Tag: hit&run

The extra attention the problem of police violence has received from the political mainstream in the last two years has not really trickled down to the simpleton lawmakers that create the conditions for unnecessary police violence in the first place.

New Jersey Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt (D-Camden) introduced legislation on Monday that would criminalize distracted walking, or walking while using a non-hands-free cellphone. According to NJ.com, the bill would treat the use of a cellphone by pedestrians the same way as jaywalking, with fines of up to $50 and up to 15 days in jail.

The text of the bill, AR3503, is no longer available on the New Jersey legislature’s website and does not show up on a list of bills sponsored by Lampitt this legislative session. It is described in the database as a bill that “establishes motor vehicle offense of unlawful use of hand-held wireless telephone by pedestrians on roadways.”

In 2010, there were a total of 133 pedestrian fatalities total in New Jersey according to the New Jersey Division of Highway Trafic Safety’s 2012 Highway Safety Plan.

“If a person on the road, whether walking or driving, presents a risk to others on the road, there should be a law in place to dissuade and penalize risky behavior,” Lampitt told the local CBS affiliate.

Of course, texting and walking doesn’t present a significant risk to anyone but the person texting and walking, and it’s not the role of government to “penalize risky behavior.” It’s not just a theoretical point about government but a practical one. Every law creates an opportunity for government to use force against individuals, introducing violence into non-violent situations and increasing risk for the non-violent lawbreakers as well as the police officers ordered to enforce the laws.

Last year, another assemblywoman, Gabriela Mosquera (D- Gloucester), tried to designate September as “Distracted Walking Awareness Month” but that bill failed to get through the committee, which doesn’t leave much chance for Lampitt’s effort even in the nanny state of New Jersey.

The City Council of New York voted 44-3 to ban smokeless tobacco at all baseball parks and arenas. Yesterday’s vote will be income effective immediately upon Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signing of the bill. 

Following the lead of San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago, the Big Apple will become the fifth US city to ban the use of a product that is legal for adults to purchase and consume. And unlike cigarettes and other smoke-able forms of tobacco, the considerable health risk is confined to the user and not the people in the vicinity of the user. 

The Mets and Yankees, New York’s major league baseball franchises, are reportedly in support of the decision, though Yankees’ reliever Andrew Miller said, “From a philosophical standpoint” but that “it is what it is.” 

The New York Post quoted an anonymous Mets player as saying: 

I would like to see how they are going to enforce that…If somebody sees you chewing, will they reach over the railing and hand you a ticket when you are walking off the field?

Reason‘s Matt Welch wrote in 2010 about Congress’ efforts to push MLB to ban smokeless tobacco entirely, and last week he noted Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon’s reaction to the “City of Broad Shoulders” ban on smokeless tobacco at the ballpark:

“I’m into personal freedoms,” Maddon said Wednesday at Surprise Stadium. “I don’t quite understand the point with all that. Just eradicate tobacco, period, if you’re going to go that route. I’m not into over-legislating the human race.

“I stopped chewing tobacco about 15 years ago. I’m glad that I did, because I think I feel better because of it. I know the pitfalls. But I’m into (educating) the masses and let everybody make their own decisions.”

Smokeless tobacco is already banned in the minor leagues and the NCAA (which has a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to tobacco). And while efforts to de-glamorize the use of a product that can be deadly and is undoubtedly gross are well-intentioned, at some point, adults should be free to make their own decisions in a free society. 

• Donald Trump says he’s going to “spill the beans” on Heidi Cruz after an anti-Trump ad featured a photo of Melania Trump in the nude.
• The Department of Justice announced U.S. marshals had arrested 6,000 “violent felons” with outstanding warrants over the last six weeks in a sweep dubbed “Operation Violent Reduction 12”.
• Turkey says it warned Belgium about the Belgian national identified as one of the perpetrators of Monday’s terorr attacks, after catching him crossing into Turkey from Syria and deporting him back to Europe.
• Russia accused Ukraine of dragging its feet on implementing a ceasefire agreement.
• New York became the last state to lift a ban on mixed martial arts.
• The Denver airport is closed indefinitely due to blizzard.

Today North Carolina’s House passed a bill that would stop Charlotte from implementing an ordinance prohibiting some discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, set to take effect at the start of April.

Blame transgender bathroom panic, though the bill that is being implemented appears to actually prohibit much broader protections. Charlotte’s law prohibited discrimination in housing and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This meant that transgender people would be able to use the restrooms of their expressed sex, not necessarily their biological sex.

Religious conservatives argued again that this would lead to men posing as transgender in order to prey on women and girls in restrooms. Even though there’s no evidence this happens, enough have found the argument convincing enough to undo regulations in places like Houston, Texas.

This state bill in North Carolina does a lot more than just overturn Charlotte’s law. It does so by forbidding cities from passing many other labor regulations that may be more strict or require more of many employers than what the state requires in areas like minimum wages and benefits.

It also essentially reverses the direction of accommodation in some ways for transgender folks. It doesn’t just undo Charlotte’s law. It prohibits individuals in both school districts and public government agencies from using the bathroom of any sex other than what is listed on one’s birth certificate, the primary exception being a single stall unisex bathroom.

The legislation made available appears to only apply this rule to public agencies and schools. Private businesses appear to be able to decide on their own how (or if) to approach transgender accommodation. At least, then, companies and businesses are not in the position to have to “police” their bathrooms either way.

The North Carolina House voted 83-25 to pass the bill. It is expected to be rushed over to the state Senate for a vote today.

It’s frustrating to attempt to look at this issue from a libertarian perspective because it doesn’t really seem like either side in this particular culture war has any interest in separating government accommodation of individuals and the private sector. It ends up being all or nothing. Transgender and gay people should expect that the government accommodate their gender expression and sexual orientation and treat them the same under the law, particularly in areas like schools where attendance is mandatory. If you’re going to force transgender teens to go to your institutions, and you’re going to take money from their parents to fund it, you can very well deal with it. In the private sector, though, there’s no reason why cultural negotiation won’t work just fine to deal with the situation, particularly since in all likelihood, people aren’t even going to know when they’re sharing a bathroom with a transgender person anyway.

And while I don’t believe that it’s necessary to expand public accommodation discrimination protection laws (mostly because so much of the public has come to accommodate LGBT voluntarily on their own), it should be a concern when a state tells individual cities what sort of laws it can and cannot pass. You don’t have to agree with Charlotte’s law to worry about what it means for the ability of citizens in a municipality have their local control of decision-making thwarted by the political power of representatives of other communities. If the citizens of Charlotte object to what their city leadership has done, it should be up to them locally to correct it, which is what happened in Houston.

On Monday, the U.S. government suddenly pressed pause in its encryption battle with Apple—a case that stands to make or break a precedent for building a government “back door” into secure technologies. FBI lawyers requested that a court hearing originally scheduled for today be postponed until after April 5. The reason? An unknown “outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking [San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan] Farook’s iPhone” that would “eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple.”

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Israeli mobile forensic software provider Cellebrite was likely the firm enlisted to help the FBI. If the FBI’s version of events is correct, writes Andrea Castillo, Cellebrite contacted the FBI “out of the blue” just before the agency was heading into a difficult court case. Talk about good luck.

View this article.

A far-right anti-immigrant German politician, who had previously taken to Facebook to express his impassioned opposition to immigrants and refugees by writing things like “integration is genocide” and “the boat is full,” was reportedly rescued from a serious car accident by two Syrian asylum seekers. 

Stefan Jagsch, who recently ran for local office as a member of the National Democratic Party (NDP), suffered two broken legs and facial lacerations after his car ran off the road and into a tree last week.

According to the local fire department, two Syrian asylum-seekers happened upon the wreck, pulled Jagsch from the car, performed first aid on him and waited for an ambulance to arrive. 

Dos refugiats sirians socorren el polític neonazi de l’NPD Stefan Jagsch després d’un greu accident de trànsit http://pic.twitter.com/DGrR2FVEth

— Roger Suso (@eurosuso) March 22, 2016

The NDP has been frequently been referred to as a “neo-Nazi” party, and German chancellor Angela Merkel has called it “an anti-democratic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-constitutional party.”

The upper house of Germany’s parliament, the Bundesrat, argued before the Federal Constitutional Court that the NDP’s platform is “essentially identical” to Adolf Hilter and has asked the court to uphold a proposed ban on the party.

Though Merkel plainly reviles the NDP, which reportedly has a little more than 5,000 members and holds no seats in the German parliament, she doesn’t believe prohibiting them from the political process will stamp out racist extremism. 

The Washington Post‘s Justin Wm. Moyer quotes Merkel:

“[An NPD ban] shouldn’t give anyone the illusion that this alone would tackle the extreme right-wing enemies of democracy,” she said in 2013. “It is very important that we every day renew support for the rule of law and freedom, for courage and against bigotry and racism.”

The Guardian reports that Jagsch had marched in a “neo-Nazi” demonstration in January where participants held signs which described immigrants and refugees as “benefit-scrounging tourists” and “lawless primates,” among other un-pleasantries. 

A regional NPD official expressed his gratitude to the refugees for their “very good, human actions.”

This morning the eight justices of Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell. The case will determine whether the Little Sisters of the Poor and six other petitioners (including Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik) can object to an “accommodation” from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that they believe implicates them in sinful behavior.

The Little Sisters, as an order of Catholic nuns who run homes to care for the indigent elderly, have become the sympathetic face of the dispute. They strongly oppose an HHS rule that says they must either provide free contraception as part of their employees’ health insurance plan or fill out a form (or write a letter) notifying the government to instead require their insurer to provide the coverage “independently.”

The real issue is more foundational, however: When an American says a law or regulation infringes on his conscience, under what circumstances should he be exempted from it, and under what circumstances should he be forced to comply anyway?

It’s a tricky question to which there isn’t a fully established answer (though I’ve ruminated on the topic before). As Justice Stephen Breyer put it today, “I’m [still] trying to find the distinction between those things we do require people to do despite their religious objections and those we don’t.”

Under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, disputes like this must be adjudicated using a two-part test—but I’ve found it easier to think of it as actually involving three distinct questions:

1. Does the law “substantially burden” a person’s exercise of religion?
2. Does the law further a “compelling government interest”?
3. Does the law use the “least restrictive means” to further the compelling interest?

Going in to today’s arguments, I figured the battle would mostly be fought on the ground of that third question. Sure, the government might argue that the HHS accommodation doesn’t impose a substantial burden on the religious exercise of these employers. And sure, the petitioners might argue that making birth control available to women at no cost shouldn’t be seen as a compelling government interest. But even if the Court went against the government on the first count and against the petitioners on the second, it would still need to decide whether the government could have found less restrictive ways of accomplishing the compelling interest.

That, however, assumed a simple version of the compelling interest claim: that it’s the government’s job to ensure that all women have access to free contraception.

It turns out the government (as represented by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli) is claiming something else: that its compelling interest is not just in making sure women have access to contraception; that its compelling interest is not just in making sure the contraception is free; but that its compelling interest is in making sure the contraception is free and that its provision is “seamless”—in other words, that women don’t have to do any additional work in order to get it.

The only way for the government to insure that happens, Verrilli argued, is for the government to require the employee’s existing insurer be the one that provides the contraception coverage. Thus the need for the Little Sisters (and the other petitioners) to fill out the form or write the letter—otherwise how would the government know which insurer to force into the provision?

It might seem like a small distinction: whether the alleged compelling interest is the narrower “access to free contraception” or the broader “seamless access to free contraception.” But in fact, it’s a highly meaningful one, because there are clearly a number of less burdensome ways to accomplish the former end. For instance, the government could pay insurers to offer supplementary contraception plans for those women whose employer-provided policies don’t include it. Or, hell, the government could just provide free contraception to people itself.

But the government argues there aren’t any less burdensome ways to accomplish the latter end. As Verilli put it, “Every single one of [the alternatives] defeats the very purpose for which Congress imposed the preventive service requirement.” If a woman has to go out and find a separate plan, and perhaps a separate doctor, in order to access her free contraception, he says, “even those small barriers” should be considered unacceptable.

As Chief Justice John Roberts put it clarifyingly, Verrilli’s claim is that “the compelling interest is that employees get the services through the insurance plan that was set up by [the petitioners].…The point is that it’s the form that the services are provided in and not the services themselves.”

Does the government really have a compelling interest in making sure women can not just get free birth control but get it without so much as filling out any paperwork? Is needing to enroll in a separate plan from my employer’s—even if the supplementary plan will be paid for by the government—such an enormous obstacle to my good health as to warrant trampling the religious liberties of the Little Sisters of the Poor and others?

One of the lawyers representing the petitioners, Noel Francisco, provided some evidence that the government’s so-called “compelling interest” might not be quite as compelling as Verrilli was making it out to be: He pointed out that Congress and the Court have already exempted lots of exmployers—religious and secular—from the requirement that the insurance plans they offer their workers cover contraceptives. They’ve even allowed some insurance policies that don’t include the coverage to be “grandfathered” in under the law.

Why would the government be “compelled” to make sure the Little Sisters’ employees have this particular coverage—and that they get it in this particular way, through an insurer the Little Sisters have a contract with—but not the people who work for Hobby Lobby or the local Baptist church? “At a minimum the government needs to explain why all of those other ways are sufficient for all of those other people,” but no exemption is possible here, Francisco said. Why is the government “willing to tolerate it or look for other ways” in those cases but not this one?

Chief Justice Roberts, for his part, twice referred to what the government is trying to do as “hijacking” the contracts that the petitioners have entered into with their health insuranace providers.

The solicitor general denies that, saying employers like the Little Sisters need only fill out a form objecting to providing the coverage. The government will then “make a separate arrangement with the insurer that’s in parallel.” He claims the employer-provided plan is not the vehicle through which this “independent” contraception coverage will be delivered.

“We think it doesn’t count as a substantial burden because”—although the government is insisting the same insurer that provides the employee’s existing insurance also provide the contraception coverage—”from the perspective of the employer, it’s separate.”

But if they’re really different vehicles, and if they’re really totally separate, one wonders what it is that makes the provision “seamless,” as Verrilli says it must be.

When Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he’d be delivering a speech today on “the state of American politics,” many assumed that he’d be making a statement in opposition to Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican party’s presidential nomination.  

The remarks would come just days after New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sharply criticized Ryan’s response to the Trump campaign so far, saying that “faced with a potentially-existential threat to his vision of conservatism (not to mention his House majority), Ryan’s answer is first, change nothing; second, do nothing.”

The framing of the announcement raised expectations that Ryan, who has made several speeches indirectly criticizing Trumpish behavior but has also indicated that he would back the candidate if he became the party’s presidential nominee, might finally address Trump directly. Which, of course, would be a big deal given that Ryan is, in addition to being the Speaker of the House, arguably the institutional voice of the party right now, its chief spokesperson and visionary.

But Ryan did no such thing. He didn’t mention Trump by name at all, and he didn’t raise many of the biggest concerns people have about Trump and his campaign. Instead, he waxed nostalgic about his political mentor, Jack Kemp and issued a nonspecific call for greater civility in politics. Trump’s campaign loomed over the speech, but Ryan seemed determine not to take it on in anyway—even indirectly. If anything, Ryan’s speech today offered even less in the way of resistance to Trump and his ideas than previous remarks.

Earlier this month, following Trump’s initial refusal to disavow the support of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist leader David Duke, Ryan gave a forceful speech in which he said that he’d call out objectionable behavior when he saw it.

“When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and as a country,” he said, “I will speak up. So today I want to be very clear about something. If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln.”

That’s an admirable sentiment, and it’s clear enough who and what it’s directed at. But then, as today, Ryan didn’t atually name Trump, choosing to criticize Trump-like behavior generally rather than go after Trump himself. And when asked whether he’d support Trump as the nominee, Ryan said yes. In follow ups, he’s stuck with that line, saying that he has to “respect the primary voter.”

Here’s what that ends  Trump’s campaign rallies have become increasingly marked by physical unrest, and Trump has rationalized violence committed by his supporters, saying it’s “appropriate” and that “we need more of it.” He has on multiple occasions suggested he might pay the legal bills for supporters who commit violence at his rallies, and then lied and claimed he never did. He’s said he believes that a brokered Republican convention this summer would result in riots. He’s also issued gone after his rival Ted Cruz’s wife, issuing a vague threat to “spill the beans” on her after accusing Cruz of backing an ad that was produced by an outside anti-Trump group.

And, at the same time, Trump has continued to blatantly lie about everything from his own business record to the state of the economy to his own half-baked policy positions, while proving that he has neither the temperament nor the basic knowledge that required to be president. In practice, supporting the nominee if it’s Trump means potentially supporting all of the above.

Yet in his speech today, Ryan barely touched on any of this. He called for a kinder, gentler tone in politics, said that debate was preferable to disorder, and urged politicians to be more specific in their policy proposals. But he didn’t mention Trump’s rallies, or his ostentatious fabrications, or his campaign’s telling mix of petty personal bullying and authoritarian bluster. Instead, Ryan gently called for everyone to generally be nicer and more upbeat and a little more specific about policy. He described the world he’d like to see, rather than attempting to grapple with the world that exists 

That’s fine, I suppose, but it does little to meaningfully address the Trump-poisoned state of American politics, or of Ryan’s own party. And in combination with its overt Kemp-nostalgia, it suggests that Ryan, and much of the party he represents, will continue to, well, do nothing and change nothing in response to Trump’s campaign. 

The only other way to interpret Ryan’s speech today is that he sees nothing from Trump that, to borrow Ryan’s own words, runs counter to the character of the Republican party or the nation, that he believes Trump has done nothing that merits speaking up about specifically and directly, by name, with no evasion and no games. I don’t believe that’s the case, but if it is, then that reveals more about the state of American politics today than anything Ryan actually said.

Regardless, Ryan’s speech today constituted a kind of tacit acceptance of the GOP frontrunner’s campaign, which it ultimately serves to enable. And in doing so, Ryan is, at least inadvertently, rapidly paving the way for the party of Lincoln to become the party of Trump.

If there is a cross that Indian Americans (along with Chinese and other Asians) have to bear in America, it is one of being a god damn model minority. Yet some conservatives are increasingly declaring Camp of Saints, a nativist dystopia penned by French novelist Jean Raspail, that depicts Indians as leprous and lecherous savages who’ll destroy Western civilization, as “prescient.”

But Raspail’s vile description of Indians is not the only thing that’s wrong with this book. Its fundamental premise—that fast-breeding non-Western races will obliterate Western civilization because liberalism has rendered the West defenseless against unarmed foreign “invaders”—is even more rotten, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia.

So if conservatives want to raise worries about assimilation, she notes, they need to do so without referring to this odious tract. This book has nothing to do with assimilation and everything to do with maintaining Western racial and cultural purity, which is why it is a perennial cult classic among white supremacists.

View this article.

New Jersey is a terrible place to try to own or use a gun. Or even to have one on your person in a public place while shooting a movie. Even if it’s an air powered pellet gun.

This is a lesson learned by Carlo Bellario, who was caught holding a CO2 air pellet gun while portraying a bodyguard for a drug dealer while filming a small indie flick called Vendetta Games.

The 48-year-old Bellario is bravely, if possibly foolishly, not willing to plea out to any punishment for “weapons possession” for this objectively innocent act no matter the letter of that crazy state’s crazy gun laws, reports NJ.com. 

He could have plead out for three years in prison, but is opting for trial instead. (He’s got a GoFundMe going for his court costs.)

This is especially risky as he could end up with an additional ten years tacked on because of certain prior convictions the actor and comedian has on his record, including credit card theft and burglary.

The gun was, according to previous NJ.com reports from before Bellario was officially indicted for his “crime,” was a CO2 air pellet gun, which is treated like any other firearm under Jersey law. He did not fire it, merely had it in his waistband. Neighbors disturbed or alarmed by the unpermitted film shoot called the cops, who showed up and arrested him for possessing the weapon.

Superior Court Judge Alberto Rivas sternly warned Bellario that:

“you know what’s at stake here. You’re going for the long haul. You lose, (and) you’ll end up in state prison — for an extended period of time. Especially if you have a record. Flat time, three years, you’re out in less than a year — (and) you may be eligible for intensive supervision.”….

“You could be out in six months,” Rivas said alluringly. “And that’s what you are potentially rejecting today. But, it’s your call. It’s your decision. You’re the one who has to live with all the consequences for your decision.”

He continued, “He get’s to go home, he get’s to go home; you’re the only one who doesn’t know if he gets to go home. You can live with that?”

Bellario insists he thought the gun was just a prop gun, not real, and that the film director had a permit for it. Since he considers his behavior perfectly innocent, he was not inclined to just give up and put himself behind bars for it.

State Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Union) told the paper that “Common sense dictates that this guy should not be facing prison.” Brannick would like to get a state law passed that would “give prosecutors more discretion with gun charges if it were determined that there was a lack of criminal intent.”

From November 2014 the saga of Brian Aitken, another innocent man falling afoul of Jersey’s insane gun laws.

And a vast collection of Reason stories of New Jersey gun law enforcement.