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In Anaheim, California, anyone convicted of
buying sexual services will have their names and mug shots
indefinitely posted to a city web page listing “Sex Purchasers”.
The Anaheim district attorney’s office says the scarlet HTML is
meant to deter sex traffickers, which makes about as much sense as
posting jaywalker mugshots in order to deter car theives. No, let’s
call this for what it is: straight-up, old-fashioned, puritanical
public shaming.

Anaheim, in Orange County, unfortunately isn’t the first Cali
city to implement this online shaming tactic. Fresno and Oakland
also post the pics of those arrested on prostitution-related
charges to Facebook, those these photos are then deleted after two
weeks. Richmond, California, started doing similarly earlier this
fall—until people’s propensity for digging up and sharing the
addresses, employers, and other personal info of exposed sex
workers and clients caused the Richmond police department to
reconsider the parameters of the plan. 

“Public shaming as a form of punishment goes back to the days of
Puritan colonists,” writes Los Angeles Times‘ Emily
Foxhall. “In recent years, it’s become a strategy for police
departments targeting the sex trade. … Orange County’s move is
expected to heighten debate over whether public shaming is
effective at reducing prostitution and whether it exposes johns to
too much scrutiny.” 

While public shaming may be a historic practice, there’s
undeniably something different about exposing someone in a town
square or local bulletin than in a medium where the exposure has
potential global reach into perpetuity. For supporters of such
measures, however, I guess that’s part of the appeal—the chance to
serve up potential lifetime humilitation and punishment for those
who would dare to seek sexual satisfaction in the marketplace. And
if that sounds like a harsh assessment of their motives, consider
this paragraph from the Times article: 

Publicizing the identities of johns is not considered part of
the punishment and would not be up for negotiation in a plea deal,
(DA cheif of staff Susan Kang) Schroeder said. Asked if concern for
solicitors’ personal lives factored into the decision to identify
them, her response was unforgiving.

“Give me a break.”

Yet even many who want to banish prostitution aren’t keen on the
idea that publicly shaming those who get caught will make much of a
dent on the sex trade. Melissa Farley, executive director of the
anti-prostitution group Prostitution Research and Education, told
the Times she’s unaware of any evidence that
this kind of shaming results in long-term behavior change.

Peggy McGarry, director of the Center on Sentencing and
Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, has said that public shaming punishments have
“no record of efficacy in turning someone away from crime,”
especially when it comes to low-level offenders. 

• President Obama will explain his immigration plan
  tonight, but broadcast networks ABC, NBC, and CBS are
  declining to air it. The White House isn’t happy about that,
  obviously.
• A Utah legislative committee wants to consider bringing back
  
  executions by firing squad, since Europe won’t sell the U.S.
  the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injections.
• Jim Webb has
  formed an exploratory committee to run for president in 2016.
  Webb is a Democrat, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, and former
  U.S. Navy Secretary. He is known for being a progressive liberal,
  but is viewed as less authoritarian than, say, Hillary
  Clinton.
• On the other side of the aisle, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is
  also
  prepping for a presidential run.
• Authorities
  have identified the Florida State University gunman.
• New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to visit Rikers Island
  with an
  eye toward reforming the notorious prison.
• You shouldn’t care who Michael Phelps was dating,
  but if you do, here’s some news on that front.
• The “Breaking Bad” spin-off series, “Better Call Saul,”
  
  will premiere on the evening of February 8th.

There has been more text written about the
controversy known as “GamerGate” than lines of dialogue in newly
released fantasy role-playing game Dragon Age:
Inquisition. In fact, whether GamerGate is actually a
controversy and not just certain factions acting out and harassing
one another through social media is itself a focus of
controversy. The Wikipedia page for GamerGate is longer than the
Wikipedia page for the Watergate scandal.

As Reason’s Scott Shackford notes, it may seem strange
to non-gamers that video games could launch a culture war. But
video games have become a prime contributor to popular culture. It
was inevitable that the video game industry would become the
battleground for the new generation of culture wars brewing among
millennials.

View this article.

Remember
that awful federal government shutdown last year? From a
libertarian perspective, having the federal government shut down
doesn’t inherently sound like a bad thing. But, believe it or not,
the federal government shutdown made life miserable for people
looking for jobs in the private sector.

That’s because the government shutdown also rendered the
E-Verify service unusable. E-Verify is the system by which
employers check the citizenship status for potential employees.
Federal law requires employers to verify their citizens can legally
work in the United States. Some states have laws requiring some
employers to use E-Verify for this process. When the government
shut down, this left many employers skittish about hiring new
employees, even though the federal government said it wouldn’t hold
anybody responsible for not using E-Verify during the closure, as
long as they filled out the right paperwork.

I
highlighted this issue during the government shutdown as one of
the unfortunate consequences of becoming a society where we had to
ask the government permission to live our lives and engage in
commerce. Last year, Peter Suderman reminded us all that even when
it isn’t shut down, E-Verify is far from a perfect system that has

falsely told people they couldn’t legally work in the United
States. This ends up costing businesses and American citizens
significant amounts of time and money. Keep this in mind whenever
anybody proposes more regulations or laws trying to “fix” illegal
immigration. The unintended consequences will fall upon citizens as
well.

Below, Reason TV interviewed Chris Calabrese with the American
Civil Liberties Union about problems with E-Verify:

Stacy
Middle School in Milford, Massachusetts, took steps to neutralize a
dangerous public nuisance: 10-year-old Nickolas Taylor, who had
threatened some of his classmates with his weapon of choice while
cutting in line.

That weapon is an imaginary laser gun, which he conjured into
existence by pointing his finger and uttering laser noises. Quick,
get this maniac away from other kids before he disintegrates them
with his mind!

Thankfully, school officials intervened and suspended the
aspiring sci-fi villain, according
to whdh.com:

School officials said the 10-year-old’s actions indicated a
threat, but his family didn’t agree.

“It was absolutely ridiculous. Nickolas is a sweet little boy
that was just standing in line at lunch playing with his hands,”
Linda O’Brien, the boy’s grandmother, said.

The actions were taken very seriously at Milford’s Stacy Middle
School where the boy is a student.

The assistant principal sent Nickolas Taylor’s dad a note
explaining because Nickolas pointed a gun “made from his hand” at
two girls in a lunch line and then blew on his fingers as if to
cool off the gun barrel its considered “a threat”.

Okay, back to reality. The principal thought thus constituted a
threat? Really? How paranoid of gun violence do you have to be to
consider an imaginary ray gun some kind of threat against other
students?

Administrators should have told Taylor to behave himself in the
lunch room and save the pretend target practice for recess. That’s
all. But not only did they punish him, they
suspended him. He had to wait two days for school
authorities to mellow out and let him return to class. I wonder how
much trouble a kid could get into for attempting to use something
more dangerous on his classmates, like, say, Force lightning? (Note
to principals: That’s not a challenge.)

Reason readers know that kids are
routinely punished by unimaginative adult bullies for engaging in
harmless fun. Consider the teen who was disciplined for writing a
story in which
he shot a dinosaur with a gun.

For too many kids, public school is where fun goes to die. Even
if it doesn’t get blasted by an imaginary destruction ray.

At least things might get better for Taylor now. His parents
told local reporters that they plan to home school him.

More on “zero tolerance” school policies here.

Since the end of
Obamacare’s first open enrollment period earlier this year,
enrollment data has been sparse. The administration stopped
releasing monthly reports, and has provided enrollment updates
sporadically, with little context or detail.

And, it turns out, at least one of the counts was wrong,
artifically inflated by the inclusion of almost 400,000 dental
plans that the administration now claims were mistakenly
included.

When Medicare administrator Marilyn Tavenner appeared before
Congress in September, she said that 7.3 million people were
currently enrolled. That number was boosted by the inclusion of
380,000 dental plans that should not have been included,
Bloomberg News reported today.

The inclusion of the dental plans at that time pushed the total
over the administration’s stated goal of 7 million
enrolled. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said
on Twitter today that the inclusion of those plans was a “mistake”
and “unacceptable.” 

The administration later reported that 7.1 million people were
still enrolled, but according to Bloomberg News, the total number
of enrollees as of October 15 is about 6.7 million. At the end of
the first open enrollment period, the administration repeatedly
touted its success at getting 8 million sign-ups during the first
year. 

What the new figures reveal, then, is the fragility and
instability of that initial figure. Not only did the number of
enrollments continue to drop during and after the summer, the
figure wasn’t as high as reported in post-open-enrollment updates.
This is probably at least one reason why enrollment targets for the
second enrollment period were recently
slashed by about 50 percent.

Obamacare’s second open enrollment period started last Saturday,
but enrollment data so far remains sparse. About 100,000
applicatons were sent in to the system on Saturday, but as Jeffrey
Young of The Huffington Post notes, it’s
not clear how many of those people actually went ahead and selected
a plan. The Department of Health and Human Services declined a
request for further information from The Washington
Post.