Tag: hit&run

A Florida commission investigating last February’s deadly Parkland school shooting has recommended allowing public school teachers to carry weapons in the classroom.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission’s report, released yesterday, includes lots of recommendations for stopping future school shootings. “All stakeholders—school districts, law enforcement, mental health providers, city and county governments, funding entities, etc.—should embrace the opportunity to change and make Florida schools the safest in the nation,” it says. “There must be a sense of urgency—and there is not, across-the-board—in enhancing school safety.”

One of those recommendations involves Florida’s Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program. The program, named for the Stoneman Douglas football coach who gave his life shielding students during the shooting, mandates that each public school in the state be protected by an armed guard—either a police officer or a “guardian.” While administrators, security guards, and librarians can be trained as guardians, teachers cannot unless they are military members, former law enforcement, or ROTC instructors. Each school district in the state, the commission’s report says, “should expand the guardian eligibility to other school employees now permitted to be guardians.”

The report also encourages the state legislature to expand the program to include more teachers:

Further, the Florida legislature should expand the Guardian Program to allow teachers who volunteer—in addition to those now authorized—who are properly selected, thoroughly screened and extensively trained to carry concealed firearms on campuses for self-protection, and the protection of other staff and students in response to an active assailant incident.

Arming teachers to protect against school shooters is not a new proposal. As ReasonTV’s John Stossel explained in April, allowing trained teachers to carry a gun in the classroom is a lot cheaper than stationing police officers at each school. More than a dozen states already allow teachers to carry in some form or another, and there are very few documented examples of students being hurt as a result.

But the proposal has run into opposition in the Sunshine State, where the Florida Education Association and the Florida PTA argue that arming teachers will simply increase the danger.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the commission, doesn’t think their opposition makes sense. “So what are we saying to people—we’re not going to allow you to defend yourself, we’re not going to allow you to defend the kids—why? Because of some ideology that we don’t like guns? Anyone who thinks they’re going to get rid of guns is crazy,” he says, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It isn’t going to happen. We’ve got to do something differently and people should be able to protect themselves.”

Does arming teachers keep students safer? It’s hard to tell, though an FBI report from April said that of the 50 “active shooter incidents” that occurred in 2016 and 2017, there were four examples of citizens with valid firearms permits stopping the shooter. It’s also worth remembering that school shootings with mass casualties are very rare. Schools are generally safe whether or not teachers are armed.

The public safety commission’s report proposes a bevy of other recommendations, including additional classroom safety measures. It also details some of the steps the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the school itself could have taken to either prevent the shooting or limit the death toll. The report has been sent to the governor’s office and the state legislature for consideration.

As of Tuesday, adults younger than 21 are no longer allowed to buy semi-automatic rifles in Washington, thanks to a ballot initiative approved by 59 percent of that state’s voters last November. The initiative, I-1639, officially targets “semiautomatic assault rifles,” but its definition of that term is so broad that it renders the assault part superfluous, except for tendentious rhetorical purposes.

The New York Times, for example, describes the firearms restricted by I-639 as “assault weapons” (a term the initiative also uses) and implies that they are similar to the guns banned under that heading in “states like California and Connecticut.” While those laws do cover semi-automatic rifles, they do not cover all semi-automatic rifles—only specifically named models or those with disfavored features such as pistol grips, folding stocks, and flash suppressors.

I-1639, by contrast, defines a “semiautomatic assault rifle” as “any rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.” That category includes not just scary-looking, military-style rifles like the AR-15 but a wide range of firearms commonly used for hunting, target shooting, and competitions. The definition excludes rifles that are “manually operated by bolt, pump, lever, or slide action” but includes all the rest.

In addition to the new minimum purchase age, the initiative imposes a 10-day waiting period on buyers of semi-automatic rifles and bans sales to residents of other states; those provisions take effect in July. According to the initiative, the restrictions are supposed to help prevent mass shootings.

Since the Times does not even hint at the broad scope of I-1639, readers may be puzzled by objections to the law. “We will not sit idly by while elitist anti-gun activists attempt to deny everyday Americans their fundamental right to self-defense,” says Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, in a statement quoted by the Times. But if 18-to-20-year-olds are denied the right to purchase “semiautomatic assault rifles,” can’t they still purchase ordinary semi-automatic rifles?

Well, no, they can’t, but readers won’t understand that point unless they are familiar with I-1639’s sweeping definition of “semiautomatic assault rifle.” Since the minimum purchase age for handguns in Washington was already 21, the only remaining options for younger adults are shotguns or “bolt, pump, lever, or slide action” rifles. That situation makes the NRA’s concern about the “fundamental right to self-defense” easier to understand. The NRA is one of the plaintiffs in a post-election lawsuit that claims I-1639’s age restriction on rifle purchases “impermissibly burdens the exercise of rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment” and is “significantly broader than necessary to serve any possible alleged governmental interest.”

The response from the initiative’s supporters is telling. “The gun lobby is trying to thwart the will of nearly 60 percent of Washingtonian voters who supported common-sense gun reform in our state,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told the Times. But the Second Amendment is supposed to thwart the will of the majority; that is the whole point of constitutional guarantees. The NRA may or may not be right that I-1639 violates the Second Amendment. But the fact that most Washington voters thought the initiative was a good idea has no bearing on that issue.

Linda Greenhouse, who covered the Supreme Court for the Times from 1978 until 2008, also does not like the idea that the Constitution might trump her policy preferences. In an op-ed piece published today, she pooh-poohs the “outlandish” notion that federal courts are treating the Second Amendment as a “second-class right,” saying that concern is a right-wing fantasy dreamed up by Justice Clarence Thomas and echoed by likeminded extremists. Then Greenhouse proves Thomas’ point by complaining that “the Supreme Court’s appetite for expanding the Second Amendment, if such an appetite develops, will be wildly out of sync with the mood of the country.” If the Court overturns popular policies just because they violate the Constitution, she says, it will “accelerate the collapse of public confidence in the one organ of government that at the moment seems to stand between us and disaster.”

The Court’s ability to “stand between us and disaster,” of course, depends on its determination to uphold the Constitution regardless of politics or public opinion. Yet Greenhouse wants the justices to consider the latest polling data before deciding how to apply the Second Amendment. It seems unlikely that she would take that position in connection with any other constitutional right.

Chicago Tribune‘s reporting this week on the psychological devastation of Anthony Gay’s 22 years of solitary confinement should make you feel pity, horror, and rage over how our incarceration systems run.

Gay, now 44, was convicted in 1994, when he was 18, of robbery after a street fight with another teen where he stole a hat and a single dollar. He was sentenced to probation, which was revoked when he was caught driving without a license. Then, what should have been a short prison stint ended up becoming years and years in solitary, as the frequently suicidal young man would keep getting into fights with guards.

Trapped alone in his cell with very little psychological support or assistance, Gay turned to self-harm, mutilating his arm (there’s photo evidence in the story), other parts of his body, and even his testicles. His confrontations with guards resulted in repeated new indictments, often stacked separately to extend his jail time for the purpose of making an example out of him. He eventually had 97 years tacked onto his sentence.

He finally turned to legal help (he represented himself during all these indictments while he was incarcerated). Eventually lawyers got his sentence reduced and now he’s free. He’s also suing the state of Illinois over the use of solitary confinement and the visible, terrible impact it had on his mental health.

It would take a special kind of awful person to downplay the real horror of Gay’s story in order to attempt (and fail miserably) to score some sort of political points on Twitter. So let’s see what former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is up to these days:

Don’t remember ANY Lying Lib News outlet writing sob stories about Paul Manafort being held in solitary confinement 24-7 as a form of torture to squeeze him into making something up about @realDonaldTrump. Where was the concern for HIS mental well-being? https://t.co/WrQfjMwPhj

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) January 3, 2019

Oh. I see. We probably shouldn’t expect Clarke to actually care about what happened to Gay in prison. Recall that under Clarke’s leadership in Milwaukee County, a man died of dehydration in the county jail after being denied water for a week. He has also made it abundantly clear that he opposes criminal justice reform and is generally supporter of a cruel prison system. He actually titled a chapter of his book, “Guess What? Prison Is Supposed to Be Unpleasant.”

So one might think Clarke would actually be repulsed by the special treatment Paul Manafort actually received while was in federal jail (and a reminder here: He was only incarcerated in the first place because he violated the terms of his pretrial release and contacted witnesses in his case to allegedly attempt to influence their testimony). Unlike most people who are in “solitary” confinement, Manafort was not actually stuck in his cell, had access to computer equipment and a phone, and met with his legal team regularly.

People who aren’t wealthy and connected to the president don’t have such kind experiences in jail, thanks exactly to terrible people like Clarke. His sudden but very, very limited concern about the effects of solitary confinement is reminiscent of the Republican members of Congress who cared about misuse of federal surveillance tools against people connected to President Donald Trump, yet nevertheless voted in favor of renewing and expanding the authority of the government to use these surveillance tools against other American citizens.

But hey, in the end, Clarke’s horrible tweet is probably drawing attention to a horror story that might have slipped under many people’s radars. So there’s that, anyway.

“To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation,” wrote Mitt Romney, the newly elected Republican senator from Utah, in yesterday’s Washington Post. “A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect….[P]residential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.”

As The Daily Beast notes, the predictable response from the president’s supporters was that “all of Trumpworld united under the banner of a single cause: stuffing incoming Senator Mitt Romney into a locker.” That included Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who told the media on a call that the president didn’t “deserve…to have a new senator…attacking his character.”

As Katherine Mangu-Ward, Matt Welch, Peter Suderman, and I discussed in yesterday’s Reason Podcast, Romney is certainly accurate in his depiction of President Trump’s demeanor. The former real estate developer is a bully, a loudmouth, and a liar (or at the very least a bullshit artist). But Romney’s take is seriously off in at least two ways that matter far more than whatever the presidential Twitter feed offers up at any given moment.

First, the presidency doesn’t shape “the public character of the nation.” We’re not living in some Arthurian legend where a wounded fisher king or a healthy leader is a manifestation of the body politic. Trump’s juvenile behavior has conceivably hurt America’s standing abroad. Romney notes that just 16 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believe the president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” Before Trump took office, that figure stood at 84 percent. But it’s not exactly clear whether that’s because, I don’t know, he called a porn star horseface or because he’s constantly bitching about Europe paying more for its own defense (or a million other policy proclamations). At any rate, do most Americans form their character based on who is sitting in the White House? I don’t think so.

Second, Romney scants policy questions in his attack on Trump. Near the end of his piece, he rolls out a series of bromides that are so generic and uninspired they remind us why he lost the 2012 presidential race against an unpopular incumbent.

We must repair failings in our politics at home. That project begins, of course, with the highest office once again acting to inspire and unite us. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment. Our leaders must defend our vital institutions despite their inevitable failings: a free press, the rule of law, strong churches, and responsible corporations and unions.

We must repair our fiscal foundation, setting a course to a balanced budget. We must attract the best talent to America’s service and the best innovators to America’s economy.

The link above goes to a column by George Will calling for a balanced budget amendment, which is nice. But it’s also the case that Romney studiously avoided mentioning any significant cuts he would make when he was running for president. (At one point, he went out on a limb and said he’d axe the National Endowment for the Humanities.) He talked a game of “cut, cap, and balance” but made exceptions for military spending, Medicare, and Social Security, which is to say, most of the budget. He was consistently vague, except when he promised to cut taxes. In his Post op-ed, he says that he will “speak out against significant statements or actions” that are, among other things, “divisive” and “anti-immigrant.” Romney’s gesture toward inclusive immigration policy is nice, but he was persistently anti-immigrant in 2012. If he wants to prove he’s changed those stripes, there’s a long list of policies and priorities he can start pushing back on, including plans to intensify workplace crackdowns and reduce the number of H-1B visas (for highly trained workers in short supply). Yet he told CNN yesterday that he “would vote for the border wall.” Go figure.

I’d argue that the country is suffering more from a lack of policy leadership than from a surfeit of ill-tempered tweets.

Most Americans have been shielded from the effects of the so-called government shutdown. Post offices continue to run; the federal drug war rages on; the regulatory state thrives. If the shutdown continues through tax season, though, it could have a very serious impact indeed.

Though the government continues to dip its hand into Americans’ hard-earned funds, The Wall Street Journal reports that early filers will likely not see their refunds so long as the government remains shut down. But fear not! While the Internal Revenue Service currently lacks the funds to process refunds, it is fully prepared to process tax returns that include payments to the government.

In other words, you can still pay the government, but the government won’t be returning anything it took in excess.

While this is less of a concern to later filers, the report notes that lower-income households often rely on early refunds to pay debts or make larger purchases. Indeed, many retailers count on people to spend more money in February.

The partial shutdown began in the days leading up to Christmas, thanks to President Donald Trump’s insistence on adding $5 billion for a border wall to a congressional spending package. Trump will have an even harder time pursuing funding for his wall in 2019, now that the House is under Democratic control.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with a “shutdown” that fails to shut down the parts of the government that take people’s money.

Shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency, Kanye West, the successful and controversial hip-hop artist and fashion mogul, tried to start a conversation about political pluralism. On stage during a show in San Jose, California, he admitted something he knew would alarm a lot of his audience: While he hadn’t actually voted, if he had, it would have been for Trump.

“That don’t mean that I don’t think that black lives matter,” he clarified. “That don’t mean I don’t think that I’m a believer in women’s rights. That don’t mean I don’t believe in gay marriage.” Still, West told his San Jose crowd, it was time to “stop focusing on racism.…We are in a racist country, period…and not one or the other candidate was gonna instantly be able to change that because of their views.”

Most of his friends and family were for Clinton, he conceded. And he knew none of his political ruminations were apt to please his fans. “I guess we’re just not gonna sell out the rest of the tour now,” he said, presciently. New York magazine chided him afterward for turning himself into “basically the uncle you really wish you could avoid at Thanksgiving dinner,” and R&B singer John Legend told a French magazine that “for Kanye to support [Trump’s] message is very disappointing.”

A week after the San Jose show, West canceled 21 remaining tour dates, was hospitalized for “stress and exhaustion,” and disappeared from public life and productivity for a year. He later attributed his troubles that week to trying to wean himself from an opioid dependency; he has since publicly identified himself as diagnosed bipolar, and he often talks about when he is or isn’t on his meds.

He became active again in 2018, releasing a string of albums that he either performed on or produced in early summer. This time, it looked like his politics might not hinder his creative ventures. His solo record Yequickly hit No. 1. A week later, a collaboration with Kid Cudi called Kids See Ghosts debuted at No. 2, while Ye held on to No. 5.

But during this same period of artistic fertility, he also dove back into politics, doubling down on his support for Trump, writes Brian Doherty.

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A Republican member of Congress says he’ll support a series of Democrat-proposed changes for the new House of Representatives.

As NPR explains, it’s customary for the majority party in the House to adopt a set of rules every two years. With Democrats having seized control of the House in the November midterms, some alterations were inevitable. Among the notable changes in the new rules is a provision allowing the speaker—likely Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.)—to “intervene” in Texas vs. United States, a federal case involving the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Another rule prohibits measures that would increase the budget deficit for the current year, while a third would create a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to investigate climate change.

Rep. Tom Reed (R–N.Y.) is the Republican co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers that attempts to reach compromises (with mixed results). In late November, a press release from Reed’s office touted the “commonsense rule reforms” that House Democratic leaders and Democratic members of the Problem Solvers Caucus had agreed on. And yesterday, Reed officially announced his support for the rules. “The reforms the Problem Solvers Caucus were able to get included in this rules package go a long way to empower the people we represent, enable rank-and-file Members to govern and make it easier for bipartisan bills to pass,” Reed said in a statement, adding that “we are proud to walk the talk of reaching across the aisle to best serve the people who sent us here.”

Reed does not support the full rules package. But the reforms he favors make it easier for bipartisan legislation to get to the House floor for a vote, while also making it more difficult for ideological factions in either party to affect the legislative process.

This will be the first time since 2001 that a legislator votes with the other party on a set of House rule changes. Politico reports that other Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus will vote with Democrats as well, though none have said so publicly.

It remains to be seen whether Reed will face repercussions from Republican leaders in the House. He suggested that he’s been threatened with “consequences,” though he wouldn’t elaborate. “I won’t speak to that right now, because hopefully there is reconsideration of it,” he tells The Washington Post. “But it is what it is, and I recognize that some people want to continue to play us-versus-them politics, but I came to Washington to change it, and I’m willing to put my voting card where my mouth is.”

Though there are aspects of the rule changes that he doesn’t like, Reed thinks supporting the package as a whole seems like “a show of good faith,” his spokesperson, Will Reinert, tells Politico.

“There are some things that deal with litigation matters under the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and other issues that are potentially problematic from a conservative perspective,” Reed said yesterday, according to WSKG. “But overall, I believe the reforms are a net positive for the American people. Regardless of the consequences that this will bring to me, I will be voting yes on that package tomorrow.”

“What seems to be the answer from the foreign policy establishment?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) about U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Syria. “Stay forever. That is not a policy. We can’t do that.”

Warren’s comments came on The Rachel Maddow Show, where the host was trying to goad Warren into criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to pull American troops from Syria and (reportedly) to reduce the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

Her statements seem to have strengthened criticism against others on the left—such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)—who have been thus far been quiet on Trump’s pivots on Syria and Afghanistan.

“Now that Warren emphatically supported Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria & Afghanistan – ignoring @Maddow‘s desperate bait to bash Trump & instead condemned Endless War – the silence on these issues of Sanders (&, to a lesser extent, @AOC) becomes harder to maintain,” tweeted The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald on Thursday morning. “I emailed Sanders’ office on Dec 26 to ask his view on Syria troop withdraw – was told they were discussing it but he didn’t yet have a position. As I said, people are entitled to time to address complex matters, but these debates are central & ongoing silence is hard to justify.”

Trump also offered comments on Afghanistan yesterday, while seated in front of a Game of Thrones–style poster of himself at a White House cabinet meeting:

Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.

That last bit is, as the president might say, fake news. The reason the Soviet Union—and the U.S.—started meddling in Afghanistan a few decades back was in service of the Cold War. The Soviet Union wanted to aid the country’s then-communist government; the U.S. wanted to prevent that.

Watching Trump bloviate about the Soviet Union and Afghanistan a day later….it’s even worse the second time around. It’s a gold medal performance in historical ignorance and revisionism.

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) January 3, 2019

Trump also suggested that he “fired” former Department of Defense chief Jim Mattis (who resigned) because Mattis failed on Afghanistan:

Trump says he “essentially” fired Jim Mattis. He did not. Mattis resigned due to policy differences. Trump also says of Mattis: What’s he done for me? How has he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. Not too good. I’m not happy with what he’s done in Afghanistan.” Via Fox. pic.twitter.com/TG5N34E7gO

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 2, 2019

FREE MINDS

The public domain is expanding. “What makes January 1, 2019, particularly interesting is that it marks the first year in which works protected under U.S. copyright law, whose entry into the public domain was stayed for a time under the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act or, more cynically, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, since it had the effect of keeping the movie “Steamboat Willie” protected by copyright until 2024), will no longer enjoy that benefit,” notes The IPKat blog. So “works first copyrighted in 1923 or thereafter, which were still protected by copyright in 1998, will enter the public domain in 2019.”

FOLLOW-UP

Khashoggi killers on trial. Saudi Arabia says that 11 suspects in the torture and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi will face trial and have had their first court hearing. A prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for five of the suspects.

“This death sentence decision seems to be nuts,” says Turkey-based Al Jazeera journalist Sinem Koseoglu. “It will mostly likely not be welcomed by Ankara, because it will mean that Saudi Arabia will prevent those people from talking.”

In other tales out of Saudi Arabia:

We know that indescribably horrible things are being perpetrated by our purported allies, but a single human story makes them resonate so strongly. https://t.co/yzGnDy1P81

— Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) January 3, 2019

QUICK HITS

• “Super Bowl LIII isn’t due until February 3, but anti-trafficking groups are already out in force” spreading baseless fears about sporting events causing a spike in human trafficking.

• It’s day 13 of the partial government shutdown, and Trump doesn’t look like he’s backing down on border wall funding demands.

• A lot cheaper than that wall…

State marijuana legalization starting in 2014 did more to reduce marijuana smuggling than the doubling of Border Patrol agents or the construction of hundreds of miles of border fencing did from 2003 to 2009. https://t.co/AQT35S50WM #CatoDrugWar #CatoImmigration pic.twitter.com/AZ54CEMJKR

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) January 3, 2019

• Trump’s pick to replace Jeff Sessions will face Congress soon:

Save the date: January 15-16 will be Bill Barr’s confirmation hearings https://t.co/YxcIYwZ3Gf

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 3, 2019

• Here’s a novel way to address a push for increased transparency:

The Long Beach Police Department engaged in a destruction of decades worth of internal investigation records just days before they would have become public under a new law. The contempt for the public, democratic accountability is stunning. https://t.co/8J37KPgnw1

— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) January 3, 2019

We tend to think of political eras in terms of presidents: The 1980s remind us of Ronald Reagan, not Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. The same is true of the 1990s and Bill Clinton, the post-9/11 era and George W. Bush, the years after the financial collapse and Barack Obama. Now, it is assumed, we are in the era of Donald Trump.

But are we? Trump is certainly the most visible elected leader in our national political life. But with his inescapably controversial persona serving as the starkest partisan dividing line in our polarized age, he is, perhaps more than any other modern president, also a figurehead—a president-in-name-only, elected to sit in the Oval Office and tweet into the abyss, which may or may not tweet back.

Meanwhile, the real work of legislating and governing is done by others—in particular, by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, writes Peter Suderman.

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Looking back, 2018 reveals a sad picture of what a Republican Congress and White House have failed to accomplish, says Veronique de Rugy. Instead of fiscal restraint, we got a spending explosion. Instead of restoring the regular budget order, we got more of the same fiscal chaos and short-term spending-bill nonsense punctuated by threats of government shutdowns. And at the end of that tunnel of disarray, only heightened uncertainty and heavier debt remain.

“I want to believe that many Republicans and Democrats are aware of our fiscal condition and that, deep down, they know that they must start to legislate responsibly,” de Rugy writes. “It would be amazing if they could, for a change, speak up and take the first steps toward finding a solution. Sadly, the incentives of politics are so biased toward fiscal irresponsibility and big government that meaningful reform will be difficult, borderline miraculous. However, I still have a little of that Christmas spirit left in me, so I’ll allow myself to dream for the span of one column.”

View this article.