Category: reason

New mom Cardi B, star of the cover story in the first issue of the redesigned Rolling Stone, doesn’t generally worry about old-fashioned bourgeois respectability. As described in that story, “she’s an ex-stripper with butt injections who’s after your money; she’s a possible former member of the Bloods…and says today that she still carries a knife.”

She’s apparently willing to step outside ideological respectability as well. Cardi B, the first female solo hip hop artist to earn two number-one Billboard singles, says this to reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis:

“God forbid, the government tries to take us over, and we can’t defend ourselves because we don’t have no weapons.” She adds, “How do you think American colonizers went to Africa and it was so easy for them to get those people? Because they had guns. No matter what weapon you have, you can’t beat a gun.” She shrugs. “They have weapons like nuclear bombs that we don’t have. So imagine us not having any weapons at all.”

Even many defenders of gun rights find it less than politically expedient to emphasize the Second Amendment’s value in resisting government’s depredations, though it was one of the major reasons we have it in the first place. Still, Vox gave space to gun rights scholar David Kopel back in 2016 to preemptively explain why Cardi B isn’t being as outrageous as some might think.

As Kopel explains, “The Second Amendment does not create a right of revolution against tyranny. That inherent right is universal.” He points out that even the United Nations acknowledges this in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But by barring the government from disarming the people, the Second Amendment does “reinforce the rule of law and anti-tyranny structure of the US Constitution.” And the “well-regulated militia” described in it was imagined as one of those bulwarks:

Explaining the proposed Second Amendment, Madison’s ally Tench Coxe, a delegate to the Continental Congress for Pennsylvania, wrote: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” Madison thanked Coxe for the newspaper essay.

More recently, Kopel notes, even as proper a liberal as future vice president Hubert Humphrey wrote in 1960: “Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.” One of the tyrannies Humphrey recognized was the “local tyranny in the Jim Crow system of the South.”

Cardi B throwing her hands up over government’s nuclear bombs brings to mind an old gag from the Church of the SubGenius: While the Powers That Be possess hundreds of nuclear weapons, the SubGenii have only three. Still, may Cardi imbue her family with the spirit of that declaration—that it’s never a good idea to cede all authority to powerful people who claim rights that they deny you.

Cardi B previously spoke out against taxation as well and inspired this Reason TV video from Remy:

Michelle Carter was convicted last year of involuntary manslaughter because she told her boyfriend to kill himself. She has now appealed this decision on grounds that her conduct was permissible under the First Amendment.

“Carter’s words encouraging Roy’s suicide, however distasteful to this Court, were protected speech,” wrote her lawyers in a recently filed brief. “A criminal law that penalizes a person who encourages another person to commit suicide cannot survive strict scrutiny.”

Carter wasn’t present for the suicide of her boyfriend, Roy Conrad. But she communicated with him on the phone shortly before he attached a water pump to his car and poisoned himself with carbon monoxide. Carter had previously urged Conrad to go through with it, though her lawyers argue it was never definitively established that she egged him on at the very end, when he was actually taking the steps to kill himself.

She later told a friend that Conrad’s suicide was her fault, though it’s possible she just said that for attention. She is clearly a very disturbed person, as was Conrad.

But is she a killer? As I wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times a year ago, her conviction runs afoul of the First Amendment:

Ms. Carter’s conduct was morally reprehensible. But—at least until today’s ruling—it was clearly legal. While some states criminalize the act of convincing people to commit suicide, Massachusetts has no such law. Moreover, speech that is reckless, hateful and ill-willed nevertheless enjoys First Amendment protection. While the Supreme Court has carved out narrowly tailored exceptions for literal threats of violence and incitement to lawless action, telling someone they should kill themselves is not the same as holding a gun to their head and pulling the trigger. Nor is it akin to threatening to kill the president, which is specifically prohibited by law—and in any case, only considered a felony if done “knowingly and willfully.” (Merely expressing hope that the president dies isn’t enough.)…

For decades, efforts have been underway to criminalize every obnoxious or problematic social interaction between K-12 kids in American schools. Hardly a week passes without a national news story about teenagers who were arrested on child pornography charges—and face unfathomably long prison sentences—because they had inappropriate pictures of classmates (or even themselves) on their phones. In Iowa, in June 2016, authorities tried to brand a 14-year-old girl as a sex offender for Snapchatting while wearing a sports bra and boy shorts. The following month, Minnesota police officers busted a 17-year-old for swapping consensual sexts with his 16-year-old girlfriend. Such matters should be handled by parents and teachers, not the cops. The same is true for the various issues that plagued Ms. Carter and Mr. Roy.

Carter is despicable. But defending free speech means protecting even vile expression from prosecution.

Both before and after he became president, Donald Trump has talked about reducing drug prices, though he has rarely offered much in the way of details about how he’d do it. This week he singled out Pfizer, the massive pharmaceutical conglomerate, for a little Twitter abuse:

Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason. They are merely taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves, while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe & elsewhere. We will respond!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2018

Soon after the tweet, Pfizer’s stock price took a minor hit. After a brief phone call with the president yesterday, the CEO bowed to political pressure and rolled back many of the company’s price increases.

It might be tempting to praise Trump for that, but presidential bullying really isn’t the best solution to the problem of costly medications.

One big reason for those prices is patents, says Gilbert Berdine, associate professor of internal medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and a faculty affiliate with Texas Tech’s Free Market Institute.

“The patent monopoly interferes with the market mechanism against raising prices however high you want,” Berdine says. Freed from competition, drug companies can at least partially monopolize domestic markets and charge disproportionately high prices.

Supporters of patents argue that they give companies an incentive to produce new drugs and treatments. It’s true that loosening drug patent laws might reduce the flow of new drugs to the market, but that’s not a one-way street. Current patent laws keep drug prices high and take away resources from other productive sectors of the economy.

Public funding of precription drugs is another reason for rising drug prices. Medicare and Medicaid boost demand for these medicines and pay for them out of the government’s deep coffers. “Taxpayers who are going to pay taxes,” Berdine says, “and then Medicare or Medicaid will disperse their tax money to Pfizer.”

And then there’s an idea from a suprising source, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Not ordinarily an advocate for laissez faire, the Vermont socialist has called for freer trade in prescription drugs. In response to Trump’s tweet attacking Pfizer, Sanders wrote:

If you are serious about this issue, tell your Republican pals in Congress to pass bills requiring Medicare to negotiate drug prices and enabling the importation of safe, low-cost drugs from Canada and other countries. (2/2)

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 9, 2018

Requiring Medicare to negotiate drug prices is more debatable, but opening the American medication market to foreign competition could bring down prices 35 to 55 percent, according to some estimates. Trump was right about that part: Other countries are getting “bargain basement prices,” at least in comparison to America. Bringing in drugs from those countries would give pharma companies a reason to reduce their prices—or at the very least to stop subsidizing medicines abroad with American consumers’ dollars.

Downsizing patent protections and reforming entitlement programs would do much more to achieve a long-term, sustainable decreases in medical costs than clumsy programs and presidential tweets ever could.

A federal court has ruled that Donald De La Haye, a former kicker for the University of Central Florida Golden Knights who lost his scholarship and his place on the football team after making some money off a popular YouTube account, can sue his former school on First Amendment grounds.

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida rejected the university’s attempt to dismiss De La Haye’s lawsuit, which will now proceed to the merits of De La Hoye’s free speech claims.

“We hope that today’s decision denying UCF’s attempt to dismiss this case will be a step toward protecting Donald’s rights and ensuring all college student-athletes’ free speech rights are protected,” says Jon Riches of the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, a free market think tank and legal center that’s representing De La Hoye.

On his “Deestroying” account on YouTube, De La Hoye posted videos of his daily routines and workouts, along with funny moments with friends and teammates. Some clips—like one where he destroyed a flat-screen TV by kicking it off the top floor of a parking garage—are just weirdly entertaining. The videos have quite a following: De La Haye has more than 350,000 subscribers, enough to earn money from the advertisements YouTube allows on high-end accounts. According to SocialBlade.com, a website that assesses the potential value of social media accounts, he could earn somewhere between $2,000 and $31,000 a month.

The problem isn’t the content of the videos. It’s the fact that he made money off them. Per National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, student-athletes lose their amateur status if they earn any money off their sports while attending school. Last July, the NCAA told the school that De La Haye would be ineligible to play college football unless he stopped making videos about the game. He would have been allowed to make videos about other topics—videos that would likely get fewer views and earn him less advertising revenue.

After De La Haye decided not to agree to those terms, the team dismissed him and the school revoked his scholarship. He was given 72 hours to remove himself and all his belongings from university housing. With no where else to turn, he ended up living with a friend and sleeping on a sofa.

“It’s really tough,” De La Haye said in a video from last July, shortly after he learned that his scholarship would be revoked. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not making money illegally. I’m not selling dope. I’m not kidnapping people or robbing people. I’m not selling my autographs for money. I’m not sitting here getting Nike checks and Nike deals and all these sponsorships. I’m literally filming stuff. I’m sitting here, editing things on my computer for hours and developing my own brand. I put in the work, and I’m not allowed to get any benefits from the work.”

This week’s court ruling is an encouraging sign, says Robert Henneke, general counsel for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is also involved in De La Hoye’s lawsuit. “Students like Donald don’t check their constitutional rights at the gates to a public university simply because they are athletically gifted,” Henneke says.

A police officer in a small Arkansas town pulled a man over for driving suspiciously near some railroad tracks. The driver—Adam Finley—turned out to be a railroad employee just doing his job.

Here’s what happened next, as evidenced by video footage of the encounter. Even though the cop, Matthew Mercado, had no reason whatsoever to escalate matters, he ordered Finley out of the car, became aggressive with him, shoved him against the car door, handcuffed him, swore at him, and threatened to use a taser on him.

Meanwhile, Finley kept remarkably calm. He didn’t get angry, and he followed Mercado’s confusing instructions as best he could.

After Mercado let him go free—again, because Finley had done absolutely nothing wrong—Finley went to the Walnut Ridge police station to speak with the chief and make a complaint. For this, Finley was punished: they decided to charge him with obstructing justice during the Mercado encounter. They made this decision only after Finley decided to object to his treatment. They also spoke to Finley’s wife, suggesting to her that if she saw the video she would realize that her husband had committed a crime. This was an outright lie, but it apparently played on some suspicion Finley’s wife had about him, and they later divorced.

A town’s law enforcement apparatus conspired to ruin a man, all for being the victim of a bossy, incompetent cop.

Mercado is no longer on the force. But he appears to have resigned because he didn’t get a pay raise he wanted, not because anyone decided to discipline him.

That’s all according to The Washington Post‘s Radley Balko, who has just written about the case:

Finley wasn’t shot, or choked to death, or found hanging in a jail cell. He didn’t suffer any permanent or lasting physical injury. Mercado didn’t even use racist or bigoted language. But Finley did everything he was supposed to. From the footage we can see and hear, he was polite, provided ID when it was asked of him and stepped out of the truck when ordered. Despite cooperating, he was treated poorly, detained and roughed up. When he then tried to file a complaint, he was harassed, and the chief of police attempted to turn his own wife against him—by citing video she hadn’t seen and that ultimately vindicated her husband. Yet even after viewing that video, city officials proceeded to prosecute. And even after the video was released, city officials maligned Finley in the press and insisted that the residents of Walnut Ridge believe the assertions of authority figures over the video evidence that contradicted them.

The “lesson” Finley learned here is pretty clear. Power usually wins. You can be as cooperative as possible, but if a police officer wants to dish out some abuse, he can. And he’ll probably get away with it. Try to hold him accountable if you’d like, but just know that doing so may come with a heavy price.

Having watched the video footage of the initial encounter, and footage of Finley and his wife meeting with the police chief, it is clear to me that the authorities abused their power. No reasonable person would conclude, after seeing Mercado’s encounter with Finley, that there was any legitimate reason to rough him up or handcuff him. And yet the police let Finley and his wife believe the video would show that Finley had acted criminally.

As Balko points out, it could have gone worse for Finley. For many others unfortunate enough to come in conflict with hotheaded cops, it does. This incident is a reminder that not ever example of police abuse is a bloody or deadly affair.

Finley has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city and the officials who wronged him. He is undoubtedly owed compensation for the indignities he suffered at the hands of some very petty authoritarians.

Since the 2016 election, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, under pressure from Congress, have moved to block or deprioritize media sources that spread “fake news.” France is considering legislation that would give judges the ability to block the publication of information they deem inaccurate in the lead up to an election.

Most Americans don’t want the government regulating social media. A Pew Research Center survey found that a majority of respondents favored free speech even if it meant tolerating the spread of false information. A majority also said that big tech firms should do more to restrict the spread of false information.

Reason’s Justin Monticello and Zach Weissmueller headed to the Venice Beach boardwalk to conduct a bullshit detector test on passersby. How easily could they distinguish inaccurate headlines from the accurate ones, such as “BREAKING: Hillary Clinton Killed During FBI Raid,” and “Trump asks Japan to build cars in the U.S. It already does?”

With a fractured media, and when sources like CNN and Politico publish misleading or exaggerated statements, what’s a responsible news consumer to do? Are “echo chambers” a problem, and how do we avoid them? And why do younger Americans in particular distrust the government and tech companies to regulate the flow of information?

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A viral video appears to show a Chicago police officer telling a pair of black men, “I kill motherfuckers.”

The video, posted to Facebook on Monday, begins with a white police officer in an unmarked car being approached by at least two young black men. “I kill motherfuckers,” the cop says, before telling them to stop filming him. “How about I lock you up for walking in the street?” he adds.

The officer claims the man filming was “illegally” walking across the street. Eventually, he gets out of his car and starts following both men. “You want to know the good news though?” the officer asks. “Illinois is a two-party consent state and I don’t consent to you recording me.”

The man filming, meanwhile, replies that he was recording himself on Snapchat and the officer “hopped in the camera.” The officer then claims the man filming hit his shoe, and uses that as an excuse to get in his face.

The officer was correct in his assertion that Illinois is a two-party consent state, but that doesn’t seem to appy here. In Illinois, citizens don’t need consent to film others, including police officers, as long they aren’t doing so secretly and aren’t infringing on the other party’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Since this incident occurred in public, and the officer knew he was being filmed, it doesn’t appear that the man filming did anything wrong.

According to WFLD, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability has opened an investigation into the incident.

Police misconduct has been a nationwide theme in recent days. A video posted to Facebook last week showed an unnamed El Paso police officer pointing a gun at a group of children, then arresting the young man who filmed the incident. Earlier in the week, a drunk off-duty officer with the New York Police Department allegedly crashed his car and punched a witness before attempting to flee the scene.

A judge has ruled that an FBI agent can keep his gun after the agent accidentally shot a patron in a Denver nightclub while dancing.

A video showing FBI agent Chase Bishop, 29, dancing at Mile High Spirits went viral in June. A crowd circled around the agent while he showed off his dance moves. A gun fell out of his pants while he did a backflip. When he went to pick up his weapon, he accidentally discharged it into the crowd and a bullet hit another man, Tom Reddington, in the leg. Bishop then put his hands up in the air and walked toward the crowd.

Nearly two weeks after the incident, the Denver District Attorney’s office announced that Bishop was charged with second-degree assault, a felony, after turning himself in.

Following a court hearing on Tuesday, Judge Frances Simonet of the Denver County Court ruled that Bishop would be allowed to keep his gun. Frank Azar, Reddington’s attorney, previously said that he did not believe that Bishop should have been dancing with a loaded gun. David Goddard, Bishop’s lawyer, explained in the court hearing that the agency encouraged its agents to carry at all times, even when they were off the clock. Because of this explanation and a lack of objection from the prosecution, Simonet allowed Bishop to remain armed.

Prosecutors also offered Bishop a plea deal, but the details will not be publicized prior to its acceptance. Bishop must comply with an order to stay away from alcohol and drugs while his case continues. As for his employment, the FBI has yet to explain what discipline is in store for Bishop.

“That’s got to be a terrible thing to have to happen. People make mistakes. I hope he doesn’t lose his job, and my client hopes he doesn’t lose his job,” Azar said shortly after the incident.

Reddington also commented just after the shooting, telling ABC News, “I don’t blame the guy. I’m not vindictive at all. I don’t want to ruin his life. At this point, there’s nothing we can do to fix it. So, let’s just move on and deal with it as best we can.”

Close to 1,000 people in Michigan had their property seized by police or government officials last year even though they were neither convicted nor sometimes even charged with committing a crime.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we have this information at all. In 2015 Michigan passed legislation that mandated local law enforcement agencies report more information to the state about the extent of their seizures. The Department of State Police just released its first report that encompassed all agencies for a full calendar year.

Law enforcement agencies across the state seized more than $13 million in cash and property in 2017. And while State Police Director Kriste Etue claims in the report’s introduction that all those seized assets were “amassed by drug traffickers,” that’s not really what the numbers show.

Tom Gantert, managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential, which is published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, drilled down into the report and noted that 956 people who had their money or property seized last year were not convicted of a crime. Of those, 736 people were not even charged with a crime for which property forfeiture was permitted. And yet such forfeiture happened, quite frequently. To put it in larger context, it happened to 14 percent of the people who had their stuff taken.

Police and prosecutors are able to essentially legally steal people’s property under the process of civil asset forfeiture. Under “civil” forfeiture, criminal convictions are not necessary. Instead, police and prosecutors basically accuse the property itself of being connected to a crime. Using lower evidentiary thresholds and complicated bureaucratic and administrative procedures, civil forfeiture subverts the typical legal process by forcing citizens to prove themselves and their property innocent of crimes rather than forcing prosecutors to prove guilt.

Thus citizens can have their stuff taken by the government without being first convicted. There’s been a growing backlash to the use of civil asset forfeiture, and some states are attempting to restrain the police by requiring convictions before money and property can be taken. Michigan does not currently require a conviction, but some lawmakers are working on changing the rules. The state’s House passed a bill in May that would require convictions before forcing somebody to forfeit property and cash valued at less than $50,000. It has not yet been taken up by the state Senate.

Perhaps knowing that more than one out of 10 folks who have their property taken from them aren’t even convicted might be helpful information to convince senators to vote for change. One of the difficulties in pushing for asset forfeiture reforms is that poor transparency requirements have left citizens unclear about how extensive the practice is. Police and prosecutors typically insist that the seizures are all from drug traffickers and other criminals. Without strong reporting guidelines, citizens have no way of knowing the true circumstances of the seizures and where the money is going.

Now, thanks to Michigan’s new reporting law, we do know, and it’s not a good look for Michigan. Gantert notes that there are currently more than 2,000 folks in Michigan who face having their property seized while charges are still pending. If the law isn’t changed, some of those folks may lose their property or money even if they’re never convicted.

Bonus links: Damon Root explains how civil asset forfeiture abuse has roots in Michigan from a 1996 Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case next term that may give it an opportunity to rein in the practice.

An Ohio mom and her two sons had their paper route interrupted last week when a police car pulled them over.

It seemed curious that police would be interested in the family, as they hadn’t done anything to warrant the attention of authorities. But as it turns out, someone had called the cops on Brandie Sharp’s 11-year-old son, Uriah.

The caller grew suspicious after seeing Uriah walk up to a house in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and come back with something in his hand. “It looked like at first they were delivering newspapers or something, but I noticed they were walking up to the houses with nothing in hand and one of them came back with something,” the caller told police, according to WSYX, “I mean, I don’t want to say something was going on, but it just seemed kind of suspicious.”

Uriah, though, had a completely reasonable explanation. He, his mom, and his 17-year-old brother Mycah had delivered some of the newspapers to the wrong homes, and he was retrieving them. Sharp tells WCMH that after a police officer pulled her over and asked if they were soliciting, she explained they were on a paper route and the situation was quickly resolved.

But Sharp wasn’t pleased someone had felt the need to call the police in the first place, and she thinks her son’s race played a factor. “Sad I cant [sic] even teach my son the value of working without someone whispering and looking at us out the side of their eye perhaps because we DON’T ‘look like a person that belongs in their neighborhood,'” she wrote in a Facebook post.

She was also left wondering what was so suspicious about a family delivering newspapers in broad daylight. “Something as simple as delivering papers and it turns out to be I have to be racially profiled?” she tells WSYX.

Arlington Police said on Facebook that the officer simply responded to a report of suspicious behavior, then “quickly determined” nothing nefarious was going on. Police also noted that a new law in Upper Arlington requires people delivering newspapers “to walk up to each home to correctly deliver these materials.”

This case is just the latest in a string of “Summer of Snitches” incidents involving authorities being called either to enforce petty regulations or for no reason at all. Just last week, for example, police were summoned to deal with a black man wearing socks at a pool. The white apartment complex manager who called police has since been fired.