Category: reason

Ant-Man movies offer a welcome respite from the endless gush of Marvel super-product. The action is confined to one planet, the banter is funny but not overbearingly zingy, and the super-suits are only modestly muscular. At first sight, the diminutive hero raises minimal action expectations, so in this second film, as in the first, they’re easily exceeded, writes Kurt Loder.

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Stutsman County, North Dakota, sheriff’s deputy Matt Thom testified that he stopped a vehicle because it was going 2 mph under the speed limit, it was from out of state, he could see no luggage, and the driver was sitting too rigidly and did not look at him when he drove alongside the vehicle. A judge ruled none of that added up to a good reason to stop the vehicle. He ruled that Thom violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the two men in the vehicle and said that 500 pounds of marijuana seized in the stop cannot be used as evidence.

When $50 went missing during the choir class’s sixth-grade field trip, Lanier Middle School’s police officer informed its assistant principal that sometimes “girls like to hide things in their bras and panties.” The assistant principal then ordered the choir’s 22 female members—it isn’t clear whether there were any boys in the choir—to report to the school nurse for strip searches.

Although the nurse “loosened their bras” and “checked around the waistband of their panties,” no money was found. The search at the Texas public school was in any case brazenly improper and probably violated the students’ rights.

That’s according to a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The girls had filed a federal lawsuit against the school district, which readily agreed that it had violated their rights under the Texas constitution. A federal judge nevertheless dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that the girls had failed to state a constitutional claim. The Fifth Circuit reversed that decision last week:

Here, the alleged facts, taken together and assumed to be true, permit the reasonable inference—i.e., the claim has facial plausibility—that the risk of public officials’ conducting unconstitutional searches was or should have been a “highly predictable consequence” of the school district’s decision to provide its staff no training regarding the Constitution’s constraints on searches.

Techdirt‘s Tim Cushing writes that he hopes the school’s police officer is now “chronically underemployed”:

No one was looking for weapons or even illegal drugs. It was cash—something easy to lose. That $50 has gone missing does not necessarily mean it was stolen. That it may have been stolen does not necessarily mean the female class members would have stashed it in their undergarments.

Cushing adds:

The district’s policy for searches is a mess. An unconstitutional mess. As the court points out, it gives no guidance to administrators on how to reach its self-generated standard of “reasonable cause” before performing a search. However, it does tell administrators searches by school personnel should be as non-intrusive as possible and only when there’s a “reasonable” belief contraband might be found.

The only discipline handed out for this mass violation of rights was a memo chastising the Vice Principal for performing a search to find something not actually considered to be “contraband.” But the court points out that this memo misses the whole point of Constitutional protections and the school’s obligation to leave those (and their students) unmolested.

Students aren’t prisoners, and schools aren’t prisons. But these distinctions blur when school districts rely on police officers and aggressive disciplinary measures to maintain order.

Judge Raymond Kethledge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is reportedly among a handful of finalists under consideration by President Donald Trump to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kethledge, 51, attended law school at the University of Michigan and went on to clerk for Justice Kennedy at SCOTUS. In 2008, President George W. Bush appointed him to the 6th Circuit. During his decade on the bench, Kethledge has had the opportunity to weigh in on some of the most contentious issues in American law. His judicial record therefore offers a good indication of what sort of Supreme Court justice he might turn out to be.

He is perhaps best known to the general public for his 2016 ruling in United States v. NorCal Tea Party Patriots, which rejected the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to withhold documents relevant to a lawsuit that charged the I.R.S. with unfairly treating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The federal law applicable in the case, Kethledge wrote, “does not entitle the IRS to keep secret (in the name of ‘taxpayer privacy,’ no less) every internal IRS document that reveals IRS mistreatment of a taxpayer or applicant organization.” The law “was enacted to protect taxpayers from the IRS, not the IRS from taxpayers.”

Kethledge has authored several notable opinions in First Amendment cases. In Lavin v. Husted (2012), he struck down an Ohio statute that made it illegal for state attorney-general and state county-prosecutor candidates to accept campaign contributions from Medicaid providers. State officials justified the law as an anti-corruption measure, arguing that it helped prevent prosecutors from turning a blind eye towards Medicaid fraud committed by doctors who offered financial support to their campaigns.

Kethledge rejected the state’s position. “The statute here restricts the First Amendment rights of nearly 100,000 Medicaid providers who do not commit fraud, based on an attenuated concern about a relative handful of providers who do,” he wrote. “There is no avoiding the conclusion that the contribution ban…is therefore unconstitutional.”

In other First Amendment cases, however, Kethledge has been more willing to side with the government. In Big Dipper Entertainment v. City of Warren (2011), for example, Kethledge rejected a free speech challenge to a city law that banned strip clubs from the downtown area. “The speech at issue here is that conveyed by a topless bar,” Kethledge wrote. “In a democracy, it is only common sense to say that ‘society’s interest in protecting this type of expression is of a wholly different, and lesser, magnitude than the interest in untrammeled political speech.'” He added: “Democracies need political debate more than they do topless bars in order to function.”

Kethledge has not yet written a major Second Amendment opinion. But he did sign on to a 2016 concurring opinion that argued in favor of broader protections for the right to keep and bear arms.

That concurrence came in the matter of Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office. The case centered on a man named Charles Tyler. He wanted to legally purchase a gun but was barred from doing so under federal law because he had been involuntarily committed three decades earlier. Tyler maintained that the federal law was unconstitutional as applied to him because he now had a clean bill of mental health and should be able to exercise his Second Amendment rights.

Kethledge joined the concurring opinion filed in the case by Judge Jeffrey Sutton. “The government has assumed power to deny guns to those who were once institutionalized on the theory that they necessarily remain mentally ill and thus are unprotected. That is wrong,” the concurrence maintained, “because institutionalization and mental illness are not ever-lasting synonyms. Just as the government may not ban protected speech by labeling it obscene, it may not deny a gun to a protected individual by labeling him mentally ill for life.”

Among civil libertarians, Kethledge is perhaps best known for his 2016 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to the FBI’s warrantless acquisition of cellphone location records. “Cell-site data—like mailing addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses—are information that facilitate personal communications, rather than part of the content of those communications themselves,” Kethledge wrote. “The government’s collection of business records containing these data therefore is not a search.”

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Kethledge’s Carpenter decision. “A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere,” declared the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts. “We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information.”

Among property rights activists, Kethledge is perhaps best known for his 2017 dissent in Wayside Church v. Van Buren County. At issue was a forfeiture and foreclosure proceeding undertaken against a Michigan church over delinquent property taxes. “In this case the defendant Van Buren County took property worth $206,000 to satisfy a $16,750 debt, and then refused to refund any of the difference,” Kethledge wrote. “In some legal precincts that sort of behavior is called theft.” Kethledge argued that the church had raised a legitimate just compensation claim that deserved to be heard under the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment.

In his non-judicial writings, Kethledge has voiced support for the theory of constitutional interpretation known as originalism. In a 2017 article in the Vanderbilt Law Review, for example, he argued that judges “are bound to apply” the “meaning [of a constitutional provision] that the citizens bound by the law would have ascribed to it at the time it was approved.”

In that same article, Kethledge revealed himself to be a critic of the legal doctrine known as Chevron deference, which says that when the federal courts are confronted with an “ambiguous” statute, the default response is for the courts to defer to the interpretation of that statute favored by the executive branch agency charged with enforcing it. According to Kethledge, in a typical Chevron deference case the regulatory agency “asks if there is a colorable interpretation that will support the policy result that the agency wants to reach. When judges engage in that kind of analysis, we call it judicial activism…. It is not clear to me why the result is any better when the arrogation is done by the executive.”

To say the least, Judge Raymond Kethledge has left a lengthy paper trail that reveals his views on a number of hot-button legal issues. If he gets the nomination to replace Justice Kennedy, I hope the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will question him about these important matters of law and constitutional interpretation.

Reason turns 50 this year, and one of our first mega-celebrations takes place next Wednesday through Saturday in Las Vegas at FreedomFest, the largest annual gathering of libertarians.

After three days of peace, love, and monetary policy, the event will be capped by a special Saturday gala dinner during which we’ll hand out our Reason Media Awards (RMAs). During the last four years, the RMAs have become a don’t-miss event in New York, and we’re going even bigger in Vegas. I’ll dish on the awards finalists and dinner details in a moment, but first take a look at the two days of special Reason panels that will take place on Friday and Saturday at FreedomFest.

They include:

Where We Are Winning I: Guns, Drugs, Biotech, Lifestyle

Reason celebrates its 50th anniversary by looking at areas in which the libertarian perspective has not only survived but flourished. Matt Welch leads a discussion with Ronald Bailey, Nick Gillespie, and Jacob Sullum about movement triumphs of the last half-century.

Where We Are Winning II: Pensions, Policy, Criminal Justice Reform

Reason Foundation analysts Adrian Moore and Lisa Snell detail the policy wins they and their colleagues have scored since 1968 and explain why the future looks bright for continued reform in areas ranging from public-sector pensions to school choice to criminal-justice and regulatory reform. Moderated by Nick Gillespie.

Where We Are Heading: Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin

Katherine Mangu-Ward leads a discussion with Ron Bailey, Jacob Sullum, and Jim Epstein about how biotechnology and human enhancement, the legalization of everything, and new forms of cryptocurrency and other forms of permissionless expression and markets will help create a world that is fairer, freer, and more innovative.

Libertarianism for the 21st Century

Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch document how much freer the world has become since Reason launched in 1968 and explore how libertarian thought and action must change to become the dominant force in the coming half-century.

Robert Poole, a Life in Liberty

No individual has done more to reshape the policy and libertarian landscape during the last 50 years than Bob Poole of Reason. In a freewheeling and wide-ranging conversation with Nick Gillespie, Poole discusses triumphs, failures, and his vision for a future rich in market-driven reforms.

Reaching Young People

Seventy percent of people under 30 are not engaged in politics. Of the 30 percent who are, just 20 percent approve of the Republican Party and 40 percent of the Democrats. Katherine Mangu-Ward, Paul Detrick, and Nick Gillespie reveal the key issues Millennials and Gen Z care about, where to find them online, and how to create the next generation of libertarian activists. The three finalists for the Young Voices Award (see below), given to writers under 30, will also appear.

Reason Editors: Ask Us Anything (and We Mean ANYTHING)

Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Ron Bailey, Jacob Sullum, and Nick Gillespie take any and all questions about their time at Reason and the issues they see as absolutely vital to a flourishing country. Not for the faint of heart.

And then there’s the Reason Media Awards, which take place on Saturday night. You can buy tickets for this kick-ass event separately or as part of a FreedomFest package. Go here for special Reason pricing.

During the awards show, we’ll be handing out the Bastiat Prize, which is awarded to writers who best explain the importance of freedom with originality, wit, and eloquence. The winner will receive $10,000, the runner-up will earn $5,000, and the third-place prize is $1,000. The five finalists are:

• Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times
• Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
• Bonnie Kristian, The Week
• Jake van der Kamp, South China Morning Post
• Bari Weiss, The New York Times

We will also give out the Reason Video Prize, which honors short-form films and videos that explore, investigate, and enrich our appreciation of the libertarian beliefs in individual rights, limited government, and human possibilities. The winner will receive $5,000, second place gets $2,500, and third place takes home $1,000. These are the finalists:

• We the Internet, Rob Montz: “Silence U Part 2: What Has Yale Become?“
• Institute for Justice: “Why Is Teaching a Crime? California Denies Blue-Collar Workers Entry to Trade Schools“
• American Enterprise Institute, Sally Satel: “What if You Could Legally Sell Your Kidney?“
• Competitive Enterprise Institute, Passing Lane Films: “I, Whiskey: The Human Spirit“
• Pacific Legal Foundation: “No Boys Allowed: Freddie Linden’s Story“

And then there’s the Young Voices Award, which honors excellence in writing and policy work done by someone under 30. A $2,500 grand prize will be given to one of the following three writers and policy analysts under 30:

• Nick Sibilla, Institute for Justice
• Brittany Hunter, Foundation for Economic Education
• Nolan Gray, Market Urbanism

The biggest award of the evening is the Lanny Friedlander Prize, which is named for the founder of Reason and honors an individual or group that has created a publication, medium, or distribution platform that expands human freedom by increasing our ability to express ourselves, engage in debate, and generate new ways of understanding the power of “Free Minds and Free Markets.” Previous winners include Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto, the co-founders of Wired; Glenn Greenwald, the co-founder of The Intercept; and John Stossel of ABC News, Fox Business, and, since 2017, Reason. This year’s recipient is Steve Forbes, the publishing magnate who was among the first people to seize upon the power of the internet as a publishing medium.

In addition to all this, Reason will be having pop-up meet-and-greets at our booth in the exhibition hall, where staffers, finalists, and high-profile guests will be stopping by for impromptu debates, policy slams, and Q&As. We’ll also be taping live Reason Podcasts, including no-holds-barred conversation among Katherine Mangu-Ward, Matt Welch, Jacob Sullum, Ronald Bailey, me, and more.

FreedomFest has lots to offer on top of this: dozens of panels, hundreds of speakers, and 2,000 like-minded souls engaging with each other at Bally’s Paris in Las Vegas. Go here now for ticket information. If you’ve got questions that can’t be answered online, call Jennifer at 310-391-2254. If you register at the FreedomFest site, use discount code REASON1 to get $100 off regular fee.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Garden State Film and Digital Media Jobs Act, also known as the Snooki Amendment, into law on Tuesday. The law will provide tax credits to film and digital media content creators in an attempt to encourage more projects in the state.

“By signing this legislation, we are allowing these companies to take advantage of New Jersey’s unique culture, location, and geography,” Murphy said in a press release promising “good-paying union jobs and countless residual benefits to the economy” from “the many projects that will come out of our great state.”

In its most recent estimate, the Office of Legislative Services predicted the tax credits will cost up to $425 million in state revenue. It listed the “indirect state revenue gain,” the “indirect local revenue gain,” and the “state opportunity cost” as “indeterminate.” The credits would be capped at $75 million annually for films and $10 million annually for digital content.

The bill will replace a similar program that expired during the administration of Murphy’s predecessor, Chris Christie. In 2011, Christie blocked a similar tax credit, nicknamed the “Snooki subsidy,” that would have awarded a $420,000 tax break to cover production costs for the inaugural season of the hit MTV show The Jersey Shore. Christie, while saying he had “no interest in policing the content of such projects,” nevertheless said taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for a show that “does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the state and its citizens.”

Critics like state Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Montville) spoke out against this year’s film credits for similar reasons. Murphy, who called the bill signed by Murphy the “Snooki Amendment,” said there are “a whole host of needs from school aid to property tax relief that deserve $425 million before we consider giving it to Snooki,” The Jersey Shore‘s leading personality.

Reason‘s A. Barton Hinkle has explained that film tax credits like New Jersey’s have a history of overpromising and underdelivering:

According to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, Virginia’s “film tax exemption has little effect on film location decisions, a negligible benefit to the Virginia economy, and provides a negligible return on the state’s investment.” The film tax credit provides a return of 20 cents on the dollar; direct grants return 30 cents on the dollar.

Hinkle cites a 2012 report from the Tax Foundation, which discovered that “aside from studies paid for by economic development authorities and the Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA], an industry trade association, almost every other study has found film tax credits generate less than 30 cents for every $1 of spending.” The MPAA praised Murphy for signing the Snooki Amendment.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned from his post, President Donald Trump said on Thursday.

In pair of tweets, Trump thanked Pruitt for doing an “outstanding job” and said his deputy, Andrew Wheeler, will take over as acting administrator. “I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,” Trump wrote. “Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!”

I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 5, 2018

…on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 5, 2018

This latest Trump adminstration shakeup comes after months of scandals involving the Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt has faced investigations for installing an expensive soundproofed telephone booth in his office, regularly traveling first class on airlines, taking a security detail on personal trips, and renting a posh D.C. condo from a Washington lobbyist at a cost far below the market rate. He justified his first-class air travel and 24/7 security guards on the grounds that the hoi polloi might say rude things to him.

CNN reported this week that Pruitt asked Trump to get rid of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and give him control of the Justice Department. Pruitt denied that report.

In his new book, Suicide of the West, National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg talks about what he calls “the Miracle”—the immense and ongoing increase in human wealth, health, freedom, and longevity ushered in by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. At turns sounding like Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and economist Deirdre McCloskey, Goldberg writes, “In a free market, money corrodes caste and class and lubricates social interaction….Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples’ lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn’t feel like it.”

As his book’s title suggests, Goldberg isn’t worried the world is running out of resources. He’s troubled by our unwillingness to defend, support, and improve customs, laws, and institutions that he believes are crucial to human flourishing.

“Decline is a choice,” he writes, not a foregone conclusion. While he lays most of the blame for our current problems on a Romantic left emanating from Rousseau, he doesn’t stint on the responsibility of his own tribe of conservative fearmongers and reactionaries.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason, Goldberg talks about his new book, his persistent opposition to Trump, how his thinking has evolved on a number of culture-war issues, and why he can’t just admit once and for all that he’s becoming a libertarian.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia and Austin Bragg.

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The mayor of Sheffield, England, has “banned” Donald Trump from his city ahead of the president’s visit to the United Kingdom next week.

Sheffield Lord Mayor Magid Magid, who at 28 is the youngest mayor in the city’s history, announced the ban while chairing a city council meeting on Wednesday. At the meeting, Magid sported a T-shirt declaring Trump a “wasteman” and a sombrero, which he told the London Independent he wore to show “solidarity with Mexicans, other Latinas and all people suffering at the hands of the Trump regime.”

Magid told the world about the ban on Twitter. “I Magid Magid, Lord Mayor & first citizen of this city hereby declare that not only is Donald J Trump (@realDonaldTrump) a WASTEMAN, but he is also henceforth banned from the great city of Sheffield!” he wrote before declaring July 13, the date Trump is set to arrive in the U.K., to be “Mexico Solidarity Day.”

I Magid Magid, Lord Mayor & first citizen of this city hereby declare that not only is Donald J Trump (@realDonaldTrump) a WASTEMAN, but he is also henceforth banned from the great city of Sheffield!

I further declare July 13th to be Mexico Solidarity Day! pic.twitter.com/qYehdHYDEt

— MΛG!D (@MagicMagid) July 4, 2018

Magid’s attempt to ban Trump from Sheffield is symbolic. As CBS News noted, there’s no reason to believe Trump will stop in Sheffield during his U.K. visit. And even if Trump wants to see the city, Magid doesn’t actually have the power to ban him, Sheffield’s city council told the BBC. Still, Magid felt he needed to speak out against Trump, who he told The Independent is a “spurting cesspit of hate, stoking divisions between communities while scapegoating minorities.”

“We need to be honest, bold and courageous in our viewpoints,” Magid told the BBC. “As a world leader he has a lot of weight and we have to fight that hate.”

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Magid listed several reasons he considers Trump a “wasteman.” He took issue with Trump’s ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries as well as his decisions to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, enforce the “imprisonment of children at borders,” and defend “the violence and actions of White Supremacists.”

pic.twitter.com/x8Add2JUXZ

— MΛG!D (@MagicMagid) July 4, 2018

Magid, a Somali immigrant who came to the U.K. at the age of 5, is not the only critic planning to protest Trump’s visit to the country. Tens of thousands of people are expected to demonstrate against Trump’s policies in London next week, according to CBS. On Twitter, Magid encouraged people to participate in those demonstrations and support organizations “combating Trump and his politics.”

Actor James Woods says he was dropped by his agent on Independence Day, and the outspoken conservative thinks his political views are to blame.

Early Thursday morning, Woods posted an email he said he had received from his “liberal” agent, Ken Kaplan. “It’s the 4th of July and I’m feeling patriotic,” the email read. “I don’t want to represent you anymore. I mean I could go on a rant but you know what I’d say.”

So this email from my agent (a political liberal) today… pic.twitter.com/RLXUWi9no8

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) July 5, 2018

Woods also shared his response to Kaplan:”Dear Ken, I don’t actually. I was thinking if you’re feeling patriotic, you would appreciate free speech and one’s right to think as an individual. Be that as it may, I want to thank you for all your hard work and devotion on my behalf. Be well.”

My response: “Dear Ken, I don’t actually. I was thinking if you’re feeling patriotic, you would appreciate free speech and one’s right to think as an individual. Be that as it may, I want to thank you for all your hard work and devotion on my behalf. Be well.” https://t.co/nEe8OMaWb2

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) July 5, 2018

If Woods’ story is true, this incident is just the latest in a trend involving people who refuse to do business with companies or individuals for political reasons. Late last month, for example, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant due to her position in the Trump administration. Many conservatives responded with outrage, leaving a bevy of unflattering reviews for the restaurant on Yelp and protesting on social media.

This week conservatives were on the other end of the stick. A group of right-wing Twitter users, enraged that Walmart’s website would dare sell clothing imprinted with the phrase “Impeach 45,” launched a #BoycottWalmart campaign, even though the retail giant also sells a variety of pro-Trump hats and shirts.

For his part, Woods didn’t exactly complain about losing his agent, but he has taken something similar into the public arena before. The actor, who often takes to Twitter to express his conservative and pro-Trump views, said in February he was “blacklisted” by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after saying he wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton “if she ever ran for president.”

I recommend this interview highly. I, too, was blacklisted by that individual at #HFPA after nine Golden Globe nominations. During a press junket with HFPA, he asked if I would support Hillary Clinton if she ever ran for president. Never nominated again. https://t.co/fnAX5GM4Io

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 22, 2018