Brickbat: Losers

Officials at
Nebraska’s Lincoln Public Schools have apologized for passing out a
flier at one school telling students not to
tell on bullies
 because “the number one reason bullies
hate their victims is because the victims tell on them.” It also
advised those who are being bullied not to be sore losers, not to
defend themselves and to “treat the person who is being mean as if
they are trying to help you.”

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Tonight on The Independents: Earth Day Hysteria, Drone-War Accountability, Palcohol Panic, Affirmative Action Boredom, AirBnB Agonistes, Aereo’s Dealio, a Facebook Vote…Plus Sexy After-show!

Click the clicky! |||Is it still Earth Day if nobody talks about it?
How about if people celebrate it by publishing an article calling
the fight against climate change “The New
Abolitionism
“? These are some of the questions to be chewed on
tonight’s live episode of The
Independents
(Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT).
Party Panelists Monica Crowley
(Fox
News
analyst, radio
host
, author of
What the (Bleep) Just Happened?
The Happy Warrior’s Guide to
the Great American Comeback
), and Carrie Sheffield
(Forbes
contributor
, “Committed to free minds + free markets”!),
will talk about that, plus the Supreme Court’s
big affirmative action decision
today, and then your
Facebook vote
will determine whether their final topic will be
a new
conservative gay marriage poll
or Gov. Chris Christie’s

dull-witted remarks
about not legalizing marijuana.

Cato Vice
President
(and Reason.com columnist)
Gene Healy will talk
about the recent court ruling requiring President Barack Obama to

at least explain
when and how it determines that
Americans need to be droned to death
. Wall Street
Journal
multimedia explainer Jason Bellini, proprietor of
“The Short Answer,” will present his latest video, about
New York’s war on AirBnB
. And the co-hosts will discuss the
latest with the silly
“palcohol” scandal
.

After-show can be found at http://ift.tt/QYHXdy
at 10 p.m. sharp; the aforementioned Facebook page at http://ift.tt/QYHXdB.
Follow us on Twitter @ independentsFBN, and
click on this page
for video of past segments.

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SCOTUS Grills Ohio Over Its Speech-Suppressing ‘Ministry of Truth’

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised on Tuesday to give the
green light to a First Amendment lawsuit aimed at overturning a
censorious state law.

At issue in Tuesday’s oral arguments in Susan B. Anthony
List v. Driehaus
was whether the anti-abortion group Susan B.
Anthony List (SBA List) may proceed in federal court with a
constitutional challenge to an Ohio law that criminalizes “false”
political speech. Under the terms of that law, “any person” may
file a complaint about “false” speech with the Ohio Elections
Commission, thereby triggering official proceedings where the
alleged wrongdoer may be forced by the state to produce witnesses
and documents. “In other words,” remarked Justice Anthony Kennedy
during the oral arguments, “you have tens of thousands of private
attorney generals” able to haul their political opponents before a
state tribunal. Kennedy did not appear to mean that as a
compliment.

In 2010, SBA List was subjected to precisely that sort of
ordeal. After Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus
complained about the group’s attack
on his record, a
three-member panel of the Ohio Elections Commission, with two
Democrats in the majority and one Republican in dissent, determined
there was “probable cause” to believe SBA List would be found in
violation of the speech law. Meanwhile, the congressional election
where Driehaus was a candidate came and went. In effect, SBA List
had been successfully prevented from speaking out against Driehaus’
candidacy.

The question now before the Supreme Court is whether that set of
events is sufficient to give the conservative group the requisite
“standing” needed to challenge the Ohio law on free speech grounds.
Judging by what I observed during Tuesday’s oral arguments, a
majority of the justices seemed ready to give the Susan B. Anthony
List its day in court.

“Don’t you think,” asked Justice Kennedy to Ohio State Solicitor
Eric Murphy, “there’s a serious First Amendment concern with a
state law that requires you to come before a commission to justify
what you are going to say and which gives the commission discovery
power to find out who’s involved in your association, what research
you made, et cetera?”

Justice Antonin Scalia struck a similar note. “You are forcing
them to go through this procedure in the midst of an election
campaign,” he complained to Murphy. Several minutes later, Scalia
launched another attack, comparing the Ohio Elections Commission to
the notorious “Ministry of Truth” from George Orwell’s
1984.

But perhaps the most damaging argument raised against the state
came courtesy of Justice Stephen Breyer. “There are things I want
to say politically,” Breyer began, “and if I say them, there’s a
serious risk that I will be had up before a commission and could be
fined. What’s the harm? I can’t speak. That’s the harm.”

That statement captured the entire case against Ohio in a
nutshell. Assuming Breyer and his colleagues hold to that view, the
Buckeye State will soon be forced to justifiy its actions agains
the full weight of the First Amendment.

A decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus is
expected by June.

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Chris Christie Opposes Pot Legalization Because He Doesn’t Want New Small Businesses or Tourists in His State

Last night on his radio show, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
wanted to make sure everyone knew he really, really
doesn’t think it’s cool to legalize marijuana
 and that not
even “casual use” is OK. After all, think of the potential
consequences! 

“Go to Colorado and see if you want to live there,” the governor
said. “See if you want to live in a major city in Colorado, where
there are headshops popping up on every corner, and people flying
into your airport just to get high.

No siree. Wouldn’t want new small businesses opening up or
tourists coming to your state. That would be terrible.

He added:

“To me, it’s not the quality of life we want to have here in the
state of New Jersey,” he added. “And here’s no tax revenue that’s
worth that.

He could have stopped before the last three words.

The governor has also said that
he’s worried about the “profit motive”
sneaking into his state
if a recent
bill
 submitted in the state legislature to legalize
possession of marijuana of up to an ounce passes. He famously
dragged his feet on much needed liberalization of medical marijuana
in the state as well, as this Reason TV video
shows
:

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There Should Be No ‘Punishment’ Phase When a Culture War Ends

Let's not with the "eye for an eye," hmm?Dozens of supporters of gay
marriage, including many noted journalists and scholars, have
signed on to a statement today calling for an end to the kind of
public outrage that haunted ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich when people
discovered he once donated money to the opposing side.

The full statement is posted at Real Clear Politics,
and the signatories include many names recognizable here at
Reason:
Jonathan Rauch
, Paypal’s Peter Thiel, Eugene and Sasha Volokh
(and other contributors to The Volokh Conspiracy), Andrew
Sullivan, Charles Murray, Reason Contributing
Editor
Cathy Young
. The letter calls for advocacy and debate, but an
end to retributive responses to those who have opposed (or still
oppose) same-sex marriage recognition. In the section titled
“Disagreement Should Not Be Punished,”
they argue
:

We prefer debate that is respectful, but we cannot enforce good
manners. We must have the strength to accept that some people think
misguidedly and harmfully about us. But we must also acknowledge
that disagreement is not, itself, harm or hate.

As a viewpoint, opposition to gay marriage is not a punishable
offense. It can be expressed hatefully, but it can also be
expressed respectfully. We strongly believe that opposition to
same-sex marriage is wrong, but the consequence of holding a wrong
opinion should not be the loss of a job. Inflicting such
consequences on others is sadly ironic in light of our movement’s
hard-won victory over a social order in which LGBT people were
fired, harassed, and socially marginalized for holding unorthodox
opinions.

During the debate over whether what happened to Eich was
appropriate—and very frequently in the debate on recognizing gay
marriage itself—supporters of how the conflict ended with Eich
stepping down invoked interracial marriage. Would we have supported
Eich if he was opposed to interracial marriage? How is opposing
same-sex marriage different from opposing interracial marriage?
Indeed, the issue was immediately raised in the comment
thread after signatory Dale Carpenter
posted an excerpt
at The Volokh Conspiracy. Should a
CEO opposed to interracial marriage be immune from any sort of
consequences from such a position?

Since the laws against interracial marriage were struck down so
many years ago, it’s appropriate to respond: Who, actually, was
punished for being on the wrong side of that debate? Did people who
opposed race-mixing lose their jobs for supporting the wrong
candidates? Can anybody point to CEOs who were fired back in the
’60s or ’70s for supporting some racist candidate somewhere? I have
done a bit of a stab at trying to track down any info that such
outcomes happened, but that would seem to take a lot more time than
I have as a blogger.

To the extent that those particular civil rights battles ended,
I don’t recall there being a punishment phase afterward. The
battles were certainly punishment enough. Those people on the wrong
side—and there were millions of them—didn’t go anywhere. They
continued on with their lives under new laws and probably most of
them eventually came around on the issue, or at least kept it to
themselves. Winning a culture war isn’t like winning an actual war.
You’re not stopping an invasion (or initiating one). When the war
is over, the participants are still around and they still have to
negotiate a way to live together. That realization is why the end
of a culture war simply can’t have some sort of Nuremberg Trials.
There isn’t an equivalent. You have to live next door to people who
may have extremely different views from yours. Sometimes, those
views were actually the majority view at one point. If you try to
initiate a punishment phase, why would your opponents then agree to
stop fighting and accept your victory?

Nobody who knows the history of the gay movement in the United
States should countenance people being punished by their employers
for the way they express themselves, unless they value revenge more
than liberty (some probably do, sadly). The conclusion of the
letter notes:

LGBT Americans can and do demand to be treated fairly. But we
also recognize that absolute agreement on any issue does not exist.
Franklin Kameny, one of America’s earliest and greatest gay-rights
proponents, lost his job in 1957 because he was gay. Just as some
now celebrate Eich’s departure as simply reflecting market demands,
the government justified the firing of gay people because of “the
possible embarrassment to, and loss of public confidence in…the
Federal civil service.” Kameny devoted his life to fighting back.
He was both tireless and confrontational in his advocacy of
equality, but he never tried to silence or punish his
adversaries.

Now that we are entering a new season in the debate that Frank
Kameny helped to open, it is important to live up to the standard
he set. Like him, we place our confidence in persuasion, not
punishment. We believe it is the only truly secure path to equal
rights.

The tragedy was not that this sort of workplace treatment
happened to gays and lesbians (or that it still happens). It was
that it happened to anybody at all.

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Police Officer Tells Parents They Could Be ‘Trespassing’ on School Property If They Oppose Standardized Testing

abba caddabaThe Finneys of Marietta, Georgia, have been
fighting their local school district over the state’s standardized
exam battery, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, taken in
third, fifth, and eighth grades and used to determine promotion to
the next grade. Two of their three children were required to take
tests this month, a third grader and a fifth grader, but the
parents refused. At one point they said they thought they had a
meeting scheduled with the principal to talk about their concerns.
Instead, they were met by a cop.
Via the Marietta Daily Journal
:

The Finneys worked out a meeting with school
administrators early Wednesday morning to talk things over. But
when they arrived, they were confronted by a police officer instead
of the principal. 

According to Tracey Finney, the officer was extremely nice and
professional, but told them being on school property while actively
opposed to the test was “kind of a trespassing thing” and that
their kids weren’t allowed on the property either if they weren’t
going to take the test. The officer’s report confirms the parents
were told they and their students would be trespassing if they
stayed on the property.

The principal says the meeting was cancelled a couple of hours
after it was confirmed via email that morning. The Finneys say they
were told they could send their children to school after the tests
were administered in the morning, but the school then told them
make-up testing would take place in the afternoons. The Finneys say
they like the public school system but that they will send their
children to private school or homeschool them if their children
will be compelled to take the tests.

While the tests have been mandatory in Georgia since 2000, in a
statement
picked up
by The Daily Caller the family
linked their concern over the data-collection aspect of
standardized testing to Common Core. “People don’t realize it,” the
statement read in part. “We don’t want to sound like we’re wearing
tin-foil hats, but they want to track our kids from kindergarten
through college.”

Earlier this year, Colorado parent Sean Black reportedly
got a visit from a cop after he told a state bureaucrat that he
wanted opt his disabled child out of a test. In
Colorado, teachers
with children in public schools
are among the loudest opponents
of standardized testing, and Black, also a teacher, was eventually

allowed
to opt his child out.

The Finneys, meanwhile, deny that they’re trying to opt out of
the test. Rather, they insist what they’re doing—refusing to have
their children take it—is different. State officials say there’s
nothing in the law to allow for opting out.

This is, of course, the kind of thing that could be curbed by
replacing state and federal standardization and centralization with
a system in which funding
follows the students to the schools of their choice

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SCOTUS Upholds Michigan Affirmative Action Ban, Sherpas Shun Mt. Everest, Another Police Shooting in Albuquerque: P.M. Links

  • Do they deliberately make the book titles so mockable?The Supreme Court today

    upheld
    , 6-2, Michigan’s ban on using affirmative action during
    the enrollment process for colleges.
  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says she’s not running for
    president in 2016, but her new book, A Fighting Chance,
    seems to
    read a lot like
    the kind of books put out by people planning
    runs for president.
  • After an avalanche killed 13 of their peers,
    sherpas have abandoned
    this year’s climbing season at Mount
    Everest.
  • Russia is applying pressure to Ukraine by demanding the country

    prepay for Russian gas
    unless it starts paying down its
    debt.
  • Today marks 10 years since NFL player turned Army Ranger Pat
    Tillman
    was killed
     by friendly fire just weeks after arriving in
    Afghanistan.
  • Albuquerque, New Mexico, police officers
    shot and killed
    a 19-year-old woman during a chase. She’s the
    third person killed by Albuquerque officers in five weeks. Police
    claim that she pulled a gun on them during a foot pursuit.

Follow us on Facebook
and Twitter,
and don’t forget to
sign
up
 for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

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Zenon Evans on Promise and Peril in Tech Approaches To Stopping Child Sex Trafficking

Children and teens are trafficked for sex and
exploited for pornography, and the web amplifies this trade. The
National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children received 500,000 potentially explicit images of
minors online in 2004. By 2011 it surged to over 17 million. The
tech world is starting to intersect with the advocacy and outreach
world on how to deal this issue in situations where legislation has
been unsuccessful. Zenon Evans highlights an organization called
Thorn and the pros and cons of their strategies: surveying,
surveilling, and spreading information.

View this article.

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Sen. Chuck Schumer Blasts FDA’s ‘Ridiculous’ New Proposal for Breweries

Sen. Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) is
sticking up for breweries
and pushing back against the Food and
Drug Administration’s nonsensical “spent grain” proposal. In a
letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Schumer said the
proposed rule “would drive up costs for both farmers and brewers
with no clear health or safety benefit.” 

Under the rule,
breweries would be barred from sharing spent grains
—the
leftover muck from the beer-making process—unless they dry and
package the grains first. Currently, many brewers donate the spent
grains directly to local farmers, who feed it to livestock. It’s a
symbiotic relationship that saves both parties time and cuts down
on environmental waste.

Nick Matt, CEO of the brewery behind Saranac beers, says his
company has been providing spent grain to
farmers since 1888. It seems that for the past
century and change, pigs and cows have been perfectly fine without
the FDA imposing safety standards on the spent grains they
eat. 

At a press conference at New York’s Saranac Brewery yesterday,
Schumer said
the “ridiculous” rule—part of the FDA’s implementation of the new
Food Safety Modernization Act—is overly restrictive, is
unnecessary, and would force brewers to trash the grains, as
this would be cheaper than meeting the new requirements. The
brewing industry estimates that compliance could cost brewers over
$50 million a year.

The rule “simply cannot go forward,” said Schumer. “I’m urging
the FDA to do an about-face on this misguided rule, which would
stymie a mutually-beneficial relationship between two of Upstate
New York’s most important industries.”

Last week, 13 U.S. representatives
also sent a letter
to FDA Commissioner Hamburg about the spent
grain proposal. “While we appreciate that the FDA is working
towards improved food safety,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Reps.
John Garamendi (D-Calif.) and Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), “the
unintended consequences of these regulations will increase costs,
decrease efficiency and hamper the growth of breweries.” 

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