Month: July 2014

Is it possible to discern congressional intent by
examining what was never said? In the wake of last week’s circuit
court ruling that, contrary to the Obama administration’s current
implementation, Obamacare does not allow insurance subsidies in
federally run health exchanges, supporters of the law and reporters
who covered it have argued as much. No one in Congress ever said
that subsidies were limited to state-run exchanges, their argument
goes, and the idea was unheard of before critics of the health law
decided to challenge the administration in court.

It’s true that the legislative history isn’t particularly
revealing. The issue of whether subsidies would be available in
federally established exchanges was rarely if ever brought up prior
to the law’s passage.

Thankfully, writes Reason Senior Editor Peter Suderman,
there’s no need to infer from what wasn’t said. There is a clear
record of congressional intent in the plain text of the legislation
that Congress voted into law.

View this article.

Remember when NATO’s intervention in Libya was supposed to
be an example of a war that worked? Three years after the
U.S. helped overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi,
The New York Times
reports, the

country is coming undone. Relentless factional
fighting in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi has left
dozens of people dead. Well-known political activists have been
killed, diplomats have been kidnapped, and ordinary citizens fear
bandits on the roads.

Water and electricity shutdowns have become more frequent than at
any time since the chaos after Colonel Qaddafi’s fall, and fuel has
disappeared from Tripoli’s gas stations. On Sunday, several Western
nations advised their citizens to leave immediately. Gunmen
attacked a convoy of British diplomats….

This time, the fighting in Tripoli seems at least partly fueled by
the campaign of a general named Khalifa Hifter, who vowed in May to
rid the country of Islamist militias. He and his self-proclaimed
national army have focused their fight in Benghazi, where daily
battles with the militias have settled into a deadly
stalemate.

Mr. Hifter has won support from Libyans who fear the growing
assertiveness of extremists, especially in eastern Libya. But his
campaign has also stirred new divisions, and violence, across the
country. Militias from the coastal city of Misurata that oppose Mr.
Hifter have been clashing for weeks around the Tripoli airport with
fighters from the mountain city of Zintan, who support
him.

Any glimmers of a potential peace? Well, the forces battling for
control of Tripoli’s airport agreed to a
cease-fire last night—but only to give firefighters a chance to
try to put out a gigantic fire that a missile set off at an fuel
depot. After 24 hours, the truce is scheduled to expire.

The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf
comments: “At the very most charitable, the common
interventionist claim that Libya vindicated them in their dispute
with non-interventionists was wildly premature.” At the very most
charitable, yes.

Remember when NATO’s intervention in Libya was supposed to
be an example of a war that worked? Three years after the
U.S. helped overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi,
The New York Times
reports, the

country is coming undone. Relentless factional
fighting in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi has left
dozens of people dead. Well-known political activists have been
killed, diplomats have been kidnapped, and ordinary citizens fear
bandits on the roads.

Water and electricity shutdowns have become more frequent than at
any time since the chaos after Colonel Qaddafi’s fall, and fuel has
disappeared from Tripoli’s gas stations. On Sunday, several Western
nations advised their citizens to leave immediately. Gunmen
attacked a convoy of British diplomats….

This time, the fighting in Tripoli seems at least partly fueled by
the campaign of a general named Khalifa Hifter, who vowed in May to
rid the country of Islamist militias. He and his self-proclaimed
national army have focused their fight in Benghazi, where daily
battles with the militias have settled into a deadly
stalemate.

Mr. Hifter has won support from Libyans who fear the growing
assertiveness of extremists, especially in eastern Libya. But his
campaign has also stirred new divisions, and violence, across the
country. Militias from the coastal city of Misurata that oppose Mr.
Hifter have been clashing for weeks around the Tripoli airport with
fighters from the mountain city of Zintan, who support
him.

Any glimmers of a potential peace? Well, the forces battling for
control of Tripoli’s airport agreed to a
cease-fire last night—but only to give firefighters a chance to
try to put out a gigantic fire that a missile set off at an fuel
depot. After 24 hours, the truce is scheduled to expire.

The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf
comments: “At the very most charitable, the common
interventionist claim that Libya vindicated them in their dispute
with non-interventionists was wildly premature.” At the very most
charitable, yes.

In drone school, students study math and
learn robotics. What they do not do is fly drones.

That’s because per Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules,
unmanned aerial vehicles cannot be operated for commercial
use—and
that applies to for-profit teaching programs.

To get around the rules, schools like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University train students on flight simulators or have students fly
drones indoors.

But this restriction is still likely to stifle academic
research, according
to a lengthy letter signed by 29 professors and sent to the
FAA.

The letter details several issues that concern drone
enthusiasts:

1. Unprecedented Expansion of FAA Jurisdiction

The Interpretative Rule states that “the FAA intends to apply
its enforcement authority to model aircraft operations that
endanger the safety of the National Airspace System
(NAS).”While federal statutes in place since 1926 grant the FAA
authority to regulate the navigable air space, understood to be the
airspace above approximately 500 feet altitude in most areas, the
NAS is a term that the FAA now implies comprises all airspace in
the United States, including our campuses, private backyards,
and possibly even inside buildings.

2. Unreasonably Broad Definition of “Aircraft” 

The Interpretive Rule also vastly expands the conventional
definition of “aircraft” to include, in a most literal sense, “any
contrivance invented, used, or designed to navigate, or fly
in, the air”. Objects the size of butterflies and
even toys that are “used in the air” appear to be gaining
the rights, regulatory obligations, and federal protections
afforded to full-sized passenger aircraft.

3. Unwarranted Distinction between Recreational and Commercial
Model Aircraft

The regulatory distinction between “recreational” and
“commercial” use of model aircraft is troubling in that the FAA has
not substantiated how this distinction promotes safety. It is
concerning, for example, that a ten-year-old hobbyist can freely
fly model aircraft for recreation, while our
nation’s scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs are
prohibited from using the same technology in the same types of
environments.

Private for-profit schools are not the only ones getting on the
FAA’s nerves.
Last year, the agency sent letters to two public universities
telling them to shut down their drone journalism programs. The
University of Missouri and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were
both told to halt their programs and obtain Certificates of
Authorization. The process for being granted a certificate can take
several months. The schools had been trying to operate under the
rules set for recreational use of model aircraft. But the FAA
didn’t consider the programs as recreational.

The FAA considers the journalism drones to be “public aircraft”
and the university to be a public operator, which places it in a
more restrictive category than amateurs.

Under amateur rules, unmanned aircraft must stay under 400 feet
and conduct flights away from populated areas. Under the more
restrictive rules, the program must designate a small area—up to 2
square miles—and provide proof of the airworthiness of each
vehicle.

Entrepreneurs, researchers, and students trying to use drones in
new innovative ways will have to continue to wade around in murky
waters because the FAA has not finished writing its drone
regulations. Congress gave the agency to September 2015, but
according to a report from the Department of Transportation’s
inspector general’s office,
the FAA is “significantly behind schedule” will likely not meet the
deadline. 

It’s another
destructive, deadly day in Gaza. Twenty-two days into the
current iteration of this conflict, despite the fact that Israel
and the U.S. are snapping
at each other, Israel remains the sympathetic party in the eyes
of many Americans. But millennials are drifting away from that
norm.

The latest Pew Research Center poll, which was published
yesterday,
shows that Americans aged 18 to 29 are pretty divided. When
asked about “Israel’s response to the conflict with Hamas,” 31
percent said it’s been “about right.” Nearly as many, 29 percent,
said that it’s “gone too far.” Tellingly, only 7 percent of young
Americans believe it has “not gone far enough.”

By contrast, in the older age demographics (50-64 and 64+) 16
and 18 percent, respectively, believe that Israel’s use of force
hasn’t gone far enough. Generation Xers are a bit closer to
millennials’ views in some respects; 34 percent say Israel’s
response has been about right, while 30 percent say it’s over the
top. But again, 16 percent believe Israel’s military action should
be more aggressive.

In fact, with the exception of self-described “liberal”
Democrats, 44 percent of whom say the Jewish state has gone too far
while only 7 percent say it’s not enough, every other demographic
polled – whether political independents or Republicans; college
graduates or high school dropouts; blacks, whites, or Hispanics;
men or women – have double digit support for Israel ramping up its
campaign against Hamas.

Notably, general support for Israel in its grappling with
Palestine has been eroding in the last few years, though a hawkish
minority has grown: In January 2009, the percent of Americans
willing to say that Israel’s tactics are “about right” has dropped
15 percentage points from 50 to 35, while those who believe it
should go further has nearly doubled from 7 percent to 15
percent.

Although it’s outside of the scope of Pew’s research at hand,
it’s worth noting that the numbers fit into a trend that
Reason-Rupe’s own polls have been shedding light on: Millennials
are politically unclaimed, but see Democrats as the
less bad option on
some issues such as foreign policy.

Likewise, the drop in general support may reflect what
Reason‘s Jesse Walker noted last week:
the American public doesn’t have much of a stomach for
war. 

USA Today features a
slightly alarming headline:
Ebola Only an Plane Ride Away from USA. Of course that is true,
but that does presage the possibililty of a widespread epidemic
here? No. Why not? Because my fellow Americans would go seek
treatment when they feel ill and would submit to quarantine if
diagnosed with the disease. Contrast this with how the New York
Times
reported some West Africans are sadly confusing correlation
with causation:

Eight youths, some armed with slingshots and machetes, stood
warily alongside a rutted dirt road at an opening in the high
reeds, the path to the village of Kolo Bengou. The deadly
Ebola virus is believed to have infected several people in the
village, and the youths were blocking the path to prevent health
workers from entering.

“We don’t want any visitors,” said their leader, Faya
Iroundouno, 17, president of Kolo Bengou’s youth league. “We don’t
want any contact with anyone.” The others nodded in agreement and
fiddled with their slingshots.

Singling out the international aid group Doctors Without
Borders, Mr. Iroundouno continued, “Wherever those people have
passed, the communities have been hit by illness.”

Health workers here say they are now battling two enemies: the
unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 660
people in four countries since it was first detected in March, and fear, which
has produced growing hostility toward outside help. On Friday
alone, health authorities in Guinea confirmed 14 new cases of the
disease.

Workers and officials, blamed by panicked populations for
spreading the virus, have been threatened with knives, stones and
machetes, their vehicles sometimes surrounded by hostile mobs. Log
barriers across narrow dirt roads block medical teams from reaching
villages where the virus is suspected. Sick and dead villagers, cut
off from help, are infecting others.

“This is very unusual, that we are not trusted,” said Marc
Poncin, the emergency coordinator in Guinea for Doctors Without
Borders, the main group fighting the disease here. “We’re not
stopping the epidemic.”

Efforts to monitor it are grinding to a halt because of
“intimidation,” he said. People appear to have more confidence in
witch doctors.

Despite the scary headline, the USA Today article does
note:

Yet while Ebola is a fearsome disease, the virus “would not pose
a major public health risk” in the USA, [Michael] Osterholm,
[director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
at the University of Minnesota] says.

That’s because people need to be in intimate contact to spread
the virus, Osterholm says.

Ebola is actually much harder to spread than respiratory
infections, such as influenza or measles. Those viruses pose a much
greater threat on a plane or in any confined space, says Osterholm,
who notes that people cannot spread the Ebola virus simply by
sneezing or coughing.

Ebola also can only be spread by people with active symptoms,
[Stephan] Monroe, [deputy director of the CDC’s national center for
emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases] says.

“No Ebola cases have been reported in the United States and the
likelihood of this outbreak spreading outside of West Africa is
very low,” says Monroe, who says that the CDC has sent 12 experts
to Africa to help with the crisis. “While it’s possible that
someone could become infected with Ebola in Africa” before boarding
a plane to the USA, “it’s very unlikely that they would spread it
to other passengers.”

Ebola does spread readily through body fluids, such as blood and
saliva, Osterholm says. On a plane, a sick person could potentially
contaminate the bathroom if he or she vomits or has diarrhea…

Hospitals in the USA are on high alert for Ebola, however, and
would quickly isolate anyone with suspicious symptoms who has
recently returned from Africa, Osterholm says.

“Right now, we’d have to assume every case is an Ebola case,” in
people with suspicious symptoms, Osterholm says.

In a worst-case scenario, Osterholm says, a handful of emergency
room workers could be exposed before a sick person is
diagnosed.

That being said, if you’ve traveled to West Africa recently and
begin to experience fever, muscle aches, chills, sore throat,
vomiting and diarrhea, a rash and start bleeding all over the place
– go see a doctor.

For more background, see my 2003 column, “Disease,
Public Health, and Liberty,” analyzing when quarantine is
appropriate.