Tag: in-the-news

After less than 24 hours of deliberations, a jury has found a former Dallas police officer who shot and killed her neighbor after mistaking his apartment for her own and treating him as an intruder guilty of murder.

The guilty verdict comes after a week-long trial in which Amber Guyger’s defense tried to show that Guyger was justified in killing her 26-year-old neighbor, Botham Jean. Robert Rogers, Guyger’s attorney, stated that Guyger’s mistake was a result of exhaustion from working 40 hours in four days, from knowledge of recent burglaries in the complex, and from genuine confusion over whose apartment she was in. The defense also claimed that Jean, when he heard Guyger enter his apartment, shouted “Hey! Hey!”—which prompted Guyger to draw her weapon and demand that Jean show her his hands. Jean allegedly failed to comply with Guyger’s order, making her “fear for her life” and fatally shoot Jean.

The prosecution argued that Guyger acted unreasonably by using lethal force, noting that Jean, at the time of Guyger’s intrusion, was sitting on his couch enjoying a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and that the trajectory of Jean’s bullet wounds suggested that Jean was likely getting up from his couch when Guyger shot him.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus also drew attention to several sexually explicit messages Guyger had sent to her partner the day of Jean’s death, containing evidence of Guyger saying that she was “super horny [on the day of Jean’s death],” to counter the defense’s claim that Guyger’s mistake was the result of exhaustion. She sent out one of the messages via Snapchat 30 minutes before shooting Jean, asking, “Wanna touch?”

The guilty verdict comes after Judge Tammy Kemp of the 204th District Court in Dallas County ruled that the jury could, as part of its deliberations, consider the Castle Doctrine, which is a part of Texas’ “Stand Your Ground” laws that permits an individual to use lethal force to reclaim property that they “reasonably [believe] the other person had no claim of right [to]” and when “[one] reasonably believes the use of force is immediately necessary.” In the same ruling, Kemp also stated that the jury could consider charging Guyger with manslaughter instead of murder. Guyger had the potential to walk free if the jury had decided that the Castle Doctrine was applicable or to serve up to 20 years in prison if the jury had delivered a manslaughter verdict.

Guyger now awaits sentencing for Jean’s murder. She faces anywhere from five to 99 years in prison.

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Today, a partially divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit largely rejected challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 decision to repeal its 2015 “net neutrality” decision (aka the “Open Internet Order”). In a per curiam opinion on behalf of Judges Millett and Wilkins, and Senior Judge Williams, the court concluded that given the broad degree of deference afforded to federal agencies, the FCC’s interpretation of its own statutory authority could withstand legal challenge and that the agency was entitled change course.

The FCC did not win across the board, however. The court rejected a key part of the FCC’s order that would have preempted conflicting state and local regulations. As a consequence, individual states may attempt to adopt “net neutrality” rules of their own. In addition, the court remanded a few issues to the FCC for greater examination and explanation, but otherwise left the new order intact.

The per curiam opinion in Mozilla v. FCC begins:

In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission adopted an order classifying broadband Internet access service as an information service under Title I of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104–104, 110 Stat 56 (“the Act”). See In re Restoring Internet Freedom, 33 FCC Rcd. 311 (2018) (“2018 Order“). In so doing, the agency pursued a market-based, “light-touch” policy for governing the Internet and departed from its 2015 order that had imposed utility-style regulation under Title II of the Act.

Petitioners––an array of Internet companies, non-profits, state and local governments, and other entities––bring a host of challenges to the 2018 Order. We find their objections unconvincing for the most part, though we vacate one portion of the 2018 Order and remand for further proceedings on three discrete points. . . .

The 2018 Order accomplishes a number of objectives. First, and most importantly, it classifies broadband Internet as an “information service,” see 2018 Order ¶¶ 26–64, and mobile broadband as a “private mobile service,” see id. ¶¶ 65–85. Second, relying on Section 257 of the Act (located in Title II but written so as to apply to Titles I through VI), the Commission adopts transparency rules intended to ensure that consumers have adequate data about Internet Service Providers’ network practices. See id. ¶¶ 209–38. Third, the Commission undertakes a cost-benefit analysis, concluding that the benefits of a market-based, “light-touch” regime for Internet governance outweigh those of common carrier regulation under Title II, see id. ¶¶ 304–323, resting heavily on the combination of the transparency requirements imposed by the Commission under Section 257 with enforcement of existing antitrust and consumer protection laws, see id. ¶¶ 140– 154. The Commission likewise finds that the burdens of the Title II Order’s conduct rules exceed their benefits. See id. ¶¶ 246–266.

We uphold the 2018 Order, with two exceptions. First, the Court concludes that the Commission has not shown legal authority to issue its Preemption Directive, which would have barred states from imposing any rule or requirement that the Commission “repealed or decided to refrain from imposing” in the Order or that is “more stringent” than the Order. 2018 Order ¶ 195. The Court accordingly vacates that portion of the Order. Second, we remand the Order to the agency on three discrete issues: (1) The Order failed to examine the implications of its decisions for public safety; (2) the Order does not sufficiently explain what reclassification will mean for regulation of pole attachments; and (3) the agency did not adequately address Petitioners’ concerns about the effects of broadband reclassification on the Lifeline Program.

Both Judges Millett and Wilkins wrote separate concurring opinions stressing that they were obligated to uphold the FCC’s judgement under the Supreme Court’s Brand X decision, but neither seemed particularly happy about it.

Senior Judge Williams dissented in part. His separate opinion begins:

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.

So says Macbeth, finding that the witches’ assurances were sheer artifice and that his life is collapsing around him. The enactors of the 2018 Order, though surely no Macbeths, might nonetheless feel a certain kinship, being told that they acted lawfully in rejecting the heavy hand of Title II for the Internet, but that each of the 50 states is free to impose just that. (Many have already enacted such legislation. See, e.g., Cal. S. Comm. on Judiciary, SB 822 Analysis 1 (2018) (explaining that California has expressly “codif[ied] portions of the recentlyrescinded . . . rules”).) If Internet communications were tidily divided into federal markets and readily severable state markets, this might be no problem. But no modern user of the Internet can believe for a second in such tidy isolation; indeed, the Commission here made an uncontested finding that it would be “impossible” to maintain the regime it had adopted under Title I in the face of inconsistent state regulation. On my colleagues’ view, state policy trumps federal; or, more precisely, the most draconian state policy trumps all else. “The Commission may lawfully decide to free the Internet from Title II,” we say, “It just can’t give its decision any effect in the real world.”

His opinion concludes:

My colleagues and I agree that the 1996 Act affords the Commission authority to apply Title II to broadband, or not. Despite the ample and uncontested findings of the Commission that the absence of preemption will gut the Order by leaving all broadband subject to state regulation in which the most intrusive will prevail, . . . and despite Supreme Court authority inferring preemptive power to protect an agency’s regulatory choices, they vacate the preemption directive. Thus, the Commission can choose to apply Title I and not Title II—but if it does, its choice will be meaningless. I respectfully dissent.

All together, the opinions are nearly 200 pages.

As preemption is an issue that divides the current Supreme Court in some unusual ways, it will be interesting to see whether a petition for ceriorari on the preemption question is forthcoming, and whether the Supreme Court believes this question is worthy of review.

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Nutrition researchers and doctors are at each other’s throats once again, this time over a recommendation published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that “adults continue to eat their current levels of red and processed meat unless they felt inclined to change them themselves.” 

This advice runs contrary to the consensus formed by most American medical organizations and the U.S. government, which says the optimal diet is one low in all kinds of meat and processed foods and higher in most kinds of vegetables, fruits, and grains. 

It’s yet another example of the ways that years of bad government diet recommendations, media myths, and disagreement between competing factions in the world of diet and nutrition science have combined to make for an incredibly confusing environment for people who want to eat better, tastier, healthier diets.

The panel of experts that made the red meat recommendation labeled its conclusions as a “weak recommendation” with “low-certainty evidence.” You can read the entire package from the American College of Physicians, which publishes the Annals, or just this summary: “We found low- to very low-certainty evidence that diets lower in unprocessed red meat may have little or no effect on the risk for major cardiometabolic outcomes and cancer mortality and incidence.”

This conclusion has sparked a fight between two groups that might best be described as “meat agnostics,” who believe that moderate meat consumption is not as risky as recently claimed, and “less meaters,” who argue that meat consumption does not occur in a vacuum, and—in the industrialized context—is generally bad. If you buy raw animal proteins, cook them yourself, and eat them with mostly greens, rainbow vegetables, and legumes, you probably agree with the new recommendation. If you eat most of your meat out of a can, wrapper, or bucket, you are why people are mad at the new recommendation.  

My own takeaway, as someone who overhauled his diet and successfully lost a lot of weight and brought his blood pressure down to optimal levels, is that this fight does a disservice to people who want to be healthy, or healthier, and feel confused by the daily onslaught of conflicting nutrition research. 

If you are in the latter camp, allow me to share with you my own recommendations for meat, plants, and all things food.  

Most diet advocates are uncompromising zealots. The best diet is the one that works for you.

I have a good friend who lost 100 pounds eating vegan. I lost 90 pounds eating pork chops for breakfast and meat at every meal, lots of vegetables, but almost no grains, pasta, rice, or fruit. Both of us have sustained our weight loss for many years by continuing to eat our respective diets, and both of us have optimal blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and cholesterol panels. Whose advice should you follow? 

The better question is, whose advice do you want to follow? Liking the idea of a diet is a good indicator that you’ll at least be able to start it. The next best question is, are you getting the results you wanted, whether it be improved biomarkers, better body composition, or weight loss? The third question is, can you eat this way 90 percent of the time for a long time? 

These are the questions that should inform your quest for the optimal diet. People succeed in improving their physical and mental health, testable biomarkers, and body composition using all kinds of different nutrition plans. I prefer something close to the keto diet, which can be adapted for omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans, but if you dig into the research conducted by the National Weight Control Registry, which surveys Americans who have lost weight and sustained that weight loss, you’ll find the keys to success are exercise, intentional and disciplined food choices, and keeping a close eye on their weight. In other words, what food types you eat matters less than how much you eat, how much you exercise, and how disciplined you are about eating and exercising. 

Processed foods are not inherently bad, but they do present a tradeoff.  

The rise of “processed” food that tastes good is both a massive human accomplishment and a double-edged sword. Processed foods, which are basically any food item that has been rendered nonperishable or includes multiple ingredients at the time of purchase, have made life easier by speeding up and simplifying food preparation. “Fortified” processed foods, meanwhile, have made it possible for the poorest people in the developed world to both consume adequate calories each day and get many of the micronutrients previously found only in a balanced diet of perishable meats, fruits, and vegetables.  

However, the proliferation of affordable, nonperishable food has played a major role in the rise of obesity and obesity-related diseases; more so, probably, than any other labor-saving technological development of the last century.

This does not mean processed food is bad, or that it should be banned or taxed out of reach, only that consuming processed foods is a tradeoff. These foods often taste fantastic, yet excessive consumption of processed foods can easily erase whatever benefits they provide through micronutrient fortification and time saved.

Expert consensus is hard to come by and overrated.

That the panelists published by the Annals are now under attack by their peers in medicine is just the latest example of the war over nutrition advice. Many academic nutrition researchers believe their work can save entire populations and are frustrated that they have to compete in a marketplace of ideas that does not elevate their findings over those of their peers, the advice of lay diet experts, and the marketing done by food companies. That the federal government has done such a hamfisted job of recommending the “right” advice and is slow to correct recommendations when consensus changes, is all the more infuriating. 

What’s more, popular media reporting on nutrition is often sloppy, sensationalized, and self-contradicting. Just look at the way the Annals recommendation was covered by The Washington Post: The researchers used the terms “weak recommendation” and “low-certainty” while the Post headlined its piece: “A study says full speed ahead on processed and red meat consumption. Nutrition scientists say not so fast.” The study did not say “full speed ahead” and its critics did not say “not so fast.” Debates in nutrition science are covered this way every single day in America’s most respected media outlets. 

The noise around nutrition science should not distract us from the fact that Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with a lifestyle correlation are, in fact, a major health care expenditure in the U.S. and around the world; and that many humans in the industrialized world who should eat better both can afford to and would likely succeed with the right combination of external motivation and education. 

This is why nutrition researchers are constantly at each other’s throats. Each faction wants to have the final say, and for their peers and government to rally behind them. But it is futile to expect a single global nutrition paradigm to exist across varying economies, climates, and cultures, especially in the age of democratized media. 

You’re going to die regardless of what or how much you eat, but, on average, junk habits will kill you faster and decrease your quality of life. 

While there is no actual consensus on the optimal ratio of the three macronutrients (fat, carbohydrates, proteins), or on how much (if any) animal protein a person should consume each day, there is an actual, honest-to-God consensus against smoking cigarettes, drinking excessive alcohol, not sleeping enough, and consuming a diet made up mostly of processed foods. If you are the kind of person who desires certainty, nutritionists of every persuasion are certain about the above, if nothing else. 

And if you are the kind of person who feels liberated by the possibility that any number of nutritional paradigms can restore your health and improve your quality of life, there is no better time to be alive than today and no better marketplace of ideas than the one we have now. 

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A spokesman for Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools says a local elementary school should not have called the police on a 10-year-old boy for playing with toy money. The spokesman said law enforcement should be called only if a student tries to use counterfeit money to buy something.

The Topeka, Kansas, police department has apologized for a Father’s Day tweet inviting women to snitch on their babies’ daddies. “Does your child’s father have warrants? Is he carrying around any drugs? Has he been caught committing any crimes? Want to give him a Father’s Day he’ll never forget? Call TPD and we’ll help your family make a memory that will last a lifetime,” the tweet read.

A Murray, Utah, animal control officer cited Kate Anderson for “animal at large” and “not having a license,” both misdemeanors, because Anderson’s cat was lying on her front yard. Anderson says someone took a photo of the cat resting and reported her to the cops. A city ordinance defines an animal as at large unless it is physically confined to the property.

Students of Fairbury Public Schools in Nebraska who take part in sports and other extracurricular activities are subject to random drug testing. Now the district has announced it is expanding that program to include nicotine. It’s also looking at placing sensors in school restrooms that can detect vapor from e-cigarettes.

Detroit cops suspected artist Sheefy McFly was vandalizing an aqueduct, but he was actually painting a mural for the city. He didn’t have his work permit with him, but a municipal official showed up to tell the officers he was working on a public project. The police still arrested McFly, charging him with resisting arrest, obstruction of an officer, and having an outstanding traffic warrant. He spent 24 hours in jail.

David Abston, the sheriff of Pickens County, Alabama, since 1987, has pleaded guilty to one count each of wire fraud and filing a false tax return. According to federal prosecutors, Abston defrauded the West Alabama Food Bank and the Highland Baptist Church of Gordo of some of his jail’s food money. Until last year, the state allowed sheriffs to personally pocket any funds budgeted for food that the jail did not spend.

Holland Kendall just wants to help homeless people see better, but the Kentucky Board of Optometric Examiners and the Kentucky Board of Ophthalmic Dispensers say his philanthropy is illegal. Kendall started an organization that dispenses used eyeglasses in 2003 and has given out thousands of pairs to the needy. But state officials sent Kendall a letter in June saying “it would be a violation of law if eyeglasses provided are not new, first quality and made to meet the individual’s personal prescriptions.”

In Illinois, Lakewood Forest Preserve District President Angelo Kyle attempted to cancel this year’s 27th annual Civil War re-enactment. He rescinded the cancellation after Lake County commissioners complained and the organizer noted that they had a contract. It is the largest event hosted by the park, drawing about 3,000 people each year, but Kyle complained that it does not pertain “to the mission of the forest preserve—preserving our natural resources and environmental quality of Lake County.”

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Here is another preview of the 11-hour video library from our new book, An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know. This post will focus on the second batch of cases from the Rehnquist Court.

U.S. v. Lopez (1995)

Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida (1996)

Romer v. Evans (1996)

U.S. v. Virginia (1996)

City of Boerne v. Flores (1997)

Printz v. U.S. (1997)

U.S. v. Morrison (2000)

You can also download the E-Book or stream the videos.

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An anonymous federal employee is alleging that President Donald Trump has abused his executive authority in order to hide possible misconduct. Congress is now investigating.

Yes, it sounds like a story you’ve heard before—pretty much non-stop for the past week or so, actually—but this is a different whistleblower complaint alleging completely different presidential misconduct and being investigated by a different congressional committee. This one hasn’t gotten as much attention as the allegations involving Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden’s son because it lacks the foreign intrigue, Mafioso-style “favors,” and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the 2020 presidential election.

And this whistleblower’s allegations may suggest a more straightforward example of the president attempting to circumvent federal law.

On July 29, members of the House Ways and Means Committee “received an unsolicited communication from a Federal employee setting forth credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct,'” wrote Rep. Richard Neal (D–Mass.), the committee chairman, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on August 8. The letter’s existence was reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday. In the letter, Neal wrote that the committee was informed of “inappropriate efforts to influence” a mandatory Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit of the president and Vice President Mike Pence.

“This is a grave charge that appreciably heightens the Committee’s concerns about the absence of appropriate safeguards as part of the mandatory audit program and whether statutory codification of such program or other remedial, legislative measures are wan-anted,” Neal wrote.

The important background here provided another in a growing number of parallels between the Trump administration and the Watergate era. Following Nixon’s resignation, the IRS added a rule requiring that presidents and vice presidents have their tax returns audited every year. Having automatic audits of the commander in chief is mostly for the IRS’s benefit so the agency doesn’t appear to play political favorites by choosing which years to audit and which to ignore.

Of course, the audits haven’t really mattered before—because, unlike Trump, every other post-Nixon president has released his tax returns publicly. If there was any misconduct to be found in the tax return, it would not escape notice. Trump has kept all his tax returns private, however, which means the mandatory IRS audits may be the only means of exposing key details like how much Trump is personally benefiting from the office he holds.

In the letter, Neal acknowledges that Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner, has dismissed the allegations of “undue influence” being applied to Trump’s audit as being “unfounded.” But Neal says the allegations made to the committee by the IRS whistleblower “cast doubt” on that claim.

To be fair, IRS employees have engaged in nakedly partisan activities before, and any federal employee could have all manner of incentives to make allegations against Trump. From the scant details provided in Neal’s letter, it’s impossible to tell the extent of the whistleblower’s complaint or the alleged misconduct.

However, because the whistleblower is concerned about the status of the IRS audit of the president, it seems likely that these “credible allegations” are directed towards Trump’s tax returns since taking office. In other words, the issue doesn’t seem to be some long-buried secret in Trump’s old returns—which Congress is still trying to obtain—but rather an attempt to circumvent the mandatory IRS audit of Trump while he is a sitting president.

Regardless, Trump could put an end to the question of whether this is a legitimate allegation of wrongdoing or another “deep state” plot against his presidency by simply following the example of his predecessors and releasing his tax returns.

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Former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, who announced his Republican presidential campaign at the beginning of September, is cutting through the heated political climate to remind his party of an old but looming issue.

During a Monday night appearance on The Daily Show, Sanford said, “Whether I’m successful or not, I think we need to have a conversation about where we’re going as Republicans and where we’re going as a country.” When asked by host Trevor Noah the areas in which Republicans have lost their way, Sanford spoke of the issues that were once “hallmarks” in his party’s national conversation.

Sanford began with spending and the national debt, saying that both have “spun indeed out of control” under President Donald Trump. Sanford also added that regardless of personal feelings over the methods Republicans used to address both issues in the past, there was a time when “Republicans were recognized for trying on that front.”

Sanford also compared Trump’s praise of the economy under his presidency to a family carrying out a facade of prosperity while secretly dealing with insurmountable credit card debt.

Will Republican voters be swayed by Sanford’s fiscal message or has Trumpian nationalism fully taken hold in the party?

“It’s either all the conversations I’ve had over the past 25 years of politics in the [House of Representatives] and two terms as governor, either they didn’t matter and they weren’t real or they were,” he replied.

Sanford’s in a tough spot. Despite years of calling for a more fiscally responsible government, he became one of the first casualties of the Trumpism that has overtaken the Republican Party. Though he advocated for more limited government, Sanford was an early critic of Trump’s demeanor. Not only did he lose his reelection bid in 2018, but his loss appeared to be indicative of the power of the new Republican Party.

As Reason reported last year, the Associated Press also found that rather than campaign on successful tax cut legislation, ads for Republican midterm challengers focused heavily on support for Trump and the border wall, even in states that do not touch the southern border.

“We wish [economic policy] got the pitchforks out,” GOP ad maker Will Ritter told the AP. “It doesn’t.”

Sanford acknowledged this reality in his Monday interview. He mentioned that he believed his campaign would uncover whether or not fiscal values remain important to Republican voters.

Even if Sanford attracts supporters, he’ll still need to overcome party politics. A handful of state Republican officials have canceled their primaries in support of Trump.

The full interview can be watched here (interview starts at 18:56).

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Today is the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, which marks the occasion when the Communist Party seized power in the world’s most populous nation. The regime established then remains in power today, and is holding a massive celebration. But today is more properly an occasion for mourning. It is an appropriate time to remember the horrific injustices of the government that committed the biggest mass murder in the history of the world, and numerous other injustices and atrocities.

Though it gets nowhere near the level of attention it deserves, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was in fact the biggest mass murder in all of human history. I discussed its enormous scale here:

Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao’s Great Famine recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened:

“Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.”

A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation….”

The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought, and that the mass murder was more clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured, as opposed to “merely” starved to death. Even the previously standard estimates of 30 million or more, would still make this the greatest mass murder in history.

 

What happened in the Great Leap Forward was similar to what occurred in the Soviet Union and other communist regimes when agriculture was collectivized. But the death toll in China was much higher than anywhere else.

While the Great Leap Forward was the biggest atrocity committed by the PRC, it was far from the only one. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 also took millions of lives. And there was no shortage of other instances of official repression and mass murder during the Mao era, ranging from the brutal conquest and occupation of Tibet (which persists to this day) to numerous purges.

After Mao died in 1976, the regime liberalized much of the economy and eased up on repression. The resulting economic growth was impressive and helped lift millions out of poverty. But it is important to recognize that most of this progress was the result of the government’s ending some of its own previous oppressive policies. For example, much of the economic growth occurred because rural Chinese were freed from being forcibly confined to collective farms, and allowed to move (relatively) freely to other parts of the country, where there were better opportunities.

Post-1976 China is far less awful than it was under Mao’s rule, and the regime no longer adheres to many of the tenets of communist ideology, which has largely been supplanted by nationalism. But severe oppression nonetheless persists. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 is only the most famous example. The regime has also forcibly displaced tens of millions of people for various “development” projects, including over 1 million forced out of their homes just to build the facilities for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The cruel “one child” policy for a long time imposed  state control over one of the most intimate aspects of private family life.  in addition to its inherent injustice, the that policy have created serious social and economic problems that the regime will find it hard to overcome, including a serious gender imbalance in the population, and a rapidly aging work force.

And, of course, the government continues to be a one-party dictatorship, with severe limitations on freedom of expression. I got a first-hand view of some of this when I was a visiting professor at a Chinese university in 2014.

Sadly, under the rule of President Xi Jinping, the government has become much more repressive over the last few years. It has established massive detention camps in which hundreds of thousands of members of the Muslim Uighur minority have been confined for purposes of “reeducation.” The regime’s increasingly intolerant nationalism is bad news for other minorities, as well. Even the tiny community of Kaifeng Jews has been targeted for harassment and persecution.

There has also been a crackdown on real and imagined dissent even among Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group. The closure of the Unirule Institute—a  widely respected think tank critical of regime policy—is just one of many examples. I gave a talk at Unirule’s offices in Beijing back in 2014—something that sadly would no longer be possible today. China is also trying to repress the liberal democratic protest movement in Hong Kong, in a dramatic confrontation that has captured the attention of the world.

The horrific history of the PRC is notable for exemplifying the evils of both of the ideologies that have caused enormous harm around the world over the last century: communism and nationalism. The regime’s gradual transition from the former to the latter, while still being a brutal dictatorship, is a textbook example of how the two have many common flaws.

The unspeakable death toll created by the PRC doesn’t necessarily prove it has been the very worst government in history. The numbers are so high in part because the Communist Party ruled over such a large population, and stayed in power for many years. If the likes of Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot had ruled over a comparably large population over a similar length of time, it is entirely possible they would would equaled or even surpassed Mao Zedong’s dubious record. It is also possible to argue that genocide—mass murder inflicted based on race, religion, or ethnicity—is qualitatively worse than mass murder whose victims are chosen because they are “class enemies” or political dissidents, or just obstacles to the implementation of the regime’s ideology. I don’t buy this theory myself, but I can understand the sentiment behind it.

But even if the PRC is “merely” one of a handful of contenders for the title of worst regime in human history, rather than the clear winner of that dubious title, its awful record is still worthy of mourning. And such remembrance should be combined with a determination to learn its lessons, and use them to prevent the repetition of similar horrors.

 

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More meddling from foreign countries was reportedly sought by the Trump administration. Revelations about “quid pro quo” requests President Donald Trump made to Ukraine’s president appear to have opened the floodgates on stories about Trump trying to make self-interested political deals with foreign leaders.

This includes asking the Australian prime minister for help poking holes in the Mueller report, The New York Times reported yesterday, and it includes having his attorney general ask leaders in Australia, Italy, and elsewhere to investigate the CIA and FBI’s handling of Trump-Russia collusion fears.

Like Trump’s chat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the conversation with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison “shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests,” the Times said, continuing:

The discussion with Mr. Morrison shows the extent to which Mr. Trump views the attorney general as a crucial partner: The president is using federal law enforcement powers to aid his political prospects, settle scores with his perceived “deep state” enemies and show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt, partisan origins.

Meanwhile, Barr himself was reportedly talking to British intelligence authorities, Italian officials, and folks in the Australian government about the FBI and CIA’s actions leading up to the 2016 U.S. election and motivations for Trump-related inquiries, according to The Washington Post and “people familiar with the matter.”

“The attorney general’s active role also underscores the degree to which a nearly three-year-old election still consumes significant resources and attention inside the federal government,” notes the Post.

Combined with the actions undertaken by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in Ukraine, we see “a kind of two-front war” happening, write Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Katie Benner. While Barr looks backward, seeking information to challenge the idea that Russia had anything to do with Trump’s 2016 victory, Giuliani is focused on finding dirt to help Trump crush Biden in the presidential election next year.

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FREE MINDS

“Twenty-five years after the infamous 1994 crime bill, too many criminal justice groups are simply reimagining mass incarceration.” A powerful op-ed from Derecka Purnell, a human rights lawyer, and Marbre Stahly-Butts, executive director of Law for Black Lives, calls out the timidity of current criminal justice reform efforts, which often still center on interventions by police.

“The reality is this: The police fill prisons,” they write. “We can’t repair the harm that the 1994 crime bill has done by promoting mass incarceration without reducing the size and scope of the police.” And yet, “politicians promise jail closings even as they increase police budgets—and, as a result, arrests.” People see the fault in old drivers of mass incarceration and yet, faced with any new or persistent social problem, still turn to cops, arrest, and imprisonment as first solutions.

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FREE MARKETS

Why trade with China when its government perpetuates horrible human rights abuses? Simple, writes Scott Sumner: “Politics is the answer, trade is the solution.”

Free markets and international trade promote peace and liberalization, while isolationism and poverty make authoritarianism worse.

“Hundreds of years of human history strongly suggest that trade makes people better, both at the individual level and the national level,” writes Sumner. “History shows that if you want to bring peace and freedom to the world, trade is one of the best ways of doing so.”

Whole thing here.

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QUICK HITS

• Another case of the U.S. Justice Department bravely catching traitors created by the U.S. Justice Department.
• A proposal in Nye County, Nevada, would confine women working in the area’s legal brothels to the brothels, stipulating that they only leave the premises “for six (6) hours per ten (10) day” period.
• “The power of the Ukraine revelations lies in their simplicity,” writes Politico columnist Renato Mariotti, warning Democrats against getting “greedy” with the impeachment inquiry.
• Gen Z and millennial Americans say they want a European-style democratic socialist state. And yet “Europe’s young are less progressive—or ‘woke’—than their American contemporaries,” suggests The Atlantic. “A third of Millennial and Gen Z voters in Europe consider themselves centrists…and they are emphatically not socialists.” In fact, “they are also less in favor than older generations of fiscal redistribution to reduce inequality.”
• If you haven’t watched this Saturday Night Live parody of the Democratic presidential debates yet, you should:

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Social media companies like Facebook don’t show you all your friends’ posts. You may think they do, but they don’t. Instead, an algorithm picks which ones to show you—and which not to show you. How do they decide? The companies won’t reveal the details.

Glenn Beck, publisher of the major conservative outlet The Blaze, tells John Stossel that social media companies are biased against conservatives.

Beck says Facebook reduces his posts’ reach. And he notes that when a video made fun of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi by slowing down her voice, Facebook put a warning on the post and reduced its reach.

Beck mentions that while social media companies censor right-wing sites that might advocate violence, similar left-wing groups still have Twitter accounts.

In Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs attacked journalist Andy Ngo because he had criticized the group’s violent tactics. They kicked him and punched him in the head. The attack left Ngo with brain damage.  

But the account of the local group, Rose City Antifa, is still on Twitter. The group justifies the attack on Ngo on their website: “If you rally the far-right to attack our city and profit by their violence, you are one of them. And the community will stop you, however it can.”

Other antifa accounts are still up—despite supporting violence, Beck points out.

“In Austin they were actually calling for the next phase to have people be a paramilitary operation. That was up forever,” he tells Stossel. 

The Austin antifa group’s Facebook page is still up, linking to a manifesto calling for antifa’s opponents to be “beaten bloody…annihilated.”

Beck says a double standard exists because social media companies are based in left-wing San Francisco. Also, they mostly hire Democrats.

A Spinquark analysis found dozens of former Democratic staffers working at social media companies.

Stossel pushes back at Beck: “They must hire some Republicans, too.”

“They do, but it’s about 20 percent and they’re not from top-level positions,” Beck replies.

In the case of the Pelosi video that was shown to few people, Beck says, “The person who was in charge happened to be…one of the leaders in Nancy Pelosi’s office, who had just left Nancy Pelosi’s office to go to work [at Facebook].”

But Beck doesn’t want hiring quotas. He says he opposes affirmative action for conservatives in social media.

“It bothers me that there are so many conservatives [who] want more regulation,” Beck says.

Stossel suggests Beck is not consistent about that. After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) claimed immigrants were “being told by [border patrol] officers to drink out of the toilet,” Beck demanded that she be punished.

“I would prosecute anyone making outrageous charges like this,” he said on Blaze TV.

When Stossel asks about that, Beck laughed and backed off the idea.

“I speak five hours off-script every day. There’s a lot of stuff that I vomit out!” he replies.

“So, you’re not eager to prosecute Cortez?” Stossel asks.

“No. No. No.” Beck replies.

Stossel says he’s glad Beck walked that back. “Truth comes out through argument—open debate. The more social media companies censor, the less we learn.”

Stossel notes that social media companies have a right to censor—but that, on at least some social media platforms, if not all, all speech should be free.

Beck agrees, “We can handle it. Stop treating us like children.”

The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

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