Tag: hit&run

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently shot down the latest effort by the Justice Department to compel Microsoft to hand over the data of a foreigner stored overseas. Amazingly, the government asserted that a U.S. search warrant should carry jurisdiction over the data of an Irish citizen being stored on a server in Ireland simply because it is owned by Microsoft, an American corporation.

Thank goodness the federal appeals court has now rejected the government’s attempt to have the case reheard after a lower court ruling in the government’s favor—which held Microsoft in contempt for failing to turn over the data—was overturned last July.

The outcome affirms a landmark defense of privacy rights against law enforcement overreach and clearly establishes that the U.S. government does not have jurisdiction over the entire world. It also removes a major threat to the competitiveness of U.S.-based multinational companies, which must operate under the privacy rules of the countries in which they operate. Many of those countries unsurprisingly take a dim view of U.S. government efforts to pry into the lives of their citizens. To comply with the U.S. government warrant, Microsoft would have had to violate Ireland’s privacy laws.

The decision to reject the government’s appeal for a rehearing was decided by a 4-4 split, much closer than it should have been. Justice Department officials pledged to try to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

The new administration could insist that Justice Department lawyers drop the matter. Members of Congress, however, shouldn’t count on either the courts or the Trump administration. Instead, they could address the fundamental issue, writes Veronique de Rugy.

View this article.

A police officer in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada gave Dave Balay $465 ticket for having a cracked driver’s license. Balay notes the crack is a small one and does not obscure his photo or any information.

Berkeley is burning tonight: the university campus that birthed the Free Speech Movement played host to a despicable display of violence and censorship Wednesday evening that culminated in the cancellation of a planned speech by controversial Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Anti-Yiannopoulos protesters wearing black scarves over their faces hurled fireworks at the building where the alt-right leader was supposed to speak. They also tore down barricades and smashed windows. They used gasoline to start a significant fire on the street that threatened to engulf a nearby tree, and forced police to push people back. Authority figures deployed rubber bullets and tear gas in an attempt to control the situation.

“This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,” said Mike Wright, a member of the Berkeley College Republican group that invited Yiannopoulos to speak. Shortly after he made this statement, smoke bombs were set off around him, and someone threw red paint at him, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Yiannopoulos released the following statement on Facebook:

I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protestors tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building. My team and I are safe. But the event has been cancelled. I’ll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

As I write this, at 10:00 p.m., the violence and chaos are ongoing. Yiannopoulos was forced to evacuate the campus.

Anti-Yiannopoulos protesters described themselves as anti-fascists and anarchists. “We reject fascist America,” the said.

They don’t so much reject it as enable it. Most people will watch the chaos unfold and wonder what’s wrong with college students these days—why they must resort to violence and destruction to silence people they don’t like.

By engaging in such tactics, anti-Yiannopoulos protesters effectively distract from the fact that Yiannopoulos’s own views are loathsome. They turn Yiannopoulos into a free speech martyr, which is exactly what he wants. When Milo is censored, Milo wins.

By the way, Yiannopoulos’s old Breitbart boss, Steve Bannon, is now a top advisor to President Trump. I wonder whether Bannon would rather Yiannopoulos’s speech go off without a hitch, or be shut down by violent protesters? Which outcome is better for the law-and-order policy positions of the Trump administration? It’s not actually a question: the president’s narrative is obviously better served when irate students resort to violence to silence an alt-right speaker.

This is what happens when an unreasonable force meets an irreverent object https://t.co/SjHQVbGSD7

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) February 2, 2017

If Dr. David J. Shulkin is confirmed as the new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) then he will have his work cut out for him. First on his to-do list should probably be the national Health Eligibility Center (HEC), which is in the midst of what has been described as a “records management nightmare.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been tracking ongoing systemic problems at the national HEC located in Atlanta, Georgia, after a whistle-blower—communications official Scott Davis—alerted the paper to them back in 2014. These issues include a backlog of 889,000 veterans’ health care applications and system errors in the enrollment process. They were never resolved.

In August 2015, then–Under Secretary Shulkin, who was overseeing the Veterans Health Administration, visited the Atlanta office and made promises to address the problem, but Davis reports that he never returned. Then Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson became the senior V.A. executive charged with finding solutions to the systemic problems, but Davis says efforts to resolve the backlog fell apart after a flawed mail campaign that started in March 2016.

In an email obtained by the AJC, Matthew Eitutis, the acting director for V.A. member services overseeing the HEC, explains that 365 Day Equitable Relief letters were mailed to 545,000 veterans requesting the opposite category of information actually necessary to complete their applications. Of the 545,000 veteran applications, 440,410 instructed the recipient that the V.A. either needed means testing information when it really needed military information, or vice versa. If veterans respond incorrectly to the flawed information request then their applications stand to be purged within a year beginning this March. Veterans will not be able to get their health care costs reimbursed if their applications are purged, even if it’s by error.

Davis argues that the new V.A. secretary has the ability to prevent this from happening. “All he has to do is stop the process and create a legitimate awareness campaign to inform veterans how to get their applications out of the pending backlog,” the whistleblower informed the AJC.

Shulkin testified before the Senate’s Committee on Veterans Affairs today and faced questions about the federal hiring freeze, the V.A. Choice Program, and privatization.

“There will be far greater accountability, dramatically improved access, responsiveness, and expanded care options, but the Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my watch,” he said at the hearing. “If confirmed, I intend to build a system that puts veterans first and allows them to get the best possible health care and services, wherever it may be—in V.A. or community care.”

Shulkin is expected to be confirmed without any delays.

Add another significant federal judge ruling to the complex mess that has followed President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking immigrants—even those with green cards and visas—from entering the United States from a handful of countries.

A federal judge in Los Angeles, in response to case filed on behalf of 28 Yemeni-born folks who got caught up in Trump’s order, has put out an order intended to halt the whole thing for now. Based on the Los Angeles Times report of the order, this is a broader ruling then what a judge decided on Saturday, which only stopped the government from removing those affected by the order. Here’s this newest order (via the Los Angeles Times):

Notably, in his ruling, [U.S. District Judge Andre] Birotte forbade federal officials from “removing, detaining, or blocking the entry” of affected travelers or “cancelling validly obtained and issued immigrant visas of plaintiffs.” The wording would seem to mean that government officials would not be allowed to continue the practice of instructing airlines and border officials in other countries to stop immigrants from the affected countries from boarding planes bound for the U.S.

The Times does not provide a link to the ruling as yet and the story isn’t widely being picked up at the moment. And there have been other relevant court rulings as well since the first stay on Saturday night. As reporter Joel Rubin notes, though, it’s hard to determine what the actual impact of the ruling may be, because it’s not even clear to the extent that the administration is abiding by previous rulings. Rubin said they’re seeing reports at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) of travelers still being turned back.

Below, Reason went and chatted with protesters at LAX:

Is there no political controversy that can’t be responded to by pointing out the bias of journalists and hyperventilating of opponents? On the latest edition of The Fifth Column, the weekly podcast I co-host with Kmele Foster and Michael “Hollywood” Moynihan, we tangle over that question and so much more with Moynihan substitute Kevin Williamson of National Review. Williamson comes out in favor of explicitly restricting Muslim immigration, due to concerns of terrorism and assimilation; I argue differently, and Kmele is just asking questions, including What role did U.S. foreign policy play in creating the refugee mess?

It’s a lively discussion, including some rare Welchian criticism of Reason commenters, and you can listen to the whole biscuit here:

Oh yeah, neglected to link to last week’s episode—that’s here.

For more places to get our Fifth Column on, check out iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, wethefifth.com, @wethefifth, and Facebook.

• President Trump made an unnannounced visit to Dover Air Force Base to greet the body of a Navy SEAL killed in a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen. National Security Advisor said Iran was “on notice” after a ballistic missile test that appeared to be in violation of a United Nations resolution.
• The Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson as secretaty of state. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) became the second Republican to say she would vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Democrats say they’re not ruling out a filibuster of Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch.
• The Federal Reserve said sentiment was “improving,” but decided not to raise interest rates.
• The civil war in Yemen erased a decade’s worth of health gains, according to UNICEF.
• Parliament approved a bill to permit Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50 and begin Brexit negotiations.
• A corruption scandal surrounding French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon forced up French borrowing costs; his primary rival is the National Front’s Marine Le Pen.
• Former United Nation Secretary General Ban Ki-moon won’t run for president of South Korea.
• Police in Miami Beach want to install license plate readers on all state roads.

Today the Rhode Island legislature turns its attention to a matter of such pressing import, it could (possibly) garner some attention—even though it has nothing to do with President Trump. In the Ocean State, all (slightly stinging) eyes are on the Sunscreen Bill.

Do children have the fundamental right to apply sunscreen while at school? Five daring Rhode Island state representatives believe they do. And so Bill LC000842, to be voted on today, proposes:

Any person including, but not limited to, students, parents or school personnel may possess and use a topical sunscreen product without a physician’s note or prescription while on school property or at a school-related event, or activity…

The bill goes on to explain that the law would allow said sallow students “to avoid overexposure to the sun.” (So that’s what it’s for!) So long as “the product is regulated by the Federal Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter use,” that is.

I’m sure this must have been prompted by stories like this one, wherein three girls suffered severe sunburn at their school’s field day because, the principal said, the school was not to allowed to administer sunscreen for “liability reasons.” In fact, the principal added that if the student did not have a doctor’s note officially approving the glop, it would be considered contraband.

Rhode Island, the state that once proposed a law that would make it a crime to let any child under the age of 12 get off the school bus unless an adult is waiting for them, takes a high dive into common sense.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled all-Trump all-the-time programming.

Looked at in isolation, President Trump’s rush to enact executive orders restricting immigration reveals plenty about his administration’s incompetence and willingness to engage in petty cruelty. But they are not isolated actions. And taken in context with Trump’s other stated views—in particular his opposition to meaningful entitlement reforms—they reveal a frightening holistic worldview of America as an entitlement state that is hostile to immigrants and closed off to the world.

Although Trump’s immigration order last week did not specifically ban Muslims from entering the country, it targeted majority Muslim nations, and also included an exception for religious minorities that Trump has said was intended to favor Christians rather than Muslims.

The religious favoritism embedded in the order makes clear that it is intended to bolster America’s dominant religion at the expense of another—and to reshape the demographic makeup of the country. Indeed, Trump’s own team has indicated that the initial order is likely to be a first step towards a far more consequential revision of America’s relationship with immigrants and, implicitly, the rest of the world. As the Los Angeles Times reported this week, “Trump’s top advisors on immigration, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller, see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, won’t assimilate into American society.”

Leaked drafts of two potential executive orders may provide a hint as to what the next steps in the new administration’s project could look like. One of those orders would restrict foreign worker visas not found to be in “the national interest,” and would require federal inspections of employers who rely on foreign workers, according to The Washington Post, which reported on the two draft orders yesterday. The order’s explicit purpose is to reduce the number of foreign-born workers in order to prioritize American workers.

The other would deny entry into the country for immigrants who are deemed likely to use social welfare programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. It would also move toward setting up a system in which immigrants are deported for benefiting from those programs. As Dara Lind notes at Vox, which obtained and published a similar draft order last week, immigrants could be required to reimburse the federal government for the cost of providing those benefits.

At this point it is worth stopping to remember that Trump is on record as a defender of the country’s major entitlement programs and a stern critic of those who seek to reform them. In a debate last year, he swore he would “do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is.” Around the time he launched his campaign, he criticized Republicans for wanting to cut entitlement programs, saying “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that.” Trump’s tax reform plans, meanwhile, would blow a $10 trillion hole in the budget.

The combination of Trump’s views on entitlements with the immigration orders that he has issued and the ones he appears to be considering is incredibly telling.

Trump is not concerned about runaway entitlement spending. He is not worried about the nation’s dangerous fiscal trajectory. He is not focused on reducing the federal debt, or on maintaining even a pretense of fiscal responsibility.

Instead, Trump is worried strictly about entitlement spending on immigrants. He’s worried about making sure that the benefits go to the right people—which is to say, the people who backed Donald Trump. Indeed, preserving the entitlement state, regardless of the fiscal consequences, is, like imposing new trade and border controls, central to Trump’s project, because it provides him with a way to reward favored groups and exclude outsiders.

Trump has been in office for two full weeks. Yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we now have a president a president who sees America as an isolated ethno-nationalist welfare state in which immigrants and outsiders are dangers to the culture and drains to the system. And his rush to implement his executive orders suggests that he and his administration are fully intent on turning this dark worldview into our national reality.

President Trump signed an executive order last week directing the Army Corps of Engineers to “review and approve in an expedited manner, to the extent permitted by law” the easements across federal lands necessary to complete the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). At issue is permission to finish construction of the last segment of the pipeline underneath Lake Oahe in North Dakota. Last July, the Corp completed and issued an environmental assessment (EA) with a “Finding of No Significant Impact” with regard to the construction of the pipeline beneath Lake Oahe.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe objected to the construction due to expressed concerns that an upsteam pipeline leak could contaminate their drinking and irrigation water supplies. However, the Corps’ environmental assessment specifically noted, “The tribes argue the District did not adequately consult on the DAPL pipeline alignment. The EA establishes that the District made a good faith effort to consult with the tribes and that it considered all tribal comments.” The Corps’ assessment concluded that measures adopted to mitigate any spills were adequate to protect Lake Oahe. Environmental activists opposed the construction of the pipeline in the hope that stopping it would prevent the production and burning of fossil fuels that contribute to man-made global warming.

As the fall wore on, thousands of protesters set up camp near Lake Oahe to block construction of the pipeline and to put pressure on the Obama administration to overrule the Corp’s environmental assessment. Without speculating on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Obama administration officials, it is the case that acting Assistant Director of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy issued in December a memorandum that voided the Corps’ assessment. In her memo Darcy did observe:

I want to be clear that this decision does not alter the Army’s position that the Corps’ prior reviews and actions have comported with legal requirements. Rather, my decision acknowledges and addresses that a more robust analysis can be done and should be done, under these circumstances (emphasis hers), before an easement is granted to the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River on Corps land.

Under the circumstances, Darcy then declined to approve an easement that would enable the completion of the pipeline. In addition, Darcy ordered the Corps to undertake a full-blown environmental impact statement, a process that could take as long as two years more to complete.

Now just two months later, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven has reportedly been told that Army Secretary Robert Speer will soon order the Corps to issue the easement necessary to complete the pipeline. Whether this apparent impending approval is “permitted by law” will, of course, be contested by Sioux and environmental activists in court.

Ultimately, this episode is an example of how arbitrary politically motivated bureaucratic decisions are replacing the rule of law. This should worry every American.