Category: reason

Civility, Culture War, and Cake Gives Way to Libertarian Squabbling: Reason Roundup

Gary Johnson, democracy criticized in wake of RedHenGate. We’re entering day three of this week’s debate over Donald Trump, civility, and free association. Already, plenty of us at Reason have weighed in, and there’s not much meat left to dissect with regard to the particulars of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. However, the incident has spawned some interesting kerfluffles that are worth highlighting before we (hopefully) all move on soon.

Hanging over this latest culture-war spectacle is the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a baker who refused to decorate a wedding cake for a same-sex celebration. During the 2016 election, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson came under some fire for refusing to unequivocally denounce those who would force bakers to comply with creating cakes they’re ethically opposed to (after candidate Austin Peterson proposed a hypothetical Jewish baker who refused to decorate a Nazi cake). And libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) isn’t ready to let it go.

Massie’s Monday tweet garnered a lot of libertarian love—but also some pushback from fellow travelers:

Quite a few commenters suggested that Massie’s support for Donald Trump disqualified his disses of Johnson from serious consideration, while others metaphorically rolled their eyes over Massie’s all-or-nothing approach to the Libertarian ticket.

Johnson may have been far from a perfect Libertarian candidate, but let’s not forget who he was up against in the LP:

Outside of libertarian world, the debate has turned to whether this whole incident represents a crisis of civility or democracy (almost everyone is sure that it represents a crisis of something). Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times and many other prominent media figures have started suggesting that Sanders getting the boot from a dining establishment showcases how dystopian our nation has become, how uniquely precarious our republic’s position. Thankfully, some folks with less hysterical historical ignorance have also entered the debate:

FREE MINDS

The NSA’s secret spy hubs. The Intercept “has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world” in each of eight major American cities. Tucked away in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., these facilities “are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.”

“The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners,” The Intercept reports. Their collaboration has lasted for decades. And yet…

Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

Read the whole thing here.

FREE MARKETS

Cannabis-based epilepsy drug gets approval. On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Epidiolex, a prescription drug made with cannabidiol (CBD) that can be used to treat severe epilepsy. Derived from cannabis, it helps squelch epileptic seizures without the psychoactive effects of smoking marijuana (which come courtesy of the plant’s THC, not CBD).

“The difficult-to-control seizures that patients with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome experience have a profound impact on these patients’ quality of life,” said Billy Dunn, deputy director of the FDA’s center for drug evaluation and research, in a statement.

In addition to another important treatment option for Lennox-Gastaut patients, this first-ever approval of a drug specifically for Dravet patients will provide a significant and needed improvement in the therapeutic approach to caring for people with this condition.

But FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stressed that folks shouldn’t get their hopes too high about this step, saying it was important “to note that this is not an approval of marijuana or all of its components. This is the approval of one specific CBD medication for a specific use.”

QUICK HITS

  • Republican or conservative: “You have to choose,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.

  • The Supreme Court sided with American Express in a case that saw the credit card company sued by the federal government and several states.

  • Is this the most 2018 story of the day?
  • The case for expanding telemedicine by removing government barriers.
  • “Orlando has stopped testing Amazon’s facial recognition program after rights groups raised concerns that the service could be used in ways that could violate civil liberties,” reports Reuters.

  • In Illinois, “the Libertarian Party filed a slate of statewide candidates on Monday,” reports NPR. These included gubernatorial candidate Kash Jackson, “a retired Navy veteran [who] wants to legalize recreational marijuana,” along with lieutenant governor candidate Sanj Mohip, comptroller candidate Claire Ball, and attorney general candidate Bubba Harsy.

  • Voters in Colorado, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, and Utah go to the polls today.

  • Seaweed will save us?

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This Is Not a Pot Pipe: New at Reason

In the latest issue of Reason, Jacob Sullum teaches readers how to stay on the right side of drug parafernalia laws:

If you take an apple from your fruit bowl, you have committed no crime. If you take a knife and carve a right-angled channel through the apple, starting at the top and ending on the side, you are still in the clear.

But the moment you think about covering the top hole with perforated aluminum foil to hold a nugget of marijuana that you will light while sucking on the side hole, you have transformed that innocent apple into contraband. Possessing it could earn you penalties ranging from a fine (up to $500 in Texas, where I live) to a jail sentence (as long as a year in Pennsylvania, where I grew up).

View this article.

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Police Investigate 20 Kids for Sexting, Charge No One (Thankfully)

PhoneLet’s hear it for an unusually sensible police response to a case of high school sexting.

The Nashua, New Hampshire, police received word in May that 10 or 20 students at Bishop Guertin High School had been snapping and swapping sexts.

But then, rather than arresting these kids for making child porn, or threatening to register them as sex offenders, the police did something outrageously reasonable.

They opted not to charge any of them.

As Nashua’s Lieutenant Robert Page told WMUR TV:

“To begin with, the laws of child pornography were developed to target and prosecute child predators, not students and juveniles who make bad decisions,” Page said.

Police said they have spoken to all the students who were involved and their parents. They also wiped the photos off the phones.

The police went on to tell the students that what they put on social media never completely disappears, so from now on, lay off the inappropriate photos. That’s precisely the response I think most of us would want from the cops if our own kids ever sent or received a sext. (Which, if they’re under 23, they probably did, by the way.)

Now compare the perspective and compassion of those Nashua, NH, police to the actions in any number of other teen sexting cases. For instance:

  • The 2014 Virginia case where cops sought and obtained a warrant to give a teen boy an erection so they could compare it to a sext they had gotten their hands on (as it were).
  • The case in Minnesota where a 14-year-old girl sent a racy picture of herself to a boy she liked, and was charged with distributing child porn. Yes, that made her both the exploited child and the nefarious pornographer.
  • The Rhode Island case where a girl, 13, sent a boy, 14, “inappropriate” pictures of herself, which the boy inappropriately shared. Lots of inappropriate behavior going on. But how inappropriate? He was charged with distributing child porn, she was charged with disseminating indecent material.

I vote to have Page make a video for the National Association of Police Organizations saying just what he said to WMUR:

“The laws of child pornography were developed to target and prosecute child predators, not students and juveniles who make bad decisions.”

Or maybe we should needlepoint some police station pillows with that statement. Or make t-shirts. Or simply repeat it over and over until law enforcement realizes the American public does not want its children being treated like child pornographers simply because they’ve got a cell phone and some hormones both turned on at the same time.

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The SEC Keeps Eyeing Cryptocurrency Tech for Regulation: New at Reason

EtheriumOne of the hottest scenes in the cryptocurrency community today revolves around what’s known as an “ICO,” or initial coin offering. An ICO is a kind of futuristic fundraising round. Rather than relying on regulations and lawyers to guide investment, developers of an upcoming project solicit funds to build out a planned technology platform in exchange for tokens that investors can then trade or use on the platform itself when it is complete. Developers gain access to needed funding in order to make their vision a reality. Investors are rewarded for their early insight with profits and first access to the platform. Everyone wins, and innovation proceeds apace.

At least, this is the ideal. In practice, a lot of ICOs end up being unexpectedly complex works-in-progress (to be extremely charitable) at best and outright scams at the worst. A tiny handful—we’re talking maybe two or three—of ICOs seem to have lived up to their promises. Maybe others will follow. But a worrying number of them have unfortunately looked more like fly-by-night get-rich-quick cons hoping to piggyback on the buzz of the cryptoeconomy than an innovative funding mechanism for the technologies of tomorrow.

For these reasons, securities regulators across the world have started to turn a sharp eye to the ICO space, with important implications for the future of this kind of project structure. In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been closely watching the ICO space for some time, and it has recently signaled that it may undertake more rigorous interventions in coming months. Andrea O’Sullivan delves into the details.

View this article.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Got Booted From a Restaurant, but Florists and Photographers Should Have to Work Gay Weddings?

Wedding flower arrangementsOn Friday—I’m guessing you’ve heard—President Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was calmly asked to leave the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, by its owner, Stephanie Wilkinson. Sanders did did so without a fuss.

The rest of the country could learn a thing or two from the exchange.

Many, especially on the political right, have responded with outrage. A different Red Hen restaurant was egged, presumably by confused Trump supporters. Unflattering reviews were left for Wilkinson’s eatery on Yelp. People milled around outside the next day, shouted things from car windows, and tried to flood the system with fake reservations, according to reports. Red Hen’s management ended up deciding not to open Saturday evening.

There are good and reasonable arguments to be made that responding to political disagreement with a total refusal to engage in either conversation or normal business dealings is bad for the country. The Washington Post editorial board came out against Wilkinson’s move, writing that “those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment.”

Civility is great, of course, as are dialogue and debate. But so is economic freedom, including the right of private individuals to decide when, where, how, and with whom to do business.

Conservatives should be careful what they demand in cases like these. Most of them likely support the right of a religious baker not to make a custom cake for a same-sex marriage celebration—and rightly so. As important and valuable as it is to treat others with respect, especially given the current toxic political culture, good behavior should never be forced on us at the expense of our right to live out our peaceful convictions. Words are not violence. Neither is politely turning someone out of your restaurant or shop.

People on the left might also use this moment to re-evaluate a few things. The insistence that wedding vendors be required by law to work gay weddings is often framed in terms of civility as well, with appeals to the deep emotional harm and “deprivation of personal dignity” that can come from being refused service.

But as the exchange between Wilkinson and Sanders shows, one person’s bigotry is another person’s morality-driven business decision—and it is possible to survive such an affront without falling completely to pieces. The situations are not exactly alike, but they’re not far off. In each, the proprieter of a private establishment acted in accordance with the demands of his or her conscience on a politically charged question. And in each, those turned away had many other options conveniently at their disposal. Arguably, the florists and photographers actually have a stronger case against being compelled to enter a commercial relationship against their will, since wedding services are generally creatively tailored to a customer’s wishes and intended to capture the ethos of his or her particular event. (They’re also generally arranged via contract in advance.) Personally, however, I think we should stop looking for narrow categories of economic activities we’ll allow and begin instead with a presumption of liberty. Sometimes people will use their freedom to do things we don’t like, and that has to be OK.

I’m all for living in harmony, to include good-faith engagement through trade and discourse even with those you think are horribly, and even horrifyingly, wrong. Civility is a worthy ideal, but it is not the only or highest consideration in most situations—and it certainly should not be imposed upon us by the state.

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Brickbat: Overpolicing

Guy on bikeWhen a Toronto police officer pulled over a bicyclist for riding on the road instead of the bike lane, the cyclist began to argue that he had not broken the law. So the cop called for backup, and four more patrol cars arrived to help him write the ticket. Unfortunately, it seems that none of those officers knew the law. The Toronto Police Service says the cyclist was right and withdrew the ticket.

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Top Democrats Distance Themselves from Maxine Waters’ Calls to ‘Push Back’ Against Trump Administration Staffers

REUTERS/Toya Sarno JordanTop Democrats on Capitol Hill are disavowing Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-Calif.) call to tell Trump administration cabinet members they are “not welcome.”

At a weekend rally, Waters told her supporters to “get out and…create a crowd” if they saw a member of the Trump administration in a public setting: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Waters’ comments came in response a tweet from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders after the management at the Red Hen, a rural Virginia restaurant, asked her to leave the establishment. The owner maintains that she did so out of concern for her staff.

“In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again,” tweeted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday morning. Pelosi’s tweet included a link to Waters’ comments.

Hours later, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered his own criticism from the Senate floor, saying, “I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don’t agree with you.” Schumer offered alternative ways to share disagreement, which included engaging in civil discourse and voting.

“No one should call for the harassment of political opponents,” he added. “That’s not right. That’s not American.”

During a Monday press briefing, Sanders responded, saying that “calls for harassment and push[es] for any Trump supporter to avoid the public [are] unacceptable,” citing comments by “a member of Congress.”

“We are allowed to disagree, but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm, and this goes for all people, regardless of politics,” Sanders said.

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The Libertarian Case FOR Serving Sarah Huckabee Sanders (and Other People You Disagree With)

My colleague Robby Soave has already published a libertarian defense of refusing to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Over the weekend, Sanders and her party were bounced from the Red Hen, a restaurant in Virginia. The restaurant’s owner, said “this feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

Well, sure, knock yourself out. The doctrinaire libertarian defense of the owner is pretty straightforward: A business owner should have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, good, bad, and stupid. (Note: Such a position is not the law of the land due to various antidiscrimination laws). Just as an anti-gay cake baker should be able to pass on making a wedding cake, or a racist can refuse service because she doesn’t like the skin color of a potential customer, the Red Hen’s owner should be able to kick out this or that customer just because.

Those arguments make sense, I guess. But I think the decision to withhold service is usually illiberal and damaging to civil discourse, which, like property rights, is also something we should value as libertarians. Unlike many of my Reason colleagues, I don’t get too bothered with laws that mandate equal treatment under the law at businesses that are open to the public. If you want to be a private club so you can discriminate for x or y reason, go right ahead. But there is a social value in saying that businesses that claim to be open to the public will not be allowed to exclude individuals or groups unless they are being specifically disruptive. It’s one thing to kick out a rowdy party of women at a restaurant. It’s another to refuse to serve women at all.

Libertarians are quick to point out that capitalism works to break down prejudice and bias precisely because everyone’s money is green. The profit motive can trump tribal, political, or ideological prejudices. Once a racist, a homophobe, or a NeverTrumper starts working side by side with or serving the object of their scorn, it’s quite possible that meaningful conversation will take place. Who knows, people may even find common ground and start building out from that toward a better, more-inclusive society? There are also questions of proportion here, too. As press secretary, Sanders is an habitual liar (that is the job of a press secretary, regardless of who she serves), but she’s also not, I don’t know, Henry Kissinger at the height of the Vietnam War, or even Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser credited with engineering the controversial family-separation policy talking place on our southern border.

From a strictly pragmatic level, did the bouncing of Sarah Huckabee Sanders do anything to undermine Trump’s support or policies? No, of course not. If anything, it simply hardens the hearts of his supporters. It’s no secret that Donald Trump is the troll in chief, an expert hand at making people who disagree with him act like total jerks. Time and again, for instance, the media gets blinded by its Trump Delusion Syndrome and makes serious mistakes (most recently, consider the case of the girl that wasn’t separated at the border). Nobody wins in a pissing contest but everybody ends up getting wet, right? In the wake of the incident, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), surely one of the least-impressive members of the group that Mark Twain called America’s only native criminal class, has called for a non-stop campaign of public shaming of anyone associated with the Trump administration. “For these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gasoline station,” she dreams.

Good luck with all that, Rep. Waters. America is already staggering under the weight of every goddamn thing we do being hyper-politicized. One of the creators of Twitter, for god’s sake, just apologized for eating a Chick-fil-A, for god’s sake. If you want to actually change somebody’s mind, you’re far better off using unexpected opportunities to demonstrate essential humanity to your enemies and opponents, rather than fulfill stereotypes. Perhaps it would have been a smaller story (or none at all) if the Red Hen owner had taken a few minutes at the end of the meal to sit down with Sanders and explain the nature of her grievances with various Trump policies. I suspect that sort of treatment would go farther than kicking Sanders the hell out.

As with most things, of course, this all really just life imitating Seinfeld. Here’s a clip from an episode in which Jerry clears out a restaurant by forcing customers to find out whether the owner agrees with them on the issue of abortion. It’s very funny, but I know I don’t want to live in this sort of world.

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Trump Era Has Been Great News for New York Times Company’s Shareholders: New at Reason

The Trump era sure has been good for shareholders in what the president likes to call the “failing New York Times.”

The New York Times Company stock went to $26.60 last week from $11.05 on Election Day 2016, according to Yahoo Finance’s data, which adjusts for reinvested dividends. That’s an increase of $15.55 a share. The stock hit a 52-week high last week.

The single biggest winner on that climb appears to be the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. According to The New York Times Company’s 2018 proxy statement, Slim controlled 27,191,500 shares of The New York Times Company Class A Common Stock as of February 15, 2018. Do the math, and Slim would have a paper profit of $422,827,825 on his Times investment since Election Day, though he has sold some shares between February and today. The Ochs-Sulzberger family descendants that control the Times Company also made some money on paper, though less than Slim, since the Ochs-Sulzberger family owns about a 9% economic interest in the Times Company, compared to Slim’s 16.7%, according to the proxy statement.

The “Trump Bump” has been good for Carlos Slim and the Ochs-Sulzberger family’s stock price. Whether it is good for the Times journalism, and whether it’s a sustainable long-term growth strategy for the Times Company, are different questions, however, writes Ira Stoll.

View this article.

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Is ‘Civility’ Possible, Let Alone Desirable, in Trump’s America?: Podcast

The America we deserve. ||| Ben GarrisonWill the Red Hen episode lead to a “Red Wedding“-style breakdown of the American political family? It’s been an unavoidable conversation these last 52 hours in American politics, so it kicks off this week’s editor-roundtable version of the Reason Podcast, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch.

Aside from the legality, political efficacy, and etiquette of public-official-shaming, the editors share what they learned during the family-separation imbroglio, celebrate last week’s Fourth Amendment victory at the Supreme Court, break down the advent of health association plans, and manage not to spoil the season finale of Westworld.

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

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Relevant links from the show:

“Everyone Has an Opinion About Whether Restaurants Should Serve Trump Staffers,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“A Libertarian Defense of the Red Hen’s Right to Refuse Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” by Robby Soave

“10 Things Libertarians Need to Know About Trump and Pence, Hamilton, and Political Correctness,” by Robby Soave

“Beginning of the End of Trump’s Zero Border (In)Tolerance?,” by Shikha Dalmia

“Trump Signs Executive Order Reversing Family Separation Policy,” by Christian Britschgi

“Huge Win for Everyone With a Cellphone (and for the Fourth Amendment) at the Supreme Court,” by Damon Root

“First Thoughts on Carpenter v. United States,” by Orin Kerr

“Neil Gorsuch Joins Sonia Sotomayor in Questioning the Third-Party Doctrine,” by Jacob Sullum

“Database Nation,” by Declan McCullagh

“Rand Paul–Endorsed ‘Association Health Plans’ Go Into Effect,” by Brian Doherty

Muppet existentialism

Don’t miss a single Reason Podcast! (Archive here.)

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