Tag: hit&run

Bernie Sanders Is Right: We Should Let the Boston Marathon Bomber Vote

One of the more noteworthy points of discussion from Monday night’s series of town halls with 2020 Democratic presidential candidates focused on whether or not convicted felons should be allowed to vote while incarcerated.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) certainly seems to think so. “This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” he said. Sanders was specifically asked if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing which killed three people, or other felons, like those convicted of sexual assault, should be able to vote.

“Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope,” Sanders explained. “So I believe people commit crimes and they paid the price and they have the right to vote. I believe even if they’re in jail they’re paying their price to society but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”

Sanders admitted his views on this issue were controversial, acknowledging that his opponents would likely use his remarks to attack him. Conservative activists did indeed slam his comments, with Donald Trump Jr., Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and others criticizing him on Twitter.

What about the other Democratic candidates? Well, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg said felons should not be able to vote until they’re released from prison. “Part of the punishment when you are convicted of a crime and you’re incarcerated is you lose certain rights. You lose your freedom,” he said. “And I think during that period, it does not make sense to have an exception the right to vote.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) had a less committal response to the question, saying: “I think we should have that conversation.”

So what can libertarians take away from all this? The way I see it, Sanders is spot-on. Let’s assume that every person who’s been convicted of a felony and locked up in prison deserves to be there. (It’s a bold assumption, but humor me.) There are about 2.3 million people incarcerated nationwide, though when you only count the people who’ve actually been convicted of crimes, that number is probably closer to 1.7 million, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. The disparity exists in part because many people accused of crimes don’t have the money to afford bail, and are just locked up until they’re either convicted or found not guilty.

Again, imagine each of those convicts, like the Boston bomber, is in prison for a good reason. If that’s true, then they’re already paying their debt to society by being incarcerated. What good does it do the rest of the population to take away their right to have a say? Are incarcerated individuals going to plan a mass conspiracy in order to get a rapist elected president? Or a pro-crime candidate? Probably not, and they wouldn’t have a large enough voting bloc to elect such a politician even if they wanted to.

“Even if there were this sort of mythical pro-crime candidate running for office, or even someone whose positions on crime are totally different than your own, you can’t not allow people to vote based on your fear that they’re going to vote for someone,” notes Scott Novakowski, a legal fellow with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “That’s not democracy. That’s not what we do.”

And it’s far more likely that incarcerated individuals will vote for politicians with good stances on policies that actually affect them, rather than for so-called “pro-crime” candidates.

Consider the example of Patrick Murphy, who was convicted of murder for his role in the 2000 killing of a Texas police officer and sentenced to death. By all accounts, Murphy has led a bad life. He’d previously been convicted of sexual assault, and he admits to being involved in a prison escape and botched robbery that led to Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins’ death. But while he did not pull the trigger or have direct involvement in Hawkins’ murder, Murphy was eligible for the death penalty due to Texas’ law of parties. It’s an unfair punishment, as I’ve previously argued. So shouldn’t he be able to vote for a politician who might change the law, thus saving his life?

There are plenty of candidates who support criminal justice reform measures like reducing drug sentences or banning solitary confinement. Shouldn’t the people who will be affected by those measures the most be allowed to cast their ballot for those candidates, if they so choose?

The point is, there are a host of issues that affect prisoners. Not giving them any sort of say undermines our democracy, and it means that prison abuse may just continue. Pregnant women will continue to be shackled during labor, male and female inmates will continue to be thrown into solitary confinement, and prisoners will continue to be sexually assaulted, often with no accountability for their assailants. (Many law-abiding citizens, after all, won’t be motivated to change the system in the same way that people directly affected by the system are, and might not even be aware of prison abuse problems in the first place.) And while the Boston bomber and those convicted of murder and sexual assault are bad people, to be sure, they still shouldn’t be terribly mistreated while incarcerated.

Now, remember how I said before that we were going to assume each incarcerated individual is in prison for a good reason? Well, that’s not exactly true. Aside from wrongfully convicted individuals, there are hundreds of thousands of people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses. Simply said, plenty of people who are in prison deserve to be free. Don’t they deserve to have a voice in American democracy as well?

Sanders’ remarks highlight how far we’ve come in addressing disenfranchisement among those convicted of crimes. As seen by the response to his comments, we’re still a long way from letting felons vote while they’re in prison (Restrictions on felons’ voting rights are technically constitutional, per the 14th Amendment).

But there has been considerable progress toward allowing ex-felons who’ve served their time to vote. On the federal level, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has been pushing to restore ex-felon’s voting rights since at least 2014. While he’s had mixed success, similar state efforts have succeeded.

In November, for instance, Floridians overwhelmingly approved a measure restoring voting rights for 1.4 million people with felony records. As Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella wrote at the time, more than 30 states still have laws on the books that restrict ex-felons’ voting rights.

We’ve clearly seen progress on this issue, and the fact that presidential candidates are even debating whether incarcerated individuals should be allowed to vote is itself a positive development.

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We Won’t Make America Great Again by Scaring Off Foreign College Students

American colleges and universities have long been the most sought-after in the world, as judged by the number of foreign students who come to study here. About 20 percent of college students who study abroad choose a school in the United States. That’s almost twice the percentage that choose somewhere in the United Kingdom, the second-most popular location.

But that corner of American greatness might be getting shut down. According to the Institute of International Education (IIE), between the academic years of 2016/17 and 2017/18, the number of new international students enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities dropped 6.3 percent for undergrads, 5.5 percent for grad students, and 9.7 percent for non-degree students. Overall, the drop was 6.6 percent and the total number of new international students (about 272,000) is down to levels last seen in 2013/14. The number of new enrollments peaked at 301,000 in 2015/16.

As the IIE notes, the decline in new students is offset a bit by the number of foreign students who participate in the “Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows international students to practice their skills in the United States for up to 12 months during or after they complete their academic programs, or up to 36 months for students who have earned a degree in STEM fields.” If you factor in OPT folks, the number of international students increased overall by 1.5 percent between 2016/17 and 2017/18 (the last year for which there is data). But with fewer new students enrolling, there will be fewer graduates eligible for OPT down the road.

Why are foreign students, who mostly come from China (33 percent), India (18 percent), and South Korea (5 percent), bypassing the United States? Writing at Forbes, Stuart Anderson, the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, states that “the Trump administration has made it more difficult for international students to stay or work in America.” Among other things, the White House is working to reduce or eliminate the OPT program, has made it easier for international students to get deported due to clerical errors, and made it harder and more expensive to get an H-1B visa, which is the sort of work permit most international college grads need to stay in the country. And both President Trump and many in the Republican Party are pushing legislation that would reduce legal immigration by 50 percent.

It’s not just students who are thinking twice about coming to America. As a friend of mine who runs a math department at a top-tier public university has told me, foreign-born faculty are also thinking twice about coming to a country in which immigration policy is becoming more restrictionist. So we’re not just losing students who want to come here, but also faculty, researchers, and scholars.

In trying to “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump and his allies are trying to reduce the number of foreign-born people living here. To the extent that they succeed, they will be making U.S. colleges and universities less desirable than they once were. Given declining birthrates and the outsized role immigrants play in starting new companies—foreign-born individuals comprise 15 percent of the labor force but are 25 percent of entrepreneurs who start new businesses—scaring off newcomers is a recipe for decline, not greatness.

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Activists Launch Fresh Effort To Get Rent Control on California’s State Ballot

Undeterred by the drubbing their last measure received on election day 2018, California’s rent control advocates are back with another ballot initiative that would pave the way for price regulation of rental housing across the state.

On Monday, members of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and their affiliated PAC, Housing is a Human Right, announced that they had filed to place a new rent control measure the 2020 November state ballot.

The AHF, and its controversial CEO Michael Weinstein, had been the main drivers behind 2018’s Prop 10, a ballot measure that would have repealed California’s existing state law limiting local governments’ ability to impose rent control—known as the Costa-Hawkins Act.

Despite the $25 million spent by the Yes on Prop 10 campaign—$21 million of which came from AHF alone—the initiative was thrashed, getting only 40.5 percent of the vote and managing to lose in liberal strongholds like Los Angeles County.

Why try again so soon after such a crushing defeat?  According to Weinstein, because the problem Prop 10 was meant to address, escalating housing costs, hasn’t gone away.

“Among the 17 million renters in California, the suffering is unabated,” said Weinstein in a press call yesterday. He also expressed concern that state legislators are not doing enough to advance rent control bills, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.

Currently working its way through the California Assembly is AB 1482, which would cap annual rental increases at 5 percent plus inflation. The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman David Chiu (D–San Francisco) and introduced as part of a larger package of rental regulations, is scheduled for a committee hearing later this week.

The AHF’s new ballot measure is less ambitious.

Instead it would repeal Costa-Hawkins—which bans the imposition of rent control on buildings built after 1994—and allow local governments to regulate rental prices on buildings more than 15 years old. It would also cap the amount landlords could raise rents statewide at 15 percent after a tenant moves out.

This measure—known as the Rental Affordability Act—is more specific than AHF’s failed Prop 10 initiative, which would have merely repealed Costa-Hawkins.

This is likely done to address what many saw as Prop 10’s primary defect: it didn’t actually impose rent controls, it just removed barriers to local governments imposing them.

This allowed opponents to paint Prop 10 as something radical and dangerous, while denying supporters the ability to point to anything concrete the measure would actually do.

Whether the AHF’s new initiative will succeed where the last one failed remains to be seen. The measure still has to go through the long and expensive signature-gathering process before it can qualify for the 2020 ballot.

Even if it does make it on the ballot, landlords and developers are sure to fight it tooth and nail, arguing that rent control will only make California’s housing problems worse by deterring new housing construction.

“This past November, California voters of all political stripes rejected Proposition 10 by an overwhelming margin,” said Tom Bannon, CEO of the California Apartment Association, which represents landlords. “Voters recognized that Weinstein’s proposition would have brought construction of affordable- and middle-class housing to a halt, worsening California’s housing shortage.”

Weinstein is also a highly controversial and polarizing figure within the already-contentious world of California housing politics.

Just last week, the AHF ran an ad campaign lambasting another major housing reform in the state legislature, SB 50, which would upzone land near transit stops and job centers, as a handout to developers looking to bulldoze minority neighborhoods.

In addition to spreading falsehoods about the bill, AHF’s ad campaign did little to ingratiate itself to housing advocates and voters who are amenable to both upzoning and rent control.

The AHF’s inept politicking is not something free marketers should necessarily bemoan. Rent control has long been criticized by economists as a great way to reduce the construction of new housing. Capping the returns developers can make on new apartments will encourage them to build fewer of them, the thinking goes.

A 2018 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on rent control expansion in San Francisco found that the policy, while helping some tenants stay in their home, led to citywide rent increases and more rapid gentrification.

Folks who really want to see housing become more affordable should focus less on imposing restrictions on prices, and instead on lifting restrictions on new development.

Recent examples of supply-side housing reform include examples like Seattle and Portland, where a boom in apartment construction is starting to push rents down after years of steep increases, or Houston, where the ease of creating new suburban housing has kept prices in check.

Public comment on the AHF’s ballot initiative is open until May 20, after which the state attorney general will issue an official ballot title and summary.

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Terminal Patients Got Drugs Without FDA Approval. It Added Years to Their Lives.

When Marc Hayutin was 69, he was diagnosed with squamous cell thymic carcinoma, a deadly cancer that affects the lymphatic and endocrine systems. His doctor told him he likely had months to live.

That was six years ago.

He survived thanks to an experimental drug that rapidly shrank his tumors and eased his pain. What’s particularly noteworthy about Hayutin’s recovery was that the drug that saved his life hadn’t been approved for commercial use by the FDA. That would come six years later, at which point Hayutin probably would have been long dead.

He was able to take the medicine anyway thanks to Right to Try—a legal movement that has led to the passage of laws in 41 states allowing doctors to prescribe experimental drugs (ones that haven’t been approved by regulators yet) to patients suffering from life-threatening illnesses. Right to Try was engineered by the Goldwater Institute, a free-market research and litigation organization in Arizona.

In May of 2019, President Trump signed a Right to Try bill into federal law. It was championed by Vice President Mike Pence, who had signed a version of the legislation as governor of Indiana in 2015.

Right to Try is a shot across the bow at the FDA’s core mission. But what does it mean for the future of medicine?

Produced and shot by Zach Weissmueller. Additional interview by Alex Manning. Additional camera by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, Lexy Garcia, Alex Manning, and Mark McDaniel.

“Smoldering,” by Kai Engel, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NC 3.0 license. Engel’s music is available for purchase and download at his Bandcamp page.

“November,” by Kai Engel, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NC 3.0 license. Engel’s music is available for purchase and download at his Bandcamp page.

“Cobweb Morning,” by Kai Engel, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NC 3.0 license. Engel’s music is available for purchase and download at his Bandcamp page.

“After Midnight,” by Kai Engel, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NC 3.0 license. Engel’s music is available for purchase and download at his Bandcamp page.

“November,” by Kai Engel, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NC 3.0 license. Engel’s music is available for purchase and download at his Bandcamp page.

“Drop D for Sirish,” was produced and recorded by Case Newsom.

“Bosphorous,” by Aris Spyropoulos, was licensed under a standard license through Artisound.io.

“Hang Drum Campfire,” by Aris Spyropoulos, was licensed under a standard license through Artisound.io.

Photo credits: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom

Additional stock footage provided by Pond5.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Plan To Cancel College Debt Is a Giveaway to the Well-Off and Well-Connected

Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic primary’s foremost Game of Thrones recapper, styles herself a staunch defender of the little guy. In her campaign announcement, for example, the Massachusetts senator declared that millions of American families are currently “struggling to survive in a system that’s been rigged, rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected.” She’s a true champion of the struggling middle class, the sort of grounded and relatable politician who knows what it’s like to be 29 years old and still sharing your parents’ HBO GO password.

To prove her commitment to fighting a system that is rigged by and for the wealthy and well-connected, Warren yesterday announced a new plan (with Warren, there’s always a plan) that would … provide more than a trillion dollars in aid to the wealthy and well-connected.

In addition to ending tuition at public colleges, Warren wants to cancel the vast majority of outstanding student loan debt. The idea is to eliminate debt up to $50,000 for people with household incomes under $100,000, and offer more limited debt cancellation for households making between $100,000 and $250,000. By her own estimates, the full plan, which also includes funds for Pell Grants and historically black colleges, would cost about $1.25 trillion, which she says she would pay for with a tax on wealth that she announced earlier this year.

On the surface, Warren’s idea might sound like another expensive federal benefit for struggling families. But the nature of college attendance and student loans means that Waren’s loan forgiveness plan is a massive giveaway to relatively well-off people.

In the U.S., only about a third of people over 25 have a college degree, making them a comparatively elite group whose elite status is reinforced by, among other things, the connections they make while at college.

On average, college graduates earn about $1 million more during their lifetimes than non-college graduates, according to a Georgetown University study. A separate study from Pew found that college graduates typically earn about $17,500 more annually than people who only had high school degrees.

College graduates aren’t, for the most part, super rich. But generally speaking, they are far more comfortable than the majority who lack such degrees. And the rich, however you define that word, are a class comprised almost entirely of people who graduated from college (with, yes, a handful of notable exceptions). This is a plan that provides a rather large benefit for them.  

Warren’s defenders might respond that it’s still a downward transfer, since the whole thing will be paid for by a new tax on the super wealthy. There are, however, a few problems with this as a financing mechanism.

The first is that the tax might not be constitutional. Even if it is, the second problem is that it’s likely to raise far less money than projected, which is one of the reasons that most countries that have tried similar sorts of taxes over the last two decades have abandoned them.

The third, as the Washington Examiner‘s Philip Klein points out, is that Warren has suggested that this same tax could be used to help pay for a whole slew of other progressive policy ideas, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and subsidized child care, which, all together, would cost so much it’s barely even worth estimating. (Okay, fine: about $42 trillion, give or take the GDPs of a few mid-sized nations.)

This is a little like finding a $20 bill on the street and using it to run up five $20 bar tabs. On the campaign trail, where inspirational speeches are more important than math, you can spend your imaginary wealth tax revenue however many times you’d like. In reality, you can only spend the money once.

I am always hesitant to label policies as class warfare, but here, it’s hard to avoid the description. Warren wants to impose an essentially punitive tax on the rich to fund a program for the merely well-off. And she wants to use the revenue it hypothetically generates not to pay for social programs targeting the poorest and neediest, but to fund debt forgiveness for the comfortable, college-educated upper middle class—which is to say, the sort of people who spend a lot of time reading New York magazine essays about Game of Thrones. This is a different, and more expensive, sort of pandering than an essay about why Warren loves Daenerys Targaryen, but it’s pandering all the same.

I am not without sympathy for those who have racked up tens of thousands in burdensome college debt, and, in the process, helped fund the installation of those august tools of higher learning, campus water parks. The higher education system has become far too dependent on federally-backed loans that encourage colleges to raise tuition, while also encouraging prospective students to borrow ever larger amounts, often to their own long-term detriment. That system should be dismantled. National Review‘s Kevin Williamson has some ideas as to how, which may include modest amounts of debt forgiveness.

But Warren is not looking to attack the systemic faults of higher education so much as to replace and expand them with an even more sweeping system of federal intrusion.

As a policy proposal, her plan will no doubt find supporters. But as a campaign gambit, I suspect it won’t be enough. Despite her pedigree and preparedness, Warren is underperforming in this race. Once recent poll found her trailing behind Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden—who hasn’t even officially announced yet—in the state of Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren, you may recall, is a senator from Massachusetts.

Yes, the race is still early, and she still has time to release another $42 trillion or so worth of policy proposals. But somehow I doubt that her student loan plan will be the one that moves her to the front of the pack. Warren has a plan for everything, except how to turn around her campaign.

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Harris Clarifies That She Does Not Support Prostitution Decriminalization, Would Use Executive Power To Toughen Gun Laws: Reason Roundup

Kamala Harris answered questions on CNN last night. One important thing the senator and 2020 presidential candidate cleared up is any notion that she actually supports decriminalization of prostitution. Harris still thinks paying for sex should be a crime, she just wants to classify all female sex workers as victims so as to avoid arresting them.

In response to a question about decriminalization, Harris said “what I don’t support is criminalizing these women.” (Are there no male or non-binary sex workers in Harris’ world? Or is it just that only women get to exchange their agency for their freedom?) Harris said she would, however, still target the “johns”—an old-timey word for anyone who pays for sex.

This method of sex policing is called the “End Demand” or Nordic/Swedish model. It’s roundly panned by human rights agencies (Amnesty International and the World Health Organization, for example), migrant groups, doctors, criminal justice researchers, and sex workers themselves worldwide, for creating the same harms of full criminalization while letting police and politicians pretend to be taking a liberal and feminist tack.

“The Nordic Model is a legislative wolf in sheep’s clothing,” as Zoë Bulls and Victoria Watson of the Center for Health and Gender Equity put it. “Instead of protecting the health and rights of sex workers, it embodies an elementary, paternalistic understanding” and undermines “the agency and bodily autonomy of sex workers with a victimization framework.”

It’s also not working out so well in countries that have adopted it.

But this sort of progressive authoritarianism seems to be in keeping with the overall Harris 2020 agenda. She also told the CNN Town Hall last night that she would give Congress 100 days to pass “reasonable gun safety laws” and “if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action.”

Harris said her executive order would expand the list of people not allowed to legally purchase guns, require anyone who sells more than five guns a year to conduct background checks on customers, and that any gun seller who violates any gun regulation would automatically have their license pulled by the feds.

In keeping with her all-things-to-all-people strategy, Harris also remained vague about some issues (including impeaching Trump and voting rights for the incarcerated), suggesting that we really need to “look into” or “have a conversation” about them.

FREE MINDS

Child in drag prompts legislative overkill in Ohio. In response to one example of parents letting their child perform in a charity drag show, Ohio is seeking to create a new law criminalizing the appearance of children in any show that “appeals to prurient interest,” an incredibly vague category. There are already laws criminalizing actual abuse and (sexual and labor) exploitation of children, this new rule would simply invite threats against and prosecutions of parents for anything folks found distasteful or didn’t understand.

In the case of the drag show, the child’s parents say there was nothing sexual about the performance and that it’s actually outraged conservatives who are sexualizing children here. But the bill’s sponsor is invoking everyone’s favorite new bogeyman—human traffickers—to back up his legislation. “Given our heightened focus on human trafficking and the role money plays in trafficking children, I knew I had to take action to make sure this activity does not occur again,” he said.

FREE MARKETS

Washington law could keep kids in car seats through middle school. A new measure signed into law by the state’s governor says kids must use booster seats until they reach a height of 4 feet and 9 inches tall.

“In some cases, that means some kids could still be in a booster at the age of 12,” points out ABC7 News. “The new guidelines will go into effect in January.”

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The Government Is Treating Assange Like a Hacker to Punish His Journalism

Much of the discussion over the recent arrest and indictment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has revolved around whether or not his activities qualified as journalism. This is a key element in the government’s vendetta against the transparency activist.

However, the indictment justifying Assange’s extradition to the United States is based on alleging hacking. But Assange didn’t do much in the way of “hacking” at all. In truth, much of the government’s affidavit against Assange describes perfectly legal and legitimate technology-assisted journalism.

By conflating hacking and journalism, prosecutors kill two birds with one stone. They can take down their public enemy number one while setting a precedent that could harm future would-be muckrakers.

In December of 2017, the FBI filed an affidavit to support a criminal complaint against Assange based on an alleged conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). This law, which got kicked into gear after President Reagan was spooked by the hacking movie WarGames, makes it a crime to “knowingly access a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access” to obtain information.

As you might expect from a movie-hacker-inspired ’80s-era computer law, the CFAA is muddled and vague. What exactly does “without authorization” mean? If a company like AT&T accidentally leaves customer information publicly accessible, and someone stumbles upon that data, does that qualify? Big companies caught with their pants down obviously think so, as do others who ideologically oppose the outcomes of such “hacks.”

Prosecutors have taken advantage of this unclear language to throw the book at a wide range of activities that aren’t obviously “hacking” or even in violation of the spirit of the law.

A famous and tragic victim of CFAA prosecutorial excess is Aaron Swartz, Reddit co-founder and internet activist, who committed suicide in the face of a possible $1 million fine and lengthy prison sentence. His crime? Violating academic journal terms of service to publish open access scholarly publications.

Assange will now get the Swartz treatment. His enemies are legion; Wikileaks’ activities have exposed powerful groups across the world.

You would think the FBI has had enough time to put together an ironclad legal assault. But when you look at the affidavit, the charges the government has whipped up to take down its enfant terrible are actually pretty weak tea.

Here is the sole charge: that in 2010, Julian Assange gave Chelsea Manning (known then as Bradley) suggestions on how to crack a password. That’s it. We don’t know if they were successful, by the way—not that it matters in the eyes of the CFAA. But it’s pretty incredible that for all of Assange’s supposed black hattery, the only thing the government could nab him on is a passing conversation on rainbow tables.

It’s ridiculous, but the 29 words of Assange’s chat to Manning could cost him five years in the slammer. (It’s quite possible that the feds will add other charges as well.)

This is crazy world of the CFAA. The affidavit admits that “there is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password.” The New Yorker‘s Raffi Khatchadourian suggested that Assange’s offer was merely bluster to make Wikileaks’s shoestring five-person operation appear more sophisticated to a nervous source.

No matter. The very fact that password guessing was brought up in the course of hundreds of chats discussing the publication of newsworthy documents is enough under the CFAA. As the affidavit crows, “the recovered chats described above reflect an agreement between Manning and Assange to crack the hash.” Gotcha.

It’s worth pointing out that none of this is news—these chat logs surfaced back in 2013, and WIRED discussed the allegations in 2011. Nor was this relatively minor infraction worth including in the government’s separate case against Manning. This may just be all that the feds could pin on Assange, at least for now.

If that’s all that Assange is accused of, why the 40 pages of exhaustive detail in the affidavit? This brings us to one of the more troubling and less discussed elements of the Assange indictment: It demonizes standard journalistic tools like encryption technologies by association.

An analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization spearheading the effort for CFAA reform, provides context. The FBI affidavit darkly describes things like Manning’s use of the open source OS Linux. Another report from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press echoes EFF: The chat platform Jabber, identity-concealing encryption, and cloud drop boxes are all lumped into the “manner and means” of the alleged conspiracy. This makes these innocuous and useful technologies appear sinister.

The FBI does not shy away from directly impugning Assange’s journalistic interest. For example, the Bureau’s press release condemns Assange for “actively encouraging Manning to provide more information.” Well, what investigative journalist hasn’t? You want to get the full story right.

Some have argued that this is an appropriate use of the CFAA. It’s not journalism, it’s like helping your source to pick a lock. Well, I would say it’s actually more akin to discussing whether and how to access information with an essential source who has provided solid leaks over several months. Anyway, Assange isn’t charged with “helping to pick a lock” but rather the more nebulous “agreeing to conspire to maybe help to pick a lock that wasn’t actually picked.”

But all of that largely misses the point.

As The Intercept‘s Micah Lee points out, considering “measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to Wikileaks” as part of a criminal conspiracy sets a dangerous precedent for all investigative journalists.

A lot of people don’t like what Assange did. (It’s kind of funny to compare people’s opinions on Wikileaks over time.) Or maybe they just don’t like the guy himself. Fine.

But it’s hard to deny that the federal government is wielding the CFAA as it often does: a catch-all pretext to crack down on troublemakers.

The Reporters Committee notes that this CFAA pseudo-technicality gives the government a way out of potential First Amendment problems involved with prosecuting the actual publication of the leaks.  (This is the justification the Obama Administration gave for failing to prosecute.) They nab their guy without the constitutional fuss. Is such prosecutorial opportunism really something that Assange critics in the media wish to defend? Would their tune change if it was directed at one on their own team?

No one honestly believes that the FBI is going after Assange on a good faith mission to uphold the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. We know it’s because Wikileaks exposed government operatives. You may think he’s a hero. You may think he’s a scoundrel. Either way, we should all be worried about such abuses of “hacking” laws to crush ideological enemies.

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The Ukrainian President’s Theme Song?

The new President of the Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky, is (as I noted in an earlier post) not a career politician, but a prominent actor and comedian. How did he become famous? By playing a non-career-politician who is unexpectedly elected the President of the Ukraine. Anything we can do, he can do meta. The only thing better would have been if his character in the show had been an actor and comedian. (The character was actually a history teacher who first studied law before switching to history; Zelensky is trained as a lawyer.)

For whatever it’s worth, here’s the theme song (which, I’ve just learned, is called “саундтрек” in Russian) to the show, which is called “Servant of the People,” and which Zelensky apparently helped create. I think the song captures well the humor of the show; time will tell what it tells us about Zelensky the President rather than Zelensky the character and producer. Imagine it sung in a jaunty, carefree tone; also imagine it rhyming, which of course it does in Russian:

I love my country
Love my wife
Love my dog
I am a member of everything
Almost Superman
But rarely spoil for a fight.
Everyone knows
What I’m sentenced to—
“Servant of the people.”

I have almost everything
Dignity and honor
And even shouts of “Bravo.”
The people issued me
My personal airplane
And why not? I have the right.
On my belly—right here—
I’ll get a tattoo
“Servant of the people.”

The author is Dmytro Shurov (or Dmitriy Shurov in Russian) of the band Pianoбой.

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Sanctuary Cities Should Hope That Stephen Miller Makes Good on His Threats

Attorney General William Barr and White House aide Stephen Miller have come up with conflicting plans to deal with the rush of fleeing Central American migrants flocking the southern border. Barr wants to deny them bail and hold them in pens on taxpayer dime. Meanwhile, Miller wants to release them to sanctuary cities that are defying Trump’s draconian interior enforcement designs to teach these cities a lesson.

Barr’s plan is idiocy that is unlikely to accomplish anything. But if sanctuary cities play their cards right, Miller’s plan could work out well for everyone and be instructive in ways that he doesn’t even realize.

President Trump had campaigned on controlling the border but, embarrassingly, it’s become an even bigger mess on his watch. Border apprehensions, although nowhere close to the 1.6 million high in 2000, are significantly up. In the last two months alone, about 190,000 asylum seekers have been apprehended compared to 310,000 in all of 2017, the year Trump assumed office.

Barr’s bright idea to deal with the situation is to end the long-standing practice of releasing some asylum seekers who pass the initial “credible fear” screening if they are able to post a bond. The alternative is to hold them for years and years as their case wends its way through hopelessly backlogged asylum courts. The statutory minimum bond amount, which asylum seekers lose if they fail to show up for their hearings, is $1,500. However, last year the Trump administration set the rate at $7,500, an increase of 50 percent from the median bond rate over the last five years, and even $10,000.

He’s giving border agencies 90 days to ramp up their processing and detention capacity. After that, he says that any asylum seeker caught outside of an official port of entry will no longer be eligible for bond. He’ll exempt unaccompanied minors and families with children because they can’t be detained for more than 20 days as per law (although an advisory plan that Trump had convened this week recommended that he pass an emergency regulation to overrule that law). But all singles and childless families will be denied bond.

Barr thinks this will end the so-called practice of catch-and-release and deter asylum seekers from making the schlep to the border. The more likely outcome is that he’ll incentivize even more families to bring kids with them. Either way, it is highly unlikely that his proposal will pass legal muster given that Barr is essentially proposing to give people who’ve merely exercised their legal right to request asylum no option but to remain in indefinite detentions. That should be a relief to taxpayers given that otherwise, instead of gaining millions in bond revenues, they’ll be spending tens of millions for detention since it costs $320 per day to detain just each migrant.

Miller’s plan, on the other hand, which Trump gleefully endorses on a nearly daily basis for all the wrong reasons, is a great idea.

“Democrats must change the Immigration Laws FAST,” Trump tweeted earlier this week. “If not, Sanctuary Cities must immediately ACT to take care of the Illegal Immigrants.”

Asylum seekers are of course not illegal immigrants. But even if they were it would be no catastrophe given that contrary to Trump’s assertions, undocumented migrants aren’t gangbangers and criminals. The best evidence suggests that they commit fewer crimes than natives.

Asylum seekers, who are fleeing violence, are even more law abiding. Indeed, all they are looking for is a safe place where they can work hard and build a life for themselves and their families. That also makes them a major economic boon.

Therefore sanctuary cities should not just roll out the welcome mat, as many of them are pledging to do if Trump makes good on his threat. They should go a step further and offer to pick up the tab for transporting these migrants so long as the administration gives them work permits right off the bat, as I recently suggested, not after six months as is currently the case. The permits could confine the asylum seekers to working in the sponsoring city for a while, but that would be a whole lot better than being in a detention camp. They could, however, petition other participating jurisdictions for sponsorship if they wanted to move. If they skipped town, that could count against their asylum petition. But to minimize that eventuality, sanctuary cities can send emissaries to the border to inform asylum seekers of the kind of local work that is available and let them choose the place that best suits their skills and experience.

There are about 300 state and local governments that are considered sanctuary jurisdictions. Even if they had to absorb a million asylum seekers this year, that would work out to an average of 3,333 per jurisdiction. That should be manageable for any city. Florida took in 125,000 low-skilled Cuban convicts in 1980 without any discernible economic or other ill-effects when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro dumped them on the state during the notorious Mariel Boatlift episode.

Many mayors and governors who have for years been pleading with Uncle Sam to give them special visas to recruit immigrants to relieve labor shortages or to boost flagging population can jump in on the action. If they aren’t already sanctuary jurisdictions, they can declare themselves such.

Some will object that this will turn amnesty into a guest worker program. But if a proper guest worker program with Central American countries existed and asylum seekers used it to gain entry to the United States, would they object to that? The fact is that even folks in the most dangerous countries have multiple motives for seeking a particular destination country. Central American migrants looking for work would no more move to Raqqa even if ISIS paid them handsomely than asylum seekers would move to poverty-stricken Lesotho just because it is safe. The only way to ensure purity of motive is to have both an adequate asylum program and a guest worker program. But America’s guest worker program is worse than its asylum program, which is why Central Americans are trying to push their way through the latter. But asylum also taxes border resources more than any other admission route. So the best way to relieve pressure on the border and restore order is to create a proper guest worker program, exactly what Trump won’t even consider.

For now, the beauty of the plan to let sanctuary jurisdictions sponsor asylum seekers is that it would be a mini-experiment in federalizing immigration policy, something that many immigration reform proponents, including me, have been recommending since before Trump became president. Those jurisdictions that feel that asylum seekers will strain their resources more than they contribute to the economy don’t have to admit them. But those who believe the opposite don’t have to be deterred by such objections. Whoever turns out to be right will become an example for others without the federal government having to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on the whole country.

Between Barr and Miller, Miller is the implacable foe of immigration. Barr had no particular record of hostility toward immigrants before joining the White House. It would be delicious irony if Miller is the one who gets the ball rolling on something remotely good for immigrants.

This column originally appeared in The Week

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Matt Welch Interviews C.J. Ciaramella About Pot Politics on Sirius XM Insight

For the next four mornings I’ll be sitting in the guest-host chair for Stand UP! with Pete Dominick on Sirius XM Insight (channel 121) from 9–12 a.m. eastern time. There will be a LOT of discussion about the 2020 presidential election, actual government policies that affect actual humans, and (as ever) things that make me go heh. Today’s guest-list includes:

* Beloved Reason criminal justice reporter C.J. Ciaramella, who will talk about the latest reform efforts on the state, local, and federal levels; where the 2020 candidates stand on incarceration and weed, and maybe a bit on the state of government transparency.

* Documentary filmmaker Rachel Lears, director of the brand new film Knock Down the House, which follows four upstart Democratic women candidates who sought to primary incumbents in 2018. You might recognize the one who won. Here’s the trailer, which was released Monday:

* Washington Examiner Executive Editor Phillip Klein, who yesterday stone cold got ratio’d for this tweet:

* Brookings/Tablet/Deep State** contributor Jamie Kirchick, author of a forthcoming history of gay D.C., who will talk about the meaning and import of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg‘s surprisingly traction-gaining candidacy for president.

(**I am kidding, though also eager to ask about this 2016 piece.)

* Shit-stirring New York writer Molly Jong-Fast, who will talk about why “Bill de Blasio 2020 Is a Terrible Idea.”

You can call into the program at any time, 1-877-974-7487, to heckle either me or the guests, though please do treat the latter with at least token decorum.

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