherty noted in his 2014 article “Petty Law Enforcement vs. the Poor.”

More extreme one-off examples of jaywalking enforcement can be found as well. In 2017 Nandi Cain received a vicious beating from a Sacramento police officer after he was stopped for jaywalking. Something similar happened in Stockton, California in 2015, when nine officers hit, tackled, and then arrested a 16-year-old for jaywalking and resisting arrest. We shouldn’t forget the fates of Eric Garner or Michael Brown, both killed by police after being stopped for selling loose cigarettes and jaywalking respectively.

Whether or not the Santa Barbara officials pushing a straw ban in 2018 want to see fines and jail time for violators does not change the fact that these penalties are still on the books, and could be used to harass, jail, and impoverrish residents and businesses should political will change.

Indeed, statements from Santa Barbara officials suggest that, while the city doesn’t intend to seek the maximum penalties for its straw ban, it likes having them around for use in extreme, vaguely defined circumstances.

When I asked Santa Barbara Assistant City Attorney Scott Vincent about the potential penalties in the city’s straw bill, he stressed that they would only be used in extreme circumstances. Latchford himself said told KEYT that “jail time or stiff fines are not the intent for first-time offenders,” but that those penalties are included in the city’s code as a last line of defense.

If the intention of Santa Barbara straw ban proponents is truly to never use the maximum penalties allowed by current text of its straw ban, then those maximum penalties should be removed. Otherwise, what is the argument for keeping them? If the intention is to only use these maximum penalties for the most egregious straw violators, city officials owe it to their constituents to explain what these circumstances might be.

The straw ban ordinance will not be picked up by the full council again until September, and Latchford tells me that there is a possibility the penalties in the bill will be amended or removed.

Doing so would demonstrate that Santa Barbara city officials’ handwringing about how they would never try to fine or jail someone for handing out plastic straws to customers is more than just damage control.

Avital Ronnell, a leading professor of feminist philosophy at New York University, has been forced to take a year off after NYU determined that she had sexually harassed a male student. If there’s a stranger #MeToo story out there, I’ve yet to hear it.

Ronnell identifies as a lesbian; the student she is accused of harassing is gay, and now married to another man. Also extraordinary: many well-known feminists—including the legendary Judith Butler—came to Ronnell’s defense, testifying to her “grace and keen wit” and demanding that she “receive a fair hearing.” (Butler and co. taking the side of the accused in a sexual misconduct dispute would of course be unthinkable if the accused were male, as is usually the case.)

The New York Times reviewed excerpts of NYU’s report on the matter. I have not seen this report, and thus I am reliant on the the Times‘ version. Unfortunately, I’ve learned not to entirely trust the Grey Lady on matters relating to Title IX, the federal statute that governs campus sexual misconduct trials. The assertions described in the story certainly sound like sexual harassment, but without knowing more I can’t say whether there are mitigating contextual factors. Regardless, Ronnell’s defenders are right that she was entitled to a fair hearing.

The accuser, Nimrod Reitman, claimed that Ronnell pressured him into an amorous relationship. She would visit him at his home, climb into bed with him, and force him to kiss and touch her. According to The Times:

In the semesters that followed, Mr. Reitman said he was expected to work with Professor Ronell, often at her apartment, during lengthy work sessions nearly every weekend. Professor Ronell frequently detailed her affection and longing for him, according to emails from her that Mr. Reitman provided to The New York Times.

“I woke up with a slight fever and sore throat,” she wrote in an email on June 16, 2012, after the Paris trip. “I will try very hard not to kiss you — until the throat situation receives security clearance. This is not an easy deferral!” In July, she wrote a short email to him: “time for your midday kiss. my image during meditation: we’re on the sofa, your head on my lap, stroking you [sic] forehead, playing softly with yr hair, soothing you, headache gone. Yes?”

In a submission to the Title IX office, Professor Ronell said she had no idea Mr. Reitman was so uncomfortable until she read the investigators’ report.

NYU’s Policy on Consensual Intimate Relationships prohibits “sexual, dating, or romantic relationships” between professors and graduate students who are in the same discipline or academic program, and between a faculty advisor and their advisee. The responsibility for not engaging in such behavior rests solely with the professor, according to the policy. It would seem fairly clear Ronnell is in violation of it.

Of greatest interest to me, though, is this comment from a defender of Ronnell:

Diane Davis, chair of the department of rhetoric at the University of Texas-Austin, who also signed the letter to the university supporting Professor Ronell, said she and her colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr. Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a feminist.

“I am of course very supportive of what Title IX and the #MeToo movement are trying to do, of their efforts to confront and to prevent abuses, for which they also seek some sort of justice,” Professor Davis wrote in an email. “But it’s for that very reason that it’s so disappointing when this incredible energy for justice is twisted and turned against itself, which is what many of us believe is happening in this case.”

In this woman’s deeply unprincipled view, it’s wrong to use Title IX against a member of the feminist left. And we were supposed to believe that Gloria Steinem’s “one free grope” rule had been consigned to the dustbin of history! How can it be said that Title IX is really about ending gender-based discrimination, if it’s wrong to use Title IX to protect men from sexual harassment?

In the days following an airstrike that killed 14 people in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz last month, official reports of the incident followed a familiar but disturbing routine.

Initially, the Afghani military claimed responsibility for the strike, but denied that the victims were civilians. “It is propaganda by the enemy,” an Afghan army officer told The New York Times, before suggesting that perhaps it was the Taliban who were responsible for the deaths.

But reports from the scene soon punched holes in that story. The attack had targeted a house where 20 people lived, including women and children—at least thee of whom were killed in the attack. Not even a few days later, the strike was revealed by local and U.S. military officials to be an American airstrike. The U.S. military opened an investigation.

That investigation ended last week, with the Pentagon absolving itself of responsibilty for the attack.

“After carefully considering all relevant and reasonably available information, which included a review of the Afghan government’s report of findings, our investigation found no credible information to corroborate the allegations,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman, said in a statement to Reuters.

The confusion and disarray following the attack is aggravated by the fact that the Afghan Ministry of Defense corroborated the civilian status of the victims, according to the Times, and issued an apology for the attack. Additionally, the dead included eleven women and children, with one as young as three years old, hardly fit for fighting. Since the Taliban do not admit women fighters, it seems unusual that so many of them would be killed in an attack supposedly aimed only at insurgents. The New York Times reports that this is the third such event since 2016 in which American airstrikes were blamed for the loss of civilians. One of these events even involved the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital that killed 42 and even warranted an apology from the president.

While the reports differ on who did the killing and who was killed, there’s no doubt that civilian deaths in Afghanistan continue to rise. The United Nations found that there was a 52 percent increase in the number of civilians killed by airstrikes in the first half of this year. Recently, the U.S. has embraced a policy of conducting more airstrikes in an effort to force the Taliban to come to the negotiating table, but the policy has been to no avail.

America has been involved in Afghanistan since 1978 when it funded and armed anti-communist revolutionaries, many of whom would take up these same arms against the United States in 2001. Despite this long history in the region, we have remarkably little to show for it but more government lies, more debt, and more civilian deaths.

It’s estimated that taxpayers will pay $45 billion this year for America’s efforts in Afghanistan, about half of which will go to bureaucratic waste and corruption. A BBC report found that, even with this spending, the Taliban operates in 70 percent of Afghanistan and the Islamic State is more active in the area than it’s ever been.

How is this possible, one might ask? Turns out dropping bombs on innocent people doesn’t do much for their morale and, in fact, pushes people towards radical fringe movements like the Taliban. Displacing innocent civilians and killing local noncombatants is a surefire recipe for powerful Taliban propaganda that only solidifies the already powerful anti-American sentiments present throughout the Afghan mountains.

“I think it’s important that we have dialog between countries that control 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in a press conference call this morning, responding to critics who see something sinister in a U.S. senator traveling to Russia for meetings with politicians there, given that Russia is accused of meddling in U.S. elections.

Paul visited Russia to meet with members of the Russian Federation Council (the nation’s upper legislative body) and Duma, and to deliver a message from President Donald Trump to Russian President Putin, as well as meet with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

He was “excited to announce” that Russian legislators agreed to “continue these discussions” by “coming to Washington after our November election.”

Because of existing U.S. sanctions, some specific Russian legislators cannot enter the United States, a policy Paul hopes to change. He also hopes to to be able to meet further with such barred legislators “in a third party neutral country.”

Paul summoned memories of Reagan’s diplomacy with the Soviet Union in the last days of the Cold War when mentioning his own pow-wow with Gorbachev.

In addition to the nuclear weapons question, Paul also spoke of cooperation in fighting terrorism as a good reason for high-level, continual, and friendly interactions between the U.S. and Russia.

“Ways to resolve military conflict in the Middle East” are another area in which he thinks we need open lines with Russia, since “many say that the war in Syria will not come to a military conclusion with complete victory or loss to any party” and “we have to get to the point where we can find some peace in Syria.” That’s another reason he thinks those who “want to diplomatically isolate us to not have relations with Russia are making a big mistake.”

Perhaps as a jab back at those who insult aspects of Paul’s peace-oriented foreign policy as “isolationist,” Paul made frequent references to those against dialog with Russia as represented by his Russia trip as “diplomatic isolationists.” He criticized Democrats who let partisan dislike for the Trump administration blind them to the dangers of refusal to have decent relations with Russia, especially as it relates to nuclear arms control.

The New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia will be expiring in 2021, and Paul hopes that some form of agreement on the curbing of nuclear arms possession with the two countries can continue. He grants that Trump himself has spoken out against New START in the past, and when it comes to that and the 1987 INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty, there are “allegations that both sides have done activities that violate either the spirit or details of New START or INF.”

Still, the “only way to figure out nuclear arms agreements’ complicated details” is to get the people involved in dialog. Not just politicians, but nuclear arms negotiators “need to be talking to each other” and if Trump believes aspects of the existing treaties are a bad deal, getting down to the specifics of why and what to do about it needs to be discussed openly.

Paul did discuss his trip to Russia with Trump before leaving, he says. In addition, “we were briefed by the State Department several times in advance of our meetings in Russia” and Paul will also brief them on his return tomorrow.

Paul being the most prominent legislator openly on Trump’s side regarding relations with Russia has helped mark him as a “comeback” kid when it comes to foreign policy influence, with some crediting him with keeping Trump on the peace side of U.S. conflicts with Iran.

Drama on this season of the White House has doubled in size thanks to revelations from Omarosa Manigault Newman, former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison and star of President Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. After finding herself fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in December, Manigault Newman exacted her revenge on the Trump administration with damning revelations about the administration in her new tell-all, UNHINGED. But her use of audio recordings in the book have raised legal questions.

Manigault Newman claimed that she recorded conversations in the White House, even a few with the president. Armed with the recordings, she said she had proof that Trump used the n-word on the The Apprentice, despite Trump’s numerous proclamations that he is the “least racist person” one could ever meet.

On Tuesday, CBS played audio of high-profile Trump campaign staffers, like former spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, figuring out ways to spin the potential release of a recording that possibly features the president using the racial slur. In one recording, Pierson allegedly says, “He said it. No he said it. He’s embarrassed.”

POTUS says former White House staffer @Omarosa lied when she called him a racist who has said the N-word on tape. But a new recording, obtained by @CBSNews overnight, seems to back up Omarosa’s story that several Trump advisers discussed an alleged tape during the 2016 campaign. pic.twitter.com/tV3R6P2TvE

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) August 14, 2018

As the public reacts to the news of the potential tape, questions of the legality of Manigault Newman’s recording loom. As The Daily Beast reported, the White House conversations Manigault Newman claims to have are conversations that include herself. This small detail is important when taking into account wiretapping law in the District of Columbia.

According to D.C. Code § 23-542, D.C. is a one-party consent state. This means that only one person in a conversation needs to consent to being recorded—the participant can be the recorder or can give permission to another person to record. If Manigault Newman was, in fact, part of the conversations she recorded, she would be well within the confines of the law. If for some reason Manigault Newman recorded conversations that she was not part of without consent from those involved, she would be in violation of the law.

As details of the latest White House scandal come out, the Trump campaign has explored other legal actions to take against Manigault Newman. Earlier, she claimed to have refused $15,000 in hush money from the campaign. Records from the campaign reportedly confirmed that other former staffers were offered the same amount of money in exchange for their silence. Whether or not she took the money, the Trump campaign announced on Tuesday that it would be taking her to court for breaching a non-disclosure clause in the campaign contract she signed in 2016.

Actor Tom Arnold once said that he was in possession of a tape on which Trump said “every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever.” He said the comments were made during outtakes of The Apprentice and included him “saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children.”

West Virginia’s House of Delegates has impeached all four of the state’s Supreme Court justices, who allegedly abused their authority and used taxpayer funds for personal gain.

Fourteen articles of impeachment were brought up against Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justices Allen Loughry, Robin Davis, and Elizabeth Walker of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Eleven of those articles were officially adopted last night and this morning, putting the justices’ fates in the hands of the state Senate. Davis has already retired from her post. Another former justice, Menis Ketchum, resigned last month and admitted to defrauding the state.

Of the four justices impeached this week, Loughry is probably in the most trouble. According to the articles of impeachment, he wasted more than $363,000 of taxpayer funds on office renovations, including a $32,000 couch. He’s also accused of misusing government vehicles and computer equipment, taking a desk from his office home with him, and lying to the state’s House Finance Committee when questioned about his alleged wrongdoing.

Loughry is facing something worse than just removal from office. In June, he was indicted on multiple counts of fraud. His case is somewhat ironic, considering that he’s the author of a 2006 book about political corruption in West Virginia.

Davis, meanwhile, allegedly spent $500,000 to renovate her office. Workman and Walker were also accused of unnecessarily spending large amounts of state funds to remodel their offices ($111,000 and $131,000, respectively). But they were cleared, as those sums were considerably less than what Loughry and Davis allegedly spent.

The justices aren’t just accused of overspending on themselves. The House of Delegates also approved impeachment articles charging Loughry, Workman, and Davis with overpaying senior status judges (who are retired but still preside over some cases) for their work.

Walker was the last of the justices to be impeached. The House said that she, along with her colleagues, failed “to provide or prepare reasonable and proper supervisory oversight” of the Supreme Court of Appeals and its “subordinate courts.”

“This is indeed a sad day and certainly no cause for anyone to celebrate,” Del. John Shott (R–27), chairman of the state’s House Judiciary Committee, told The New York Times. “But it is our duty, and I think the public demands it.”

There is also a significant timing issue at play with the impeachment proceedings and subsequent state Senate hearings. As NPR notes, West Virginia has until the end of today to set up a special election to replace any departing justices. If that deadline isn’t met, Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, will be able to appoint judges to fill the open seats.

In announcing her retirement, Davis explained that she wanted West Virginians to “be afforded their constitutional right to elect my successor in November.” State officials have already scheduled a special election to replace Ketchum.

While Ethan Sonneborn begins his freshman year of high school this year, he will simultaneously be running for governor of Vermont. Only 14 years of age, Sonneborn found a legal loophole that allowed him to get his name on the ballot. As Sonneborn explains on his website, the Vermont state Constitution does not have a minimum age to run for the governorship. It merely requires that a candidate “shall have resided in this State four years next preceding the day of election.”

Sonneborn is running on a progressive platform. Among other things, he’s advocating for a worker’s bill of rights and a higher minimum wage, a carbon emissions tax, and universal healthcare. He also refers to himself as a “proud backer of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation.” Sonneborn’s ideas don’t stop there. In a recent debate, Sonneborn supported taxing and regulating the state’s recently legalized marijuana.

While the age laws in Vermont, or in this case, a lack thereof, have inadvertently allowed Sonneborn to run for the highest political office, they have also criminalized a wide range activities for this would-be governor. As Reason has found, disproportionate age laws would allow someone to hold political office in Vermont before they were trusted to operate a moving vehicle, gamble, or even hold an agricultural job.

Here are some of the age barriers that Sonneborn currently faces:

Sexual Consent

The age of sexual consent in Vermont is 16 while the age of legal consent is set at 18. With certain exceptions, a teen can get married as young as 16.

Though the age of consent is 16, a Vermont teen can still be convicted for sexting until the age of 18.

Driving

Stonneborn will be unable to receive his learner’s permit until he’s 15. At 16, he’ll be able to drive himself around the state. He’ll still need to wait an additional 6 months to enjoy full driving privileges.

Tobacco

Sonneborn will not be able to purchase a legal cigarette for another four years in Vermont. Vaping is similarly out of the question. Like cigarettes and cigars, the legal age for vaping is 18.

Agricultural Work

Should Stonneborn decide he wants to leave both high school and the political life behind for field work, he’ll have to wait until he’s 16 to do so during school hours. Thankfully, if he decides to switch paths tomorrow, he can obtain a labor certificate to allow him to work two years ahead of the age limit.

There are no age restrictions for doing agricultural work outside of school hours.

Traditional Work

If Stonneborn decides to find other kinds of work while remaining in school, he will still be required to obtain an employment certificate until he turns 16.

Abortion

Teenagers in Vermont are allowed to get abortions without first obtaining the consent of a parent, guardian, or court of law.

Gambling

Stonneborn is barred from participating in the lottery until he turns 18. Charity bingo and pull tabs are also out of the question.