Tag: in-the-news

Trump Uses Clemency To Help Drug War Victims, Reward GOP Donors, and Spite James Comey

President Donald Trump granted clemency to 11 individuals on Tuesday, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was serving a 14-year prison sentence for a variety of political crimes including a scheme to sell an appointment to the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

While much of the media coverage focused on Blagojevich and some of the other high-profile names on Trump’s clemency list (more on that in a moment), there are others whose names you don’t know but probably should.

People like Crystal Munoz, who spent the past 12 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. Munoz was convicted in 2007 of assisting a marijuana smuggling operation because she drew a map of a dirt road near Big Bend National Park in Texas. That map was used by drug smugglers, and the Drug Enforcement Administration eventually traced it back to Munoz, who got a 19-year prison sentence despite the fact that she never possessed or sold any of the drugs.

Nothing about Munoz’s case suggests that the 40-year-old mother of two girls is a danger to society who needs to be kept in a cage—she’s just another person in an endless line of drug war victims. Thankfully, Trump’s clemency order will allow her to return to her family.

People like Munoz are “are the forgotten majority of the country’s crisis in mass incarceration, a crisis that disproportionately impacts lower-income communities and communities of color, and they are every bit as deserving of a second chance,” said Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network, a criminal justice reform nonprofit that advocated for Munoz’s release. In a statement, Harris said she hopes Trump will “use this executive power to grant more commutations and clemencies in due course for any of the thousands of deserving individuals who are neither rich, nor famous, nor connected.”

Being rich and famous does seem to help, though. Blagojevich, a former contestant on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice, seems to have ended up on Trump’s radar after Patricia Blagojevich made several appearances on Fox News to plead for her husband’s release. Trump also granted a full pardon to Michael Milken, a financier who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after being convicted by then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani is now Trump’s personal attorney and Milken is a top Republican donor who reportedly watched the 2018 election results at the White House. Another pardon went to Paul Pogue, the owner of a Texas construction company who spent three years in prison for filing a false tax return. Pogue has also donated hefty sums to the Trump campaign.

While some of yesterday’s clemency recipients were forgotten people, Trump is clearly using his power to settle some political scores too.

FREE MINDS

China ousted three Wall Street Journal reporters in retribution for what the Chinese government said were racially discriminatory and slanderous opinion pieces. In a column published on February 3, Journal opinion writer Walter Russell Mead referred to China as “the real sick man of Asia”—a phrase with historical connotations unflattering to China.

Three journalists booted from the country work for the Journal‘s news-gathering operation, not its opinion section. Recognizing that distinction, however, would first require a healthy respect for a free press—something that China’s government seems uninterested in cultivating.

FREE MARKETS

“Rich places are getting richer, but economic activity isn’t becoming more concentrated in a few dominant places. In fact, economic activity—as measured by total income—is less concentrated in a handful of top metro areas today than it has been during most of the past half-century,” reports The New York Times in a deep dive into population and economic growth.

Despite the perception that economic growth is clustering in a few megacities, the real concentration is taking place in mid-sized-to-large cities, the Times reports. The share of economic activity taking place in America’s five largest cities has actually declined in recent decades, but the share of activity taking place in metro areas ranked 11th through 50th has grown.

In general, places are either getting bigger but not richer (like Las Vegas and Phoenix), or richer but not bigger (like the Connecticut suburbs of New York City). The places that are growing their wealth and their population are more like Austin, Texas, rather than San Francisco or New York.

ELECTION 2020

Tonight’s Nevada primary debate will be the first to include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has blasted into second place in some polls after an expensive advertising blitz. He’s not likely to get a warm welcome from his fellow candidates, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), in particular, is ready to go on the attack.

There will be plenty of fodder for the anti-Bloomberg crowd. Expect his longstanding support for (and explicitly racist defense of) stop-and-frisk policing to be a factor. And his track record of making demeaning comments about women. And the fact that, as recently as last year, he was caught on tape referring to transgender individuals as “a man wearing a dress.” Indeed, if there is any political capital left in the so-called “woke primary,” Bloomberg can expect to be on the receiving end of all of it.

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The FBI’s Sloppy FISA Surveillance Is Exposed

In December, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Justice Department released a highly anticipated report on the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia connection. The findings shared by Inspector General Michael Horowitz didn’t tell us anything new about President Donald Trump’s campaign, but they did reveal some rotten practices at the FBI and a major media blindspot.

Most outlets focused on the OIG’s failure to turn up evidence that the FBI launched its investigation into Trump and Russia in order to help Hillary Clinton or to undermine his presidency, as Trump has long alleged. Many of those same outlets acted as if nothing else in the OIG report mattered. A CNN article, for instance, called the Russia probe “legal and unbiased” before conceding that a “low-level FBI lawyer” made “serious mistakes.” CNN and MSNBC anchors also invited former and current bureau leaders to come on TV and claim vindication. Yet the FBI’s malfeasance is a lot scarier and more complicated than a single lawyer’s mistakes.

Inspector General Horowitz found 17 “serious performance failures” relating to warrants obtained by the FBI through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts for the purposes of monitoring Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FISA warrant, which was reauthorized three times, contained false and misleading information about Page: It omitted that he had previously disclosed his Russian contacts to a government agency; it overstated the government’s confidence in the infamous Christopher Steele dossier and ignored Steele’s own doubts about one of his sources; it declined to mention that Page had said he and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had “literally never met”; and in general it ignored information that undermined the theory that Page was a Russian asset.

“When the Justice Department’s Inspector General finds significant concerns regarding flawed surveillance applications concerning the president’s campaign advisors, it is clear that this regime lacks basic safeguards and is in need of serious reform,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, in a statement. “The system requires fundamental reforms, and Congress can start by providing defendants subjected to FISA surveillance the opportunity to review the government’s secret submissions.”

Trump and his supporters were mistaken to attribute to malicious conspiracy what is better explained by bureaucratic incompetence, but the latter is not necessarily less dangerous. The OIG gave America its most intimate glimpse ever of the FBI’s internal workings. What it revealed doesn’t bode well for liberty.

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Brickbat: Now, Who Was Misbehaving?

In Florida, officials at Love Grove Elementary School had Martina Falk’s 6-year-old daughter Nadia involuntarily committed to a mental institution for two days for an evaluation after the girl allegedly threw a tantrum at school and threw chairs. Body camera footage shows the two deputies called to transport the child were skeptical about the assignment and that the girl was well behaved and chatty with them, with one of the deputies even calling her “very pleasant” and questioning whether school employees were provoking the child. That didn’t stop them from taking her to the mental health facility.

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The Socialist Delusions of Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders leads the race for the Democratic nomination.

He may become America’s first self-described “democratic socialist” president.

What does that mean?

Today, when Sanders talks about socialism, he says: “I’m not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden.”

But Denmark and Sweden are not socialist. Denmark’s prime minister even came to America to refute Sanders’ claims, pointing out that “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.”

Both Denmark and Sweden do give citizens government-run health care and have bigger welfare programs than America has. However,  recently, they’ve moved away from socialism. Because their socialist policies killed economic growth, they cut regulations and ended government control of many industries.

Sanders probably doesn’t know that. He, like many young people, just loves the idea of socialism.

For my new video this week, Stossel TV producer Maxim Lott went through hours of Sanders’ old speeches. What he found reveals a lot about what Sanders believes.

When Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he went out of his way to defend Fidel Castro. “He educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society!” Fortunately, Sanders added, “Not to say Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect.”

No, they are not perfect. Castro’s government tortured and murdered thousands. By confiscating private property, they destroyed the island’s economy. Life got bad enough that thousands died trying to escape.

Even now in Cuba, most people try to live on less than $2 a day

Sanders focuses on other things, like: “They did a lot to eliminate illiteracy!”

Sanders has long had a soft spot for socialist countries. He chose to honeymoon in Communist Russia, where he said people “seem reasonably happy and content.” He was “extremely impressed by their public transportation system…[the] cleanest, most effective mass transit system I’ve ever seen in my life!”

He praised Soviet youth programs: “Cultural programs go far beyond what we do in this country.”

He did at least qualify his support, calling the Soviet government “authoritarian.”

But Sanders made no such criticism after Nicaragua’s socialist revolution. He praised the Sandinistas’ land “reform” because they were “giving, for the first time in their lives, real land to farmers so that they can have something that they grow. Nobody denies that they are making significant progress.”

Former landowners sure denied it. They’d had their land stolen. Sanders suggested that was OK because landowners are rich.

“Rich people, who used to have a good life there, are not terribly happy,” he said. “As a socialist, the word socialism does not frighten me… (P)oor people respect that.”

What about the hunger and poverty that socialism creates? Bernie had an odd take on that.

“American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve.”

After he said he was “impressed” by Sandinista leaders, Sanders added, “Obviously I will be attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a dumb dupe.”

I join them.

Bernie Sanders is indeed a “dumb dupe” about economics. Or as the Soviet Communists used to put it, “a useful idiot.”

Under Ortega’s rule, Nicaragua quickly fell further into poverty, and the socialists were voted out in 1990. Ortega later returned as a violent dictator. For most people in Nicaragua, Cuba, and other centrally planned economies, life is hell.

Once Sanders was elected to Congress, he mostly stopped praising violent socialist revolutions.

At that time, Communist governments in Europe were collapsing. It was convenient for embarrassed former supporters of those governments to rebrand themselves.

In Congress, Sanders would call himself an independent and, in the estimation of his fellow Vermonter, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, he “votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time.”

But Sanders has never taken back the enthusiastic praise he gave to socialist regimes.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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Bloomberg’s Constitutionally Oblivious Gun Battles

Michael Bloomberg has been taking flak from progressives lately because of his longstanding, enthusiastic support for New York City’s “stop, question, and frisk” (SQF) program, a position he renounced just a week before he officially entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The former mayor’s support for stricter gun control laws, by contrast, is not very controversial among Democratic voters, although it reflects the same troubling readiness to sacrifice civil liberties on the altar of public safety.

During Bloomberg’s administration, the annual number of SQF encounters septupled, from fewer than 100,000 in 2002 to more than 685,000 in 2011. Nearly nine times out of 10, the pedestrians stopped, questioned, and frisked by police were black or Hispanic.

SQF’s racially disproportionate impact has always been one of the main objections to it. Until recently, Bloomberg argued that the strategy’s purported effectiveness in reducing gun violence justified the burden it imposed on young black and Hispanic men.

Now Bloomberg says he was wrong to credit SQF with reducing New York’s homicide rate, which continued to fall as the number of stops plummeted after 2011. He also wants Democrats to believe he has finally taken to heart the complaints of innocent people hassled by police for no good reason—complaints that in 2013 led a federal judge to conclude that SQF violated both the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Bloomberg never offered a credible defense of SQF’s constitutionality. To the contrary, he implicitly admitted that New York police officers were routinely flouting the Fourth Amendment.

The main point of stopping and searching pedestrians, Bloomberg said, was not seizing illegal guns (which police almost never found) but deterring young men from carrying them. According to the Supreme Court, that is not a constitutionally permissible aim, since police may detain someone only if they reasonably suspect he is engaged in criminal activity and may pat him down only if they reasonably suspect he is armed.

Bloomberg overlooked such niceties, he says, because “I was totally focused on saving lives.” The same tunnel vision is apparent in his gun control platform.

Bloomberg wants the federal government and all 50 states to enact “red flag” laws that suspend people’s Second Amendment rights when they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. Such laws raise serious due process concerns, including vague standards, a lack of legal representation for respondents, and the automatic issuance of ex parte orders that deprive people of their constitutional rights without giving them a chance to rebut the allegations against them.

Bloomberg wants to ban so-called assault weapons, an arbitrarily defined category that includes some of the most popular rifles sold in the United States. Yet the Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment protects the right to own firearms “in common use” for “lawful purposes,” a description that clearly applies to the guns Bloomberg considers intolerable.

Bloomberg wants to require “background checks for all gun sales,” a policy aimed at enforcing legal restrictions on gun ownership that have little or nothing to do with public safety. If the system he favors works as intended, it will unjustly and irrationally stop millions of harmless people—including cannabis consumers and people who committed nonviolent drug felonies or underwent involuntary treatment for suicidal impulses decades ago—from exercising the constitutional right to armed self-defense.

Bloomberg wants to create a federal “permit” for gun purchases, which is constitutionally analogous to requiring that people get the government’s permission before they buy books, express their opinions online, or start a prayer group. Such permits would be a vehicle for enforcing the current rules, the new ones Bloomberg favors, and whatever restrictions politicians dream up in the future.

As with SQF, Bloomberg simply assumes these policies will reduce gun violence, and he does not even consider whether they are constitutional. To him, that question is irrelevant when you are “totally focused on saving lives.”

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Wiretapping the Pope

In breaking news from 1995, the Washington Post takes advantage of a leaked CIA history paper to retell the remarkable tale (first published in the mid-90s) of Crypto AG, a purveyor of encryption products to dozens of governments – and allegedly a wholly controlled subsidiary of US and German intelligence. Nick Weaver, Paul Rosenzweig, and I are astonished at the derring-do and unapologetic enthusiasm for intelligence collection that the story displays. I mean, really: The Pope?

This week’s interview is with Jonathan Reiber, a writer and strategist in Oakland, California, and former Chief Strategy Officer for Cyber Policy and Speechwriter at the Department of Defense, currently senior advisor at Technology for Global Security and visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. His recent report offers a candid view of strained relations between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon. The interview explores the reasons for that strain, the importance of bridging the gap, and how that can best be done.

Nick reports that four PLA members have been indicted over the Equifax breach. He speculates that the US government is sending a message by disclosing a photo of one soldier that appears to have been taken by his own webcam. Paul and I note that the purpose of the hack was very likely the assembly of records on Americans not dissimilar to the records we know the Chinese keep on Uighurs – which are extraordinarily detailed and surprisingly artisanal.

The arrest of a Bitcoin mixer allows Nick to explain how Bitcoin mixing works and why it’s (sometimes) illegal.

Paul lays out the potentially serious impact of Amazon’s lawsuit to stop a $10 billion Microsoft-DOD cloud contract. We note that Amazon wants to take testimony from President Trump about political interference in the award. Thanks to his Twitter habit, we conclude, that’s not out of the question.

I preview my remarks at a February 19 Justice Department workshops on Section 230. I will reprise my article in Lawfare and the encryption debate with Nick Weaver that inspired it. And I hope to dig as well into the question whether Section 230 provides too much protection for Silicon Valley’s censors. Speaking of which, Jeff Bezos’s company has joined the censors but won’t tell us which books it’s suppressing.

Nick and I give a favorable review to CISA’s new #Protect2020 election strategy. We search for deeper meaning in IANA’s failure to complete its DNSSEC root key signing ceremony because of… a physical safe. And we all take a moment to mock and abuse the latest vote-by-phone snake-oil app seller, Voatz. If nothing else, we conclude, it will greatly reduce friction in the market for selling votes in future elections.

Download the 300th Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!

As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, or friends.

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No Belated Sealing of “Central” Information in Professor’s Race Discrimination Suit

From this morning’s decision by Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews in Moudden v. Univ. of Colorado Boulder (D. Colo.):

This Order addresses Plaintiff Youssef Moudden’s Motion to Restrict the Proposed Scheduling Order and the Scheduling Order …. The Motion is unopposed. In accord with D.C.COLO.L.CivR 7.2(d), Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law, timely filed an objection to the Motion in his personal capacity and not as a professor at the law school. Professor Volokh argues that he “would like to write about the case, but would be limited in doing so if access were restricted and case documents were thus effectively sealed (whether entirely or partly).” …

The fact the Motion is unopposed does not in and of itself justify restriction because the right to access documentation is owed to the public. D.C.COLO.LCivR 7.2(c)(2). Moreover, the presence or lack of objection to a motion to restrict is not alone sufficient to deny or grant such a motion. D.C.COLO.L.CivR 7.2(d).

A motion to restrict is instead determined in light of preserving the public’s right to access court documents. There is a strong presumption of public access to court records. Therefore, documents filed with the court are presumptively available to the public. This strong presumption of public access exists to hold courts accountable and to provide insight into the court’s decision-making process. The presumption of public access is only outweighed when a party’s interests require nondisclosure.

The District Court’s Local Rule 7.2 governs motions to restrict. Because documents filed with the court are presumptively accessible to the public, the party seeking restriction has the burden to justify relief under Local Rule 7.2. In order to restrict public access to documents filed with the court, Local Rule 7.2(c) requires a party to move for restriction with a written motion that: (1) identifies the document for which the restriction is sought; (2) addresses the interest to be protected and why such interest outweighs the presumption of public access; (3) identifies a clearly defined and serious injury that would result if access is not restricted; (4) explains why no alternative to restriction is practicable or why only restriction will adequately protect the interest in question; and (5) identifies the restriction level sought.

Moudden moved to restrict public access to the Proposed Scheduling Order and the Scheduling Order, both in their entirety. However, the Motion fails to satisfy the second, third, and fourth requirements of Local Rule 7.2(c).

First, the proposed Scheduling Order was filed January 2, 2019, and the Scheduling Order issued January 8, 2019. Moudden waited until July 1, 2019 before moving to restrict these filings, which undercuts a finding that serious injury would result if access is not restricted since he waited six months to seek restriction.

Second, while the documents he seeks to restrict contain some information that is potentially sensitive, that information is central to the legal issues in the case, which weighs in favor of maintaining public access for transparency in the proceedings.

Third, Moudden did not clearly define what injury would result from continued public access to the two documents other than implying he may experience some embarrassment. See Richardson v. Gallagher, No. 10-cv-02097-MSK-CBS, 2012 WL 4359116, at *8 (D. Colo. Sept. 24, 2012) (determining that “embarrassment” is insufficient to qualify as a “clearly defined and serious injury” in favor of restricting public access). Lastly, the Motion does not address why possible alternatives to restriction are insufficient to protect Moudden’s interests.

Ultimately, Moudden has not met his burden to show that the Proposed Scheduling Order and the Scheduling Order should be restricted from public access. The Motion to Restrict is therefore DENIED.

For more on the underlying lawsuit, see here; here is a taste of the plaintiff’s allegations:

Plaintiff’s allegations, which the Court accepts as true only for purposes of the Motion to Dismiss, are as follows:

Plaintiff is a former Research Associate and Lecturer in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering Sciences (“AES”) and Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies (“ATOC”) for Defendant University of Colorado Boulder (the “University”). He identifies as black and African-American, and his national origin is Moroccan. Plaintiff worked at the University from June or July 2007 to the end of the Fall 2016 semester.)

At some point while working as a Research Assistant for AES, Plaintiff became interested in becoming a lecturer in ATOC. At all relevant times, Defendant John Cassano (“Cassano”) was responsible for selecting candidates for teaching positions in ATOC, subject to the approval of the chair of ATOC, Defendant Cora Randall (“Randall”). (Cassano and Randall first became aware of Plaintiff’s desire to lecture in ATOC on June 11, 2013, when Plaintiff expressed interest in a lecturing vacancy. They did not consider Plaintiff for the position.

Cassano and Randall were again made aware of Plaintiff’s interest in a Lecturer position in ATOC in April 2014, when he applied to teach the courses ATOC 1050 and 1060. According to Plaintiff, Defendants ultimately hired a “less qualified candidate” with “inferior teaching experience and inferior research experience.”

In August 2014, Plaintiff e-mailed Cassano from a different e-mail address under the pseudonym “Jason McLeif.” Plaintiff, posing as “McLeif,” stated in an e-mail to Cassano that he was a post-doctoral student at Colorado State University and was inquiring about lecturer vacancies in ATOC. Cassano responded and informed “McLeif” (i.e., Plaintiff) that there were currently no vacancies, but that he would keep him apprised of future opportunities. Thereafter, Cassano informed “McLeif” of “every teaching vacancy that ATOC had and invited him to apply at every available occasion.” Cassano never informed Plaintiff (i.e., Youssef Moudden) of any teaching vacancy and never invited him to apply.

And here is some material from the Proposed Scheduling Order and the Scheduling Order that may have been the “confidential personnel information based on an OIEC (Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance) complaint” to which plaintiff’s motion to seal referred. Note that this is the defendants’ view of the matter, and, like plaintiff’s allegations, has not been proved:

Over the course of the Fall 2016 semester, Defendants received (1) complaints from students about Plaintiff’s class and (2) a complaint from a student regarding an inappropriate and uncomfortable interaction during which Plaintiff (a) asked about the student’s dating relationships; (b) asked whether she had any tattoos; (c) invited her to watch a movie with him; and (d) grabbed her hand and arm. Given these complaints and the number of other qualified individuals interested in serving as contract lecturers, although Plaintiff expressed interest in serving as an ATOC lecturer the following Spring 2017 semester, Defendants decided not to re-hire Plaintiff.

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American Heart Association Journal Finally Retracts Study Implying That E-Cigarettes Cause Heart Attacks Before People Use Them

Eight months after the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study implying that e-cigarettes magically cause heart attacks before people even try them, it has retracted the article. “The editors are concerned that the study conclusion is unreliable,” JAHA says in a notice posted today.

Based on data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), Dharma Bhatta and Stanton Glantz claimed to find that “e-cigarette use is an independent risk factor for having had a myocardial infarction.” Glantz, a longtime anti-smoking activist and e-cigarette opponent who directs the Center for Tobacco Research Control and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said the results provided “more evidence that e-cigs cause heart attacks.” Notwithstanding the evidence that vaping is much less hazardous than smoking, Glantz and Bhatta, an epidemiologist at the center, concluded that “e‐cigarettes should not be promoted or prescribed as a less risky alternative to combustible cigarettes and should not be recommended for smoking cessation among people with or at risk of myocardial infarction.”

But as University of Louisville tobacco researcher Brad Rodu pointed out last July, the analysis that Bhatta and Glantz ran included former smokers who had heart attacks before they started vaping. Once those subjects were excluded, Rodu and University of Louisville economist Nantaporn Plurphanswat found, the association described by Bhatta and Glantz disappeared. “The main findings from the Bhatta-Glantz study are false and invalid,” Rodu and Plurphanswat wrote in a July 11 letter to JAHA. “Their analysis was an indefensible breach of any reasonable standard for research on association or causation.” In another letter a week later, Rodu and Plurphanswat urged the journal’s editors to “take appropriate action on this article, including retraction.”

Eleven days ago, I noted that JAHA had not responded to Rodu’s criticism, which was recently amplified by 16 prominent tobacco researchers, except to say that “the American Heart Association is steadfastly committed to ensuring an objective and thorough evaluation of any and all inquiries received about studies published in any of our journals.” I asked JAHA for comment while writing that post, and today I received a reply from AHA spokeswoman Michelle Kirkwood. “Bhatta et al.’s manuscript underwent a thorough and comprehensive review during the past 7 months,” she says in her email, “and the process is now complete. As of 2/18/20, JAHA has retracted the paper.”

Why did it take the journal so long to acknowledge the glaring error highlighted by Rodu and other critics of the study? Here is how the AHA describes what happened (emphasis added):

After becoming aware that the study…did not fully account for certain information in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health [PATH] Wave 1 survey, the editors of Journal of the American Heart Association reviewed the peer review process.

During peer review, the reviewers identified the important question of whether the myocardial infarctions occurred before or after the respondents initiated e‐cigarette use, and requested that the authors use additional data in the PATH codebook (age of first MI and age of first e‐cigarettes use) to address this concern. While the authors did provide some additional analysis, the reviewers and editors did not confirm that the authors had both understood and complied with the request prior to acceptance of the article for publication.

Post publication, the editors requested Dr. Bhatta et al conduct the analysis based on when specific respondents started using e‐cigarettes, which required ongoing access to the restricted use dataset from the PATH Wave 1 survey. The authors agreed to comply with the editors’ request. The deadline set by the editors for completion of the revised analysis was not met because the authors are currently unable to access the PATH database. Given these issues, the editors are concerned that the study conclusion is unreliable.

Even before publication, in other words, JAHA‘s editors and reviewers recognized that there was a logical problem with asserting a causal link between e-cigarette use and heart attacks based on cases that predated e-cigarette use. They asked Bhatta and Glantz to address that crucial issue, and the authors failed to do so, even though the PATH database included the necessary information. JAHA published the study anyway, and Bhatta and Glantz say they can’t do a corrective analysis now because they no longer have access to the PATH database.

That seems like a pretty slipshod peer review and editorial process, doesn’t it? I suspect JAHA would have been a bit more careful with a study that found vaping prevents heart attacks by helping smokers quit.

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With Bernie Sanders in the Lead, Is Democratic Socialism Unstoppable?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) squeaked out a victory in last week’s New Hampshire primary, but now he has a new threat to contend with: former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose formidable pocketbook has helped put his campaign near the top of national polls. Is Bernie’s vision of Democratic socialism the future? Or will Bloomberg’s blend of technocratic competence and paternalism win out?

Here to discuss the latest wave of Democratic party infighting on this week’s Reason Roundtable are special guests Robby Soave and Stephanie Slade, along with Nick Gillespie. Peter Suderman fills in for Matt Welch as host.

Also up for debate: Is Bill Barr Trump’s hatchet man? Does President Trump think he’s above the law? What’s Roger Stone got to do with any of this? And what’s with Trump’s big new budget plan?

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

Music: ‘The Plan’s Working’ Cooper Cannell

Relevant links from the show:

“Is Bloomberg vs. Sanders the 2020 Nightmare Scenario?” by Eric Boehm.

“Bill Barr Knew He Would Be a Hatchet Man for Trump,” by J.D. Tuccille

“How Much More Should Trump Be Spending on You?” by Nick Gillespie

Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington, by Lachlan Markay  Asawin Suebsaeng

“Trump’s Budget Plan Is an Economic Fantasy,” by Peter Suderman

“President Trump, Betsy DeVos Want To Reduce the Education Department’s Size and Power,” by Robby Soave

“The Good News Is That We Probably Won’t Elect a Socialist. The Bad News Is That We Already Have, Many Times,” by Nick Gillespie

“Bloomberg’s Awful Old Quotes Defending Unconstitutional Stop-and-Frisk Are Coming Back to Haunt Him,” by Scott Shackford

“Roger Stone Inauguration Outfit Twitter Roast Is Hilarious,” via New York 

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