Category: reason

Today at noon ET, Nick Gillespie talks with Libertarian vice presidential nominee William Weld from the DNC right here and on Facebook!

A new Pew Research Center poll reports that majorities of Americans are opposed to allowing others to use various technologies that could enhance human health and capabilities. The poll finds that 50 percent would oppose using gene editing to give babies much reduced disease risk; 66 percent are against allowing people to use a brain chip that would offer much improved cognitive abilities; and 63 percent would forbid the use of synthetic blood to provide much improved physical abilities. My first reaction on hearing these results is: What is wrong with you people?

As annoying as they are, I don’t take these Luddite sentiments too seriously. There was much the same public reaction to the dreaded test-tube babies in the 1960s and 1970s. As I report in my 2010 article, “From Yuck to Yippee!,” a 1969 Harris poll found that a majority of Americans believed that producing test-tube babies was “against God’s will.” Congress even considered outlawing IVF. Yet, just one month after the birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Joy Brown, the Gallup poll reported that 60 percent of Americans approved of in vitro fertilization and more than half would consider using it if they were infertile. By 2013, another Pew poll found that nearly 80 percent of Americans have no problem with using IVF. The same thing will happen with these technologies when they are shown to be safe and effective.

During my radio interview, AirTalk host Larry Mantle focused on the “ethical” concerns that seem to motivate public opposition. Naturally, one of the main fears is that rich people would further exacerbate socioeconomic inequality by using these technologies to benefit themselves and their families. I counter that the costs of these technologies will fall and they will become widely available. Two of them – brain chips and booster blood – could notionally be provided to anyone who wants to use them – and they can be removed if an individual decides later for some reason they would prefer to “go natural.”

With regard to gene-editing babies to reduce their risk of disease – what person wants to be less healthy? Just as we assume consent for fetal surgery to correct malformations, we can also assume consent to gene-editing to fix genetic traits associated with the higher risk of disease.

The Pew folks also conducted several focus groups to try to get handle on what might be motivating opposition to these technologies. The focus groups included a lot of religious believers and a couple of my favorite responses were: 

“That’s always a sticking point with technology and advancements in medicine. … There are those who don’t believe you should be touching what God has created. If God wanted you to be sharp in the mind … then you would have been born that way. That’s the thought of some religious people. But, I’m probably in that category where the Lord gave people the ability to come up with a way to help you [and it’s OK to take advantage of that].” – a 52-year black evangelical Protestant man in Atlanta.

“Just because you have faith in God, does it make you not go have your gallbladder [or] your tonsils taken out? I mean, people do things every day to lengthen their life and to be healthier.” – 50-year-old Hispanic evangelical Protestant woman in Phoenix.

Back in 2010, I concluded:

We are still in the yuck phase when it comes to the public’s thinking about impending advances in reproductive technologies that will enable parents to endow their children with genes and epigenetic combinations that will improve their health, lengthen their lives, boost their intelligence, and strengthen their bodies. But sometime in this century, when these technological interventions become safe and effective, yuck will turn as quickly to yippee as the response to those test tube babies did 32 years ago.

That’s still true.

For more discussion of this Pew poll, click on the link to the Airtalk radio program.

How do the Clintons get away thriving despite their remarkable record of sleaziness?

John Stossel writes:

The just released documentary Clinton Cash, based on a book by Peter Schweizer, explains how they make big money by selling access to themselves.

On my TV show, Schweizer said the Clintons use “speaking fees” to get around bribery laws.

“If somebody gave a politician or family member money for a favor, that’s breaking the law. But if you say it’s a speaking fee, and you pay double or triple the normal rate, that seems to be legal.”
Since Bill Clinton left office, he’s earned more than $126 million giving speeches. Nothing wrong with that. Bill likes to talk, and if people want to pay big bucks to hear him or just to say they were near him, so be it. It’s their own money.

But what suggests influence peddling, says Schweizer, is that before Hillary became secretary of state, Bill’s usual fee was less than $200,000. But after Hillary became secretary of state, he made as much as $750,000 per speech.

View this article.

Early on in her tenure as First Lady, Michelle Obama decided to make childhood obesity her cause célèbre, which is a completely worthwhile effort and will certainly age better than Nancy Reagan’s zero tolerance drug prohibitionist “Just Say No” campaign.

But Mrs. Obama hasn’t been merely urging American youth to get off their sedentary asses and run around for a little bit each day, she’s also used the bully pulpit of her ceremonial position to advocate for the end of king-sized candy bars and to chastise a young Olympian on national TV for admitting that all she wanted was an Egg McMuffin.

The First Lady also pushed for a government solution to the supposed problem of “food deserts,” generally defined as low-income urban areas with a paucity of grocery stores and restaurants featuring healthy culinary options.

After two days covering the Democratic National Convention (DNC), held at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, I’d like to make my own plea: Michelle, this place is a food desert and we need your help. 

The food is horrible at the DNC, when it’s available at all. Try to imagine going to a sold-out Philadelphia Flyers game with only one of every five kiosks in the concourse open. Lines are interminably long for hot lamp-warmed pizza, hot dogs, and various fried grease and meat-like substances. I heard uncomfirmed reports that complimentary meals were scarce even for arena and convention employees.

Particularly appalling to friends of Reason such as Fox Business host Kennedy is the inexplicable shuttering of the Gluten-Free station. And if you want a cup of coffee, you’d better be ok with getting your caffeine fix from a $5 can of Pepsi.

Despite being housed on a sprawling sports complex shared by the Phillies’ Citizen Bank Park and the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, the only dining options outside the arena are a handful of food trucks, four of which specialize in (wait for it) cheesesteaks. There is also a “Sushi Burrito” truck, a Korean taco truck (my personal favorite, and one that proudly advertised it’s vegan options), and a large pavilion featuring more burgers, hot dogs, BBQ, and in the only surprise to be found, Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. 

Yes, that’s the same Chick-Fil-A which some Democratic mayors, including former Obama administration Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, wanted to ban from doing business in their cities because of the anti-gay views of the company’s president.

About a five minute walk from the arena but within the security perimeter, there’s a standard sports bar, which from what I could tell is the only place in the entire securitized DNC area where the general public can order a salad.

Put simply, this place is a food desert. And considering the Democratic Party is the one which prides itself on the virtues of central planning, as well as health, wellness, and hipness, the irony is rich if not satisfying enough to gain any sustenance from.

While the dietary problems of a few thousand convention-goers might not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, it appears that food deserts are probably not the existential crisis we were led to believe.

Writing for the National Review in 2014, Alec Torres noted a study conducted by Health Affairs which examined more than a thousand residents of Philadelphia (of all places), “who formerly lived in areas considered food deserts but have since seen grocery stores built within 1.5 miles of their residences.” According to Torres:

Six months after supermarkets were built, the researchers found only 26.7 percent of those who lived near one of the newly built grocery stores ended up using the grocery store as their main food source. Within that 26.7 percent there was no significant improvement in body-mass index or intake of fruits and vegetables.

The findings led the authors of the study to write that “this indicates that simply providing new food retail stores is insufficient to encourage the adoption of new stores as residents’ main food source.” Residents who didn’t adopt the new stores, it is assumed, continued to use the old, less-healthy alternative.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) essentially admitted that the $500 million spent by the government “to attract supermarkets or improve existing stores in underserved areas” was a failure. Turns out the price of food and “household and neighborhood resources, education, and taste preferences may be more important determinants of food choice than store proximity,” according to the USDA’s official magazine Amber Waves.

The fact that a taxpayer-infusion of half a billion dollars was not enough to change eating habits in “food desert” neighborhoods demonstrates the folly of looking for a purely top-down solution to American obesity. As my colleague Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote last month, “You can lead human beings to Whole Foods, but you can’t make them buy organic kale there.”

Still, as an omnivore who chooses not to eat meat every day and does my best to eat well (or at least not horribly) when possible, I was kind of hoping the food and health scolds of the Democratic Party would have used their quadrennial four-day informercial as a venue for savory yet nutritious fare.

I can’t stress enough how much available space there is to be had for food trucks and stands outside the arena. The 2016 DNC could have been a farm-to-table Woodstock, with ambitious and health-conscious food vendors from all over the country competing for delegates’ and journalists’ dinner dollars. Instead, some of us are smuggling bottles of V8 into the venue and buying tiny pretzel-and-hummus snack packs for $4. 

Mrs. Obama, I’m just looking for some greens while I’m in town. Do you think you could help me out by throwing a little of the side-eye you threw at Gabby Douglas (for admitting she likes McDonald’s) in the direction of DNC organizers? 

On Tuesday night delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia heard from the mothers of seven African Americans whose deaths have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. Their stories illustrate the movement’s legitimate grievances as well as the myths and bogus arguments that alienate potential allies.

Activists undermine their cause when they ignore plausible self-defense claims, perpetuate misconceptions about “stand your ground” laws, and push a divisive gun control agenda, writes Jacob Sullum. As President Obama likes to say, equal treatment under the law is “an American issue,” or at least it should be.

View this article.

The federal government will pay $475,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a New Mexico woman who in 2012 was subjected to six hours of degrading and fruitless body cavity searches based on a purported alert by a drug-sniffing dog at the Cordova Bridge border crossing in El Paso. The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, had already reached a $1.1 million settlement with the the University Medical Center of El Paso, where Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents took her after their searches near the bridge found nothing, and the emergency room physicians who sexually assaulted her at their behest.

In addition to a pat-down and strip search at the crossing, Doe endured “an observed bowel movement, X-ray, speculum exam, rectal exam, vaginal exam, and a CT scan.” She repeatedly made it clear that she had not consented to these indignities and refused to sign a form saying she had. “After the CT scan,” the lawsuit says, “a CBP agent presented Ms. Doe with a choice: she could either sign a medical consent form, despite the fact that she had not consented, in which case CBP would pay for the cost of the searches; or if she refused to sign the consent form, she would be billed for the cost of the searches.” The upshot: The hospital billed her $5,000 for its services. 

Ultimately the hospital got stuck with a bill more than 200 times as big, while CBP agreed to pay almost 100 times as much as it tried to charge Doe for the privilege of being kidnapped and violated (although that money will, sadly, come out of taxpayers’ pockets). Coincidentally, the total amount, about $1.6 million, is what David Eckert, another victim of a dog-authorized sexual assault, got from the city of Deming, New Mexico, in 2014. In addition to paying Doe, the CBP agreed to better train its agents so they no longer consider this sort of thing part of their job description.

“This settlement is one of the largest of its kind ever reached over violations involving an individual search,” says the ACLU of Texas, which brought the lawsuit together with the ACLU of New Mexico. Last week those two organizations, joined by ACLU affiliates in Arizona and California, sent letters to 40 health care providers that run facilities near the border, warning them of their legal exposure if they participate in the war on drugs as enthusiastically as the doctors at University Medical Center, which as part of its settlement agreed never to conduct searches like those endured by Doe without a warrant. The letter explains that a warrant is required in such situations by CBP policy as well as the Fourth Amendment:

Searches that intrude on a person’s body require a high degree of justification, even at the border….Except in very rare instances, government searches that intrude into the human body require a warrant because “[s]uch an invasion of bodily integrity implicates an individual’s ‘most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy.'” The protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment extend to searches conducted by medical personnel who are acting at the request or direction of law enforcement officers….

Your staff should know that CBP agents have no authority to compel healthcare professionals to assist in law enforcement searches. CBP policy absolutely forbids CBP officers from pressuring, cajoling, or otherwise requesting medical personnel to conduct medical examinations of individuals under their custody….

Even if CBP personnel insist that a person in their custody may be concealing contraband such as illegal drugs, healthcare professionals are under no obligation to comply with a request to conduct a search. Even for persons in CBP custody, the healthcare professional retains the obligation to ensure that body cavity searches, X-rays, CT scans or similar procedures are for legitimate medical reasons and to adhere to the patient consent requirements appropriate for that procedure….

Medical personnel should know that CBP’s own policy expressly requires officers to obtain a search warrant to authorize highly invasive searches, such as body cavity searches and medical X-rays….

CBP defines a body cavity search as “any visual or physical intrusion into the rectal or vaginal cavity.” Only medical personnel may conduct a body cavity search, as CBP officers are strictly prohibited from doing so per the Handbook. CBP policy provides that body cavity searches are reserved for “the most exceptional circumstances.” As such, these highly invasive searches are not permitted unless the patient gives her free and voluntary consent or the agent obtains a search warrant from a judge.

The need for such guidance is depressing but undeniable. “When Ms. Doe expressed dismay about the unreasonable searches she suffered,” her complaint says, “a Medical Center employee responded that these procedures were routinely followed when an individual is brought in by CBP agents. The employee also told Ms. Doe that what happened to her was not invasive.”

This morning from 10 a.m. ET I’ll be pulling a two-hour stint on SiriusXM Insight channel 121’s Stand Up! With Pete Domnick talking all things Democratic National Convention, along with scheduled guests Van Jones, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), The Nation‘s John Nichols, and more.

If Donald Trump is the first man to run for president as a Twitter troll, the Democrats are putting on the first political convention that plays like a reel of Upworthy videos. The only things missing are the clickbait headlines. “Hillary Is a Change-Maker. Here’s Why That’s Important.” “These Heartwarming Stories Will Renew Your Faith in Foreign Policy.” “Elizabeth Warren’s Reply to Donald Trump Is Perfect.” “Watch Sarah Silverman DESTROY the Bernie Bros.”

There are occasional breaks—a heckle, a vote—but almost everything here is aimed at an audience that wants to feel Inspired, to Make History, to be told why something’s a Big Deal. The prerecorded clips played between speeches look like they were designed by a committee that really wants them to go viral, and who filled the soundtracks with emotional cues for anyone who isn’t sure what he’s supposed to be feeling. Even the musical numbers have a Made-for-Facebook flavor. (Look! It’s a celebrity-studded cover of “Fight Song“!) And the candidate, of course, is presented not merely as a politician with a policy program but as an Inspiration To Little Girls Everywhere.

This is the politics of a Kony hashtag, of an image macro with a mangled quote, of a college student staring earnestly at a camera while cradling a small sign. If you’re prone to writing phrases like “Wow. Just wow.” then this may be the convention for you. Me, I’ll be looking for the Party of Clickhole.

Hamilton College has instituted a diversity requirement: all students must take a course that deals with issues of race, class, or identity—even if they are majoring in the hard sciences.

The proposal, which was approved by the faculty governing body 80-19, doesn’t precisely specify what constitutes diversity, however, which has left one independent-minded professor wondering if his course on conservative thought could satisfy the requirement.

“Is it not eye-opening that a supermajority of the faculty would approve of imposing a requirement based upon a concept, ‘diversity,’ that was never precisely defined before it was voted on?” Robert Paquette, a history professor at Hamilton, asked Inside Higher Ed. “Will departments be drawing up lists of ‘approved courses’? Which courses will be included? Which courses will be excluded? Does the understanding of ‘diversity’ include viewpoint diversity, and would, e.g., my course on conservative thought make anyone’s list? Would all history courses make the list? Or none, or some?”

These are valid questions. Paquette, as it so happens, has donated to Republican candidates in the past, which makes him something of an anomaly. He is the only undergraduate professor to do so—not just at Hamilton, but at any of the top 50 liberal arts schools in the country, according to Campus Reform.

There are, after all, plenty of left-leaning professors eager to inject material having to do with race, class, sexuality, and other forms of identity into the curriculum. But there are very few professors are teaching about conservatism. Even fewer—practically none—are conservatives themselves.

Of course, when universities talk about diversity, they aren’t actually talking about diversity. They don’t want to expose students to a broader range of views. They want to expose students to more of the same view most of them already hold.

• Hillary Clinton was made official as the Democratic presidential candidate Tuesday.
• Delegates supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders made a mass exodus from the convention hall in protest. 
• Future first gentleman Bill Clinton spoke at the Democratic Convention last night. “If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade…” he said, “a real change-maker represents a real threat.” 
• Next up: Barack Obama. 
• Girls creator Lena Dunham also spoke last night, along with someone who is not (contra Dem PR) a sex-trafficking survivor.
• Turkey is clamping down on journalists. 
• False positive tests are behind the claim that there’s THC in the Hugo, Colorado, water supply.