Category: reason

Pardon power. After issuing a full presidential pardon for conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza yesterday, President Donald Trump indicated his openness to pardoning other famous felons, including homemaking mogul Martha Stewart and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

D’Souza pleaded guilty in 2014 to a straw-donor scheme designed to benefit New York Republican candidate Wendy Long, who was trying to oust Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. He was sentenced to five years probation, including eight months in a “community confinement center.” Upon news of the pardon, D’Souza tweeted that “KARMA IS A BITCH” and lashed out at former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, who handled his case.

Trump’s pardon of D’Souza and suggestion of other pardons “delivered an indirect but unmistakable message to personal attorney Michael Cohen, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and others ensnared in Trump-related investigations that they, too, could be spared punishment in the future,” suggests the Washington Post politics team:

D’Souza, Blagojevich and Stewart had been convicted of such crimes as campaign-finance violations or lying to investigators—charges similar to those brought against Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and other Trump associates indicted in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Cohen, meanwhile, is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York for possible campaign-finance violations and other possible crimes.

D’Souza marks Trump’s six presidential pardon, each issued unilaterally (as opposed to the traditional process which includes ample Justice Department review). Other pardons have included former Dick Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby (charge: perjury and obstruction of justice) and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio (charge: contempt of a federal court order).

“The handful of pardons that President Trump has granted so far may appear to be scattershot, but they’re beginning to show a distinct pattern—not just of who he believes is worthy of mercy, but of how he thinks about the justice system as a whole and about his power to bend it to his will,” writes the New York Times editorial board today.

The Times suggests that Trump’s pardons could be “a signal of loyalty and reassurance to friends and family members who may soon find themselves facing similar criminal charges,” but it also suggests an alternative motive: Trump trying to get back at those he perceives as enemies in federal law enforcement.

Besides Mr. Bharara, there’s James Comey, who prosecuted Ms. Stewart, and Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted both Mr. Blagojevich and Mr. Libby, and is a friend of Mr. Comey’s.

In any case, they conclude, the message behind the pardons should worry us “more than Mr. Trump clearing the record of some noxious clown.” And they cite this tweet:

Pardoning is basically the one presidential power that works the way Trump thought ALL of being president worked. He’s gonna use the shit out of it.

— David Roberts (@drvox) May 31, 2018

Still another explanation: Trump just doesn’t like seeing his celebrity friends facing the same consequences as us plebes do. “He has a gravitational pull towards [pardoning celebrities] because that is the world he used to exist in—a lot of those folks are people who used to be his friends,” Scottie Nell Hughes told The Daily Beast. “However, I believe this is opening a door, and if he doesn’t follow through with [more] people who are not well-known, I think that will be extremely disappointing.”

FREE MARKETS

Sigh.

FAIR TRADE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018

For more on Trump’s new tariff moves, see Eric Boehm’s analysis here. “The trade war that seemed improbable for weeks is now slipping closer to inevitable,” he writes. “All sides are still talking to each other and there’s faint hope for a last second deal, but that looks increasingly unlikely.”

On Thursday, Trump announced that a 25 percent on steel and a 10 percent aluminum tariff would take effect at midnight.

“The tariffs on steel and aluminum,” Eric explains, “are being imposed on the administration’s vague and unfounded claims that foreign metal somehow undercuts America’s national security. The White House is already gearing up to make a similarly laughable argument for tariffs on cars. But how tariffs on European cars and Canadian steel will address the administration’s worries about a trade imbalance with China—something that isn’t even really a problem—remains completely unclear.”

QUICK HITS

• Sex workers across the country have organized June 2 protests against a recently passed federal law banning prostitution advertising. The protests take place in conjunction with “International Whore’s Day,” an annual day of discussion, rallies, and protests related to sex-worker rights.
• The president is upset that Comedy Central hasn’t fired show-host Samantha Bee for calling his daughter a “feckless cunt.”

Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show? A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2018

• Trump has also been tweeting about today’s jobs report ahead of the official announcement, even though the numbers are strictly embargoed because of the effect they have on markets.
• “The world of illegal abortion today looks nothing like it did 45 years ago.”

The Houston DA’s office – known for its zeal for capital punishment – has a rock band “Death By Injection.” It belittles the taking of a life and frankly is some Nazi Germany level dehumanization. And the reporters just shrug their shoulders like, “huh, how fun and kooky.” https://t.co/te5btpJc4p

— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) June 1, 2018

• The Trumpification of Maria Bartiromo.
• Australian libertarian Helen Dale writes about the “Intellectual Dark Web” down under.

America’s elite communities are leaving the rest of the country behind, writes @JimPethokoukis. Now what? https://t.co/LaZEFJNksb pic.twitter.com/R6uumw4b8y

— AEI (@AEI) June 1, 2018

• Denmark bans the covering of faces in public places, effectively outlawing burqas and niqabs.

With consumer confidence at a 17-year high and economic prospects looking relatively strong, congressional Democrats have taken to grousing about the gas pump as a midterm strategy. “These higher oil prices are translating directly to soaring gas prices,” declared Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “something we know disproportionately hurts middle- and lower-income people.”

If this is true, asks David Harsanyi, then why have Democrats spent the past two decades advocating for policies that artificially spike fossil fuel prices?

View this article.

The cooled-out world of Upgrade might be called pre-apocalyptic. The society we see is headed in a bad direction—robo-gizmos run people’s homes, surveillance drones hover everywhere, and yes it’s all quite familiar. But nobody has grasped how bad things are really getting, or how much worse the inevitable hell-of-our-own-making is likely to be, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.

View this article.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents and members of the Bradley County, Tennessee, SWAT team knocked down the door to Spencer Renck’s home and tossed several flash bang-bang grenades, including one thrown into the room his young son was in. They tackled Renck to the ground, handcuffed him and arrested him. Minutes later, they figured out they were in the wrong home. Renck says officers told him they made the mistake because he has a white car like the man they were looking for.

Rustem Kazazi, an American citizen, was just trying to get on a plane to return to his native Albania last October, from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. He was initially flying to Newark where he’d catch a connection to Albania.

He hoped while in Albania for a few months to do some repair work on a home he still owned there, and possibly to look for another home for his family in his old age. Given facts about the Albanian banking and finance system and the advantages of cash there, he chose to turn his life savings into U.S. dollars and bring them with him to cover expenses related to the above house needs and his long stay rather than deal with bank transfers or anything of the sort.

At an American airport, he was the victim of desperadoes who took everything he had.

Kazazi ran his carry-on luggage through the x-ray machine, like we all must. In that luggage was his life savings in cash, $58,100. There was zero attempt to be clandestine or smuggle-y about it. It was divided into three labeled and marked stacks of $100 bills, all in one envelope with $58,100 written on the outside.

TSA agents noticed the money. Hard not to, I guess. They called Customs and Border Patrol on Kazazi, who took him off to a private room to grill him, as well as strip him naked for a search for, what? money he did not label openly in his carry-on luggage?

While his English is poor and he couldn’t quite understand the agents, they refused him either an interpreter or to summon family for help.

They kept his money, without telling him why, then tried to get him to just get on his flight without it. The receipt they handed him made no reference to the specific amount they’d confiscated. When he refused initially to just go on with his day as if he hadn’t just suffered a horrible crime, they escorted him out of the airport. He contacted his wife in shock and she assured him it must all be some mistake and encouraged him to go forward with his travel plans.

In December CPB finally formally informed him via a “Notice of Seizure” that they’d taken $57,330 from him, $770 less than he insists was actually taken. The Kazazi’s filed all the officially required forms and notices to proceed with trying to get their money back before the legal deadline (after some complications involving confusing deadlines provided by CBP, and including the $770 the CPD seemed to deny it had even stolen). CPB agents tried to finagle the Kazazi’s into withdrawing their demand for federal court action, but failed.

Kazazi and his family today filed a formal motion for return of property under Rule 41(G) against U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and some of its authorities and agents hoping to get his stolen life savings back. The motion was filed with the assistance of consistent civil-forfeiture-justice fighters from the Institute for Justice, and the preceding details were gleaned from it.

The money is hard-earned. Kazazi, now 64 years old, and his family had the (at the time apparent) good fortune to win a visa to enter the U.S. from the State Department in 2005, and has been a citizen since 2010. His wife Lejla has lately been teaching English to immigrants, while Kazazi has worked a series of jobs including busboy, custodian, and parking lot attendant. (He’d been a police officer in Albania himself.)

Customs has chosen to assert that Kazazi’s money is criminal for a grab bag of reasons that don’t necessarily go together and for which they have no proof: “involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation” or you know, something bad that means they can steal it.

Was Mr. Kazazi guilty of smuggling, drug trafficking, or money laundering? Money can’t commit a crime by itself, one might think, but requires a human accomplice. Lacking any evidence whatever for any such crime on Kazazi’s part, he’s accused or convicted of none of them. Thanks to the sinister legal magic of “civil asset forfeiture,” the feds can just steal the money without proving any crime at all on the owners part.

Except even that evil power, which shouldn’t exist at all, has its procedural limits thanks to the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, as Kazazi’s lawsuits argues. According to that law, Customs in order to keep the stolen loot must officially initiate either civil forfeiture or criminal proceedings within 90 days of the complainant demanding an official federal court procedure regarding the property. That deadline, the suit says, expired back in April, but CPB haven’t returned the money. The feds should have no legal recourse but to do that, promptly. But they haven’t, hence the motion filed today.

The Washington Post reported on Kazazi’s plight today, and received a statement from CPB asserting

“pursuant to an administrative search of Mr. Kazazi and his bags, TSA agents discovered artfully concealed U.S. currency. Mr. Kazazi provided inconsistent statements regarding the currency, had no verifiable source of income and possessed evidence of structuring activity,” that is, making cash withdrawals of less than $10,000 to avoid reporting requirements.

[Wesley] Hottot [one of Kazazi’s lawyers] denies that Rustem Kazazi was trying to conceal the cash — he had wrapped it in paper, labeled it and sent it through the scanner in his carry-on bag. The “inconsistent statements” were a result of Kazazi’s poor English language comprehension, Hottot said.

Hottot also noted that the structuring allegation was not included in the seizure notice. “They’ve never mentioned structuring before,” he said. “I think what were really seeing here is some creative Monday-morning quarterbacking by CBP, trying to justify the unjustified.”

As IJ noted in a press release on Kazazi’s plight, despite the government’s invented and contradictory claims of criminality:

the Kazazis saved up their money from jobs they held lawfully in America, and they have 13 years of tax documents and bank statements to prove it. Moreover, the government has never pointed to any evidence of wrongdoing.

“This family’s case, like so many others, shows why civil forfeiture must end,” explained IJ attorney Johanna Talcott. “The Kazazis did nothing wrong and were never charged with a crime, but the government still won’t return their money all these months later. This kind of abuse is far too common because civil forfeiture is an inherently abusive process that will always have disastrous effects on innocent people. Enough is enough.”

CBP also nattered about laws requiring international travelers with sums greater than $10,000 to report them. Kazazi, his lawyers told the Post, knew about those laws and intended to file his legally required forms prior to getting on the Newark flight in which he actually would be leaving the U.S.

He never got the chance. Let’s hope the courts do the right, and legal, thing, demand CPB obey the law and return the stolen money, and give Kazazi a chance to obey the laws regarding disclosure of funds leaving the country by letting him leave the country with his funds.

Comedian Samantha Bee has apologized for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” on her TBS show, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. A TBS spokesperson said Bee was right to apologize, tweeting, “Those words should not have been aired. It was our mistake too, and we regret it.”

The apology comes in the midst of considerable conservative outrage over a perceived double standard: ABC canceled Roseanne earlier this week after Roseanne Barr said a vile, racist thing about former Obama White House aide Valerie Jarrett, but TBS has not cancelled Full Frontal in the wake of Bee’s crude, sexist jab at Ivanka. The implication, of course, is that Barr, a Trump supporter, can be fired for insulting a liberal, while liberals are happy to let one of their own off the hook for insulting a Trump family member (and staffer).

Conservatives came away from the Roseanne incident eager to identify somebody on the left who had committed comparable crimes. Their first scapegoat was Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, who once compared Trump to an orangutan. Yet Maher, who frequently bashes political correctness and mocks easily offended college students, is no longer in good standing with the left, and plenty of liberals would be glad to see him go. Maher is one of the few TV hosts who invites people from all sides of the political spectrum to debate each other in segments that last longer than five seconds, and getting his show yanked from the air would be one of the most self-destructive things the right could do.

One of the biggest reasons I expressed concern about the hasty decision to can Roseanne is that it seemed like all too many people on the right would use it as a pretext to demand private censorship of speech that offends them. And hey, there’s plenty of that.

“Liberals will come for your career for wrong-think,” wrote conservative pundit Jesse Kelly on Twitter. “People on the Right have had about enough of it and will start returning the favor. I don’t want liberals punished for what they think. I don’t [want] conservatives punished for what they think. It’s a free country. But if we’re coming for people’s livelihoods, then screw it. Let’s come for people’s livelihoods.”

I think Kelly speaks for many conservatives. “Make the enemy live up to its own rule book,” was No. 4 on leftist activist Saul Alinsky’s notorious 12 Rules for Radicals, but I have rarely, if ever, heard this rule invoked by an actual leftist. In my experience, this rule is beloved by conservatives. If liberals want people fired for saying something offensive, well, there are lot of people who offend a lot of conservatives.

TBS and ABC are both private companies, and neither of them has to give a platform to Barr or Bee. Nobody owes Kathy Griffin a New Year’s Eve show, either. But the “I’m offended” arms race might end up serving the interests of some very powerful people if it causes critics of the White House to self-censor. I don’t want comedians to be afraid of slamming the president’s daughter, who doubles as an important policy adviser. Holding the reins of power and sitting idly by while our broken immigration system separates families and destroys lives is a far bigger moral failing than using some really bad words.

It’s been a contentious day/week/month/year/decade/century for the exercise of free speech. What better time to check in with Danish activist Jacob Mchangama, host of the great new podcast Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech (which Eugene Volokh recommended here)?

On this week’s episode of The Fifth Column, which was taped last Friday, Mchangma, who got into the free speech business after the Danish cartoon controversies of 2005-2006, gave Kmele Foster, Michael C. Moynihan, and me a sobering update on the state of European law. “During the cartoon affair it was mostly the center-right in Denmark that sort of said, ‘Free speech is absolute, we can’t compromise on free speech, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a minority or majority,'” he told us. “But then, in the past couple of years, we’ve had a center-right government in Denmark that has passed more laws restricting free speech than at any other time since the Second World War. And all those laws are basically aimed at Muslims who engage in extreme speech.”

It’s a wide-ranging conversation, touching on the NFL national anthem controversy, hate speech crackdowns in England, publishing cowardice in the U.S., and the history of blasphemy. You can listen to the whole thing here:

Here’s a partial transcript, mostly covering the European component of the conversation:

Kmele Foster: You are the host of A Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech, which is a podcast that you’re producing for FIRE for a limited engagement, a very good podcast. Could you give folks some context….what it is all about, and why you embarked on this journey to come across the pond to hang out here?

Jacob Mchangama: So I was born and raised in cozy, liberal, Denmark, where nothing much happens, and I’m very much a child of the cartoon affair. A Danish newspaper [Jyllands-Posten] published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, [and] the whole world went batshit crazy, or at least certain parts of the world. And I was living in a country where there’d been a long-established tradition of writers, cartoonists being able to poke fun at Christianity and religion in general. And then suddenly I see Danish flags are burning, I suddenly see the cultural elite and lots of politicians saying, “Yeah, well, free speech is important, but we shouldn’t offend….” These were people who made a living—their whole livelihood depended on them being able to enjoy free speech. And suddenly they were saying, “Jyllands-Posten, as bad as the Islam is, there are extremists on both sides.”…

So during the cartoon affair it was mostly the center-right in Denmark that sort of said, “Free speech is absolute, we can’t compromise on free speech, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a minority or majority.” And I was very much on board with that. But then, in the past couple of years, we’ve had a center-right government in Denmark that has passed more laws restricting free speech than at any other time since the Second World War. And all those laws are basically aimed at Muslims who engage in extreme speech.

And then suddenly all of those on the center-right who had been [saying] “free speech is absolute” during the cartoon crisis turned around and basically made the exact same arguments that the left had made with the cartoons. Only this time it came to, “Yeah, free speech is important, but we can’t have people defending Sharia Law,” or can’t have imams saying this or that.

To me it was just depressing. And I found that discussions over free speech in Denmark—but also here in the States very much, basically across the board—were so captivated by tribalism, and very few arguments had much substance, including my own. A lot of what I wrote was very abstract things, and I thought: OK, if free speech is important, why not delve into the history? Why is it important? Is it important? Where does it come from? What have the red lines been throughout the ages? What can we learn from the past, if anything?

So I decided to stop and go all the way back to ancient Athens as the first episode, and right now I’ve worked my way into the Middle Ages. At some point I’ll end up with artificial intelligence, I don’t know….

Michael Moynihan: To be clear here—and this is an important thing that I think that probably no one knew at the time, and no one outside of Denmark knew—is that Denmark had blasphemy laws.

Mchangama: Yeah. I think when I retire one day, what I can be happy about saying is that my organization actually played a very crucial role in defeating the blasphemy law. There was a Muslim organization that reported Jyllands-Posten to the police, and the prosecutor decided not to press charges against it. But we had a blasphemy law, and it was actually revived.

So even though we’ve had a guy—and this says a lot about how much fear since the cartoon crisis has affected Denmark—so we’ve had a guy in the ’90s, he burns the Bible on national TV. Then we have a guy in 2015, somewhere in the north of Denmark, who burns the Koran, puts it up on YouTube. Fifty people and their dogs watch it. And the guy ends up being charged for blasphemy.

And that’s when the whole ball started rolling. This was too obvious, that it was basically the jihad is veto. Meaning that Islamists get to determine the red lines.

Foster: Threats of violence carry the day….

Mchangama: And what’s interesting is we had artists who in the ’60s and ’70s made art that offended Christians—and at the time it was very much the left that sort of said “free speech!” These are the guys that would defend the Piss Christ here in the U.S. [They] said, “Yeah, you can make fun of Christianity, but don’t go after the brown Muslims, because they’re a minority.”

And what got lost in all this is the countries that put pressure on Denmark and for Jyllands-Posten to apologize were Muslim-majority countries where you could go to jail if you offended the majority religion. So it was just sucked up into contemporary identity politics with very little understanding of the principles that were at stake.

For a long time freedom of speech had not really been top of the agenda in Denmark, because no one felt threatened; you could basically say anything. And then once we were put to the test, a very important segment of those who were supposed to be manning the barricades just…said, “Those who want to kill you might have a point. They might be a bit too extreme, but…”

Moynihan: Why do you think that happened?…There’s obviously kind of a double standard here, isn’t there?

Mchangama: There is a huge double standard. I think one thing has to do with a perception that Muslims are a vulnerable minority, or a visible minority, and therefore different rules should apply to them. You shouldn’t gratuitously offend their feelings because you’re using your power to punch down. I hate that expression, “punching down,” but you saw the same arguments with Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine, where a number of journalists were butchered by jihadists—and by the way which had been one of the few publications that had supported Jyllands-Posten by publishing the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed…

Matt Welch: And was firebombed as a result…

Mchangama: Yeah, and this is one of the interesting things from doing the History of Free Speech podcast, where I actually did an episode called “The Caliphate,” where I go back in time. These were rules developed in Medieval Islam where people, apostates and blasphemers, could be killed for saying the wrong thing. This was not about protecting vulnerable people…[It was] a religious state executing people for transgressing the red lines.

And these are basically religious norms that people that happen to be a minority are trying to enforce in Western Europe. And I don’t think it should matter what the color of your skin, your religion. If you try to enforce religious rules through violence, people have to stand together and say, “We are not going to accept that, this is completely beyond the pale, and it doesn’t matter how much we disagree with whatever might provoke you, you’ve got to show solidarity.”

Foster: But they didn’t.

Mchangama: A lot of people, they didn’t….

Welch: Is it fair to say that in the historical research that you’re doing right now, that the vast majority of blasphemy laws are written by the power structure against the comparatively powerless minority populations? Is that a fair characterization of the history of blasphemy laws?

Mchangama: Very much so. The last episode I did was on heresy and the Inquisition, where you had the Catholic Church being very concerned about heterodox beliefs. So they start a Crusade, it doesn’t help, and then they sent inquisitors out into Europe that questioned people, and ultimately it was a minority who were burned. That was ultimately what could happen if you were a heretic.

So very much, blasphemy laws have traditionally been an instrument to consolidate power…of secular rulers, but also of religious rulers. It’s a completely ahistorical idea that blasphemy laws should protect minorities….There are now, I think, 13 Muslim-majority countries where you have formally the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy.

The interesting thing is, if you go back in time to the 10th century, you actually had some really interesting free thinkers in Medieval Islam who basically rejected the authority of the Koran. You had a time where in the Abbasid Caliphate you translated almost all Greek signs, and philosophy, including Aristotle, and you had some of the most powerful intellectuals, philosophers, of the time. But some of that clearly has been lost, and some of the things that were written, I think in the ninth and the 10th century, would probably send you to jail today in Saudi Arabia or places like that. It’s a real shame….

Moynihan: It’s good to have Jacob here because of the differences between how we’ve used free speech in the United States and in Europe, where we kind of conflated these things for so long. This idea of hate crimes, which we do indeed have in the United States, and hate speech, which I’m increasingly hearing thrown around just lazily in America. In Europe that’s an actual category, and most places in Europe, one can be prosecuted, one can be hauled in front of a court for an errant tweet, or an offensive tweet. We don’t have that so much here.

My worry, and I’d love to hear Jacob on this, is that as we enter this era of hyper-identity politics, and these ideas which I hear from young people constantly and hear amongst colleagues, of “it’s hate speech,” which we don’t have as an actual legal category—that we are lurching slightly more towards the European model on this….

Jacob, this is a different kind of world that you live in in Europe. The enlightened Europe, that we wish that we were more like in the United States, has kind of backwards laws on such things, don’t you?…

Mchangama: I think there’s been a shift in values in the West towards seeing free speech as a zero-sum game, meaning free speech is about winning….So free speech means my views, and they have to be protected absolutely, but those that threaten my worldview should not enjoy the same protection, maybe no protection at all. And I think it comes from the left, and it comes from the right as well….

So I think the NFL, because it’s not a legal issue so much here, it becomes very much a cultural issue in the U.S. I think the NFL issue is the mirror image of conservatives crying about social justice warriors at universities and so on.

Foster: The James Damore firing at Google.

Mchangama: Yeah, exactly. And the NFL thing is precisely the same. The national anthem, you know, national symbols—that’s something conservatives care deeply about, you cannot profane that. And so mentally, you’re just able to convince yourself that this has nothing to do with free speech, because this is something special.

If you are on the left, you have different sincere beliefs that makes you able to justify why this restriction on free speech really is not a real restriction, or this is justified.

But in the U.K., there were at least 3,300 cases of people being detained and questioned for quote unquote, “grossly offensive posts on social media.”…

Moynihan: [The argument that some people make], and I’m particularly interested in hearing Jacob talk about this if this has happened in the scope of free speech history, is that words are dangerous.

Foster: Words are violence.

Moynihan: They’re violence, they can injure people….I asked somebody in [a recent Vice] piece, “Do you believe a joke can be harmful?” and then she says, “Yes, it can.” What do you guys think about this?…

Welch: I am interested in the words-as-violence thing. Is that new?

Mchangama: It’s a pervasive idea, I would say so. Take the trial of Socrates. So there are different accounts of why he was condemned to death, but one of them was that he didn’t respect the religious traditions of the Athenians, the idea being that if you upset the gods they’re going to punish you, and the Athenians had had a lot of bad shit happening to them, they’ve lost some wars, and so he was condemned.

And you see it very much in Christianity, you know, why did the Catholic Church go after heretics? It’s not because the inquisitors were evil and they enjoyed burning people—they didn’t at all. They actually really wanted to save people from being condemned, and in their view heretical ideas would spread, infect, and ultimately you would risk the punishment of God; God would inflict punishment upon you. And if you were convinced that wrong belief would incur the punishment of God, then you can understand why it would be the less evil to ultimately burn someone, because you’re saving everyone else, you’re saving society from being contaminated.

So in that sense, it’s a very old idea that words have very serious consequences if they breach the fundamental values. Religion actually comes from the—OK, I’m getting really geeky here—but it comes from the Latin word religare, which means binding together. So religion binds society together, and so if you untie those bonds, everything is going to go to hell. Literally.

Welch: And maybe on the flip side, there’s a piece by [John McWhorter] called “The Great Awokening”…that puts that kind of identity politics, that fervor, into a religious context.

Foster: Not the first time he’s done that.

Welch: And so maybe that’s what this is on some level.

Mchangama: Yeah, and I think it shows why we should leave that behind.

I think this is one of the crucial things about free speech that I think we have to address: Is free speech a threat to minorities, or is it a safeguard for minorities? And my thinking on it is very much that free speech is extremely important for minorities.

Take my own country, Denmark. So, like I said, the center-right used to be pro-free speech with the cartoons. But now…There was this documentary showing some imams instructing their congregations in really hardcore Shariah Law, and so we had politicians go out, and we have now a law which [says] that if you are explicitly condoning certain illegal acts as part of religious training, you can go to jail for three years. So if you’re an imam, and you’re standing in a mosque, and you say, “Islam allows polygamy, and it’s a great thing,” you could potentially go to prison for three years.

Muslims in Denmark, if they had in general said, “We really don’t like the cartoons, but we understand that living in a secular democracy you have to put up with shit like that,” then I don’t think these laws would have returned. But when you’re a minority, you are very vulnerable, you basically say, “OK, let’s use the law against someone.” But then when things turn, you’re going to be the one that gets hit the hardest.

And so it’s a really, really dangerous game for minorities to try and get laws to be used against speech that they don’t like, because it is basically freedom of expression, freedom of religion, that allows minorities to live within secular democracies. Once you undermine that, you basically undermine your own freedom and safety and security. And I see that happening, and no one stands up.

Flemming Rose, who published the cartoons, he’s also been very [supportive], but all of those that we stood together with during the cartoon crisis, all of them have basically—not all of them, but a lot of them—have drifted away. No one would stand up for fundamentalists, Islamists, on principle. It just couldn’t be done. So we’re looking around: Where are all our allies, you know?

London’s cycling commissioner, Will Norman, is dismayed at the demographic makeup of the city’s bikers, finding them to be too white, too male, and too middle class. “It touches on something which is a real challenge for London cycling, which is diversity,” Norman told The Independent. “Even when we have seen the growth in the number of cyclists, we haven’t seen that diversity.”

London has been doing its level best to boost the number of people biking around the city. Mayor Sadiq Khan, who pledged to be the “the most pro-cycling mayor London has ever had,” has committed to spending £770 million ($1 billion) over his term on biking infrastructure. That’s about twice what his equally pro-bike predecessor, Boris Johnson, spent to build the city’s Cycle Superhighway network. Khan has promised to triple the network’s size from 12 to 36 kilometers.

The effect of all this investment has been to increase cycling’s share of trips taken from 1 percent to 2 percent. In addition to pissing off drivers, who blame the new bike lanes for increased traffic congestion, the heavy investment in cycling has created equity concerns, since the people who use the network the most tend to be privileged white men.

To remedy this problem, Norman floated the idea of diversity targets for London’s cycling population. That would complement Khan’s current diversity-boosting efforts, which include diversifying the board of Transport for London (the city’s transportation department) and awarding grants to community organizations representing deaf people, Orthodox Jews, and other demographics that do not bike as much as the city thinks they should.

These equity concerns start to look more like paternalistic nitpicking when you realize that London’s ethnic minorities are just as likely to bike as WASPs. They just tend to do it less often.

A 2016 Transport for London survey found that 13 percent of nonwhite residents were regular cyclists (defined as people who bike at least once a week), compared to 14 percent of white residents. But nonwhite cyclists bike less frequently, accounting for about 15 percent of all cycling trips despite making up 40 percent of London’s population. Accomplishing the city’s cycling equity goals therefore is less about getting more minority residents into cycling and more about prodding those who already bike into mimicking the government-approved transportation habits of their white counterparts.

Transport for London and Khan are far less concerned about the racially disproportionate impact of transportation policies that discriminate against modes of travel they don’t like. Last September, Transport for London stripped the ride-sharing company Uber of its license, ostensibly because of safety concerns. The decision provoked anger and charges of hypocrisy from many of the 40,000 Uber drivers in the city, the vast majority of whom are nonwhite. Khan applauded the move in a Guardian op-ed piece.

The more London spends on bike paths, the more it exacerbates another kind of inequity: forcing motorists and public transit commuters to pay for cycling lanes they don’t use. More than 80 percent of Londoners of all colors and creeds don’t bike anywhere, and most of those who are identified as cyclists in surveys don’t bike very much. Half of “regular cyclists” ride a bike no more than two days a week. Only 2 percent of Londoners bike five or more days a week.

Khan’s plans nevertheless call for spending some 5.5 percent of Transport for London’s budget on cycling. Expanding bike infrastructure often means converting all-vehicle lanes into bike-only lanes, meaning motorists and bus riders are being asked to pay for making their own commutes worse.

The 2016 presidential election was among the closest in U.S. history. If Hillary Clinton had won just 78,000 more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, she would be president right now. How did Donald Trump squeak out his victory, and what does it mean for the future of politics in America?

Salena Zito, co-author with Brad Todd of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping America Politics, has strong opinions on the matter. The Great Revolt is based on a poll of Trump backers in Midwestern swing states and hundreds of interviews with voters in the Rust Belt. Zito, a veteran, Pittsburgh-based journalist who writes for The New York Post and is a contributor at CNN, believes that Trump benefited from a rising tide of anger at elites and “bigness” in politics and business. The people who voted for Trump in 2016 (and, in many cases, for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012) aren’t going anywhere, Zito says, and they have the potential to shape national politics for years to come. In a conversation with Nick Gillespie, Zito talks about the different sorts of Trump voters and their core values.

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Is the firing of Roseanne Barr by ABC over an offensive tweet evidence of racism’s persistence or a sign of racial progress?

The star was enjoying massive popularity with the reboot of her eponymous 1990s sitcom until she tweeted that Barack Obama’s former adviser Valerie Jarrett was the offspring of “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.” Her show, a ratings champ, was almost immediately canceled by ABC, and she was disowned by most of her costars and collaborators.

Writing in The New York Times, author Roxanne Gay, who is black and lesbian, argues that the new version of Roseanne shows how little America has progressed when it comes to race, class, and gender equity:

For once, a major network did the right thing. But before it did the right thing, it did the wrong thing. It is not new information that Roseanne Barr makes racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic statements and is happy to peddle all manner of dangerous conspiracy theories. ABC knew this when it greenlighted the “Roseanne” reboot. ABC knew this when it quickly renewed the reboot for a second season, buoyed, no doubt, by the show’s strong ratings.

Gay gives no quarter to Barr’s colleagues and costars, noting, “It was only when Ms. Barr became an immediate liability that everyone involved finally looked at her racism and dealt with it directly.” Gay recounts a series of recent stories that show how blacks are often presumptively treated as criminals by white Americans and law enforcement. She acidly observes that Roseanne’s tweet was published the same day that Starbucks was holding a nationwide day of diversity training after a racially charged incident at one of its outlets in Philadelphia.

Gay says public gestures toward racial justice by corporate America and Roseanne actress Sara Gilbert are simply “part of an elaborate and lucrative illusion” that papers over the daily indignities faced by African Americans. “ABC,” she notes, “is the same network that shelved an episode of ‘Blackish’ because it addressed the N.F.L. anthem protests.” Denunciations of racism and prejudice, in Gay’s view, are always done cynically and only as a last resort.

It’s a powerful argument. But is that all there is to say? Over at CNBC, John Harwood, who is white, takes a different view in a piece titled “In America’s Racial Din, ABC’s Decision on ‘Roseanne’ Reflects a Turn Toward Tolerance.” Where Gay focuses on examples of racism, Harwood looks at unmistakable signs of progress:

Though halting and fitful, the path leads in only one direction over time….

Polling amassed by the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs showed that by 1972, 97 percent of whites agreed blacks should have equal job opportunities; by 1997, 95 percent said they would vote for a black presidential candidate; by 2011, 86 percent approved of interracial marriage….

Obama’s election—not once, but twice—demonstrated those shifts.

Harwood doesn’t scant the persistence of racism, from Donald Trump’s equivocating after last year’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville to, well, Roseanne Barr’s tweet. He also notes that America is becoming less white. Only 28 percent of baby boomers are nonwhite, he says, compared to 44 percent of Millennials, and that shift will limit racism. He quotes Martin Luther King Jr. on “the moral arc of the universe” bending “toward justice” before concluding that “it bends toward tolerance, too.”

There are other positive developments to consider. Across a wide variety of measures, racist attitudes and hate crimes have dropped over the past several decades. School choice, which gives lower-income and minority parents and students access to better education, is growing. The drug war, which disproportionately incarcerates blacks and Latinos, is breaking down. The closely related issue of criminal justice reform is proceeding apace.

Just yesterday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian met with President Trump to discuss prison reform. Kardashian is of course married to black rapper Kanye West, and the interracial nature of their union is so completely unremarkable that it is rarely if ever discussed; that is its own sort of progress. Occupational licensing, which often screws over blacks, is under attack. Black households have seen median income grow by 25 percent since 1998, substantially more than the increase for whites.

There’s no contradiction in celebrating progress toward a color-blind society while noting that racism still exists. Roseanne Barr’s Twitter feed may have been filled with racist, Islamophobic, and misogynist statements prior to her triumphant return to network TV, but who would have been looking carefully at it then? Surely it matters more that she was fired as soon as she made a patently racist remark in public, and that many of the policies that have long harmed blacks as a group are being reformed.