Category: reason

The president announces a strict new border policy aimed at preventing foreigners from harming Americans. Although it is completely foreseeable that the policy will hurt many innocent people and provoke a bipartisan public outcry, the president does not seem to anticipate the objections that eventually lead him to retreat from the policy at the urging of his advisers. Afterward he expresses regret that he listened to his advisers, wishing that he had stuck with the tough policy he initially favored instead of the watered-down version he felt compelled to accept.

That scenario, which played out during Donald Trump’s first year in office as he tried to impose restrictions on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was repeated last week as he suddenly modified a “zero tolerance” policy that had separated thousands of children from parents accused of illegally crossing the southern border. This pattern might reflect a sophisticated political strategy that aims to satisfy Trump’s base while first antagonizing and then mollifying more moderate allies and voters. If so, Trump and his underlings have done an impressive job of simulating ineptitude.

It seems more likely that Trump is trying to do what he believes is the right thing, only to be frustrated by legal and political realities. That explanation is more consistent with the chaotic implementation of these policies and with Trump’s longstanding views on immigration and border control.

The travel restrictions embodied in the executive order that Trump issued a week after his inauguration grew out of what he had originally described as “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Presumably someone told him that an explicit religious test for granting admission to the United States was constitutionally problematic. Trump’s order instead banned travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, initially including legal permanent residents of the United States as well as people legally working or attending school here. That policy caused much confusion and consternation at airports, provoked protests from Republicans as well as Democrats, and ran into immediate trouble in the courts. It was repeatedly revised, and the Supreme Court is about to rule on the latest version.

The Court probably will uphold that order. But Trump caused needless trouble for himself by recommending a comprehensive “Muslim ban” during his campaign and by rushing to issue a half-baked policy without consulting the people who would be charged with carrying it out or talking to advisers who could have suggested ways to make it more legally defensible (such as making it clear from the outset that the ban did not apply to green-card holders). The administration’s lawyers initially seemed ill-prepared to defend the travel ban, and Trump undermined their efforts by complaining that the Justice Department had talked him into a “watered down, politically correct version” of his original order. On the face of it, Trump tripped over his own feet by recklessly following his instincts.

Likewise with the policy of criminally prosecuting virtually everyone who illegally enters the United States, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month. Sessions knew that “zero tolerance” would break up families, since children could not legally be detained with their parents for longer than 20 days. Presumably Trump also knew that. Yet somehow he did not anticipate the uproar that would be caused by stories of crying children snatched from their parents and transported hundreds or thousands of miles away. Despite the public outcry, Trump steadfastly defended the policy before suddenly giving in last week by promising to keep families together from now on, although it remains unclear how that goal can be legally reconciled with his commitment to continue “zero tolerance.”

Once again, Trump wishes he had stayed the course. “Privately,” The New York Times reports, “the president has groused that he should not have signed the order undoing separations.” Yesterday Trump tried to compensate for the reversal by declaring that people caught crossing the border without permission should be summarily sent back (an approach that is actually inconsistent with “zero tolerance,” which calls for criminal prosecution and punishment prior to deportation). The political advantages of such zigzagging, which does not makes the president look tough or smart, are not obvious.

Trump is not just catering to the anti-immigrant sentiment of his supporters but following through on opinions he has publicly expressed since the 1990s. While it’s true that Trump criticized Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, for advocating policies that would encourage illegal immigrants to “self-deport” (a stance that Trump described as “crazy,” “maniacal,” and “mean-spirited”), he has a long history of advocating not only crackdowns on illegal immigration but reductions in legal immigration. “I’m opposed to new people coming in,” he said while seeking the Reform Party’s presidential nomination in 1999. “We have to take care of the people who are here.”

In The America We Deserve, the book Trump published the following year, his discussion of immigration sounds pretty similar to what he has been saying since he began his 2016 campaign. “America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders,” he wrote. “We simply can’t absorb them. It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders….Our current laxness toward illegal immigration shows a recklessness and disregard for those who live here legally….It’s irresponsible to give a helping hand to outsiders so long as there is one American deprived of a livelihood or basic services.” He added that “legal immigrants do not and should not enter easily” and warned that the U.S. must be “extremely careful not to admit more people than we can absorb.”

Trump’s sense that gains for immigrants come at the expense of U.S. citizens is of a piece with his zero-sum view of international trade, a perspective that also was influencing his thinking long before he sought the GOP’s 2016 nomination. Unlike, say, his current stances on abortion and gun control, Trump’s views on trade and immigration seem sincere as well as politically expedient. That history reinforces the impression that he is going with his gut on these issues, heedless of the practical and political consequences. Maybe that is the impression he is deliberately creating so his opponents will underestimate him, a plan that has been in the works for decades. He sure fooled me.

The Supreme Court today punted another case back down to the state level rather than further explore whether wedding service providers could legally be ordered to serve same-sex couples.

The Court ruled on June 4 that the state of Colorado erred when it punished a baker for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The decision was 7-2, but it was ruled on very narrow grounds that didn’t really address some larger free speech questions raised by the case. Instead, the majority ruled that the state’s Civil Rights Commission showed open hostility toward the issues of religious freedom presented in the case and did not behave as a neutral arbiter of antidiscrimination and public accommodation laws, which is its role. The court invalidated the commission’s ruling but deliberately did not rule one way or the other as to whether the creation of a wedding cake was a form of speech or expression.

As a result, many people had their eyes on another, very similar case, Arlene’s Flowers v. Washington, which had been petitioned to the Supreme Court for consideration (the Reason Foundation submitted an amicus brief supporting the florist and encouraging the Supreme Court to take the case up). The arguments in the case are similar to the arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, but the case revolved around floral arrangements, not cake. Washington state ruled that Arlene’s Flowers could not decline to provide its arrangements for same-sex weddings under the state’s public accommodation laws.

Today, the Supreme Court announced it would not take up the Arlene’s Flowers case, instead sending it back to the state court to reconsider in the wake of their Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling.

What that means is, essentially, the Supreme Court is warning these state officials that they need to be neutrally applying their antidiscrimination laws, and when somebody presents religious objections to what they see as compelled speech, it can’t be treated differently than other types of objections to compelled speech.

This is not a win or a loss for any side, but states should see it as a warning that they really do need to take seriously religious objections to these laws. Arlene’s Flowers owner Baronnelle Stutzman believes that she was treated with the same sort of antireligious animosity the court found in the Colorado case. Washington officials are going to have to show otherwise. You can read the state Supreme Court ruling here at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website (the ACLU is supporting the state, not the florist).

The Arlene’s Flowers case may eventually work its way back up to the Supreme Court, where SCOTUS may choose to tackle the issue of whether the providing of wedding goods and services count as expressive speech that cannot be mandated without violating the First Amendment. But that particular dilemma has been kicked quite a ways down the road for now.

On Friday, the owner of the Red Hen, a restaurant in rural Virginia, asked a customer—Sarah Huckabee Sanders—to leave. The Trump administration’s press secretary then exited without complaint.

It’s easy to imagine both left and right upping the ante with these performative acts of resistance, further polarizing society in ways that play right into Pres. Trump’s hands. Even so, libertarians should defend a private property owner’s right to eject a government official from the premises.

The incident became a national news story after a waiter wrote about it on Facebook, and Sanders confirmed it in a tweet. Since then, the conservative and liberal commentariat have been attacking and defending the restaurant owner, respectively. Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown included a useful overview of the controversy in this morning’s Reason Roundup.

A summary: Conservatives say that booting Sanders was uncivil, and we should be able to interact with people whose politics we abhor. Taken to the logical extreme, conservatives say, the Red Hen’s tactic would result in separate restaurants for conservatives and liberals, which can’t possibly be healthy for democracy.

Leftists say that Trump is a fascist—the purposeful separation of immigrant families and mistreatment of children offers better evidence of this than anything we’ve seen previously from this administration—and Sanders is complicit in fascism. Trump is neither civil, nor likely to be moved by civility, so what’s the point of playing nice?

Rep. Maxine Waters (D–Calif.), a frequent talking head on MSNBC and a leader of the #Resistance, made her position clear at a rally is Los Angeles on Sunday, where she said, “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 gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store, the people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them…”

“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,” she added.

Waters seems to be encouraging people to form angry mobs to harass Trump officials; if such a practice became normal, it could very well get out of hand quickly. Besides, Waters doesn’t get to decide the rules of engagement in department stores, gas stations, and restaurants—the owners of those properties do. I bet a lot of them would prefer if people didn’t harass other customers, regardless of whether those customers work for Trump.

But Sanders wasn’t forced from the Red Hen by an angry mob—she was asked to leave by the property owner, who was exercising freedom of conscience. Just as libertarians wouldn’t want a Christian cake baker to be forced to endorse a same-sex wedding by preparing a cake for it, we shouldn’t force a restaurant owner to serve a government official involved in policies the owner believes are immoral.

The Red Hen’s owner is free to deny service to Sanders, so too is everybody else free to criticize that decision. As cruel as it may seem for conservatives to destroy Red Hen’s Yelp rating, recall that liberals played this game, too (remember Memories Pizza?).

I think escalation is a real concern, and if the left took Waters’ advice, politicizing nearly every commercial decision, we could end up with an even more fractured society. Trump would exploit this fragmentation, happily informing his voters that liberals won’t even let them go shopping or fill up their gas tanks without shrieking at them. Trump likes to capitalize on his base’s fears; those fears seem more justified when the left peacefully censures and ostracizes prominent conservatives.

At the same time, Sanders not getting dinner is in no way, shape, or form as tragic as the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Liberals have every reason to wonder why they need to show Trump officials civility when Trump’s behavior is so appalling. Turning away Sanders is thus every restaurant owner’s right.

Will doing so encourage the Trump administration to enact more humane immigration policies, or will it cause Trump to double down and produce a toxic blowback? I think more people should be honest about the fact that we don’t really know for certain, which is another reason why the libertarian approach of letting people set the rules of engagement on their own property—at the Red Hen, and at Masterpiece Cake Shop—is the best policy.

Harley-Davidson, the iconic American motorcycle brand, will shift some manufacturing overseas in response to the raising of trade barriers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a filing made Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson disclosed plans to move some of its manufacturing facilities from the Rust Belt to the Old World in the hopes of avoiding higher costs created by new European Union tariffs that target American-made motorcycles, along with other cultural products like whiskey and blue jeans. Those 25 percent tariffs were imposed last week by E.U. officials in response to the Trump administration’s decision to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Europe.

The tariffs will increase the cost of a motorcycle exported from the U.S. to the E.U. by about $2,200 per bike, and would cost Harley-Davidson between $90 and $100 million per year, the company told the SEC.

Passing along that cost to consumers would have “an immediate and lasting detrimental impact” to Harley-Davidson’s sales in Europe. Shifting manufacturing to the E.U. will allow the motorbike maker to avoid that hit—although it will take 9 to 18 months to ramp-up international plants, Harley-Davison says, and in the meantime the company is expecting to lose $30 million to $45 million during the transition.

It remains to be seen whether Harley-Davidson’s decision to shift some manufacturing operations overseas will force layoffs at its American plants in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Still, it’s worth noting that the company has scaled back its American production lines in recent years in favor of opening a new plant in India, where motorbikes are highly sought, to get around a massive import tariff imposed there. Harley-Davidson has plans to open another facility in Thailand for the same reason.

All of which should be taken as pretty solid evidence that raising barriers to trade will ultimately harm American workers. A business like Harley-Davidson gets hit at both ends, as American tariffs on steel and aluminum imports drive up the cost of raw materials used to build motorcycles and retaliatory EU tariffs make it more difficult to sell their products. To hear President Donald Trump explain it, tariffs should force foreign manufacturers to “build them here,” but Harley-Davidson’s announcement shows how a trade war will give American businesses a strong incentive to relocate elsewhere.

Of course, Harley-Davidson has the ability to relocate some of it’s manufacturing overseas because it’s a global brand that sold more than 40,000 motorcycles to European consumers last year. Other firms don’t have that choice and won’t generate front-page headlines about the pain caused by Trump’s trade war.

Few people are talking about businesses like Mid Continent Nail Corporation in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, which announced last week that it would have to lay off 200 workers—about 40 percent of its workforce—before Labor Day due to increased steel prices created by Trump’s tariffs. The 25 percent tariff on imported steel makes it impossible for the company to compete with cheaper nails produced in places like China, a company spokeswoman told MissouriNet.com.

The same is true for the 1,500 jobs at three Arkansas-based tire cord manufacturing plants. All three say they will be forced to close their plants unless they can get relief from the Trump administration’s steel tariffs.

Those jobs won’t be moving overseas. They’ll just vanish.

Whether looking at motorcycles, nails, tires, or any of the other steel-consuming industries that employ more than 6.5 million Americans, the story is largely the same. Trump’s trade war is hiking production costs and closing off potential export markets. Tariffs aren’t saving steel towns, but they are causing serious pain for American manufacturers—the very set of industries that Trump supposedly is trying to help.

“Increasing international production to alleviate the E.U. tariff burden is not the company’s preference,” Harley-Davidson told the SEC in Monday’s filing, “but represents the only sustainable option to make its motorcycles accessible to customers in the EU and maintain a viable business in Europe.”

While America tilted its head at the season finale of Westworld Sunday night, journalists in Southern California gathered to hand out awards for writing and reporting. And Reason took home an armful.

Reason was nominated for 30 awards, a new record for us. At the end of the night, we walked away with five first-place plaques, six second-place certificates, and seven third-place certificates.

Here’s what won first-place and the judges’ comments that were shared:

Best Activism Journalism: David Bier, for “Why the Wall Won’t Work“

Judges’ comment: “A thorough, brick-by-brick explanation why the Trump wall won’t work.”

Best National Political/Government Reporting: Jesse Walker, for “The Indestructible Idea of the Basic Income“

Judges’ comment: “The historical information gives a complicated issue much needed context.”

Best Investigative Article: C.J. Ciaramella and Lauren Krisai, for “How Florida Entraps Pain Patients, Forces Them to Snitch, Then Locks Them Up for Decades“

Judges’ comment: “Through copious research, this piece shows yet another side to the opioid crisis, where outdated laws and procedures further victimize people affected.”

Best Lifestyle Feature: Mike Riggs, for “Medical Researchers Are Steps From Legalizing Ecstasy. Here’s How They Did It“

Judges’ comment: “This comprehensive piece on how psychedelic drugs, in fits and starts, have plodded toward legalization is interesting, informative, well written, well sourced and does an excellent job of explaining a complex subject.”

Best Group Blog: Staff, Reason.

Judges’ comment: “Unique viewpoints with a variety of topics keeping the reader interested in what might be happening outside their typical scope.”

Those were all the first-place winners. Look below the fold for the second- and third-place entries.

Second-place awards:

Best Humor/Satire Writing: Austin Bragg, Meredith Bragg, and Andrew Heaton, for “Game of Thrones: Libertarian Edition“

Best Non-Entertainment Personality Profile/Interview: Justin Monticello, Alex Manning, and Zach Weissmueller, for “This Self-Taught Programmer Is Bringing Transparency to California Politics“

Best Criticism on Books/Art/Architecture/Design: Brian Doherty, for “The Great James Buchanan Conspiracy“

Best Investigative Story: Elizabeth Nolan Brown, for “American Sex Police“

Best Columnist: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (for “One Woman’s Adventures in Gender Crossing and Civil Disobedience,” “The Myth of Technological Unemployment,” and “An Economist Goes to Shanghai“)

Best Minority/Immigration Reporting (print): Joe Coon, for “Bringing Bandar Home“

Third-place awards:

Best Criticism on Food/Culture: Peter Suderman, for “Government Almost Killed the Cocktail“

Best Columnist: J.D. Tuccille (for “Your Handy Guide to Camping in Forbidden Places,” “RIP Jerome Tuccille, Author of It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand,” and “Where Radar Cameras Fear To Tread“)

Best Feature, Business/Government (over 1,000 words): Mike Riggs, for “How Washington Lost the War on Muscle“

Best News Article, Government/Politics: Eric Boehm, for “After Challenging Red Light Cameras, Oregon Man Fined $500 for Practicing Engineering Without a License“

Best Columnist: Scott Shackford, for “Chelsea Manning Showed Us the Consequences of War, and We Threw Her in Prison,” “People Who Called Snowden a Traitor Shocked to Learn About All This Domestic Surveillance,” and “The Government is Here to Make Sure Your Fidget Spinner Doesn’t Kill Everybody“

Best Sports Commentary: Eric Boehm, for “Atlanta Braves’ New Stadium Is a Disaster for Taxpayers and Fans“

Best Entertainment and Celebrity News: Elizabeth Nolan Brown, for “Hot Girls Wanted: Exploiting Sex Workers in the Name of Exposing Porn Exploitation?“

I’d like to congratulate my colleagues, and all of us here at Reason would like thank our readers, supporters, and donors for making this work possible. The recognition we received last night is a direct result of you people putting your money where your ideals are.

Under Trump, restaurant admissions policies are a partisan issue. The most talked-about political news to come out of last weekend has nothing to do with immigration, tariffs, or public policy of any sort. No, the president and the chattering classes have been preoccupied Sunday and this morning with a small Virginia restaurant giving White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders the boot. The owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., said she is “not a huge fan of confrontation” but “this feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

In response, Democrats have been applauding the move and calling for more business owners to place politics above business. Rep. Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) said in a Saturday speech that more people should publicly shun Trump-administration officials, in light of their recent policies regarding immigrant children.

“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 gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store,” Waters said. “The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you, this is wrong, this is unconscionable, and we can’t keep doing this to children.'”

Meanwhile, the Trumpian right has been using the news to fuel their us-against-the-world posturing while old-school conservatives—and centrists of all stripes—wax on about civility.

“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,” opined the Washington Post editorial board. “How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families? Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service.”

This will end with political violence, and political violence with Trump in the White House will end with a crackdown that will push this country to an even worse place. But no matter: it sure will feel awesome to be rude to evildoers, so yay! https://t.co/a1Ltwxzgjp

— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) June 25, 2018

Even the president has weighed in (with typically mature aplomb).

The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018

And of course the surface similarity between this debate and the Masterpiece Cakeshop case have drawn all sorts of heated heckling and strained comparisons. Many are pointing out that just a few weeks ago, Democrats and progressives were firmly against businesses being able to deny service to certain customers. Liberals fire back that Trump staffers aren’t a protected class in the way racial and sexual minorities are. The whole business has led to some twisted rationalizations and position shifts on both sides, as Trump fans suddenly discover a dislike for business-owner discretion and progressives pretend like there’s no connection between the right of association in this case versus those involving gay wedding cakes.

Basically, everyone in the mainstream is behaving about as you might expect, united at least in their commitment to make this non-issue into a national referendum. But the bottom line is that there’s almost no chance things like the Sanders incident become commonplace. The vast majority of restaurant and small-business owners couldn’t pick out particular Trump administration officials or Congress critters, and likely don’t want and can’t afford to limit their customer base to ideologically simpatico people.

Taking serious sides in the Sanders restaurant debate doesn’t involve real stakes for almost anyone, though, so we can expect to see it dominating the news cycle for days to come. And when there’s no more spectacle left in this circus? Bring on the billboard battles!

After a billboard went up reading “Liberals please continue on I-40 until you have left our great state of Texas,” Amarillo responded with this: #Texasisforeveryone pic.twitter.com/BgGd2vcTFx

— Cynthia Reyes (@cynthiaannreyes) June 24, 2018

FREE MINDS

“Is this real?” The second season of HBO’s Westworld concluded last night with a finale that has fans (including us here at Reason) divided. See Vox for a good rundown of the season finale’s twists and turns, and what they might mean for season three.

Series co-creator Lisa Joy has said a little about about what we can expect next season. From The Hollywood Reporter (spoilers abound below):

As of season two’s conclusion, the “real world,” as it were, now has a whole new species to consider, in the form of three new inhabitants: Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and a recently created host with the likeness of the late Charlotte Hale, played by Tessa Thompson. These three hosts escaped the confines of Westworld by the end of the season, all three of them through very different means. For Bernard and Dolores, their shared existence in this strange new land is the one thing that bonds them; philosophically, they are at odds, with Dolores still determined to gain supremacy over humanity, while Bernard intends to stand in her way. Their conflict, and their new place within the humans’ world, will become a major focus in season three of Westworld, which remains without a return date.

Additionally, there’s reason to suspect that season three will not only focus largely on a new setting, but also a new point in time. Season two’s post-credits sequence, which centers on an apparently artificial version of the Man in Black (Ed Harris), takes places in the “far, far future,” according to what Westworld co-creator and co-showrunner Lisa Joy tells The Hollywood Reporter. Joy cautions that this won’t be the predominant setting for the third season, but it’s a point in the timeline that she and co-creator Jonathan Nolan are very much driving toward.

FREE MARKETS

Trump’s tariffs could be bad for good cheese. From The New York Times:

For domestic cheesemakers … Trump’s approach has further tilted the global playing field against American manufacturers, giving them an even steeper climb in an increasingly competitive global economy.

The dairy industry now faces substantial tariffs on products it exports as Mexico, Canada and other countries retaliate against Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. American exporters also fear that they could lose access to Canada and Mexico if the president goes ahead with his threat to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. And they are finding themselves at an increasing disadvantage as other countries move ahead with trade agreements that grant each other freer access to their markets while Mr. Trump further isolates the United States.

Read the whole thing here. Meanwhile, in other tariff-related news:

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Facing rising costs from tariffs, Harley-Davison will shift production for EU bound motorcycles overseas.

— WISCTV News 3 (@WISCTV_News3) June 25, 2018

QUICK HITS

• California senator and Democratic darling Kamala Harris said she’s open to running for president in 2020.
• North Korea has decided to skip an annual anti-U.S. rally this year.

If only Republicans liked money more and whiteness less https://t.co/a6JqXO2Lpe

— Kerry Howley (@KerryHowley) June 24, 2018

• “The president is relying less and less on the advice of” Defense Secretary James Mattis, reports NBC.
• Walgreens is under fire after one of its pharmacists refused to sell medication to a woman having a miscarriage, saying that filling her prescription was against his religious beliefs.
• Trump doesn’t believe in due process for people who attempt to cross U.S. borders without going through official channels.

Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has been dropping a huge number of bombs in Afghanistan—three times more in 2017 than in 2016, under Barack Obama. But the insurgents now control more of the country’s territory than ever before. The simple fact is, writes Steve Chapman, that we are not winning the war—and if you are not winning a war against an enemy fighting on his soil among his people, you are losing.

View this article.

On a shopping trip to the butcher’s, young Miss la Genne wore her new, form-fitting jacket, a stylish cotton print with large brown flowers and red stripes on a white background. It got her arrested.

Another young woman stood in the door of her boss’ wine shop sporting a similar jacket with red flowers. She too was arrested. So were Madame de Ville, the lady Coulange, and Madame Boite. Through the windows of their homes, law enforcement authorities spotted these unlucky women in clothing with red flowers printed on white. They were busted for possession, writes Virginia Postrel.

View this article.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says Catholic hospitals will be required to perform abortions once the procedure is legalized. Voters overwhelmingly repealed the constitution’s ban on abortion, and lawmakers are drafting enabling legislation. Varadkar says individual doctors and nurses will not be required to perform abortions but hospitals will not be exempt from the law.

Bitcoin is often mistakenly described as a “fully anonymous” cryptocurrency. In fact, while global superpowers can’t prevent you from spending your bitcoins, that doesn’t mean they can’t figure out what you bought. More than 100 Silk Road users have gotten into trouble with law enforcement since 2012, and the Snowden leaks revealed that the National Security Agency has worked to uncover the identities of other bitcoin users as well.

There’s no such thing as perfect anonymity, but a handful of best practices can go a long way toward shielding your transactions from government spies and other malevolents, writes Jim Epstein in his guide to buying Bitcoin.

View this article.