Category: reason

Just three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting, Delaware will be the first place outside of Nevada to allow bettors to wager on the outcome of individual games.

At 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the state’s three casinos will begin accepting single-game bets on football, baseball, auto racing, basketball, hockey, soccer, and golf. With Game 3 of the National Basketball Association’s championship series set for Wednesday night, that figures to be the first hot ticket.

For now, gamblers will have to make in-person bets at the casinos. According to the Associated Press, Delaware Lottery Director Vernon Kirk said that a mobile application that will allow people in Delaware to partake in sports betting remotely is in the works.

Delaware won the race to be the first state to offer sports betting even though it was New Jersey that brought a challenge against the Bradley Act, the 1992 federal law that prohibited states from legalizing those wagers. The Supreme Court ruled last month that part of the Bradley Act violated the 10th Amendment, freeing states to make their own rules regarding sports betting.

Since 2009, Delaware has offered parlay wagers—where a bettor must correctly predict the outcome of multiple games in order to win—on professional football matches through the Delaware Lottery, which provided the necessary regulatory and technological infrastructure for the speedy expansion of legal gambling in Delaware. In anticipation of the state’s legalization efforts, the state lottery published a betting guide that covers everything from procedures to definitions of relevant terms.

The arrangement used to divvy up the revenue from the parlay wagers will be the same one used for the new betting system. Once the winners have been paid, Scientific Gaming, which is the contractor that runs the Delaware Lottery, will receive a 15.66 percent cut of what is left. From the remainder, 50 percent goes to the state, 40 percent to the casino, and 10 percent goes to the coffers of the horse-racing industry. During fiscal year 2018, Delaware raked in about $9 million.

It is uncertain, however, if opening up more sports betting options will yield a significant boost to state revenue.

“You need a lot more gaming to generate the same amount of revenue,” said state Finance Secretary Rick Geisenberger, according to the AP. This is largely because parlay wagers have a much higher net take than the single-game wages that will now be permitted—around 25 percent compared to close to 5–6 percent.

Delaware is not the only state with legislators itching for sports wagers. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Mississippi, and West Virginia have all recently passed bills that would permit expanded sports gambling. In the meantime, we can be sure that state legislators will have their eyes on Delaware.

Potentially bad news for fans of Bitcoin and other digital currencies: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just appointed its first crypto czar. Valerie Szczepanik’s official title at the federal agency will be senior adviser for digital assets and innovation and associate director of corporation finance.

In the newly created role, Szczepanik will “coordinate efforts across all SEC Divisions and Offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and innovations, including Initial Coin Offerings and cryptocurrencies,” according to an SEC press release.

“Valerie recognized early on the securities law implications of developments like blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, and of cryptocurrencies, Initial Coin Offerings, tokenized securities, and other digital instruments,” said SEC Division of Corporation Finance Director Bill Hinman.

So can we now expect increased SEC scrutiny of cryptocurrencies in a way that impedes their dynamism and usefulness? That seems inevitable. But some are suggesting the up front attention from the SEC could be a good thing, providing clear rules that cut down on the number of confused crypto scofflaws the agency will have to investigate.

The SEC’s enforcement unit “has been increasingly going after initial coin offering fraudsters,” Axios reports. Yet “SEC commissioner Hester Peirce recently said she hopes further guidance will come from the commission’s corporation finance division rather than its enforcement unit.”

In May, Pierce said she was not “willing to make a blanket statement that everything other than Bitcoin is a security”—going against pressure from SEC chairman Jay Clayton and fellow commissioner Mike Piowar, who have said no initial coin offerings other than Bitcoin should be counted non-securities. The distinction makes a big difference, as classifying them as securities leaves blockchain token developers, sellers, and exchange facilitators subject to strict securities laws.

“There’s incredible diversity in what’s out there,” she said, mentioning that some crypto coins operate like securities, some like money, and some as other functions.

Pierce’s May talk to the Medici conference in Los Angeles highlighted many nuanced considerations the SEC should take note of when determining digital currency status. For instance, what happens when a coin’s creator “is not involved anymore”? For the SEC enforcement division “to pursue that promoter doesn’t make sense,” she said. Pierce also pointed out that a cryptocurrency could start as something and then shift in usage or categorization, and expressed a hope that SEC regulators wouldn’t micromanage new technologies.

So right now, the regulatory approach to digital currencies is still being debated, and it’s unclear whether light-touch advocates like Pierce or the typical technophobic and heavy-handed approach will prevail.

The appointment of Szczepanik as SEC crypto czar “comes during what is perhaps a pivotal point on the crypto front for the SEC,” notes Coindesk. “Many of the agency’s public-facing actions have focused on alleged scams and fraudulent behavior, while officials have also come out in support of a more balanced approach to regulation.”

FREE MINDS

Think twice before bellyaching about social media blocks by Trump. Constitutional law professor Noah Feldman suggests that we should be wary of courts “beginning to experiment with expanding the First Amendment, proposing that its protection of political speech applies even in privately controlled virtual spaces” like Twitter. His New York Times editorial comes in the wake of a May federal court decision holding that President Trump can’t block people on Twitter.

“This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the First Amendment has ever been applied to a private platform,” writes Feldman, who does not think this is a desirable development. More:

At present, free speech law ensures the platforms’ own freedom of expression and association. That gives them the constitutional right to set their own terms of service and community standards, which they can use to address everything from spreading deliberate falsehoods to harassing people based on their sex, race or religion.

But if courts determine that the Constitution trumps the private decisions of the platforms with respect to regulating speech, the platforms will not longer set their own standards. […] There is thus a fundamental trade-off at stake. If, on the one hand, courts treat social media platforms as private actors with the constitutional right to regulate what is said on their platforms and who can say it, then we must accept that only a combination of moral, public and market pressure can help ensure that the platforms take appropriate measures to protect truth and civility. This is a system of private, voluntary regulation.

If, on the other hand, courts take over regulating social media, that essentially guarantees the same free-for-all on social media that exists on the internet as a whole—not to mention in real life. In that scenario, we should be prepared to accept the inevitability of fake news, online harassment, expressions of bigotry and all the rest. This would be a system of total free speech.

Read the whole thing here.

JUSTICE WATCH

Paul Manafort could be headed back to prison after alleged witness tampering. Manafort is currently on house arrest while awaiting trial on conspiracy and money-laundering charges. But lawyers with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team are asking a federal judge for pre-trial detention for Manafort, saying they have probable cause to think the former Trump campaign manager and business associate to Russian oligarchs “repeatedly” contacted two witnesses “in an effort to secure materially false testimony.”

The witnesses were both “principals in a public relations firm that worked with Manafort in organizing a group of former European officials, known as the Hapsburg group, who promoted Ukrainian interests in Europe as well as the U.S.,” the Associated Press reported.

QUICK HITS

• The Supreme Court’s Monday decision regarding Masterpiece Cakeshop is refueling the great gay cake wars.
• Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz is leaving the company—and feeding rumors that he has political ambitions.
• New York City may become the latest place to allow residents to choose a non-gendered driver’s license.
• Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt allegedly had a staff member inquire with the Trump International Hotel whether there was “an old mattress that he could purchase.”
• “The budget for anti-human trafficking campaigns has risen to 3 billion baht from 9 million baht, but sting operations remain firmly in place [over the past 10 years],” explained the Empower Foundation’s Thanta Laovilawanyakul at a symposium on anti-human trafficking policy in Thailand. “It isn’t a legitimate approach to deal with the issue as much as it is a violation of sex workers’ rights.”
• Colorado’s governor nixed marijuana-edible tasting rooms.
• “Another explanation” for American’s growing moral acceptance of pornography “is that Stormy Daniels, adult film star actress and fierce critic of President Donald Trump, has given pornography a sense of moral credibility that it previously lacked.”

Check out Alec Ward’s guide on getting delicious foreign meats through customs:

You’re on a plane, returning home from a romantic tour of the Italian countryside. The cabin lights flicker on and you’re confronted by flight attendants passing out slips of official-looking blue cardstock: customs forms.

After scrounging a pen out of the bottom of your carry-on, you start to fill out the cramped response fields. Name, address, flight information. Back to the carry-on again, because who on Earth knows his own passport number? Finally, you come to the declaration section, and begin to tick off negative responses to the bizarre interrogatories. Bringing back soil? No. Seeds? No. Disease agents, cell cultures, or snails? No. Food or meat?

Your stomach drops as you remember the rustic charcuterie you purchased at a quaint butcher shop in Naples. Delicious, and not cheap, either. What to do? The once-boring form suddenly seems daunting. You’re no scofflaw, but what will happen if you check “yes”? You don’t want Uncle Sam to seize your salami. (That already happened once on this trip. Thanks, TSA.)

View this article.

An off-duty FBI agent accidentally shot a man while dancing in a Denver night club. Video shows the agent attempting a back flip when his gun falls out of his holster. He grabs it and fires a shot that reportedly hit another man in the lower leg.

Niall Ferguson, a conservative historian and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, resigned his leadership position in a free speech group after it came to light that he had encouraged the College Republicans to dig up dirt on an activist student.

The Stanford Daily published emails between Ferguson and CR President John Rice-Cameron that depict both parties as incredibly hostile toward Michael Ocon, a campus progressive they considered to be a hindrance.

“Some opposition research on Mr. O might also be worthwhile,” Ferguson wrote, referencing Ocon. He also instructed conservative students to “bury” and “intimidate” the “SJWs.” (That’s short for social justice warriors.)

Rice-Cameron was no less militant, writing in an email that “slowly, we will continue to crush the Left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure.”

Ferguson had served as one of two faculty leaders of the Cardinal Conversations steering committee, a group that aimed to support free speech at Stanford by inviting a range of speakers to come to campus. These speakers included Charles Murray, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and author of The Bell Curve, whose visits to colleges have provoked protests and even violence at Middlebury College, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere.

According to Ferguson’s recollection of events, he grew fearful that activist students who were offended by the views of people like Murray would try to thwart the Cardinal Conversations, and thus he decided to “mobilize the College Republicans.”

In a statement to The Stanford Daily, Ferguson said that he regretted having written the emails. He admitted his tone was juvenile, though he maintained no one ever engaged in any sort of opposition research.

“It seemed to me that the Cardinal Conversations student steering committee was in danger of being taken over by elements that were fundamentally hostile to free speech,” wrote Ferguson. “It was, however, rash of me to seek to involve the Stanford Republicans, and reckless to use such inflammatory language.”

Now Ferguson has resigned from the committee—as well he should. The pro-free speech side should be trying to win arguments, not get caught looking like it intends to play dirty. If activists pose a threat to the Cardinal Conversations’ agenda, the correct move is to debate and challenge them. Denigrating opponents as “SJWs” whose will to resist needs to be crushed is just the kind of uncompromising ideological extremism that the right often claims is all-too-common among the overzealous campus left.

I think leftist students shutting down speakers and harassing professors who disagree with them is a real problem on a lot of elite college campuses. But it’s harder to take this problem seriously when people on the right who claim to support free speech engage in behavior that is also appalling.

John McAfee, the third-place finisher in the Libertarian Party’s 2016 presidential nominating process, announced on Sunday that he is running for the White House again in 2020, either with the L.P. or some crypto-tastic new political grouping:

In spite of past refusals, I have decided to again run for POTUS in 2020. If asked again by the Libertarian party, I will run with them. If not, I will create my own party. I believe this will best serve the crypto community by providing the ultimate campaign platform for us.

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 3, 2018

The 72-year-old McAfee, for whom the word “colorful” is comically inadequate (to see why, read these three Brian Doherty pieces: one, two, three), has since his previous run become a for-profit evangelist for competitive currencies. His candidacy, notes the crypto-focused Toshi Times, “coincides with the physical cryptocurrency he has announced, called the ‘McAfee Redemption Unit’ (MRU).” CNET reports that McAfee was already generating headlines recently “by announcing the creation of his own crypto-backed fiat currency that is redeemable for up to 100 minutes of facetime with him, as well as in February for revealing he made $105,000 per tweet promoting crypto projects.” (McAfee said Friday that he was no longer charging money for promotions or tweets.)

“Had I been more connected with the [crypto] community in 2016,” McAfee tweeted over the weekend, “I believe I could have used the debates and campaign trail to change the crypto landscape for the better. In this run I can make ‘Currency Independence’ a phrase that is on every [American’s] lips.”

Despite McAfee’s late-career arrival to both electoral politics and movement libertarianism, his swagger and Vegas-style entourage definitely turned heads at the Libertarian Party National Convention two years ago (for more on which see the video at the bottom of this post). But the 2020 L.P. field is already starting to fill up, not just with 2016 vice presidential nominee Bill Weld and trouble-skirting anarchist Adam Kokesh, but with a maybe-L.P./maybe-not character even more speculative than McAfee: Porn star Cherie DeVille.

DeVille, who first made headlines last November about a possible White House run with Coolio (since abandoned), re-surfaced with a video last week promising an “honest, successful, and progressive political campaign”:

As both the video and Elizabeth Nolan Brown attest, DeVille is “a mixed bag as far as libertarian leanings go.” But in a follow-up Washington Examiner interview, the actress, who describes herself as a “left-leaning libertarian,” said she is considering the L.P., even though she “would love to be the Democratic candidate,” because “clearly my views align with the Democratic Party the best.” DeVille, whose non-stage name is the equally delightful Carolyn Paparozzi, also told the Examiner that she’s fond of Reason, so points for that.

Will the fame and charisma of DeVille and McAfee make Libertarians swoon? Don’t count on it. Gary Johnson can certainly testify that more familiarity with the L.P. does not necessarily translate into more support—the former New Mexico governor waltzed to the L.P presidential nomination in 2012, but then needed a second ballot in 2016. McAfee stepped on some L.P. toes with his withering post-nomination criticism of Johnson, and with the opening lines of his concession speech at that convention: “When I first joined the Libertarian Party, two things stood out, very starkly,” he said then. “One, 75 percent of you are men. Number two, 99.8 percent of you are white. Shame on you. Shame on you.”

Say what you will about Bill Weld or Adam Kokesh (or New York gubernatorial candidate Larry Sharpe), they are out there working the Libertarian Party state convention circuit pretty hard. With that unique 50-state ballot-access prize, at a national moment in which the identities of the two biggest political parties are remarkably fluid, it seems unlikely that party activists will take too kindly to candidates flirting openly with other parties.

As Ballot Access News Editor and third-party super-expert Richard Winger told the Examiner, “Libertarians will not nominate anyone for president who hasn’t run first for a lesser office, unless they are a former congressmember or a former governor.” Also: “In 2016 there were over 1,300 people who told the FEC that they were running for president….People who think they can get attention by running for president are usually unaware of what a mob claims to be running for president.”

My interview with John McAfee at the L.P. national convention two years ago:

In a January 29 letter to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that The New York Times published on Saturday, Donald Trump’s lawyers explain in detail why he is not guilty of obstructing justice. They are probably right, and it probably does not matter.

The 20-page letter focuses on the two purported incidents of obstruction that have received the most attention: Trump’s alleged request that FBI Director James Comey go easy on National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Trump’s subsequent decision to fire Comey. In both cases, attorneys John Dowd and Jay Sekulow argue, Trump did not do what people claim, and even if he had it would be within his constitutional authority as president and outside the scope of the relevant obstruction statutes. “It remains our position,” they write, “that the President’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself.”

That positions has provoked a strong response from Trump’s critics, who argue that it places him “above the law.” Since the president legally could have ordered Comey to leave Flynn alone or halt the Russia investigation, Dowd and Sekulow say, anything short of that direct approach cannot be obstruction, even if the goal was protecting Trump. If the president has the legal authority to do something, in other words, his motive cannot make it a crime. That’s a pretty bold claim, and it is debatable given the broad definition of obstruction in the statute that seems most apposite.

Under 18 USC 1515, someone can commit obstruction by “corruptly” destroying records or by threatening, intimidating, or persuading someone in an attempt to obstruct a “official proceeding.” It also covers someone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” It defines corruptly as “acting with an improper purpose.” Hence actions that would otherwise be legal—e.g., deleting email, treating someone to a fancy dinner, or simply talking to him—become a crime when done with “an improper purpose.” Dowd and Sekulow are claiming the president, by virtue of his role as “the chief law enforcement officer,” is special in that regard. Some legal scholars agree; many others do not.

Dowd and Sekulow are on firmer ground in arguing that Trump could not have committed obstruction by interfering with an FBI investigation because an FBI investigation does not qualify as an “official proceeding.” According to the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual, FBI investigations don’t count as “proceedings” under 18 USC 1505, another obstruction provision. Whether they count as official proceedings under Section 1515 is unsettled, but in 2013 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit concluded that they do not.

Even assuming that interceding with Comey on Flynn’s behalf or firing Comey could qualify as obstruction, proving corrupt intent is not as straightforward as it might seem. Trump’s alleged comment to Comey about Flynn (which Trump denies making) was ambiguous and could be attributed to personal concern: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” While Comey said he interpreted the statement as an instruction, it was one he did not follow, and he did not express any concern about its propriety to Trump, to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The initial explanation for firing Comey—his unfairness to Hillary Clinton in the way he handled the investigation of her email practices as secretary of state—was hard to believe given that Trump had always complained that she got off too easily. But Sessions and Rosenstein were both complicit in that cover story, putting Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, in the odd situation of overseeing an obstruction investigation that hinges to some extent on a motive he himself helped conceal. Trump dropped that pretense within a few days of dismissing Comey, when he admitted in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that he had already made the decision before receiving guidance from Sessions and Rosenstein.

Trump also conceded that the Russia investigation had been on his mind. But Dowd and Sekulow argue, pretty plausibly, that his rambling comments to Holt were misinterpreted. What the president meant, they say, is that he fired Comey even though he knew that doing so might prolong the investigation. That interpretation is consistent with this excerpt from the interview:

As far as I’m concerned, I want that thing [the Russia investigation] to be absolutely done properly. When I did this now, I said I probably maybe will confuse people. Maybe I’ll expand that—you know, I’ll lengthen the time because it should be over with. It should—in my opinion, should’ve been over with a long time ago because it—all it is [is] an excuse. But I said to myself I might even lengthen out the investigation. But I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s the wrong man for that position.

Firing Comey, of course, did not actually end the Russia investigation. To the contrary, it was followed by Mueller’s appointment, which probably made the probe broader and longer than it otherwise would have been, just as Trump feared. That upshot casts considerable doubt on whether Trump’s dismissal of Comey was such that “its natural and probable effect would be the interference with the due administration of justice,” as required to make an obstruction charge stick.

It seems likely that Trump fired Comey for a mixture of reasons, one of them being his anger at the FBI director’s refusal to publicly state that he was not a target of the Russia investigation. Given the alternative explanations, proving a specific intent to obstruct justice would be difficult. Even if Trump did tell Russian officials that getting rid of that “real nut job” relieved “great pressure because of Russia,” Dowd and Sekulow note, that comment (which Trump denies) “does not establish that the termination was because of the Russia investigation.”

Mueller, however, does not have to worry about proving that the president obstructed justice, because he won’t be prosecuting Trump. The Justice Department takes the position that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and Mueller’s office has told Trump’s lawyers he will abide by that policy. In practice, then, it does not matter whether Trump broke the law; what matters is whether Congress decides that he abused his powers egregiously enough to warrant impeachment and removal, which might be true even if his actions do not meet the legal criteria for obstruction charges. Although “high crimes and misdemeanors” can involve provable violations of the law, Congress has the power to define the phrase on a case-by-case basis.

The question of whether Trump could preemptively pardon himself, which he brought up on Twitter this morning, illustrates the distinction between what the president can legally do and what he can do without getting impeached. “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself,” Trump tweeted, “but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” On ABC’s This Week yesterday, Rudy Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team after Dowd quit in March, agreed that Trump “probably does” have the legal authority to pardon himself, since the Constitution does not qualify that power. But on NBC’s Meet the Press, Giuliani added that “pardoning himself would just be unthinkable” and “would lead to probably an immediate impeachment.”

In the Major League Baseball standings, the Yankees and the Red Sox are battling for the lead of the American League East and for the best overall win-loss record. In Amazon’s site-selection contest for its second headquarters, Boston and New York are both finalists. And in a recent report by the real estate technology firm Redfin, New York shows up as a city with a high “net outflow.” Boston, Redfin found, was the top destination for Gotham residents seeking to escape.

Five years after I moved from New York to Boston, the rivalry between the two cities — and between the states of New York and Massachusetts — only shows signs of heating up.

This tends to register barely, if at all, for most New Yorkers. If New Yorkers conceive of their city as having any competition, it’s with Paris, London, Miami, or Los Angeles, rather than with dear old Boston, home of the bean and the cod.

But New Yorkers ignore their smaller rival at their peril, writes Ira Stoll.

Read the whole thing here.

New Hampshire’s state Supreme Court has upheld a young man’s harsh sentence—which includes lifetime registry on the sex offender list—for propositioning a 15-year-old girl over the internet.

The man, Bailey Serpa, was 18 at the time. According to New Hampshire law, Serpa would have been guilty of a mere misdemeanor had the two actually had sex. But online solicitation of a minor is considered a felony.

Serpa appealed the sentence on grounds that it was “unconstitutional and grossly disproportional,” The New Hampshire Union Ledger reports. Last month, he lost in court:

The ruling is the latest chapter in a series of cases that have highlighted New Hampshire’s computer-facilitated sex law, which critics say is outdated and wielded too freely in cases involving teenagers.

“The laws were enacted to prevent young people from becoming close with old people because there was concern they were using their age to become close, groom them, and convince them they were in love,” said Wendy Walsh, a professor and researcher at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes against Children Research Center. “You need to have something on the books, but these cases are so complex and are so individual and have so much variation that ideally there would be more context behind some of the laws.”

It should be clear that when legislators first criminalized online solicitation of minors in 2008, their intention was to prevent much older people from grooming kids for sex. Teens expressing sexual interest in each other isn’t weird or abnormal, and it certainly shouldn’t be a crime. If the court won’t intervene, then the legislature should hurry up and fix its mistake.

Keep in mind that there’s little evidence the sex offender registry helps keep people safe. On the other hand, there’s plenty of reason to believe it shatters the lives of the people who end up on it: They face serious difficulty finding housing, securing jobs, and interacting with young people.

After December 2017’s oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a lopsided decision but narrow ruling that was decided 7–2 by the Supreme Court today, Managing Editor Stephanie Slade, always worth reading on the intersection of religion and government, made this prescient observation: “The Supreme Court is left with something its members clearly see as a difficult task: defining the contours of a state’s power to require people to do what their religion tells them they may not. But the justices might have found a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card allowing them not to make such a tricky ruling: In stark language, several questioned whether anti-religious animus may have motivated the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s judgment against Phillips.”

Moral of the story: Always trust content from Reason!

The gay wedding cake saga was one of several culture-war conflicts discussed on today’s editor-roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and me. Others included: Bill Clinton’s #MeToo moment, the Roseanne Barr/Bill Maher/Samantha Bee cycle of outrage, Kim Kardashian’s bizarrely derided White House visit, and the desultory trade-war apologia from Larry “I should totally know better” Kudlow. Along the way we also allow editorial overlord Katherine Mangu-Ward take victory lap about Reason‘s sensational new “Burn After Reading” issue, which you can get a special first-class delivery of if you click this link right the hell now!

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

‘Rebel Blues’ by Sul Rebel is licensed under CC BY NC 4.0

Relevant links from the show:

“Bill Clinton Gets Defensive, Pivots to Trump Transgressions When Asked About #MeToo Movement and Monica Lewinsky,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Supreme Court Rules for Baker in Gay Wedding Cake Case But Carefully Avoids Central Debate,” by Scott Shackford

“The Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision Leaves Almost All the Big Questions Unresolved,” by Eugene Volokh

“Can States Compel You to Bake a Cake Against Your Will? The Supreme Court Will Decide,” by Stephanie Slade

“Reason Foundation Supports Florists, Bakers in Gay Wedding Case Before Supreme Court,” by Scott Shackford

“Christians Started the Wedding Wars,” by Stephanie Slade

“Two Minutes of Listening Beats a Two-Minute Hate,” by A. Barton Hinkle

“Samantha Bee Apologizes for Insulting Ivanka Trump After Right and Left Play ‘We’re Offended’ Tit-for-Tat,” by Robby Soave

“Decoding Trump’s Dinesh D’Souza Pardon,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Liberals Freak Out As Kim Kardashian Visits White House to Talk Criminal Justice Reform,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Kim Kardashian Is Currently Our Nation’s Greatest Hope for Prison Reform,” by C.J. Ciaramella

“This Man Was Released From Prison and Rebuilt His Life; Two Years Later He Got Sent Back Because of an ‘Error,’” by C.J. Ciaramella

“Roseanne Reboot Is Dead. Will Real Time with Bill Maher Be Next?” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Liberals Killed Roseanne. Conservatives Crushed the NFL Protests. Everybody Happy Now?” by Robby Soave

“How Trump’s Tariffs Will Harm National Security,” by Steve Chapman

“Study: Trump’s Proposed Automobile Tariffs Will Destroy 195,000 American Jobs,” by Eric Boehm

“Today Is the Start of Hurricane Season. Trump’s Tariffs Could Make It More Costly,” by Eric Boehm

“Trump Is Standing on the Precipice of a Real and Serious Trade War,” by Eric Boehm

“‘Free-Market’ Conservatives Welcome Their New Protectionist Overlord,” by Matt Welch

“YouTube Won’t Host Our Homemade Gun Video. So We Posted It on PornHub Instead,” by Katherine Mangu-Ward, Todd Krainin, and Jim Epstein

“How to (Legally) Make Your Own Off-the-Books Handgun,” by Mark McDaniel

“When You’re Done Reading This Issue of Reason, You Might Want to Burn It,” by Katherine Mangu-Ward

“Reason at FEEcon 2018, June 7–9 in Atlanta!” by Nick Gillespie

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