Month: June 2023

It is perhaps fortuitous that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens just one week after Disney’s lavish-yet-feeble remake of The Little Mermaid.

One might not think of the two films as having much to do with each other, but both are attempts to diversify beloved decades-old pop-culture properties, broadening the racial mix on screen, and, in theory, making these stories relatable to a wider array of viewers in the process. 

But only one succeeds. It’s not just that Disney’s update of its 1989 animated hit is lethargic and tepid, a dutiful-at-best slog that’s the better part of an hour longer than the original. Its inclusion efforts feel more like mandatory H.R. training than any meaningful program of cultural expansion. Indeed, the movie’s shallow approach to diversity ends up working against it, raising odd and frankly uncomfortable questions that cut against the mix of oceanic silliness and scariness that kept the first film afloat.

Spider-Verse, in contrast, uses its self-conscious displays of diversity as a portal into a wild and exuberant exploration of human individuality. It’s a movie that finds joy and wonder in its portrayal of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-attitudinal world of Spider-Men and Spider-Women and Spider-Somethingelses, whereas The Little Mermaid treats its diversity updates as a cautious exercise in obligatory box-checking. 

The release of The Little Mermaid last week was cause for an amuse bouche of a controversy, a small bite of outrage over New York Times critic Wesley Morris’ review, in which he lamented that the film “reek[ed] of obligation and noble intentions. Joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink—they’re missing.” 

Er, Kink? One might reasonably argue with the choice of word, given that this is a movie about teenagers targeted in large part at younger girls. But later in the review, Morris served up a more pointed gripe: The movie’s attempt to diversify its cast, not only with a black Ariel, but with a multi-ethnic panel of mermaid princesses—all, somehow, from the same mother and father?—as well as a black Caribbean queen as the adoptive mother of the title character’s object of princely affection, raised more than a few questions.

“With all these Black women running around in a period that seems like the 19th century, the talk of ships and empire, Brazil and Cartagena just makes me wonder about the cargo on these boats,” Morris wrote, in a passage about the strangeness of the choices. “It’s really a misery,” he concluded, “to notice these things.”

A misery is precisely what it is, especially in a film that makes no argument for its own existence, and works only as a 135-minute reminder of how much funnier, fuller, more frenzied and alive the 83-minute animated original was. 

Spider-Verse similarly populates its story with a diverse array of characters meant to broaden the superhero’s horizons.

The main character, Miles Morales, is the biracial teenage son of an African American father and a Puerto Rican mother, but he’s more of a Brooklynite than anything else. 

In the first film, 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse, Morales was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man. He teamed up with the more familiar Spider-Man of comic-book history, Peter Parker, and encountered a cast of other Spider-Men—and Spider-Women, and Spider-Pigs, and Spider-Younameits—via a thematically convenient tear in the multiverse. 

The movie’s animating idea was that every strand of the multiverse had a Spider-Person of some kind, and since there were an infinite number of strands, that meant there were also an infinite number of Spider-Men. This meant that anyone and everyone could be Spider-Man, that the character was an idea, a generalizable heroic concept, to be cast and recast, not a single specific story about the guy named Peter Parker. We are all Spider-Man, the movie seemed to say. Spider-Man is universal. 

Across the Spider-Verse takes this idea and builds on it, blowing out the Spider-Verse with an even wider and wilder array of Spider-Folks. There’s an Indian Spider-Man who resides in a cross between Mumbai and Manhattan (Mumbattan); a British anarchist punk-rock Spider-Man who wields a guitar and wears pyramid spikes on his costume; and, as teased at the end of the first film, a futuristic Spider-Man—based on Spider-Man 2099—voiced by Oscar Isaac, who runs an elite team of multiversal agents.

Each one of these characters represents a type, a culture, an ethnicity, or an ancestral region—and yet each one is also a distinctive individual, a specific character with unique habits and quirks and ideas about the world. The movie touches on politics: the Indian Spider-Man tosses off a line about a museum showcasing all the stuff the British stole from his people; the anarchist Spider-Man makes a wry remark about a collapsing building serving as a metaphor for capitalism; Morales wears a Black Lives Matter pin on his schoolbag. Notably, however, his dad is also a cop, and the movie is in fact full of loving, doting, warm police officer father figures. Spider-Verse doesn’t indulge in speechifying politics for the sake of speechifying politics; there’s no speechifying at all. Rather, it amusingly showcases the ways that political ideas are part of these characters’ lives and worldviews.

This is the opposite of treating diversity as a dull duty, a cultural-political requirement. Rather, it’s an opportunity for weirder and more wondrous stories and characters, for stranger and sillier antics, for awe and the unexpected. It understands diversity as a way of exploring the infinite and dizzying delights of specific human individuals, even when every single one of those individuals is Spider-Man.

It’s not a misery to notice these things, for it is never a misery to notice the quirks and kinks of fully-realized fictional characters. Like the movie itself, it’s a joy and delight.

The post <i>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</i> Does Cinematic Diversity Right appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Dabiri v. Fed. of States Medical Bds. of the U.S., Inc., decided Wednesday by Judge Komitee (E.D. N.Y.) (and see the underlying 2009 opinion):

Fifteen years ago, the plaintiff, a medical doctor by trade, filed this action against Federation of States Medical Boards of the United States, Inc. (“FSMB”), a non-profit corporation representing medical boards in the United States, and General Medical Council (“GMC”), a United Kingdom-based public authority. He alleged that GMC deprived him of his right to due process by suspending his medical license without notice of hearing and then forwarding that suspension information to FSMB, which included it in reports of Plaintiff’s medical disciplinary history. As alleged in the complaint and exhibits attached thereto, GMC’s decision to restrict Plaintiff’s license stemmed from an unfavorable determination of his mental competency, at the time, to practice medicine. Plaintiff filed all documents in this case publicly, and at no time while the case was still pending did he seek to move any under seal.

Both FSMB and GMC moved to dismiss the complaint, referring to Plaintiff’s competency determination in their motion papers’ summary of the relevant factual allegations. Judge Charles Sifton thereafter granted those motions on various grounds in March 2009. That opinion included a similar reference to the circumstances of Plaintiff’s license suspension in its recitation of the complaint’s allegations.

In 2022, plaintiff sought to seal the entire case, but the court said no:

Both the common law and the First Amendment protect the public’s right to access judicial documents. The “burden of demonstrating that a document submitted to a court should be sealed rests on the party seeking such action.” …

As this Court previously advised Plaintiff, “sealing an entire case file is a last resort.” Plaintiff has not met his burden of justifying sealing this case in its entirety.

[S]ealing the case would result in sealing numerous judicial documents — including the complaint and its exhibits, the parties’ motion to dismiss briefing, and Judge Sifton’s opinion dismissing the case — to which the presumptive right of access attaches…. Dabiri “seeks to hide the entirety of the case from the public eye,” so the presumption of public access “has extraordinarily substantial weight.” … Judge Sifton’s opinion is itself an “adjudication” — a “direct exercise[ ] of judicial power[,] the reasoning and substantive effect of which the public has an important interest in scrutinizing.” Similarly, the complaint and the parties’ motion to dismiss briefing, “which the Court considered and relied upon in reaching its decision[ ],” both directly affected that adjudication…. [The] presumption [of public access], moreover, “does not dissipate once the case is over,” as the public simply “cannot evaluate a case that is sealed in its entirety.” …

Plaintiff argues that the docket “contains and publicizes sensitive medical information.” Courts have “recognized [a] privacy interest in medical records.” Accordingly, “[c]ourts in this Circuit routinely seal medical records, without sealing the entire case, to protect the plaintiff’s privacy interest in those records.” That privacy interest in medical records, however, “is neither fundamental nor absolute,” and in this case, does not overcome the strong presumption of public access to justify the full relief that Dabiri seeks.

On the one hand, Plaintiff (who was represented by counsel at the time) filed information relating to his medical history on the public docket, where it has remained accessible to the public for over thirteen years. The records’ long-term availability in the public domain not only weighs against sealing them. That public availability also suggests a certain futility in doing so. “As the Second Circuit has noted, the Court has no ability to make private that which has already become public.”

On the other hand, a party arguably maintains a privacy interest in his personal medical information — distinct from, for example, confidential business information — even after some degree of public disclosure. This privacy interest continues even where a plaintiff “has put his medical condition at issue” in a lawsuit and filed “medical records on the public docket.”

Balancing the strong public presumption of access and the countervailing privacy interests, the Court will seal the medical records filed as an exhibit to the complaint, as well as those attached to Plaintiff’s sealing requests. These records contain more detailed medical information, including examination and evaluation notes from Plaintiff’s treating doctors. The Court will not seal other mentions of Plaintiff’s mental competency determination contained on the docket, including those in the parties’ motion papers and Judge Sifton’s opinion.

Dabiri’s representations that the case has caused him “lack of employment, lost jobs and wages, and career advancement” do not justify any further sealing of the record. A “possibility of future adverse impact on employment,” as Plaintiff contends here, is not a “higher value sufficient to overcome the presumption of access to judicial documents.”

{In his sealing request, Dabiri repeatedly refers to the medical information at issue in this case as “incorrect” and “unproven.” The Court notes, in clarification, that Judge Sifton’s opinion did not rule on the accuracy of this information. Instead, that opinion and the defendants’ briefing in relation thereto assumed the factual allegations of Plaintiff’s complaint and its exhibits to be true, as they must at the motion-to-dismiss stage. The Court likewise takes no position on the accuracy or significance of this medical information, either at the time it was filed on the docket or today.}

The post Unsuccessful Plaintiff Can't Get Case Retroactively Sealed, Despite Alleged Harm to Employment Prospects appeared first on Reason.com.

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One of the biggest frustrations about getting old is hearing younger people propose ideas that were debunked decades ago—and then getting “eyes glazed over” looks from them after explaining that we’ve already been there and done that. Proposers of such ideas rarely change their minds after I say, “Dude, I was there and remember—and it was a disaster.”

The latest “old is new again” proposal is for the government to just build housing—as in public officials buying the land, choosing the design, finding a developer, and then serving as landlord. The impetus is the nation’s affordable-housing crisis. Advocates have changed the terminology. They are proposing that “we” build “social housing” rather than “public housing projects,” but it’s the same blighted idea.

“Public housing is ready to make a comeback,” wrote Daniel Denvir and Yonah Freemark in left-leaning Slate. They say current efforts to up-zone property (allowing developers to build higher-density projects with fewer regulations) yield only modest results. They rehash the debate on the Left—between YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yarders) and those who claim that new building promotes gentrification.

“But this debate is often impoverished,” they add. “As policymakers continue to confront this crisis, it is time for them to reconsider an obvious but long-taboo solution: building new public housing.” Of course, this time the government will do it better than the last time by—get this—avoiding income restrictions and opening the units to all comers.

State and local governments can simply build “millions of homes themselves” and create “vibrant, mixed-income neighborhoods,” they argue. The writers admit that past projects fell into disrepair and the feds demolished most of them in the 1970s. This time, however, we’ll provide enough resources to housing authorities to maintain them properly. It’s all so easy!

Growing up in the Philadelphia area in the 1970s, I recall the massive protests and disputes that ensued after the city built housing towers in the midst of a settled urban neighborhood of row houses. The project led to deep racial divisions and sparked an exodus to the suburbs. Such stories repeated themselves in big cities across the country.

Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis was perhaps the most notorious public housing project in America, with its 33 towers that resembled those hideous brutalist developments that defined the Soviet Union. They became a sea of crime, social dysfunction, and blight. Many people cheered when the federal government demolished the buildings only 18 years after the grand opening.

Obviously, modern planners won’t take the exact same approach, but the government has, shall we say, a spotty record in maintaining its infrastructure. During that era, the feds were the nation’s largest slumlord. Urban theorist Jane Jacobs complained in her book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” that government planners imposed their utopian vision on communities—and didn’t much consider the views of likely residents or neighbors.

Because of the obvious failures of cramming thousands of people into dystopian housing blocks, the feds moved onto a new-and-improved public housing solution in the 1990s. The Clinton administration embraced “scattered-site housing,” by which localities built (with federal funds) smaller public-housing projects—often single-family homes or duplexes—in the midst of settled neighborhoods.

I watched the process closely in my small Ohio city—and they created the same problems but on a smaller scale. The new government houses cost much more to build than surrounding market-rate houses, but these homes gained a stigma. Ultimately, the government disrupted neighborhoods and garnered resentment. Whatever the reasons, it did not create “vibrant, mixed-income” communities.

These are different times, so they will yield different approaches, but a few points seem obvious. First, the government doesn’t do anything well. Whatever design motif or strategy it chooses, it will impose them in a heavy-handed manner. The same governments that let dam spillways collapse and freeways become pockmarked with potholes, will fail to maintain these new “social housing” projects—and it has little to do with inadequate funding.

Second, there isn’t enough money—even in a world with a $ 31.8 trillion federal debt—to just build housing for everyone. The government currently subsidizes private developers to build affordable housing. Thanks to regulations, union work requirements, and bureaucracy, that has led to low-income projects costing as much as $1 million a unit. Those same inefficiencies will plague public housing.

The writers complain that developers aren’t building enough housing even with the current effort to reduce housing regulations. Well, California has been restricting housing supply for decades, so it’s unrealistic to expect builders to solve the problem after only a few years of loosened restrictions. The new approach is yielding results, but we need to make it easier to build housing across the board.

I’m old enough to have watched the government create the housing shortage. Only people who ignore relatively recent history would suggest more government is the solution.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

The post Don't Bring Back Public Housing appeared first on Reason.com.

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If you worry that the U.S. presidency has turned monarchical, you’re not alone. Activists across the political spectrum loudly object to the misuse of emergency powers by the White House to bypass debate—at least when they’re not cheering on rule by decree. Supreme Court justices also object to the invocation of special powers to address “emergencies” that never end. And so do lawmakers; last week, members of Congress held a hearing on abuse of emergency powers by the executive branch.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for reform.

“The powers triggered by a national emergency declaration include authorities that are highly susceptible to abuse,” Elizabeth Goitein, Senior Director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice told members of Congress May 24. “They could be misused to undermine our democracy — and they already have been exploited, by presidents of both parties, to implement long-term policy goals in the face of congressional opposition or inaction. These powers must be subject to meaningful checks against abuse and overreach.”

Legislative Concerns Over Presidential Abuses

Goitein spoke at a hearing about the 1976 National Emergencies Act (NEA) held by the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. Also testifying after opening remarks by Subcommittee Chairman Scott Perry (R–Penn.) were the Niskanen Center’s Soren Dayton and Satya Thallam, a policy advisor for Arnold & Porter, a politically prominent law firm.

While the National Emergencies Act was intended to consolidate and formalize emergency powers under congressional oversight, it lost much of its limiting clout when the Supreme Court ruled in INS v. Chadha (1983) that the law’s “legislative veto” over emergency executive power is unconstitutional.

“This meant that Congress’s built-in check on national emergency powers was no longer viable and transformed its delegation of emergency powers into something far broader than intended,” noted Dayton. “Indeed, since Chadha, there have been virtually no checks on the president’s national emergency powers.”

The abusive potential of the National Emergencies Act shouldn’t be news to members of Congress. In July 2020, at the height of pandemic panic when government officials were stretching the limits of their authority in every conceivable way, the Congressional Research Service prepared a report on some of the emergency powers available to the president.

“Although one purpose of the NEA was to end perpetual states of emergency, the law does grant the President authority to renew an emergency declaration,” the attorneys who authored the report pointed out. “There are currently 37 national emergency declarations in effect, some of which have been renewed for decades.”

Examples given in the report of statutory authorities under the law range from matters as petty as maintaining an island under federal jurisdiction “in its natural state for scientific observation and investigation” except during emergencies, to a more troubling power to “close any radio station…or ‘authorize the use or control of any such station'” during emergencies. It’s a pretty wide net—and one that repeatedly draws congressional attention.

Both Parties Fret Over Emergency Powers

“Since 1976, when Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, U.S. Presidents have declared the existence of 75 national emergencies, justifying their potential exercise of emergency powers,” then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D–N.Y.) warned on the occasion of a May 2022 hearing on emergency powers when his party was in the majority. “Of those 75 declarations, more than 40 remain in effect, with the oldest dating back to the 1970s. This means that for nearly five decades, this country has technically been in some form of a state of emergency. That is to say, some Americans have lived their entire lives under emergency rule.”

Testifying at the 2022 hearing were familiar names Goitein and Dayton, who also spoke this year and probably have their testimony memorized at this point. Joining them was GianCarlo Canaparo of the Heritage Foundation and Joel W. McCleary, a prominent player in the Democratic party and former White House staffer in the Carter administration who talked “of the latent dictatorial powers a president had and might be tempted to abuse.”

Which is to say that congressional committees, under both major parties, have held hearings to voice the same concerns about the abuse of emergency powers, hearing warnings and calls for reform by overlapping experts who largely repeat their testimony. They draw from research done specifically for them that documents a never-ending state of “emergency” that has long been the norm. Surely, there must be bipartisan consensus by now that the presidency’s monarchical tendencies need to be curbed so that nobody need live “their entire lives under emergency rule.”

Emergency Power Is a Problem Except When It’s Convenient

Well, maybe there is. But there’s also a consensus in both parties in favor of winning at all costs. A Republican-dominated House might hold hearings on the dangers of emergency powers now, but as that 2020 Congressional Research Service report pointed out, “President Trump invoked the National Emergencies Act to declare a national emergency concerning the Coronavirus Disease 2019…. The President subsequently invoked additional national emergency statutes.” And last year’s Democratic majority hosted hearings on abuses of executive authority just days after their own colleagues called on President Joe Biden to declare a “national climate emergency” and to wield unilateral power over wide areas of life without the messy business of legislative debate. Biden has made a habit of rule by decree.

“If emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently warned in a statement about the growing use of emergency authority to impose policies. “And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”

Everybody recognizes the danger inherent in allowing presidents to rule like kings, invoking “emergency” powers that never go away to deal with “emergencies” that often constitute nothing more than the prospect of losing a vote. Powers crafted to fight wars are now used to ride roughshod over opposing opinions—or for convenience, because it’s easier to sign executive orders than to win support.

“Advance planning for emergencies is prudent, and there is nothing inherently problematic about drafting orders and directives in advance of foreseeable crises,” the Brennan Center’s Goitein added during this year’s testimony. “But emergencies cannot justify unconstitutional measures, and planning to violate the Constitution or ignore statutory limitations is a grotesque abuse of power.”

Unfortunately, as much as they know it’s a problem, America’s politicians rather like living in a permanent state of emergency.

The post Congress Warned About Abuses of Presidential Emergency Powers appeared first on Reason.com.

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6/2/1952: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer decided.

The post Today in Supreme Court History: June 2, 1952 appeared first on Reason.com.

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One reviewer referred to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves as a “third-tier Lord of the Rings ripoff.” That’s not wrong, exactly, but appropriately humble warmed-over J.R.R. Tolkien is still good.

Cocky bard Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and barbarian-with-a-heart-of-gold Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) lead a crew of goofy improvisers against a cronyist and corrupt Lord of Neverwinter (Hugh Grant).

The grand finale finds our heroes locked in a gladiatorial combat that serves a dual function: It provides bread and circuses for the ordinary townsfolk, and it’s a way for Grant’s character to separate the kingdom’s elites from their treasure after reassuring them it was safe in a government vault.

In the end, the movie is more like The Princess Bride, with the same lessons: Never trust anyone with political ambitions, follow your heart, and have fun.

The post Review: A Lesson on Political Ambition From <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> Movie appeared first on Reason.com.

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Henry George, a 19th century reformer who famously favored an end to all taxes except a levy on land, believed his system would allow us to “approach” the “abolition of government” as a coercive force. He also wrote that his single tax could fund various public services, transforming the state into “a great co-operative society.” Depending on which way you tilt your head, he can sound like he’s either almost an anarchist or almost a social democrat.

In Land and Liberty, the Georgetown University historian Christopher William England shows that both sides of George’s thinking bore fruit after his death.

In the early 20th century, George’s followers found homes in a host of progressive reform movements and progressive-run governments. But other followers—sometimes the same followers—helped create contemporary libertarianism. (Some even had a hand in contemporary conservatism: He kept it low-key, but National Review founder Bill Buckley was a George fan.) By the time the New Deal arrived, Georgists sometimes found themselves lining up on opposite sides of the era’s debates.

Perhaps because he is so hard to classify, George is often misremembered as a momentarily popular radical of the Gilded Age, his influence on later movements forgotten. England restores him to his place in political history, both in the U.S. and abroad. (George’s international fans stretched from Cuba’s José Martí to China’s Sun Yat-sen—figures later honored in name but not in spirit by Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.) And while England mostly traces George’s influence on modern liberalism, he does not ignore Georgism’s libertarian current. As he notes, even progressive-minded Georgists often clashed with actual Progressives: While the “dominant strands of Progressivism are now seen as opposed to individualism,” most Georgists “were classically liberal, individualistic, and even libertarian on questions like vice enforcement and regulation.”

The post Review: Henry George's Many Children appeared first on Reason.com.

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A Mason County, Kentucky, grand jury has indicted Ripley, Ohio, police officer Caleb Savage for reckless homicide, failure to render aid, and leaving the scene of an accident. The Kentucky State Police says Savage spotted a vehicle he thought resembled one “suspected to be involved in a property crime.” Savage followed the vehicle across the state line into Kentucky where he turned on his lights and siren and began a chase. The driver fled but lost control and crashed after a couple of miles. Savage did not stop or call for help but returned to Ohio. The driver of the other vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene. Savage has resigned from the police department.

The post Brickbat: Giving Chase appeared first on Reason.com.

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