Tag: hit&run

The Republicans are a mess. The Democrats are a mess. And young Americans are increasingly unsure about aligning themselves with either one.

New research from NBC News and the University of Chicago polling group GenForward found millennials—poised to be the biggest voting bloc in 2020—overwhelmingly want more political options. A full 71 percent of the 18- to 34-year-olds polled said that America needs a third major political party.

The desire for a third-party option was seen across all races, genders, and partisan affiliations in the poll, which was conducted from October 26 to November 10. Respondents included a nationally representative sample of 1,876 people.

More than half of those surveyed (59 percent) had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, and 42 percent had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. (This is with an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.92 percentage points.) Only 5 percent had a “very favorable” view of Republicans and only 10 percent had a very favorable view of Democrats.

Nearly three-quarters of men and 69 percent of women wanted more political-party options. Republican women were the least likely to want a third party, with just 55 percent agreeing. If you combine the race and sex categories, white male and black female millennials were the most likely to voice support for a third party: 80 percent of the former and 73 percent of the latter endorsed the notion.

Overall, white millennials were most likely to want a third major party, with 75 percent embracing the idea. But strong majorities were seen across all racial and ethnic groups, with 69 percent of blacks and Asians and 64 percent of Latinos agreeing. (The margin of sampling error for some of these groups was quite high—as much as plus or minus 8.75 points for Asian respondents.)

Asked about the 2018 congressional election, 43 percent said they are either not sure whether they plan to vote Democratic or Republican or do not plan to vote for candidates from either party; pollsters didn’t press further to see if this indicated a lack of any plans to vote in 2018 or a desire to vote for a third-party candidate. Of these millennials in the neither/not sure category, 16 percent said they leaned more toward Republicans, 32 percent said they leaned more toward Democrats, and 50 percent said they didn’t lean toward either.

Needless to say, the fact that so many people want a third party doesn’t mean they want the same third party. Alas, the pollsters didn’t inquire about just what sort of party people would like to see. Nor did they ask whether people want just one more party or a multitude. And they didn’t include any questions seeking opinions on the parties that are already out there: the Libertarians, the Greens, and so on. The poll strongly suggests that young Americans want more options, but it won’t tell you anything about what missing choices they have in mind.

Disney’s Coco, released just last week, is already the top grossing movie ever in Mexico, a grievous blow to the Chicano Left, Gustavo Arellano writes.

Disney in the Chicano Left imagination stands for everything evil about the United States: corporate, capitalistic, ignorant of Mexican traditions at best and blatantly racist at worst. The company has deserved such criticisms: In 1994, when Disney donated money to then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, legendary Chicano cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz imaged Mickey as “Migra Mouse” because Wilson had campaigned on the xenophobic Proposition 187, which sought to do all sorts of bad things to illegal immigrants.

More recently—which brings us to Coco—Disney tried to trademark Dia de los Muertos in 2013, in anticipation of their then-untitled film on the subject. A furious online backlash (one that I helped to promote along with Alcaraz, who did a great parody of Mickey as “Muerto Mouse” coming to “trademark your cultura” ) rightfully forced Disney to back off, because their move was tone-deaf and just plain pendejo.

But then Disney did what any smart corporation would do: They hired someone to teach them how to do things right. Better yet, they hired Alcaraz as a cultural consultant for Coco. That led armchair Aztecs to accuse Alcaraz of being a vendido—a sellout. Even allies of Alcaraz engaged in a lot of Facebook hand-wringing and asked Alcaraz why he decided to help his Moby Dick try and tackle a Mexican holiday.

But regular Mexicans gave Disney the benefit of the doubt with Alcaraz on board—or, most likely, never even heard about the controversy. His help proved crucial to ensure Coco‘s success. And because it’s a legit product, Mexicans have supported the film in droves, armchair Aztecs be damned.

View this article.

The Alabama Senate special election is less than two weeks away, and voters will have just two names on the ballot, Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore.

And although there’s just one race on the ballot, Alabamans will still have the option to fill in a vote for “straight party.”

That option, used in general elections by voters who decide based purely on party affiliation, illustrates the structural problem with democratic politics in the U.S.

Revelations about Roy Moore over the last month concerning accusations of inappropriate sexual contact with minors in the 1970s, which led many high-profile Republicans to rescind their endorsements, have left many Republican voters unenthusiastic about their choices.

Although the state Republican party could withdraw Moore’s name (meaning if he won, the election would not be valid), election law prohibits the replacement of a name less than 76 days before the election.

Even worse, independent and third party candidates had to file by August 15, nearly four months before the election.

There are at least four write-in candidates vying to provide voters another option in the special election, the most prominent of them being Lee Busby, a Marine colonel who was an aide to John Kelly when he served in Iraq.

“I have no idea if the allegations against him true or not, but I don’t see anything within his experience as a judge that qualifies him for the job,” Busby said of Moore to The Daily Beast. “Alabama is not happy with the two choices we have down here. They are not appealing.”

None of these is more than an afterthought, leaving the democratic process in Alabama woefully unresponsive to voter demand. American consumers don’t accept binary choices in almost any other sphere. Even with rivalries like McDonald’s vs. Burger King or Coke vs. Pepsi consumers spend billions of dollars on many other fast food and soft drink companies.

As Moore’s problems pile up—two weeks ago Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Moore wasn’t fit to serve in the Senate and said he wouldn’t rule out expelling him—his support remains relatively steady.

While Jones led by five points in one poll earlier this months, and Moore’s Real Clear Politics polling average lead is just one point, the latest polling suggests that even as Moore’s unfavorability rating ticks upward, he maintains a five to 10 point lead.

Conservatives concerned about the crass turn the Republican party has taken, like those at the National Review, say Moore never should have received the nomination.

The Democrats’ reticence to make an example of either Sen. Al Franken or Rep. John Conyers could be helping Moore hold on to support. Both have been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, and their resignations or expulsions would not put their party’s control of their seats at immediate risk.

Many of Moore’s supporters, particularly evangelicals, may be sticking with him over concerns about abortion. At National Review, Alexandra Desanctis describes Jones as an abortion “zealot.”

In the end, the vast majority of Alabamans who bother to vote (and it won’t be a lot of them—fewer than 600,000 of the more than 3 million registered voters in the state came out for the primary, and the general is less than two weeks before Christmas), will go with Moore or Jones.

It’s not hard to imagine partisan politics eventually resembling the 1996 Halloween Simpsons scene where, faced with the prospect of choosing between two space aliens in control of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, voters still refused to consider a real human, Ross Perot.

While some progressives argue for compulsory voting, were “none of the above” available, many political offices might remain vacant.

How little voting matters, as Katherine Mangu-Ward explains, makes the predicament all the more disheartening. Moore is a deeply flawed candidate many conservatives will say they feel compelled to vote for because the other option is a Democrat. It represents a huge moral compromise for the smallest pay-off.

If government didn’t have so much control over us, the clowns we send to Washington wouldn’t matter. So long as it does voting, especially for a choice outside two such badly flawed major parties, remains vital.

America’s “brand image” has taken a beating in the Age of Trump. In many world rankings, America’s reputation on a whole host of metrics has slipped several notches.

This is unfortunate but it’ll pass, I note in my column at The Week. That’s because when it comes to the sciences, arts, technology, and business—things other than politics and politicians that actually matter to humanity—America dominates the world.

“And it does so not by imposing its will on others, but by excelling so much that it forces other countries to compete on a higher plane. Quite simply, America has made the world a better place to live.”

And even Donald Trump can’t take that away from it.

Go here to read the piece.

Hawaii is one of 29 states that allow medical use of marijuana, but it is the only state that requires registration of all firearms. If you are familiar with the criteria that bar people from owning guns under federal law, you can probably surmise what the conjunction of these two facts means for patients who use cannabis as a medicine, which Hawaii allows them to do only if they register with the state. This month many of them received a letter from Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard, instructing them to turn in their guns.

“Your medical marijuana use disqualifies you from ownership of firearms and ammunition,” Ballard says in the November 13 letter, which Leafly obtained this week after Russ Belville noted it in his Marijuana Agenda podcast. “If you currently own or have any firearms, you have 30 days upon receipt of this letter to voluntarily surrender your firearms, permit, and ammunition to the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) or otherwise transfer ownership. A medical doctor’s clearance letter is required for any future firearms applications or return of firearms from HPD evidence.”

Although medical marijuana states typically register patients and/or issue them ID cards, Hawaii is unusual in making its registry both mandatory and accessible for purposes other than confirming eligibility, which is how Ballard knew where to send her warning. The letter, which comes just three months after Hawaii’s first medical marijuana dispensary opened, does not say what will happen to gun owners who fail to “voluntarily” give up their weapons. But if police decide to pay them a visit, it should be easy enough to locate them by comparing the state’s list of patients with its list of gun owners.

As authority for disarming medical marijuana users, Ballard cites Section 134-7(a) of Hawaii’s Revised Statutes, which says “no person who is a fugitive from justice or is a person prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition under federal law shall own, possess, or control any firearm or ammunition.” The relevant federal provision prohibits possession of firearms by anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” Since federal law does not recognize any legitimate reason for consuming cannabis, all use is unlawful use, as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives makes clear in a boldfaced warning on the form that must be completed by anyone buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer: “The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

Last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Hawaii, upheld the ATF’s policy of banning gun sales to people who are known to have medical marijuana cards, even if they do not currently consume cannabis. The appeals court reasoned that possessing a medical marijuana card is a good if imperfect indicator of illegal drug use, which is in turn associated with violence, “impaired mental states,” and “negative interactions with law enforcement officers.” The 9th Circuit concluded that there is a “reasonable fit” between the ATF’s policy and a substantial government objective, which means it passes “intermediate scrutiny” and is consistent with the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Most people probably do not realize how casually the federal government strips Americans of their Second Amendment rights, because enforcement of these longstanding rules is spotty and haphazard. Federal law notionally bars gun ownership by all of America’s 38 million or so cannabis consumers, along with millions of other unlawful users of controlled substances, including anyone who takes a medication prescribed for someone else or uses it for a purpose different from the one specified by a doctor (for back pain rather than tooth pain, say). But enforcing that ban is difficult because the FBI and the ATF generally don’t know who the unlawful users are. Hawaii has begun to lick that problem and therefore can give us a sense of what “enforcing the laws that are already on the books,” as the NRA frequently recommends, would look like in practice.

Even though we’ve already had a Facebook Live mini-telethon, a Reason TV retrospective, a grand kick-off, and already around 200 donations here in the first 24 hours of Reason’s annual webathon—in which we ask all of you, our very favorite readers and viewers and commenters, to contribute some of your traditional or crypto currency to the 501(c)3 nonprofit that makes all of our journalism and commentary here possible—the most persuasive if unintentional argument for our work this week just might have come from conservative commentator Matthew Walther. Writing in The Week about how “Conservatism is dead,” Walther uncorks this fastball to the backstop:

Reason magazine thinks that the rights of pornographers and white supremacists are in need of safeguarding.

Why yes, yes we do. Libertarians believe that rights for all people need safeguarding. It’s kind of the point.

This is the best @reason webathon pitch yet.

— Michael J. Green (@Close_watcher) November 28, 2017

Granted, this is confusing to people who need to fit everything into boxes marked “Team Red” or “Team Blue.” For instance, watch The New York Times torture political adjectives in a piece last week about the Koch brothers (one of whom sits on Reason’s Board of Trustees) gearing up to participate in the purchase of Time Inc.:

Their foundations have helped fund organizations affiliated with conservative media outlets, including the libertarian Reason magazine and the Daily Caller website.

Um, sure.

The misuse and abuse of “libertarian” is one of the few examples of journalistic legerdemain that is even more egregious than the misuse of “neocon.”

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) November 18, 2017

This is why we’re gathered here today, to get through this thing called life, liberty, and the pursuit. This is why we hope you will donate to Reason right the hell now. Because in your heart, you know there’s only one publication ready to serve you headlines like….

“First Amendment Protects Cinema’s Right to Show Unicorn Masturbation Scene While Serving Alcohol, Says Judge“

“D&D Creator Gary Gygax’s FBI Records Make Him Sound Like a Badass“

“The War on Goat Yoga“

“How a Blue Butterfly Stamp Brought Down One of the Dark Web’s Biggest Marijuana Vendors“

“Deported for Giving a Handjob?“

And, obviously, “Young Louis Farrakhan Sings a Calypso Song About Transgender Surgery“

It’s not because we’re all closet yoga-goatherders or even D&D players here (though I understand there’s an office Slack channel I need to be more aware of), but rather that edge cases are often where case law is made, and precisely where loyalists of one of the two dominant-if-eroding political tribes will turn their backs on, depending on the perceived virtue of the affected class. So yes, bikini baristas and gene-editors and body-sculptors and even armless droids—we’ve got you covered. And should ever the government get enough in your business that you feel the need to march on Washington, we’ll be there with cameras.

The world might not fully get it, but dammit, you do. Won’t you donate to Reason today?

• The TODAY show’s Matt Lauer has been fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.”
• President Trump’s Wednesday-morning retweets of anti-Muslim propaganda videos from a far-right British group have earned criticism even from generally pro-Trump corners.
• The Supreme Court is considering a major privacy case today.
• A contraception shortage is looming in Venezuela.
• Congress is targeting “revenge porn” and considering changes to Congressional sexual-harassment training policies.
• Bitcoin worth has hit $10,000.
• On trial for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Praljak drank poison in the courtroom just before the judge could hand out his sentence. He’s alive and the hearing has been postponed.

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

Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in what may prove to be one of the most significant Fourth Amendment cases in years.

The Fourth Amendment, of course, famously guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Yet according to the Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”

Otherwise known as the third-party doctrine, this legal rule has proven quite valuable to law enforcement agencies over the past four decades. Perhaps the police would like to learn the URLs of the websites that someone has visited, or perhaps learn the email addresses that someone has corresponded with? The third-party doctrine lets the police obtain that information without first obtaining a search warrant for it.

But doesn’t the idea of granting vast warrantless search powers to the police run afoul of the privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment?

The Supreme Court will grapple with that question today when it hears oral arguments in Carpenter v. United States. At issue is whether the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment when it obtained, without a search warrant, the cellphone records of suspected armed robber Timothy Carpenter. With those records, law enforcement officials identified the cell towers that handled his calls and then proceeded to trace back his whereabouts during the time periods in which his alleged crimes were committed. That information was used against Carpenter in court.

According to Carpenter and his lawyers, “carrying a smartphone, checking for new emails from one’s boss, updating the weather forecast, and downloading directions ought not license total surveillance of a person’s entire life.”

According to the Trump administration, “a cell-phone user has no reasonable expectation of privacy in business records created by his provider documenting the cell sites used to document his calls.”

What will the Supreme Court do? Will the justices rework the third-party doctrine, cabin the power of the police, and recognize broad Fourth Amendment protections for the digital age?

At least one member of the Court seems inclined to do just that. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor remarked in the 2012 case of United States v. Jones, “people disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers…. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.”

We’ll find out later this term whether or not a majority of the Court shares Sotomayor’s welcome view of the Fourth Amendment.

Timothy Carpenter specialized in stealing cellphones, the same devices that betrayed him. Based on four months of cellphone location data from the companies that provided Carpenter’s mobile phone service, the FBI placed him near four stores while they were being robbed.

Carpenter argues that the FBI should have obtained a warrant before looking at those records. When the Supreme Court hears his case today, Jacob Sullum says, the justices will have a chance to reconsider a misbegotten and increasingly obsolete rule that threatens everyone’s privacy in an age when people routinely store large volumes of sensitive personal information outside their homes.

That rule, as summarized by the Court in a 1976 case dealing with bank records, holds that “the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose.” The “third-party doctrine” means the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures imposes no restrictions whatsoever on the government’s power to examine the most intimate details of your life should you be foolhardy enough to entrust them to someone else.

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As long as rich people don’t collude with government, they make our lives better.

John Stossel writes:

As Republicans struggle to agree on a tax plan, Democrats and much of the media label each attempt at reform a “gift” to rich people.

In one sense, they are right. Any tax cut disproportionately favors rich people since the rich pay much more tax.

But the media and Democrats (is there a difference?) are wrong because they routinely portray rich people as parasites who take from other people.

View this article.