Tag: hit&run

Earlier this year Uruguay
became the first country in the world to legalize marijuana,
setting up regulations largely far stricter than those in Colorado
and Washington, where marijuana was also legalized. Uruguay’s
regulations placed limits on how much marijuana could be bought and
where and required registration for marijuana users.

Just 378 people registered as of last month, and why would there
be more? Uruguay’s president, Jose Mujica, who supported
legalization even while warning of the illness marijuana use can
lead to, is nevertheless term-limited.

The front runner to succeed him, cancer doctor Tabare Vazquez,
also his predecessor, is excited about
using the registry to “better know who uses drugs and be able
to intervene earlier to rehabilitate that person.”

Meanwhile, the other candidate, center-right Luis Lacalle Pou,
is opposed to legalization. Uruguay’s marijuana legalization
experiment may not last much longer than Mujica’s term.

Some gay men and lesbians want to get
married as a public confirmation of their commitment to one
another. There are also the legal advantages afforded married
couples, such as inheritance tax benefits and hospital visitation
rights. Now the Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld has
identified another big advantage: relationship stability.
Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey parses the data
from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey to find that
marriage is the glue that keeps couples, both straight and gay,
stuck equally together.

View this article.

Common Core is still making
parents everywhere
pull their hair out as they struggle to help their kids solve
Byzantine math problems.
Silive.com profiled some very frustrated parents who believe
their kids are essentially being used as “guinea pigs” by
government and corporate interests in service of an unproven
teaching methodology:

Ten-year-old Kate Reilly, a fifth-grader at PS 55 in
Eltingville, was doing math homework, seated around the kitchen
table with her younger sister, Emma, a second-grader at PS 55, and
older brother, John, who attends Bernstein Intermediate School,
Huguenot.

One of her math problems called for dividing 84 by 7. Looking
over her shoulder, watching her jot down pre-alegbriac equations as
she successfully solved the problem, her dad, Michael Reilly, just
shook his head.

“This is just ridiculous. 84 divided by 7. Why are we making
this harder than it has to be? ” he wondered.

Frustrated, Reilly posted a photo of the problem to his Facebook
page. Within minutes it drew close to 200 comments from equally
frustrated, puzzled parents.

Reilly isn’t just any parent; he is also president of the Staten
Island Community Education Council and frequently hears from other
parents who are fed up with Core-aligned methodology and
requirements.

Just because a certain way of learning is confusing for parents
doesn’t make it inherently bad, of course. It’s perfectly possible
for educators to invent an approach that makes math easier for
kids, even if older generations don’t get it.

But it’s hard to believe that that’s what is happening here,
since many teachers and students seem just as hopelessly lost as
parents. Misaligned tests, improper training for teachers, and
Common Core’s uncertain political future are all factors adding to
the confusion. And even if the standards eventually catch on and
have a positive impact on American education—and
the evidence there is underwhelming—the kids caught in the
transition years will have been undeniably ill-served. It’s no
wonder that some students resent being
forced to serve as conscripted product testers for Core-aligned
examinations.

More from Reason on Common Core
here.

I
know, I know! SOME males? Who are the other guys who get a
bigger
dopamine rush from calories than from orgasm? Well, it turns
out that the research was done on modified nematode worms that were
given a choice between food and sex. As Genome News

reports:

Researchers from the University of Rochester say they have shown
that male brains—at least in nematodes—will suppress the ability to
locate food in order to instead focus on finding a mate. Their
study (“Sex, Age, and Hunger Regulate Behavioral Prioritization
through Dynamic Modulation of Chemoreceptor Expression”), which
appears in Current Biology, may point to how subtle
changes in the brain’s circuitry dictate differences in behavior
between males and females.

In 2012, Glamour
reported the results of a match.com poll which asked women and
men: Would you rather give up your favorite food or sex for a year?
The results were:

According to MSNBC.com, 1 in 3 single women say that if there
was a toss up between food and sex, food would win! And though it
makes more—but not total—sense to me that if you’re not having sex
anyway (considering you’re solo), then food might take
priority, there were also plenty of people in committed
relationships—28 percent to be exact—that would forgo an orgasm for their
best-loved dish. Guys, on the other hand, were less gung-ho. Only
16 percent said yea to food over sex. And, in case you’re
wondering, the food most favored was chocolate (26 percent). Next
in line was steak and pizza.

Whatever the differences between males and females with regard
to food and sex, remember “yes
means yes” and “no means no.”

MuckRock, a site dedicated to making Freedom of
Information requests, has
released a massive document detailing every single piece of
military-grade equipment owned by police departments throughout New
York.

Here’s a map of it all:

Some of the findings:

The village of Quogue on Long Island’s south shore boasts fewer
than 1,000 residents, but last month its police department received
two surplus military trucks worth a combined $150,000.

Since enrolling in the same program in 2012, police in Albion, a
village of 6,000 near the Canada border, have added a bomb robot
and two Humvees to inventory. …

Since enrolling in 1995, the NYPD has obtained four armored
trucks valued at $65,000 each and two former artillery vehicles
known as mortar carriers valued at more than $200,000 each. The
NYPD received one such heavily armored vehicle in June 2012.

The New York State Police received two cargo planes, one in 1996
and another in 2010, together valued at $2.8 million, as well as a
$900,000 helicopter in 2013.

The New York State Park Police also obtained a dozen M-14 rifles
and two military trucks.

University police at three State University of New York campuses
have received equipment through the 1033 program: police at
Morrisville, Oneonta and Old Westbury each obtained one Humvee and
three assault rifles since 2011.

The law enforcement division within the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation received 68 M-16 rifles,
all in May 2012. …

Combined, New York law enforcement agencies have received nearly
300 assault rifles via the program, plus three fully tracked
armored vehicles, two cargo planes, six helicopters, eight bomb
robots and more than 150 military trucks and Humvees.

The document, released by the New York State Division of
Criminal Justice Services, is a treasure trove of information that
deserves a close inspection from taxpayers curious why the Police
Department of Southampton, a town 26 feet above sea level, needs
climbing boots. Or a camera apparently with pictures already on
it.

There’s a lot more
eyebrow-raising equipment that one wouldn’t think of as
conventional military gear. Suffolk County police got 20
televisions. Nassau County received a coffee maker worth nearly
$800. The Rye Police Department got $2,500 exercise bike.

More than 120 departments in the state have received some 6,221
items worth $28,082,595.11.

Late last year when Albany County got a mine-resistant
ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP), an 18-ton behemoth designed for
asymmetrical warfare in Iraq, Sheriff Craig Apple praised
the vehicle for being “intimidating.” In nearby Warren County,
Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree, who also got an MRAP, stated that his
department needed one because “it’s very common for people to have
high-powered hunting rifles.”

All this equipment comes from the
Defense Department’s 1033 Program, which offers domestic law
enforcement surplus military gear,
like grenade launchers, for the price of shipping. Since 2006,
cops nationwide have received some 80,000
rifles, 12,000 bayonets, $3.6 million worth of camouflage, and
much more. In total, the program has transferred over $5
billion worth of equipment.

Police have participated in a number of high-profile shootings
and aggressive crowd control with military equipment, and since the
death of Michael Brown and the subsequent treatment of protesters
in Ferguson, Missouri, the president has called for a review of the
1033 Program, and Congress is considering how to better “monitor
and hold accountable” cops with MRAPs, grenade launchers, and other
sophisticated gear. 

Gun-control efforts often center on hardware,
such as limiting or banning the ownership of particular firearms
and ammunition. But in California this year, the most
significant new gun-related law is less about the guns and
more about identifying people who might be too dangerous to own
them. A.B. 1014, which goes into effect Jan. 1,
2016, creates a Gun Violence Restraining Order that allows
people who suspect a family member is mentally unstable or
dangerous to get a court order forbidding that person from owning
weaponry and ammo. Steven Greenhut says the main problem critics
have with the new law involves due process. A gun owner may be
deprived of a constitutional right for a year based on the claims
of even distant relatives and using a lower “reasonable” standard
rather than the “clear and convincing” standard. 

View this article.

You
can trace the progression of America’s terrors by paying attention
to what the authorities decide to warn parents about at Halloween.
The old standby, of course, is that strangers poison kids’ candy
and re-wrap it with the precision of Christo. (By the way, this
has never
happened.)

This year, that fear has been joined by another one: candy will
be laced with pot! For instance, reports
KCCI, the Knoxville,
Iowa Police department is warning its 7,313 citizens
that:

This Halloween it is more important than ever for
parents to inspect the candy their children receive before allowing
any of it to be eaten. The Mid Iowa Narcotics Enforcement Task
Force has recovered marijuana laced candy and brownies in our area
that were commercially prepared and sold in Colorado that were then
illegally brought to Iowa. These items were packaged professionally
and would be easy to mistake as regular candy.

Yeah, as if any potheads wanted to part with their $5-apiece lollipops just to
watch some little witch wail on her candy and pass out on her
Frozen blanket. The department pleads:

Parents – please make certain your children know not to eat any
candy until you inspect it. You can minimize risk by only allowing
your ghouls and goblins to go to the homes of people you know.

But how can you minimize a risk that is already
incredibly small? It’s like saying, “Parents, remember to
inspect your children’s pillows for tarantulas.” Sure, you
can do that. But you’re not really making your kids a
whole lot safer.

And if the problem is
that pot candy looks identical to stone cold sober candy—which is
what the
Denver police are warning (with perhaps a bit more
reasonable concern)—how are parents going to be able to identify
it, anyway? Perhaps they are going to use that old parental
standby, “I’ll eat this for you, kid”?

Maybe it’s time to just calm down and assume that potheads are
like the rest of us: They keep the really good stuff for
themselves.

Neither of the leading
candidates in Colorado’s gubernatorial race supports legal pot in
their state. The Democratic incumbent, John Hickenlooper, said the
2012 vote that allowed recreational pot was “reckless” (it passed
with 55 percent of the vote). His Republican challenger, former
congressman Bob Beauprez, says “we are at that point” where it
should be recriminalized.

They’re part of the growing anti-pot backlash that is seeking to
stamp out not recreational pot in Colorado and Washington but
medical marijuana in the many states that allow it.

And yet by virtually any measure, legal pot in Colorado has been
a success: Crime, especially murder, is down in the Denver area,
where most legal pot is sold. Automobile fatalites are down
statewide. Tax revenues, while lower than originally estimated, are
growing every month and will kick in up to $70 millin new dollars
to various jurisdictions. There isn’t data yet for this year, but
the rate of pot use among teenagers in Colorado was lower in 2013
than in 2001, when the state introduced medical marijuana.

Hickenlooper and Beauprez may be fishing for votes that don’t
exist—one recent poll shows that just 42 percent of Coloradoans
iike legalization while another recent poll shows 55 percent still
favor it—or they may just be stuck in  an old
mind-set.

Either way, I argue in a
new Time column, legal pot is only going to become
more widespread. That’s despite alarmists such as Patrick Kennedy
of the anti-pot group Project SAM and the endless stream of
invective against legal weed. We’ve grown up as a country and are
now ready to add pot to our list of legal intoxicants. That’s a
victory (a big one) for freedom and the 750,000 people a year who
get arrested for pot.

This much seems certain: In a world where adults can openly buy
real pot, you’re also less likely to read stories headlined
“More
People Hospitalized by Bad Batch of Synthetic Marijuana.” And
support for legalization isn’t fading. The market research firm
Civic Science finds that 58% of
Americans support laws that “would legalize, tax, and regulate
marijuana like alcohol.”

That figure obviously doesn’t include either candidate for
governor of Colorado. But just like the rest of the country,
whoever wins that race will have to learn to live with pot being
legal, crime being down, traffic fatalities declining and fewer
teens lighting up.

Read the whole Time col.

I debated Kennedy about legalization in CNN earlier this year.
Watch below:

The London-based Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has been working to identify those who
have been killed in Pakistan by American drone strikes and any
groups with whom they were affiliated. The latest news from their
project, titled “Naming the Dead,” is that only four percent of the
2,379 people killed in 400 drone strikes in the country since 2004
can be identified as al Qaeda. That’s just 84 people. Another 295
were identified as other “militants,” and even that designation
might be a
little iffy:

Only 704 of the 2,379 dead have been identified, and only 295 of
these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. Few
corroborating details were available for those who were just
described as militants. More than a third of them were not
designated a rank, and almost 30% are not even linked to a specific
group. Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda – less than 4%
of the total number of people killed.

These findings “demonstrate the continuing complete lack of
transparency surrounding US drone operations,” said Mustafa Qadri,
Pakistan researcher for Amnesty International.

When asked for a comment on the Bureau’s investigation, US
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that
strikes were only carried out when there was “near-certainty” that
no civilians would be killed.

“The death of innocent civilians is something that the U.S.
Government seeks to avoid if at all possible. In those rare
instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed
or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine
why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to
minimise such risk to non-combatants in the future,” said
Hayden.

The report notes that the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force (AUMF) doesn’t specifically say the president is authorized
only to strike members of al Qaeda and the Taliban, but rather
against those who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s a
bit problematic to argue these strikes are covered:

The CIA itself does not seem to know the affiliation of everyone
they kill. Secret CIA documents recording the identity, rank and
affiliation of people targeted and killed in strikes between 2006
to 2008 and 2010 to 2011 were leaked to the McClatchy news agency
in April 2013. They identified hundreds of those killed as simply
Afghan or Pakistani fighters, or as “unknown”.

Determining the affiliation even of those deemed to be “Taliban”
is problematic. The movement has two branches: one, the Afghan
Taliban, is fighting US and allied forces, and trying to
re-establish the ousted Taliban government of Mullah Omar in Kabul.
The other, the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP, is mainly focused on
toppling the Pakistani state, putting an end to democracy and
establishing a theocracy based on extreme ideology. Although the US
did not designate the TTP as a foreign terrorist organisation until
September 2010, the group and its precursors are known to have
worked with the Afghan Taliban.

According to media reports, the choice of targets has not always
reflected the priorities of the US alone. In April last year the
McClatchy news agency reported the US used its drones to kill
militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas in exchange for Pakistani help
in targeting al Qaeda members.

Early last summer NBC reporters got their hands on a classified
document that showed the United States often
doesn’t know who it is killing in Pakistan or what their
militant affiliations were. At the time, I thought the revelations
would be a big deal. But that very same day was when the very first
story about
domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA)
dropped, thanks to a leaker that had not yet been identified as
Edward Snowden. And the rest was history.

Below, ReasonTV explains why the United States’ policy on drone
strikes is pretty scary:

Should Republicans and conservatives be blaming
President Obama for the government’s handling of Ebola? Plenty of
them are, but that might not be a good idea,
says Philip Klein of
The Washington Examiner—at least not for those who would
generally prefer a smaller and less activist
government. Klein, citing National Affairs
editor Yuval Levin, argues that pinning the blame on President
Obama lends credence to the idea that the president should be at
the center of all national issues: 

Though there are fair criticisms of the CDC’s handling of Ebola,
by giving into the temptation to point fingers at Obama,
Republicans run the risk of reinforcing the idea that any crisis or
perceived crisis can be handled if only there were a better person
in charge. And this could cut against many of the arguments that
conservatives usually make about the inherent problems with federal
bureaucracies.

Reacting to criticism of the handling of Ebola, Yuval
Levin noted
in a post over at National Review, “The attitude is
premised on the bizarre assumption that large institutions are
hyper-competent by default, so that when they fail we should seek
for nefarious causes. Not only liberals (who are at least pretty
consistent about making this ridiculous mistake) but also some
conservatives who should know better respond with a mix of outrage
and disgust to failures of government to contend effortlessly with
daunting emergencies. But do we really expect (or even want) our
government to have the power and ability to smooth all of life’s
edges and be ready in an instant to address the consequences of,
say, a major hurricane or massive oil spill or deadly disease
outbreak? What do we think that government would be doing with that
power the rest of the time?”

One of the fundamental failures of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign
was that he didn’t make a coherent, overarching, philosophical
argument against big government. The impression Romney gave was
that large federal institutions weren’t necessarily innately
flawed, but merely mismanaged. If only Americans elected Romney —
the turnaround whiz who built businesses — to “run” the country,
those institutions would perform well.

I think criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) is basically 
fair, especially in light of some of its admitted mistakes and
recent history of safety problems. The once-respected agency has
taken a huge hit in public opinion recently, dropping from 60
percent public confidence in March of last year to 37 percent now.
That’s not unreasonable. The CDC should be doing a better job at
this, its core mission.  

But Klein makes a good point about criticism directed at
President Obama. What can Obama, himself, really do? I suppose he
can appoint (yet another) Ebola czar, but is yet another high-level
federal issue-czar really what supporters of limited government
should want? Most of the direct action in treating and preventing
Ebola happens at the local level, with local authories and health
providers making crucial calls. The administration can provide
those local authorities with the flexibility and resources they
need, but otherwise, especially at this stage, the best option is
probably to stay out of the way. 

A lot of the Republican calls for action, in contrast, have
taken the opposite approach: We’ve seen Republicans
call for travel bans to and from West Africa, and for
massive efforts to tighten security at international entry
points. GOP politicians helped
lead calls for the installation of a
new czar (despite opposing other czar appointments in the
past). It’s all just playing into the idea that if there’s a
problem, it needs to be a national emergency, possibly a panic, and
the president needs to fix it.