Tag: posts

Last week on
The Independents, Reason
contributor Thaddeus Russell—who teaches at Occidental College,
ground zero for
campus rape politics—joined panelist Remi Spencer (a defense
attorney and former prosecutor) to discuss a
proposal by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Claire
McCaskill (D-Missouri) to have the federal government spend an
additional $100 million-plus to combat sexual assault on
campus.

This is the kind of subject tailor-made for simplistic,
finger-wagging politics—what kind of moral monster
wouldn’t want to reduce campus rape?—but at The
Independents, as at Reason, we are always interested
in unintended consequences and individual rights, and do not take
at face value the moral superiority of those who would spend our
money and enable prosecutors (including de facto prosecutors with
zero track record of criminal investigation). Take a look:

The classic treatment of this topic is Cathy Young’s January
cover story, “Guilty
Until Proven Innocent: How the government encourages kangaroo
courts for sex crimes on campus.” One of many reasons you
should subscribe to
Reason today!

Look
around the country and you’ll find a strong correlation between
e-cigarette bans and progressivism, writes Matt Welch. Los Angeles
joined New York, Boston, and Chicago with its prohibition, and now
D.C. is threatening to get into the act with regulation from the
Food and Drug Administration. The same moralizing impulse is
leading to blue-city bans on everything from plastic bags to fried
chicken joints to bottled water. These are puritan progressives and
they will take the fun out of anything.

View this article.

I had a review out in this
weekend’s
Wall Street Journal about the new book from Matt Taibbi,

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth
Gap. Here’s how the review begins:

When the polemicist who made Goldman Sachs synonymous with
a “vampire squid” writes a book called “The Divide,” with a
subtitle that references “the wealth gap,” one may reasonably
anticipate some undergraduate-style fist-shaking about income
quintiles and the predatory rich. But one would be wrong. Matt
Taibbi’s “The Divide” is primarily concerned with the grotesquely
unequal application of American justice, between the
too-big-to-jail Wall Street elite and the too-poor-to-fight
minority underclass. “The cleaving of the country into two
completely different states—one a small archipelago of
hyperacquisitive untouchables, the other a vast ghetto of
expendables with only theoretical rights,” Mr. Taibbi maintains,
“is a terrible story, and a crazy one.” The characterization is
typically overwrought, but the general indictment is broadly
correct.

And here is how it ends:

But at heart “The Divide” is a face-slap, not a legal brief.
Though Mr. Taibbi doesn’t couch it in these terms, his warning is
all about moral hazard, in two senses of the phrase. When swindlers
know that their risks will be subsidized, and their potential
crimes will be punishable only through negotiated corporate
settlements, they will surely commit more crimes. And when most of
the population either does not know or does not care that the
lowest socioeconomic classes live in something akin to a police
state, we should be greatly concerned for the moral health of our
society.

Reason on Taibbi
here, including this
2007 interview.

• Pro-Russian activists have taken over a police station in
  Horlivka, a town in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian interim Prime
  Minister Olexander Turchynov said that Ukraine is preparing an
  “anti-terrorist”
  operation against gunmen who have occupied official buildings
  there.
• Yesterday Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman
  Rep.
  Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said that “not all” of his Republican
  colleagues are racists. He added that, “to a significant extent,
  the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism,
  and that’s unfortunate.”
• The man who allegedly
  shot and killed three people outside a Jewish community center
  and retirement community in a Kansas City suburb yesterday has been
  identified as Frazier Glenn Cross, a 73-year-old man with a history
  of anti-Semitic activity.
• The search for
  MH370 is heading underwater. A U.S. Navy drone will look for
  the missing plane on the floor of the search area in the Indian
  Ocean. The so-called “black box” has probably run out of
  battery.
• Senate Republicans are warning that “Bush
  fatigue” could hinder Jeb Bush’s chances of winning the
  presidency in 2016 if he were to secure the GOP nomination.
• More than 70 people have
  been killed by two blasts at a bus station in Nigeria’s
  capital. 

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up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

Brendan
Eich’s departure as CEO of Mozilla in the backlash over his 2008
donation of $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the
California initiative that limited marriage to opposite-sex
couples, has sparked a new backlash—over free speech. There has
been some absurdly overheated rhetoric on the right, with mentions
of the gulag, fascists, jihad, and Torquemada. But even gay authors
who champion marriage equality, such as Andrew Sullivan, Frank
Bruni, and Dale Carpenter, have assailed a new orthodoxy and
intolerance in the liberal camp. 

There is no question that Eich’s resignation under pressure
highlights a larger trend: the increasingly prevailing view that
all opposition to same-sex marriage is bigotry akin to racism. In
many ways, this attitudinal shift has helped same-sex marriage (for
instance, by advancing the judicial opinion that discrimination
against gay unions has no rational basis). But if it turns to
persecution of dissent, warns Cathy Young, the consequences will be
bad not only for intellectual freedom and the cultural climate but
ultimately, perhaps, for gay equality as well.

View this article.

In March
2012, volunteers spent four days looking for a two-year-old boy who
wandered away from his home outside Houston, Texas. They found him
only after volunteers reviewing images captured by a drone-mounted
aerial camera saw a flash of red in a pond that had already been
searched. It turned out to be a shirt worn by the child, who had
drowned.

That was not the first time members of Texas EquuSearch had used
these small model planes to help locate a missing person. But if
the Federal Aviation Administration has its way, it won’t happen
again.

In February, the group got a letter from the FAA demanding that
it stop using unmanned aircraft in search-and-rescue efforts, which
it says violates its ban on the commercial use of drones. It’s a
perfect example of government regulators using imaginary problems
to justify sweeping restrictions.

The agency fears that without its benevolent intervention, small
drones will endanger commercial airliners, private jets and people
on the ground. But as Steve Chapman points out, the FAA is ignoring
its own history, which indicates that tiny flying machines are no
particular cause for worry.

View this article.

Huron County, Michigan, sheriff’s deputies forced
their way into the home of John Collins, threw him to the ground
and handcuffed him. They forced him to lie there face down while
they tore
his home apart. Collins says they finally they figured out they
were in the wrong place. They were supposed to be searching another
unit in the triplex that Collins lives in. When a local paper
started asking questions about the raid, a judge sealed the search
warrant. In fact, the judge also sealed the order sealing the
search warrant, and the sheriff is refusing to release the initial
complaint that led to the raid.

April 15 is quickly approaching! Watch Game of Throne characters
prepare their taxes in Reason TV’s latest hit.

Originally aired on April 9, 2014.

Approximately 2:43.

Written and performed by Justin
Monticello. Shot and edited by Paul Detrick.

3D printing has the ability to revolutionize the way we
make practically everything, from guns to pastries and everything
in between. Reason TV recently had the opportunity to
attend Inside 3D
Printing Conference and Expo, a 3-day event
held in New York City.

There they met up with trailblazers in the 3D industry who
were able to give them the inside-scoop on how 3D printing will
revolutionize the economy.

Originally aired on April 11, 2014:

On April 4, 2014, Reason TV attended the Inside 3D
Printing Conference and Expo, a three-day event held at the
Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.
There we caught up with:

• Hod Lipson, an
  engineering professor at Cornell University, who compared the
  excitement swirling around the 3D printing industry to what it felt
  like to work in the computer industry in the 1970s.

• Brian Quan, the president of X-Object, who predicted that 3D
  printing will transform everything from toys to screwdrivers by
  making possible a “new organic creation process.”

• Aleph Objects‘
  Harris Kenny (a former Reason Foundation policy analyst),
  who discussed the power of open source design and how 3D printing
  is allowing scientists to create cheap prosthetics and lab
  equipment.

• Liz von Hasseln, the creative director of food products
  at 3D
  Systems, who demonstrated the new Chef Jet, which is the first 3D
  printer for pastry chefs.

• Scott McGowan of Solid Concepts, which created
  the first 3D-printed
  metal gun.

For more on how 3D printing will change the economy,
read Greg Beato’s
columnfrom the April 2014
issue ofReason magazine. 
About 7:20 minutes.
Produced by Jim Epstein; hosted by Naomi Brockwell.

England, Australia, Canada, and many other
nations allow cameras in their high courts. Yet the U.S. Supreme
Court continues to oppose such transparency. One justice even told
Congress, “I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our
courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.” But as S.M. Oliva
argues, there is little reason any American should have confidence
in the Court’s decisions on issues like freedom of the press and
government surveillance when the justices themselves continue to
hide behind closed doors.

View this article.