Category: reason

In August, the police killing
of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Mo. led to days of protests over police
brutality and the lack of information and communication about the
Brown killing. The St. Louis county government sent in county and
other local law enforcement agencies, often the militarized
variety, leading to even more protests.

October was supposed to be another month of protest. It had
mixed results. Today, voters in St. Louis county go to vote for,
among other positions, county officials. The county executive,
Charlie Dooley, a Democrat, isn’t up for re-election. The Democrat
vying to replace him, Steve Stenger, was
supposed to be a shoe-in.

But Stenger won his primary largely with the help of Bob
McCulloch, the St. Louis county prosecutor, also a Democrat. While
McCulloch, also a Democrat, is running unopposed he’s become a
lightning rod for criticism of the cosy relationship cops have with
the prosecutors who are charged with deciding whether they’ve
committed a crime. One of McCulloch’s
first cases when he came into office in 1991 involved defending
cops who shot two unarmed men during an ill-advised drug sting. For
McCulloch the killing was OK because the victims were “bums.”
McCulloch declined to recuse himself from the Darren Wilson case
but his objectivity has been called into questioning, threatening
not just justice for Michael Brown but for Darren Wilson too.

McCulloch’s anti-civil liberties mentality didn’t stop the
Democrat from getting re-elected five times. While there may not be
that much of a difference between a one-party system and a
two-party system, the lack of any choice to register opposition to
McCulloch at the ballot is troubling. In the county executive race,
the Republican candidate Rick Stream, a state legislator is
tackling the racial divide in St. Louis head on, an also supports
appointing special prosecutors for police shootings. Another

Republican state legislator is proposing a bill that would
permanently take the decision whether to prosecute cops out of the
hands of the local prosecutors they work with. There’s also a civil
rights activist running for county executive as a
write-in. Ferguson, by the way, which is two-thirds black, has
a majority white, Republican elected leadership. Nobody votes
because it doesn’t matter.

Follow Reason 24/7 tonight for results of the St. Louis
executive race as well as the congressional race involving
incumbent Democrat
Lacy Clay, whose district includes Ferguson and who has
supported and continues to support the militarization of local
police.

Just in
case parents get tired of
fruitlessly searching trick-or-treat bags for marijuana-infused
candy, a new Halloween scare is in the works. The San Jose
Mercury News reports
that “police in Hercules are trying to determine who gave a plastic
bag of methamphetamine to a young girl on Halloween, and are
reminding parents to inspect their children’s candy haul for
suspicious items.” This new menace is promising, since meth is
scarier than marijuana, but it has a definite disadvantage: There
is no indication that anyone tried to disguise the meth as candy.
Far from the strawberry-flavored
meth of legend, it was just 0.1 gram of white powder in a tiny
zip-lock bag—but still enough to support a felony possession
charge, according to police, which gives you a sense of how insane
our drug laws are.

“This could have been intentional, or it could have been
accidental,” Hercules police Sgt. Ezra Tafesse told the Mercury
News, “and we won’t know until we speak with the person
who did this.” Or as KNTV, the NBC station in San Jose,
puts it, “police are unsure if the meth found were given to the
child intentionally or on accident.” On accident, I’m guessing,
since the prank potential seems very low, given the lack of
resemblance between the meth and any candy kids are apt to get on
Halloween.

Speaking of accidentally distributing drugs to children,
Hercules, a city of 24,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area, was the
location of another such Halloween incident, this one involving
marijuana. It was the closest thing I could find to
trick-or-treaters getting cannabis candy instead of the regular
kind: Back in 2000, marijuana buds stuffed into wrappers from
miniature chocolate bars turned up in children’s trick-or-treat
bags. Hercules police traced the pot to a postal worker, who
obtained it from an undeliverable package without realizing what
was actually inside  the wrappers. The San Francisco
Chronicle explained:

The treats were the product of a failed and undetected attempt
to mail 5 ounces of marijuana to someone in San Francisco, said
Hercules Police Chief Mike Tye.

“Somebody tried to mail it and didn’t have enough postage or the
address was wrong,” he said.

Because the package, which contained four bags of Snickers bars
destined for San Francisco, did not have a return address, it
landed in the dead-letter office—where it was taken by a postal
employee who planned to hand the candies out to
trick-or-treaters.

“A lot of their dead mail, stuff that’s nonperishable, is given
away to charity,” Tye said. “(The employee) picked up the candy
along with a bunch of canned goods. He took the other items to a
church but kept the candy.”

Because police were convinced that the postal worker had made an
honest mistake, he was neither charged nor publicly named. His
error is obviously quite different from deliberately giving out
marijuana-infused candy disguised as unspiked versions of the same
products: Not only was the marijuana distribution inadvertent, but
no one would mistake marijuana buds for a Snickers bar once the
package was opened. Press coverage of the incident may nevertheless
have fed rumors about malicious strangers trying to trick kids into
ingesting cannabis—just as this meth story may transmogrify into
something more sinister.

According to the Mercury News, by the way, Sgt. Tafesse
said “it is unusual for drugs to be slipped into Halloween candy,
but it happens from time to time, especially with marijuana.” He
did not cite any actual cases.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, it’s currently
against the law to sell sexual services but not to pay for them.
One city lawmaker, Olga Galkina, aims to change that with a bit of
provocative political theater.

Galkina recently introduced a bill that would impose heavy fines
on prostitution clients in Russia’s second-largest city. Under her
proposal, those caught purchasing sexual services could face a
charge of 4,000 to 10,000 rubles (about $95-$240) or up to five
days in jail. The fines and jail time would increase if a client
knew an individual was being forced into selling sex. 

However—and here’s where things get interesting—a client could
evade these penalties if
they agreed to marry the person providing the sexual
service. From RT: 

In the explanatory note attached to the bill Galkina quotes
international experience, saying that introducing responsibility
for clients had helped to decrease the prostitution rate in
Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. If the St. Petersburg city
legislature approves the bill in two readings it would be sent to
the Federal parliament with the possibility to become a national
Russian law.

Law experts say that while the purpose of the bill is good it
might face difficulties in real life as it would be very difficult
to collect proof of the crime.

Let’s be clear: the purpose of the bill is good. But
not for the reasons these alleged law experts purport. Galkina’s
true motive in introducing the legislation was to get Russians
thinking about how and why they criminalize sex.

The lawmaker told Kommersant-St Petersburg that she’s
actually an advocate for decriminalizing prostitution for sex
workers and their clients. Her marry-a-prostitute proposal
has almost no chance of passing, but she introduced it to spark a
conversation. 

“Why Were Ventura
County Residents Blocked From Voting on Pension Reform in the
Midterm Elections?“ is the latest video
from Reason TV. Watch above or click on the link below for video,
full text, supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason
TV clips.

View this article.

It is legal to publish stories about
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson without the permission of their
creator’s estate, because those characters are in the public
domain. That’s what the Seventh Circuit
ruled in June, and it’s now clear that the judge’s
decision is going to stand: The U.S. Supreme Court
has declined
to hear an appeal filed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heirs.

As I
wrote when the Seventh Circuit ruling came down, this is

a welcome decision. The argument offered by Arthur
Conan Doyle’s estate rested on the fact that 10 Sherlock stories
were published after 1923 and therefore have not yet entered the
public domain. Because those stories introduced new elements to
Holmes’ and Watson’s fictional lives, the estate’s attorneys
claimed that the characters were not fully created until
after 1923 and therefore aren’t in the public domain after all. At
a time when copyright terms are constantly being
extended into the future, the estate was effectively attempting
to enact a stealth extension into the past.

It was an absurd argument, and Judge Richard Posner swatted it down
gracefully.

Absurd though its argument was, the Doyle estate had been
getting away for years with asking writers for fees they were not
actually legally obliged to pay. Indeed, this case began with the
Doyle estate telling Leslie
Klinger that he and his publisher had to cough up $5,000 for
the right to use Holmes and Watson in a book. Now the money will be
flowing in the opposite direction: In August, Judge Posner ordered
the estate to give Klinger $30,679.93—the amount he incurred in the
circuit-court stage of the legal fight. Klinger is also asking to
be compensated for the costs of an
earlier stage of the battle, before a lower court; if that
request is granted, Doyle’s heirs will be on the hook for another
$39,123.44.

I hope that happens. As Posner
wrote in August,

The Doyle estate’s business strategy is plain:
charge a modest license fee for which there is no legal basis, in
the hope that the “rational” writer or publisher asked for the fee
will pay it rather than incur a greater cost, in legal expenses, in
challenging the legality of the demand. The strategy had worked
with Random House; Pegasus was ready to knuckle under; only Klinger
(so far as we know) resisted. In effect he was a private attorney
general, combating a disreputable business practice—a form of
extortion—and he is seeking by the present motion not to obtain a
reward but merely to avoid a loss. He has performed a public
service—and with substantial risk to himself, for had he lost he
would have been out of pocket for the $69,803.37 in fees and costs
in-curred at the trial and appellate levels ($30,679.93 +
$39,123.44). The willingness of someone in Klinger’s position to
sue rather than pay Doyle’s estate a modest license fee is
important because it injects risk into the estate’s business model.
As a result of losing the suit, the estate has lost its claim to
own copyrights in characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories
published by Arthur Conan Doyle before 1923. For exposing the
estate’s unlawful business strategy, Klinger deserves a reward but
asks only to break even.

Chill
out, America. Whether the Republicans win big or the Dems hold the
line, both major parties are on the path to extinction, at least in
their current forms.

Whichever side emerges victorious, both Republicans and
Democrats should face up to a much bigger truth: Neither party as
currently constituted has a real future. Fewer and fewer
Americans identify as either Republican or Democratic
according to Gallup, and both parties are at recent or
all-time lows when it comes to approval ratings. Just 39
percent give Democrats a favorable rating and just 33 percent do
the same for Republicans. Not coincidentally, each party has also
recently had a clear shot at implementing its vision of the good
society. If you want to drive down your adversary’s approval
rating, just give him the reins of power for a few years.

What’s going on? The short version is that political, cultural,
and even economic power has been decentralizing and unraveling for
a long time. Whether you like it or not, The Libertarian
Moment is here, a technologically driven individualization of
experience and a breakdown of the large institutions—governments,
corporations, churches, you name it—that used to govern and
structure our lives. The result is that top-down systems, whether
public or private, right wing or left wing, have less and less
ability to organize our lives. That’s true whether you’re talking
about the workplace, the bedroom, or the bar down the street (that
may now be serving legal pot). This is mostly good, though it’s
also profoundly disruptive too.

That’s from my new column at
The Daily Beast, which argues that the future belongs
to

…politicians and parties who champion policies that embrace
economic and social decentralization will own the future, even as
they wield less power by letting people discover how they actually
want to live. Whoever wins tonight would do well to remember that.
Because if they don’t, they’ll be losers again, and sooner than you
think.

Conservatives/Republicans can live with some decentralization in
economic issues and education policy, but they really can’t abide
by rapidly proliferating lifestyle choice. Liberals/Democrats are
desperately trying to structure commercial life and restrict
choices when it comes to health care, school lunches, and more. If
both sides don’t realize the impossibility of their positions, they
will become even less representative of contemporary America. If
that’s the case, it was nice knowing them.

More here.

British Prime Minister
David Cameron is
under fire from a bipartisan coalition of M.P.s over his
refusal to re-evaluate Britain’s 40-year-old drug laws.

The issue arose following the release of a report from the Home
Office (a government department responsible for immigration,
security, and law and order) comparing the U.K.’s drug policy
with the approaches of 13 other countries. The report found that
“there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a
country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use.”

This led to the first major House of Commons debate on drug
policy in a generation. During the debate, M.P.s from across the
political spectrum stood up to denounce the current policy and call
for reform.

This disparate group included a succession of members from
Cameron’s own Conservative Party. The most prominent of these was
Peter Lilley, a former cabinet minister and Deputy Leader of the
Conservative Party, who bypassed talk of decriminalization and
called for the outright legalization of cannabis.

An even more influential figure to come out for reform was Nick
Clegg, who voiced his support through the media. As leader of the
Liberal Democrats, Clegg is the Deputy Prime Minister of Cameron’s
coalition government. In
an op-ed for The Independent, he argued it was clear
the war on drugs was being lost and that a new approach was
required:

Instead of looking at evidenced-based solutions successive
government’s have ratcheted up the rhetoric–talking tough but
failing to tackle the problem.

The consequences of sticking rigidly to the same old solutions
will not bring about the change we badly need. It would mean more
young addicts carted off to jail. More people in need of help
unable to free themselves from the grip of drug abuse. And those
emerging from jail even more vulnerable to the pushers.

Perhaps most encouraging of all was Clegg’s claim that the
debate in the U.K. had reached a tipping point:

Westminster has finally reached a tipping point in the drug
debate and change is in sight.

As my colleague [the now-departed Home Office
minister] Norman Baker said, “the genie is finally out of the
bottle” and people have realised if you are anti-drug you must be
pro-reform.

Despite the findings of the Home Office report, Cameron is
refusing to re-evaluate existing policy.
His response to the report was characteristic of a politician
with his head in the sand:

“The evidence is, what we are doing is working. I don’t believe
in decriminalising drugs that are illegal today,” he said. “I’m a
parent with three children­—I don’t want to send out a message that
somehow taking these drugs is OK and safe because, frankly, it
isn’t.”

Such a stock-standard response is unlikely to surprise anyone
familiar with the anti-drug rhetoric of political leaders. However,
this represents a complete backflip for Cameron. As The
Independent reports,
Cameron was once a prominent advocate for drug reform:

As a new MP in 2002, he said there was a “powerful argument” for
legalising heroin and said it was “baffling” the Labour government
was not considering the case for decriminalisation…

This statement in favor of reform was not a one-off:

During the 2005 leadership campaign – in which he refused to be
drawn on his personal drug experience – Mr Cameron said:
“Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by
posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after
crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades.”

The reason for this dramatic reversal is unclear. It’s possible
that Cameron honestly re-evaluated his beliefs and came to a
different conclusion, but he would also hardly be the first
politician to change a position for electoral reasons. However, if
Baker is right and the genie really is out of the bottle, there
will soon be far less reason for M.P.s to conceal their support for
drug reform. That can only be a good thing.

As a victim of Yale University’s rush to abandon
any pretense of fairness in sexual harassment cases, Patrick Witt
has quite a sad tale to tell. The college football player, NBA
hopeful, and Rhodes Scholarship candidate lost everything after
Yale mishandled an informal sexual harassment accusation against
him. Now Witt is a law student at Harvard University and he is
worried his new college is equally committed to trampling accused
students’ due process rights.

Witt recently penned a column for
The Boston Globe detailing the travesty of justice that
ruined all his plans and put his life on hold. Relevant
excerpts:

Harvard’s new policies are substantially similar to those
already in effect at Yale, my alma mater. While an undergraduate
there, my ex-girlfriend filed an informal complaint against me with
the then-newly-created University-Wide Committee on Sexual
Misconduct. The committee summoned me to appear and styled the
meeting as a form of mediation. Its chairman, a professor with no
prior experience handling dispute resolution, told me that I could
have a faculty adviser present but no lawyer, and instructed me to
avoid my accuser, who, by that point, I had neither seen nor spoken
to in weeks. The committee imposed an “expectation of
confidentiality” on me so as to prevent any form of “retaliation”
against my accuser.

I would say more about what the accusation itself entailed if
indeed I had such information. Under the informal complaint
process, specific accusations are not disclosed to the accused, no
fact-finding takes place, and no record is taken of the alleged
misconduct. For the committee to issue an informal complaint, an
accuser need only bring an accusation that, if substantiated, would
constitute a violation of university policy concerning sexual
misconduct. The informal “process” begins and ends at the point of
accusation; the truth of the claim is immaterial.

When I demanded that fact-finding be done so that I could clear
my name, I was told, “There’s nothing to clear your name of.” When
I then requested that a formal complaint be lodged against me — a
process that does involve investigation into the facts — I was told
that such a course of action was impossible for me to initiate. At
any time, however, my accuser retained the right to raise the
complaint to a formal level. No matter, the Committee reassured me,
the informal complaint did not constitute a disciplinary proceeding
and nothing would be attached to my official record at Yale.

Nevertheless, Witt’s employer, the Rhodes Trust, The New
York Times, and the public at large eventually found out about
the accusation. He was disgraced but unable to rectify the matter,
since the claim was never investigated or adjudicated in any
logical way. Witt’s dream of playing in the NFL was crushed, he was
forced to withdraw his Rhodes Scholarship candidacy, and his
employment ended.

Witt warns that “the destructive power that Yale’s and now
Harvard’s new sexual misconduct policies wield is immense and
grossly underestimated.” For what it’s worth, 28 members of
Harvard’s law faculty
agree—and signed a letter saying so. Sexual harassment and rape
are serious issues that demand serious responses. They should not
be dealt with by kangaroo courts or extra-legal inquisitions.

Read Witt’s full story
here.

Well there’s
already good news on today’s Election Day. The 2012 Libertarian
Party candidate for president, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson,
has announced that he’s running for the 2016 LP nomination.

He directly addressed how his views differ from Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Ky.), the most libertarian likely candidate from a major
party:

“On half the issues he’s right, but on the whole social issue
thing…. Look, libertarians are flaming liberals when it comes to
social issues, when it comes to civil liberties. A woman’s right to
choose, drug reform, immigration, marriage equality. He’s not
there.”

Johnson, who ran with Judge Jim Gray, pulled about 1.3
million votes and 1 percent of the overall total. That was the best
showing for the LP since 1980.

In an interview with Newsmax, Johnson laid out his reasons to
campaign again. Here’s a snippet of the interview (which includes
video and a transcript):

“The whole election is a big yawn. Who cares who wins,
because nothing’s really going to change? It’s like a debate
between Coke and Pepsi. They’re debating over which one tastes
better,” he said.

“They start talking about tax policy, Coke wants to reduce the
corporate tax rate to 30 percent, and Pepsi wants to drop it to 28
percent. 

“Where’s the libertarian viewpoint, which says do away with it
completely? Do away with income tax, corporate tax? Abolish the
IRS. If you’re going to replace it with anything, replace it with a
national consumption tax. That’s real meat on the bones. I just
don’t see any meat anywhere.”…

“People are clamoring to hear good ideas as opposed to the
lesser of two evils . . . Either the Democrats are going to win or
the Republicans are going to win, but the losers are all of us out
here as citizens that really do want meaningful change, and none of
it’s happening. There’s no dialogue regarding meaningful
change.”

More here.

Back in 2012, Reason ran a series of articles, each making “the
libertarian case” for the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian
presidential contender. I authored the one arguing in favor of
Johnson.
Read that (and the others) here.

Back in 2011, Reason TV followed Johnson as he talked with
Occupy Wall Street protesters in NYC. Take a look:

Today is the official release
date for my book Overruled: The Long War for Control of the
U.S. Supreme Court. It’s available at
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, and everywhere else books are sold
online.

Here’s what the early reviewers are saying:

“A riveting account of the raging debate over the future of our
Constitution between those who contend that judges must ‘defer’ to
legislatures and those who view the judiciary as an equal branch of
government whose mandate is to secure the rights and liberties of
the people by holding government to its just powers. Root reveals
the inside story behind the surging movement to restore
constitutionally-limited government. I loved this book.” —Randy E.
Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown
University Law Center, and Director, Georgetown Center for the
Constitution

“An intriguing account of judicial and economic policy
reflecting controversies within conservatism over civil rights and
other issues.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In Overruled, Damon Root explains a divide in judicial
theory about which I was not only ignorant but mistaken. ‘Judicial
activism’ is wrong. Right? It gives unelected authorities
minority power to impose rules and regulations that violate
individual rights without a democratic process. Wrong. It’s
‘judicial deference’ that gives elected authorities majority power
to impose rules and regulations that violate individual rights
within a democratic process. And to further confuse the issue
judicial activism and judicial deference have, by turns, been the
darlings of both Liberals and Conservatives. Fortunately, Damon
Root explains it all.”—P. J. O’Rourke, journalist and H. L. Mencken
Research Fellow at the Cato Institute

“The conflict between judicial activism and judicial restraint
has been part of the Supreme Court since its inception. In this
book, Root, senior editor at Reason magazine, takes a
fresh look at activism vs. restraint by placing judicial
interpretation at the center of the ideological disagreements
between libertarians and conservatives that have taken place
throughout U.S. history…. The segments about gun control and the
Affordable Care Act are especially compelling.”—Library
Journal

“Damon Root, whom I have had the pleasure of interrogating on
television, understands the concept of personal liberty in a free
society better than many members of the legal profession; and he
knows, too, that the Constitution was written by men who properly
feared the numerous insidious ways that government assaults our
natural rights. In Overruled, he shares his knowledge and
uncanny ability to explain liberty lost with his readers. This book
is nothing short of a lucid and brilliantly crafted history of the
Framers’ fears coming to pass at the hands of a judiciary faithless
to first principles. Read it today so you can anticipate and
understand the judicial contortions coming tomorrow.”—Hon. Andrew
P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News Channel,
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Constitutional Jurisprudence,
Brooklyn Law School

Perhaps you’d like to peek inside the book and read an excerpt?
Amazon
will let you do it.