Category: reason

Good Morning America did a follow-up story on The New York Times piece about Kim Brooks, who was arrested for letting her son wait in the car for five minutes.

In her piece, Brooks explored why we seem so determined to harass parents for leaving their kids in a statistically very safe situation. (How safe? Far safer than the kids were while getting driven to the store.)

Unfortunately, Good Morning America may have encouraged people to reach for their pitchforks. For the final word on this story, it turned to its expert, ABC News Senior Legal Correspondent and former Federal Prosecutor Sunny Hostin.

Hostin recalled a time she had accidentally left her child in the car for two minutes and felt terrible, which is understandable. She meant to take the kid but forgot. (Which is one reason a “never leave your kids in the car” law is pointless: the forgetters don’t realize they have left their kids in the car). But from this she concludes:

Listen, I don’t think you can be too nosy when it comes to little kids. I think we are a village…. Err on the side of protecting your child.

To which the host replies:

Correct, because that’s the intention of anyone who’s getting involved typically is to protect your child.

But of course, forgetting your kid in the car isn’t the topic of debate here. Making an informed judgment is.

We should not err on the side of protecting the child in cases where the children don’t need protecting—like when a parent knows they’re running a short errand and deliberately decides to let the kid wait briefly in a car. If you’re worried the parent isn’t coming back, wait a little bit and see. Don’t reflexively call 911. And when the parent does come back, don’t treat them like an outlaw for doing something statistically very safe.

Defaulting to an absolutist position of safety first means we would have to keep our kids in bed in bubblewrap all day. It’s ridiculous to remove good judgment from the equation, and yet that is what Good Morning America recommends: always assume a child is in danger and that the parents are bad.

When we overestimate danger, we treat everyone like they are fragile and in need of supervision. This is neither prudent nor kind.

Another day, another attempt to get somebody fired over offensive tweets. This time the target is Sarah Jeong, a journalist who recently joined the editorial board of The New York Times.

Jeong, an expert on tech policy and internet culture, is the author of The Internet of Garbage, a book about online harassment. Yet Jeong, who was born in South Korea, has a habit of tweeting disparaging things about white people. “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants,” she wrote in November 2014. “#CancelWhitePeople,” she hashtagged around the same time. “It’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” she tweeted a couple months earlier.

I strenuously objected to Disney’s firing of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over his offensive tweets about pedophilia. Gunn was obviously joking; he was trying to provoke or amuse, not communicating something he actually believed. Similarly, Jeong claims her statements were satire. She was responding to harassing tweets she had received by mimicking their tone and structure and substituting “white people” for whatever slur the trolls had directed at her. This was not an especially wise course of action, and it’s one she regrets.

The New York Times addressed the controversy in a statement on Thursday:

Our statement in response to criticism of the hiring of Sarah Jeong. pic.twitter.com/WryIgbaoqg

— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) August 2, 2018

That ought to be enough. A culture in which people are allowed to seek forgiveness, grow, and go on with their lives without losing their jobs is vastly preferable to one in which armies of trolls are constantly hunting for that one career-ending tweet, statement, or association.

One wonders, however, why Jeong is allowed to come out of this unscathed when the same dispensation was not granted to Quinn Norton, who was asked to join the New York Times editorial board as a tech specialist last February and fired immediately after her ill-advised tweets were publicized. Norton had used an anti-black slur and an anti-gay slur (she claimed she belongs to the LGBT community, so this was in-group usage), and she was friends with the alt-right hacker weev (she claimed she did not share his pro-Nazi views and hoped she could persuade him to abandon them). When these facts came to light, The New York Times and Norton went their separate ways.

Part of the problem here is that people with a special expertise in technology policy are likely to have spent a lot of time on social media, and the more time one spends on social media, the greater the opportunity to say something career-ending. Again, I don’t think anyone is solely defined by their worst moment or stupidest opinion, and both Jeong and Norton probably have much of value to contribute. The same goes for Kevin Williamson (speedily dumped by The Atlantic for some offensive comments about women who have abortions) and Ben Shapiro (rejected as a plausible candidate for “reasonable conservative that liberals should pay attention to,” in part because of some gross and juvenile statements he made, some of which he has renounced).

I’m tempted to think there’s a pretty fundamental reason that Jeong weathered the storm, while Norton and Williamson drowned at sea. Norton and Williamson committed thought crimes against intersectional progressivism. But “white people” are not an exploited category, according to the kind of thinking popular on college campuses these days, and many leftists therefore do not think it is wrong to malign them. Calling out this hypocrisy is a worthwhile exercise; supporting the lynch mob against Jeong is not.

One could certainly make the argument that woke anti-whiteness is an important strand of leftist thought that deserves representation at The New York Times. Bad opinions, after all, should be grappled with and argued against. Unfortunately, Jeong’s job at the Times will consist of researching and writing the paper’s unsigned editorials. That means we won’t see her byline, and it will be harder to directly contend with the views she holds. Instead, they will be subtly influencing the paper in ways that are difficult to parse. But that’s an argument for getting rid of unsigned editorials, not an argument for getting rid of Jeong.

David Cole, the American Civil Liberties Union’s national legal director, tells New York Times readers they shouldn’t “lose faith in the First Amendment.” Although Cole’s op-ed piece is explicitly directed at “liberals or progressives,” it can also be read as an oblique rejoinder to libertarians and conservatives who worry that the ACLU itself has lost faith in the First Amendment.

That concern is not new. Back in 1990, Reason published a cover story in which Charles Oliver argued that the ACLU’s commitment to freedom of speech had been compromised by its pursuit of progressive causes. “In recent years,” he wrote, “the ACLU has adopted an expansive definition of ‘civil liberties’ that dilutes its absolutist commitment to free speech. The ACLU, critics say, is now more committed to goals such as comparable worth, government aid to the homeless, and nuclear disarmament than to defending the First Amendment.” Oliver noted that critics, including longtime ACLU members such as Nat Hentoff and Alan Dershowitz, were complaining that “greed and left-wing ideology have corrupted the union,” which had “diluted its message, compromised its mission, and, in some instances, abandoned its commitment to the First Amendment.”

Nearly three decades later, the argument about the ACLU’s support for freedom of speech continues, which tells us two things: The organization is still divided on the question, and the stalwarts are influential enough that the ACLU is still willing to defend the First Amendment rights of people who offend progressives.

As Robby Soave noted in June, the latest evidence of internal qualms about free speech is a staff memo revealed by Wendy Kaminer, a former member of the ACLU’s national board, that says the organization’s lawyers, in selecting First Amendment cases, should consider the impact of speech on “other values advanced by the ACLU,” such as equality and racial justice. While the memo repeatedly affirms the ACLU’s commitment to defending speakers whose views its members find repugnant, the very idea that the organization’s goals conflict with each other is a license to prioritize some of those “other values” over freedom of speech. “In deciding how to use our limited resources,” the memo says, “no civil liberties or civil rights value should automatically be privileged over any other. There is no presumption that the First Amendment trumps all other amendments, or vice versa.”

The assumption that the “rights” defended by the ACLU inevitably conflict with each other is not only troubling but incoherent, since the whole point of rights is to avoid conflict by delineating each person’s legally enforceable claims. If one person has a right to spout racist bile, it cannot be true that another person has a right to silence him. Yet the memo implies that freedom of speech conflicts with other rights. “Speech that denigrates [marginalized] groups can inflict serious harms,” it says, “and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.” It is not hard to see why such loose, compromise-inviting talk bothers critics like Kaminer and former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.

Cole’s response to Kaminer reaffirmed “our commitment to defending speech with which we disagree,” but it also repeated the memo’s thesis that First Amendment cases can “pose conflicts between our values.” In his New York Times piece, Cole argues that the ACLU still takes a viewpoint-neutral approach to First Amendment cases:

In just the last year or so, my organization…has invoked the First Amendment to defend high school students disciplined for walking out from school to call for gun control, as well as other students penalized for posting pictures of guns on social media; a student newspaper denied funding after publishing a satire of “safe spaces,” as well as fans of a hip-hop band labeled gang members; Milo Yiannopoulos and the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, both of whom were denied permission to advertise on the subway by the Washington Metro Authority; and anti-Trump as well as pro-Trump demonstrators. We’ve defended flag desecraters, union organizers, and citizens blocked from their representatives’ Facebook sites for their criticism.

Cole wants progressives to understand the value of this approach, which defends a principle that is useful to the left as well as the right. “When the Roberts court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited holding the Westboro Baptist Church liable for displaying anti-gay signs outside a military funeral,” he writes, “its rationale would equally protect Revolutionary Communist Party demonstrators holding anti-Christian signs outside the Westboro Baptist Church.”

Cole rebuts the idea that neutrality is suspect because it favors the rich and powerful. Actually, he says, “the First Amendment favors people without power and influence. In a democracy, the rich and those in the majority don’t need constitutional protections; they can generally enact their desires through ordinary political processes. The targets of censorship are typically dissidents, outsiders, the marginalized.”

All of this is good to hear from the ACLU’s national legal director, although Cole’s defense of the First Amendment is purely instrumental. He says progressives should support freedom of speech because it helps advance their goals, not because using force to silence offensive speakers is unjust or immoral.

That omission may just mean Cole knows his audience. “The fact that conservatives benefit from the First Amendment is not something to bemoan,” he says. “It is part of the constitutional bargain.” Cole does not assume that so-called liberals will understand there is a principle at stake here, or even what a principle means. That would indeed be a dangerous assumption, judging from the grumbling within his own organization about the freedom that white supremacists and other unsavory characters enjoy under the First Amendment. While Cole’s defense of free speech is encouraging, the need for it is depressing.

A retired Chinese professor was doing a live TV interview via telephone yesterday when police reportedly entered his home and arrested him.

Wenguang Sun, who used to teach at Shandong University, has been a harsh critic of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government. During a panel discussion yesterday on a Voice of America (VOA) Mandarin show called Issues & Opinions, Sun took issue with how much money China spends on foreign aid to Africa. The government should use those funds to help its own people instead, he said.

A recording from VOA, which is funded by the U.S. government, reveals what transpires next:

Chinese police broke into the home of Wenguang Sun, a retired professor who is critical of China’s human rights record as he was expressing his opinions on a Voice of America (VOA) Mandarin TV show. https://t.co/3TNNgfT3n8 pic.twitter.com/S1J65p4TvY

— The Voice of America (@VOANews) August 2, 2018

“Here they come again. The police are here to interrupt again,” Sun says in Chinese, according to VOA‘s translation. He then addresses the police officers directly. “Did I say anything wrong? Listen to what I say—is it wrong? People are poor. Let’s not throw our money in Africa….Throwing away money like this is of no good to our country and society.”

Sun raises his voice as he appears to grow more concerned. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?” he asks police. “Let me tell you, it’s illegal for you to come to my home. I have my freedom of speech.” At that point, the phone line goes dead. According to VOA News, sources in China’s Shandong province, where Sun lives, say he was placed under house arrest.

While “Sun was on a live telephone interview from his home, he reported to the VOA anchor that local police had forcibly entered his residence and demanded he end the interview,” VOA spokeswoman Bridget Serchak said in a statement. “When professor Sun refused, the phone line went dead on live television. Subsequent efforts by VOA to re-engage with him for this interview have been unsuccessful.”

Sun’s apparent arrest came not long after he penned an open letter urging Xi to rethink China’s foreign aid practices. It’s not the first time he’s voiced disagreement with his government. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Sun has a long history of antagonizing the Chinese government, including as one of the original signatories of Charter 08, a pro-democracy manifesto that was quickly suppressed. That document brought a lengthy prison sentence for one of its authors, Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while jailed and died last year. Mr. Sun said his passport application was rejected in 2010 shortly before the Nobel ceremony, which he had planned to attend.

It’s not terribly surprising that the Chinese government is silencing critics like Sun. The nonprofit group Reporters Without Borders ranks China 176th out of 180 countries in its 2018 World Press Freedom Index. According to the group, “members of the public can now be jailed for the comments on a news item that they post on a social network or messaging service or even just for sharing content.”

An Illinois lawmaker has resigned after his ex-girlfriend accused him of using her nude pictures in a revenge porn scheme.

State Rep. Nick Sauer (R) resigned on Wednesday after Politico reported on a complaint filed with the Illinois Office of the Legislative Inspector General by his former girlfriend, Kate Kelly. Kelly accused Sauer of creating a fake Instagram in her name and using nude pictures of her to trick random men on the internet into having “graphic” conversations. She also alleged that an investigation was pending after she contacted the Chicago Police Department.

“The men believed they were communicating with me and Nick shared private details of my life,” read her complaint.

Kelly explained her relationship with Sauer in an interview with Politico. After meeting on Tinder, Kelly and Sauer began a long-distance relationship in 2016. In 2017, Kelly moved from California to Chicago to be closer to Sauer. Kelly said she broke things off a few months later when she reportedly found him dating other women.

In June, Kelly said Sauer sent her an apologetic email and three dozen roses “randomly.” She responded by telling him that he needed to reimburse her for the travel expenses she accumulated when she traveled to see him during the relationship. Sauer then wired $2,000 to cover her previous flights and hotels.

Kelly received a message in July from a stranger who alleged that he had been in communication with an Instagram account pretending to be her for four months. The tip led her to discover not only that the Instagram account existed, but that it likely began around the time she and Sauer started to date. (She previously stated that the images were shared between them prior to her move to Chicago.)

“He came to my house & confessed to catfishing men with my photos for 2 years to at least 8 men. He was unable to provide the names and begged that I let it go,” Kelly explained.

In his resignation letter to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Sauer wrote, “As a result of the allegations by Kate Kelly, a former girlfriend, I have decided to resign.” During his short two years in office, Sauer was a member of the House Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Task Force. He also cosponsored HB4134, an ethics and sexual harassment bill in the House. The bill was designed to strengthen sexual harassment training among the representatives.

While it is not immediately clear what legal repercussions, if any, Sauer will face if found guilty, his alleged actions are listed as a felony under Illinois state law. Former Gov. Pat Quinn (D) signed the harsher penalties into law in 2014.The Chicago Tribune reported that the new law made the “non-consensual dissemination of private sexual images” a Class 4 felony. If convicted, Sauer could face one to three years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000. Had Sauer received money or goods for the images, the law would also allow for the forfeiture of those assets. Opponents of the 2014 reportedly argued at the time that it was a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown has found, many states have struggled to write adequate laws for revenge porn offenses. In Arizona, for example, a proposed revenge porn law was so broad that the American Civil Liberties Union said it ran the risk of unintentionally criminalizing “a library lending a photo book about breast feeding to a new mother.” Other revenge laws, like one shot down in Texas, have included language that would charge those who unknowingly share revenge porn.

The hysteria over guns created by 3D-printing technology is a classic example of media and political panic driven by fear of new technology rather than any sort of measurable threat. This is “Craigslist Killer” territory, where a relatively new technology is presumed to somehow unleash all new sorts of problems.

The federal government wisely chose to settle a sure-lose lawsuit with Defense Distributed, a “capitulation” to reality that immediately set off alarm bells among law enforcement and state-level governments.

Paul Penzone, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, claimed in the pages of The Washington Post that “anyone with an Internet connection and a 3D printer—readily available in stores and online—will be able to make an untraceable handgun, rifle or assault weapon with just a few clicks.”

Penzone further warns in the Post that “drug cartels, arms traffickers and terrorists will be able to increase their revenue and the volume of weaponry at the expense of our safety through an untraceable and unlimited method of firearms manufacturing and distribution.”

Scary, scary stuff. And it’s being echoed by President Donald Trump and the NRA, two groups whose support for the First and Second Amendments come with lots of qualifiers.

I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

While stopping short of saying blueprints or CADs for 3D-printed guns should not be available to the public, the NRA has rushed to say that the objects themselves are already illegal under existing federal law:

Breaking: The NRA’s Chris Cox is out with a statement on 3D printed guns. pic.twitter.com/C2NkyqyNDf

— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) July 31, 2018

The reality of the situation, as I point out in a column for Foxnews.com, is that 3D-printed guns won’t increase crime even if and when (and that’s a Big Bertha-sized if and when) they become something other than a plaything for tech-forward hobbyists. The printing technology to crank out cheap and durable guns is a long time away, criminals already have access to more guns than they can use, and crime has gone down even as the number of weapons in circulation has gone up.

According to government data, since 1996 the number of firearms in America has nearly doubled, to 393 million guns. Over the same time period, it became easier to get concealed-carry permits to walk around armed.

And yet, “from 1993 to 2015, the rate of violent crime declined from 79.8 to 18.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older,” according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which published a comprehensive report last October.

Over the same period, rates for crimes using guns dropped from 7.3 per 100,000 people to 1.1 per 100,000 people. The homicide rate is down from 7.4 to 4.9 per 100,000 people.

It’s impossible to know whether the increase in guns caused the decrease in violence, but we do know for sure that it didn’t spark a “Mad Max”-style free-for-all either. There is no reason to think that would change if and when 3D-printing allows us all to become our own gunsmiths in our home offices.

Full thing here.

Unless you want to ascribe something magical to technology and panic the hell out, there’s no reason to believe that the correlation between increases in gun ownership and decreases in violent and gun-related crimes will change.

3D printing is a revolutionary technology that is already having massive impacts on all sorts of manufacturing processes. It augurs a world of individualized drugs, one-off classic-car parts, and even on-demand human organs. To the extent that it allows people to do more of whatever they want, it threatens government control on a million different levels. But it’s best to understand Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed’s push on guns as a demonstration project of how technology is routing around old forms of regulation and control, not as an end in itself. That people in charge are flipping out the way they are will, ironically, only speed up the process by which they come to be seen as hopelessly retrograde and, ultimately, dispensable. When ride-sharing services came online, the old guard immediately tried to assert control and has been able to semi-successfully restrict new ways of doing business. But in the long run, taxi commissions will disappear. So too will the techno-panic over 3D printing. There will always be something even newer to be scared of.

Last night on Fox Business’ Kennedy, Greg Gutfeld cited my column and the “demonic” Reason magazine, whose July issue included a story on how to legally make an “off-the-books gun with parts bought on the internet, to make many of these points. Take a look:

If you type the word “marijuana” into the search bar at Facebook today, you might be surprised at what comes up. Rather, you might be surprised at how little comes up.

Here’s what you get when you look for pages with “marijuana” in the name:

There are, in fact, many pages on Facebook that have the word “marijuana” in the name. Some of them are activist organizations, media outlets, and even government agencies. But last night, Marijuana Moment writer Chris Roberts noticed that these pages are not showing up when you search on Facebook. The pages still exist, and if you have the URL for them, you can still visit them. But if you don’t know where they are, Facebook is not going to tell you.

This is what’s called “shadow banning.” Rather than deleting or censoring pages, Facebook is making them hard or impossible to find. Marijuana Moment is itself affected by the shadow ban. Here’s their Facebook page. But if you type “marijuana moment” into Facebook’s search engine, it was not coming up this morning. No groups, posts, or events with “marijuana” in the name come up on searches. News stories about marijuana do, but only video stories.

Roberts notes that social media sites have been struggling to figure out how to deal with marijuana content as the plant itself becomes increasingly legal:

Advertisements for marijuana businesses or advocating cannabis use are regularly blocked on Facebook and other social-media websites—including Instagram, which is also a Facebook property—for violating community standards, which ban the sale of “illegal drugs.”

Algorithms often block promotions for news articles or other noncommercial posts that merely mention “marijuana” or “cannabis,” a situation that often requires lengthy appeals processes to clear automatically flagged content that doesn’t actually violate terms of service.

This shadow ban went so far as to block searches for the California Bureau of Cannabis Control, the agency that oversees the regulation of the legal recreational marijuana industry in the state. Roberts notes that their Facebook page is a clearing house of information on upcoming meetings and regulatory decisions. A spokesman told Roberts they have not gotten an explanation from Facebook as yet as to why this was happening to them.

Roberts reached out to Facebook for an answer as well, but hasn’t yet gotten one. Reason also emailed Facebook’s press office to find out if these shadow bans are intentional. We have not yet gotten a response.

Facebook, of course, has the right to decide what sort of content should be permitted on its platform. Allowing marijuana organizations and government agencies on the platform but then blocking them from search results, though, seems more like a thing they’re doing to appease nanny-state and drug-warrior regulators who will accuse them of fostering criminal enterprise—even though allowing these pages to appear in search would hardly qualify. And Facebook is being increasingly put in a position where not responding is not an option. Even Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who helped craft the part of the law that protected internet platforms from being punished for illegal third-party content, seems to be weakening on his resolve.

The Trump administration wants to freeze Obama-era requirements that force automakers to manufacture more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Under the Obama administration’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, new cars sold in the U.S. must average about 54 miles per gallon by 2025. But a joint proposal released today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would freeze those standards for post-2020 models, meaning cars would only have to average about 37 mpg by 2026.

The Trump administration is also trying to stop California and other states from being able to impose their own, stricter fuel-efficiency standards. NBC reports that

by lifting the California waiver put in place in 1975 as part of the original Clean Air Act, President Donald Trump’s administration is effectively neutering a potentially significant challenge to any rollback of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards. By setting levels of automotive CO2 emissions, California regulators could effectively retain higher mileage targets. The 10 other states and the District of Columbia that have adopted the tougher California guidelines would also be impacted by the White House move.

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the proposal would make cars more affordable and save lives. “We are delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American public that his administration would address and fix the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards,” a statement from Wheeler reads. “Our proposal aims to strike the right regulatory balance based on the most recent information and create a 50-state solution that will enable more Americans to afford newer, safer vehicles that pollute less. More realistic standards can save lives while continuing to improve the environment.”

Environmental groups are already expressing their outrage over the plan. “How can we justify rolling back the most effective tool we have to fix global warming?” Rob Sargent, energy program director for Environment America, tells USA Today. “This latest move by the Trump administration means that our cars will continue to pump billions of metric tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, further destabilizing the climate and sparking increasingly severe impacts of global warming,” he adds.

But automakers and free market groups have hailed the proposal. “The administration’s announcement that it will relax future fuel economy (CAFE) standards is good news for consumers,” Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, said in a statement. “It means that the federal government will have slightly less control over the kinds of cars and trucks people can buy. It might even cause car prices to stop increasing so rapidly.”

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Global Automakers, two trade groups that represent some of the biggest carmakers in the world, issued a joint statement expressing similar sentiments. “We applaud the president and the administration for releasing this much anticipated proposal that includes a variety of standards for public consideration,” they said. “Automakers support continued improvements in fuel economy and flexibilities that incentivize advanced technologies while balancing priorities like affordability, safety, jobs and the environment.”

The EPA and NHTSA are giving the public 60 days to provide feedback to the new proposal. A final rule is expected this winter.

For several years, lobbyists for the hotel industry have been engaged in efforts to get local and state governments to make life more difficult for short-term rental and home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.

But what happens when the lobbyists literally are the government?

We soon might get to find out, thanks to Kenny Glavan. He’s the city council president in Biloxi, Mississippi, and he recently pushed the city to step up enforcement of tax and licensing requirements for short-term rentals. But Glavan also happens to be the president of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association, the state arm of a national organization that’s been on the forefront of legal and regulatory battles with Airbnb in New York City, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The Biloxi Sun Herald reports that Glavan called a special meeting of the city council this week—and then showed up 45 minutes late for it—for the purpose of outlining a strategy to ensure “compliance” from short-term rentals. Renting a home for less than 30 days in Biloxi requires special permission from the city government and landlords have to pay the state’s hotel tax, of which the city takes a slice. In residential areas zoned for single-family homes, short-term rentals are not permitted at all. Glavan told the Sun Herald that he knows most of the short-term rentals in the city are not complying with those rules.

Glavan told the paper that he does not believe there is any conflict of interest that would prohibit him or the city council from voting on updates to the existing short-term rental rules—but this week’s hearing did not produce any concrete policy proposals and city officials will revisit the issue later, according to WDAM-TV.

It is also worth noting that another official from the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association was invited to testify at this week’s hearing. Linda Hornsby, the group’s executive director, called unlicensed vacation rentals a tax and safety issue, according to the Sun Herald.

If there are public safety issues with a short-term rental, cities probably have other tools they could use to address them. And if a home is considered safe for people to reside in year-round, there’s no reason it wouldn’t be safe for visitors to use. Often, claims about unsafe short-term rentals are red herrings used to garner support for restrictive policies.

Short-term rentals have brought both tourists and income to Biloxi. Data from Airbnb shows that homeowners in the city earned $762,000 during 2017 from more than 5,000 guests who booked stays via the platform. Across the whole of the state, Mississippi homeowners earned more than $6.4 million from more than 50,000 visitors, with more than 1,300 homes in the state rented for at least one night.

If Glavan and the hotel association plan to crack down on short-term rentals in pursuit of more tax revenue, they might end up cutting off valuable income from Biloxi residents and businesses—after all, those 5,000 tourists were eating meals and spending money on other things, too.

Mostly, the situation in Biloxi is just a good illustration of the stark power asymmetry that exists when governments regulate Airbnb, even when a lobbyist isn’t pulling double duty as a city council president. Hotels and their trade associations have attorneys, lobbyists, and longstanding relationships with state lawmakers and city officials. In short, they know how to get what they want—and they have the time and incentive to keep up to date with the ins and outs of policymaking.

Most homeowners renting spare rooms via platforms like Airbnb have no such government relations experience—and in Biloxi, they are probably right to wonder whether they will get a fair hearing from their hotel lobbyist/city council president.

The death penalty is “inadmissible” because it attacks human “dignity,” the Roman Catholic Church says.

In the past, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has supported the death penalty “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” But in May, Pope Francis approved a major change to the doctrine that says capital punishment is wrong in all cases. The update was published today, the Associated Press reports.

“The church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide,” the catechism’s new text reads.

The catechism acknowledges that capital punishment has long been seen as a “means of safeguarding the common good.” But there is now “an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” the doctrine says. “In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

According to Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s teachings on capital punishment have simply evolved. “If, in fact the political and social situation of the past made the death penalty an acceptable means for the protection of the common good, today the increasing understanding that the dignity of a person is not lost even after committing the most serious crimes,” Ladaria says in a letter explaining the change.

Though the church’s teachings have evolved, Francis’ views on the subject have not. During a 2015 trip to the United States, where the death penalty is legal, he told Congress that “from the beginning of my ministry,” he has advocated for it to be abolished.

Previous popes have had differing opinions. Francis’ immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, did not oppose the death penalty in all cases, according to the BBC. But Pope John Paul II, who came before Benedict, generally advocated for imprisonment instead.