If we all went a little nuts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it’s absolutely true that some of us—including many of our country’s leaders and people in the media—went absolutely batshit crazy, often with disastrous results.
Exactly why that happened is the subject of author Jon Ronson‘s latest season of Things Fell Apart, a podcast that explores the deep origins of today’s culture wars in controversies, panics, and delusions from decades ago.
Reason‘s Nick Gillespie talked with Ronson about why he believes the creation of a fake medical condition called “excited delirium” in 1988 ultimately led to the death of George Floyd in 2020, how law enforcement fixations on white supremacy warped the investigation into a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and how the director of the massively influential Plandemic documentaries was actually rewriting the script of Star Wars.
Ronson is best known as the author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, an account of a U.S. Army unit that tried to perfect paranormal powers like walking through walls, and So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which helped define cancel culture just as it was becoming widespread via social media.
Third time’s a charm? Let’s hope not. More than five and a half years after journalist and Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey was arrested, federal prosecutors have indicated that they will try him for a third time on the same charges.
It’s a frightening reminder of how far authorities will go to get their way—and to warn tech companies and publishers against platforming speech the government doesn’t like.
When you zoom out a bit, it’s clear Lacey’s case could have implications for anyone who posts or consumes content online.
How We Got Here
Doesn’t the Constitution bar being tried twice on the same criminal charges? Generally, yes—in cases involving an acquittal or conviction, that is. But Lacey’s two previous trials resulted in mistrials, meaning the government can take another shot if it likes. And in a motion filed yesterday, prosecutors announced that indeed they would like a do over, again.
The first trial, back in 2021, was declared a mistrial after prosecutors and their witnesses couldn’t stop suggesting that Lacey and his co-defendants were charged with child sex trafficking. They were not, and efforts to suggest as much could have seriously prejudiced a jury.
In actuality, Lacey, his longtime (and now deceased) publishing partner James Larkin, and several other former Backpage staffers and executives were charged with violating the federal Travel Act by facilitating prostitution. They were also accused of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution and money laundering in service of this.
The second trial, held last fall, saw a jury totally acquit two of the defendants while two others—Scott Spear and John “Jed” Brunst—were acquitted on multiple charges and found guilty on multiple charges.
Lacey’s outcome was also mixed but with far fewer guilty or not guilty verdicts. He was ultimately found guilty on just one count and not guilty on just one count; the jury was hung on the remaining 84 counts. So, federal judge Diane Humetewa declared a mistrial with respect to these 84 counts, allowing (but not requiring) the government to try again.
About That Guilty Verdict…
The 2023 jury found Lacey innocent of one count of international promotion of money laundering but guilty of one count of international concealment of money laundering. It was a weird verdict, considering that the conduct in question was very much not concealed. Lacey moved some money to a foreign bank after U.S. banks were pressured into dropping him. Lacey’s lawyers informed the IRS of this action and made all required declarations and disclosures.
Being found guilty of concealing activity that one informs the federal government of doesn’t make any sense—and there’s a strong chance that a court would reverse Lacey’s concealment conviction on appeal.
The possibility of an overturned conviction could be one reason why the Department of Justice has decided to try again.
But it’s certainly only part of the explanation.
Public Safety or Retribution?
The decision to retry makes little sense from a public safety perspective. Lacey is 75 years old and could get a sentence of up to 20 years if the concealment conviction stands. He’s already an old man and would be a really old man by the time he got out in that case. Even a sentence of a quarter of the max would put him at age 80 or above upon release.
Of course, Lacey could successfully appeal his conviction or Judge Humetewa could choose a much lighter sentence. But the idea that Lacey is a danger to society if not locked up is absurd—even if you accept the government’s allegations against him. Lacey isn’t accused of being directly involved in sex work or sex crimes at all, but merely of running a website where some people may have been advertised in coded terms. He’s been out awaiting trial for nearly six years, with no incident. And his “crimes” involved very particular circumstances: running an alt-newspaper empire that needed to compete with Craigslist or go broke and thus launched an online classifieds platform that became a popular hub for adult advertising. Does anyone believe he has the impetus, desire, funds, or right cultural moment to do that again?
Clearly, this is more about punishment than public safety. And perhaps some folks in the Department of Justice (DOJ) really do believe that Lacey got away with heinous crimes and should have to pay. (They would have to overlook so much evidence and torture theories of culpability to reach this conclusion, but that’s not inconceivable.)
But the aggression with which this case has been pursued also lends itself to a darker interpretation: Lacey is being punished for failing to respect authority, failing to cave and give the government what it thought would be easy to get.
Unlike former Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, Lacey and the other defendants refused to negotiate a plea deal and denied the government a quick victory lap about stopping “sex trafficking” back when public attention to this case was still strong. They fought hard against various dirty tricks the prosecution attempted and sometimes succeeded, including during the first trial when prosecutors thought they could win by just throwing around sensational and baseless sex-trafficking claims. And for decades before this trial, Lacey fought back against government overreach—and published stories very unflattering to a lot of public figures—as the co-head of alt-weeklies like the Phoenix New Times and the Village Voice.
It’s hard not to suspect the retrial is at least partially about retribution—and also butt-covering. The feds put a lot of time, effort, and public relations into this case, only to have two defendants walk entirely and one of their two main targets (Lacey and Larkin were always the big fish here) avoid conviction on 85 of 86 charges they brought.
That’s got to be embarrassing. No wonder they want another chance.
Michael Piccarreta, a one-time lawyer on Lacey’s case, said he wasn’t surprised about the government’s decision. “The government has been as aggressive on this case as any that I can remember and has put unlimited resources into the case, and they believe the initial verdict was insufficient and unsuccessful,” he told Front Page Confidential. “They also know that with their superior resources, they can wear down, financially and emotionally, any citizen.”
A Warning to Others
Ultimately, trying Lacey three times on the same charges is such an utter waste of public resources and government time and an astonishing display of how power can trump justice. Remember, this all boils down to Lacey and Larkin daring to allow users to post First Amendment-protected speech that the government told it not to allow.
Of all the potential reasons why the DOJ might be pursuing this so relentlessly, I think the one that makes the most sense is that they’ve been trying to use Lacey and company as a deterrent.
The treatment of Backpage—from Congress and federal prosecutors—has proved an apt playbook for going after other tech companies in the years since (especially when it comes to companies that run social media platforms). It’s served as a sort of instruction manual for threatening entities that allow all sorts of disfavored speech, be it about guns or politics or public health or sex or anything else.
Lacey is meant to serve as a warning to other tech honchos who dare to allow unfettered legal speech. They want to make an example of him, to put him through so much that other publishers and tech executives will just give in.
But how can Backpage serve as a serious warning against other tech platforms defying government demands if the government doesn’t actually succeed at getting their pound of flesh? For this to work, they need to win—or at least show that they’re willing to run defendants into the ground trying.
There’s also a financial component here. The feds seized a lot of cash and other assets from Lacey using civil asset forfeiture.
“The government … confiscated millions of dollars of assets and proceeds not only from [Backpage], but also from defendants’ numerous other publishing venues—ventures completely unrelated to the alleged criminality of the site and indisputably protected by the First Amendment,” noted a 2019 amicus brief filed by the Cato Institute, DKT Liberty Project, and the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine).
Sentencing for Brunst, Spear, and Lacey won’t take place until after the judge rules on two outstanding motions from the last trial. (Sentencing for Lacey on the concealment charge may also be postponed until after the new trial.)
One is a rule 29 motion, in which the defense argues that the evidence used to convict was insufficient and thus the conviction must be dismissed.
“The government has not provided this Court with a single case that affirms a concealment money laundering conviction (domestic or international) with facts like this case,” write Lacey’s lawyers in a January 18 court filing. They note that Lacey “repeatedly stated his intent to file all disclosure forms with the federal government related to the funds, pay taxes on the funds at issue, and avoid tax shelters of any kind; that he “timely filed the required disclosure forms, which identified the attributes of the funds at issue (his relationship to the funds, their location, the amount, etc.),” and that he had “documentation of the purposes of forming the trust that have nothing to do with concealment,” among other things.
The other outstanding motion is a motion for a new trial for Lacey, Spear, and Brunst on the charges on which they were found guilty. Their argument is based in part on the government’s failure to make timely disclosures before the last trial. This includes “the government’s failure to timely disclose Carl Ferrer’s emails with its case agent, Lyndon Versoza, which the government disclosed to the defense only after the jury in this case was deliberating,” they argue in the December 4 motion. It also includes “the government’s failure to disclose the factual information the government developed during its investigation of Backpage.com in the Western District of Washington in 2012-2013…which, among other things, undermines, if not contradicts, the government’s trial positions that ‘anyone could tell’ from looking at the adult ads that ran on Backpage.com that those ads were associated with illegal conduct and that Backpage’s moderation practices showed criminal Intent.” (More on that Washington investigation here.)
The Damage Done
However this ultimately ends up, the prosecution of Lacey and his co-defendants has already had some major impacts.
Obviously, it’s been devastating for the Backpage defendants, who have had to spend more than half a decade so far (and all the money and emotional toil that entails) fighting this.
Spear, Brunst, and Lacey are now facing serious prison time.
Larkin took his own life a few days before the trial started last year.
The prosecution also led to the shutdown of Backpage.com, which reverberated negatively through the sex worker and law enforcement communities.
Many sex workers say the shutdown made their work less lucrative and less safe. Police and other law enforcement—including the FBI—say it made fighting sexual violence and exploitation more difficult.
And an untold number of tech leaders and publishers (or potential tech leaders and publishers) saw what happens when you won’t moderate speech to politicians’ liking.
The Ineligibility or Sinecure Clause (Article I, Section 6, Clause 2) states:
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time . . . . (emphasis added).
Here and elsewhere, the Constitution of 1788 distinguishes “appoint” from “elect.” Whether or not contemporaneous popular usage did that too is an entirely different question—just as legal usage sometimes differs from popular usage.
For a different point of view, see Roger Parloff, ‘What Justice Scalia Thought About Whether Presidents Are “Officers of the United States”,’ Lawfare (Jan. 24, 2024, 9:01 AM), <https://lawfaremedia.org/article/what-justice-scalia-thought-about-whether-presidents-are-officers-of-the-united-states>. If Parloff and others are correct, if appoint and elect are basically synonyms across constitutional provisions, then a strategic Congress could raise the President’s (or Vice President’s) salary, and if Congress did so, then a Senator with 2 or 4 years remaining on his/her term would be barred from being elected/appointed to the presidency and vice presidency. In other words, an incumbent President seeking re-election, working in tandem with a cooperative Congress, could bar all senators (with 2 or 4 years remaining on their term) from the minority party, by raising the President’s salary $1! And they say the Blackman/Tillman position has odd, unexpected, undesirable consequences? Moreover, this point is not new. It has been in the literature since circa 2009. See Seth Barrett Tillman, Why Our Next President May Keep His or Her Senate Seat: A Conjecture on the Constitution’s Incompatibility Clause, 4 Duke J. Const. L. & Pub. Pol’y 107, 134–36 (2009).
Parloff might try to argue that the Sinecure Clause does not apply to the presidency, because the presidency is not a “Civil Office under Authority of the United States.” That would be odd. As we understand it, Parloff’s position is that the President is an “Officer of the United States” and the presidency is an “Office under the United States.” Why wouldn’t the presidency also be a “Civil Office under Authority of the United States”? And we have addressed at length why the President is not a military official. It would seem to follow that under Parloff’s position, the presidency would be considered an appointed position under the Sinecure Clause. As a result, all of these negative consequences inhere to his position.
We have little doubt there will be more rushed and flawed entries in the debate. Critics with little or no expertise in the field will find something, anything, to prove that we are wrong. No doubt these critics will be unfamiliar with our full body of scholarship, which well exceeds a thousand pages. Critics will attack positions we never took, and ignore the positions we have actually taken. Critics will be unfamiliar with the proper context of sources from the 18th and 19th centuries. And critics will approach their conclusion with absolute certitude that they are right and Tillman/Blackman are wrong. Trust us, we’ve seen it all before. We could make a list of people who have said we were wrong, and then later had to retract or more. The list keeps growing.
Over the next two months or so, the United States Supreme Court is likely to provide some resolution to one or more of these contentious issues. And, we expect that more than a few will try to leave a mark on this debate in the near term and prior to judicial resolution. They will post new “research” at the last minute knowing full well that those who are in a position to confirm the accuracy of newly reported “research” will have little or no time to do so before the Supreme Court decides this case. And, for a few, that is not a bug, it is the chief feature.
If and how we respond will be a function of what time and other constraints we face in this final, pivotal period. Our candid message to you—the reader—is to approach such new, late-breaking entries in the debate with some caution.
No, she hasn’t dropped out. But it’s abundantly clear from the New Hampshire primary results—54.5 percent for Donald Trump, 43.2 percent for Nikki Haley, at the time of publication—that she has no chance, and that Donald Trump is set up to secure the Republican presidential nomination.
“A majority of the Republican Party appears to be consolidating around Trump,” writesReason‘s Christian Britschgi. “The past couple of days also saw him collect the endorsements of former opponents Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, and Doug Burgum.” Haley, meanwhile, couldn’t even nab a Chris Christie endorsement, and quite a few of her “campaign surrogates seem disappointed in her performance,” argues Britschgi. “Politico captured some awkward moments where New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley backer, had to watch his candidate flub interview questions while he whispered alternative answers to himself.”
Haley struggled to find her footing even in purple New Hampshire, which should’ve been an easier lift for her—though Trump repeatedly (and rightfully) attacked her for being a war hawk. It’s unclear what her plan for dropping out is, since she has truly no shot at winning Nevada and very little shot at performing well in South Carolina, her home state where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017. In that state, Trump is leading by about 30 points, so it’s really not even close.
“If she doesn’t drop out, we have to waste money instead of spending it on Biden, which is our focus,” Trump said of Haley last night.
Democrats vote for same-old: “President Biden did not submit his name for the New Hampshire ballot, after the state refused to comply with a new Democratic nominating calendar that made South Carolina the first primary contest,” reportsThe New York Times. “Yet a scrappy write-in campaign run by the president’s allies delivered a victory for him nonetheless.”
Can you really call something scrappy if it’s just…a write-in effort for the incumbent? A political shakeup this is not. No underdogs here.
I truly hope Matt Welch’s reading of the tea leaves—”the 2024 presidential election just has too much weird anti-rematch energy to NOT get expressed at some point”—is correct. But the boring write-in results in New Hampshire did not lend much credence to it, and we’ll probably all be worse off due to the fact that voters keep pulling the levers for the same government-growing geriatric losers that have been in power for the last eight years.
Milei and protesters face off: At least 200,000 unionized workers—of the country’s 5 million or so—will be marching in the streets of Buenos Aires today against newly elected libertarian President Javier Milei’s policies.
Inflation now exceeds 200 percent and about 40 percent of the country is living below the poverty line. Milei is working to implement massive reforms, which include slashing the number of government employees, deregulating many sectors of the economy, and targeting deeply entrenched unions.
“Lawyers are furious about plans to fast-track divorces through the civil registry without requiring their services. Doctors hate a new requirement for them to preferentially prescribe generic medicines. Arty types are protesting about gutted funds and the closure of the national theatre institute. Fishermen are cross about permit deregulation. Sugar producers are railing against plans to remove import tariffs,” reportsThe Economist. “But no one is more affected by Mr Milei’s shock therapy than Argentina’s trade unions, or more enraged by it. His labour reforms would kneecap them by requiring employees to opt in to union membership, rather than having dues taken automatically, as they are at present. This would leave the unions out of pocket.”
It’s the unions who are leading today’s strikes, and hoping to hobble Milei’s future plans. But the new government does not intend to roll over and take it.
“Milei’s administration had said it will allow protests, but threatened to cut off public aid payments to anyone who blocks thoroughfares,” reported the Associated Press back in December. “Marchers were also forbidden to carry sticks, cover their faces or bring children to the protest.”
People “can demonstrate as many times as they want,” said Patricia Bullrich, Milei’s security minister (who lost to him in the presidential election). “They can go to the squares .. but the streets are not going to be closed,” she added.
The new policy for maintaining public order, which was first tested by mass protests last month, “allows federal forces to clear people blocking streets without a judicial order and authorizes the police to identify … people protesting and obstructing public thoroughfares,” reports the Associated Press. The government “can bill [the protesters] for the cost of mobilizing security forces.”
"La Patria NO se vende!" ???????????????? This Wednesday, Argentina's workers are striking — and calling for your solidarity. Join the @ProgIntl and trade unions across the world to defend worker rights and defeat @JMilei's illegal decree that threatens them. https://t.co/j3fAmmRHYK
“Run over racists,” says the “share the road” street sign graffiti in Fort Greene (close to the part of Brooklyn I escaped from). I’m sure the people endorsing vehicular manslaughter encounter tons of racists here among their brownstones.
QUICK HITS
“Around the world, only two high-speed rail lines (Paris-Lyon and Tokyo-Osaka) earn enough money from fares to pay back their infrastructure costs and operating costs, and many can’t even cover their operating costs without government assistance,” writes Brian Potter at Construction Physics.
“The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration on Monday, allowing federal officials to cut or remove parts of a concertina-wire barrier along the Mexican border that Texas erected to keep migrants from crossing into the state,” reportsThe New York Times. “The ruling, by a 5-to-4 vote, was a victory for the administration in the increasingly bitter dispute between the White House and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, an outspoken critic of President Biden’s border policy who has shipped busloads of migrants to northern cities.”
Good thread about sweatshops and organ selling:
A short ????on why we should reject bans on sweatshops, kidney markets, commercial surrogacy, etc.
A standard argument for these bans asserts that no one should be forced to work in a sweatshop (for example) due to economic necessity. 1/
“There’s a common belief that people with past addictions should never take any potentially addictive substances for medical reasons—period,” writes Maia Szalavitz in The New York Times. “As a result, some languish in extreme pain because they believe that drug exposure will cause them to lose control and immediately return to active addiction.”
Democrats look like they’re gearing up to regulate Zyn nicotine pouches away:
First they came for the Juuls And I did not speak out Because I was not a Juul user
Then they came for the delta 8 pens And I did not speak out Because I was not a delta 8 user
Then they came for the zyns And there was no left To speak out for me
When it comes to educational choice, Arizona ranks highly, offering a range of options for students with varying needs and preferences. But not everybody is happy that families have such leeway in teaching their kids. Chief among the opponents of such freedom is Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, who is doing her best to herd kids into government-run institutions. She could do a lot of damage to what has been a healthy environment for education and learning.
A Leader in Education Freedom
At the moment, Arizona parents and guardians pick traditional public schools across district lines, select among publicly funded but privately managed charter schools, educate their children at home, or have per-student funding follow learners to their chosen private schools.
“Arizona provides K–12 students and their families ample school choice options, including five private educational choice programs, charter schools, magnet schools, home schooling and public school choice via open enrollment,” EdChoice notes in its summary for the state.
In its 2024 EdChoice Yearbook, the organization ranks Arizona second after Florida for “the state that has the largest share of students choosing a non-public school option through a program like education savings accounts, vouchers or tax-credit scholarships.” The listing puts special emphasis on the state’s education savings accounts (ESAs) which were extended in 2022 to essentially all students.
“Part of what animated my run for governor in 2014 was universal school choice,” former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey toldReason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward last month. “The Milton Friedman idea that he shared on Free to Choose in his book and his PBS series is something that took me all eight years of my governorship to accomplish.”
The first effort to expand a limited ESA program was defeated at the ballot box by choice opponents, Ducey added. But then came COVID-19 “and parents were able to see what their kids were being taught or not taught and the level of rigor and expectation from the public schools. They also saw that the charter schools opened and the Catholic schools opened and many of the largest public districts chose to stay closed for nearly two years, even when the government was telling them to open. So we were able to pass universal educational savings accounts.”
Arizona’s ESAs (branded as “empowerment scholarship accounts”) let students take “90% of the state funding that would have otherwise been allocated to the school district or charter school” for use “to pay private school tuition, for curriculum, home education, tutoring and more,” according to the state’s Department of Education.
“The median income of families in the ESA program as of December 31, 2022 is about $60,600,” the report noted. “The median income of families in Arizona with at least one child is $69,700. Meaning, on average, the typical family receiving an ESA is less well-off than the median Arizona family.”
Critics complain about the cost of students using partial education funding on chosen alternatives, but the state is actually spending less than anticipated on schools.
“Arizona has seen an enrollment decline of 80,000 students in the state’s public schools, relative to the pre-pandemic projections,” Jason Gaulden of the education-oriented Oak Rose Group and Katie Ratlief of the Common Sense Institute argue. “Because the state budgeted money for those students, expecting them to attend a public school, this generates substantial savings.”
“Arizona’s newly sworn-in governor has repeatedly said that she wants to reverse the state’s expansion of its school-choice program, arguing that Arizona should instead increase funding to public schools,” Reason‘s Emma Camp noted a year ago.
“In this upcoming session…we must address the lack of accountability and transparency in Arizona’s ESA program,” Hobbs huffed two weeks ago in her State of the State address. “We have seen a steady stream of news coverage around unacceptable and sometimes downright outrageous use of taxpayer money under this program, including water park admissions, ski passes, and luxury car driving lessons.”
“My office already reviews all expense requests regardless of amount,” Horne mildly responded to the governor’s so-called reforms. He blames lax practices under his Democratic predecessor for complaints.
The governor also wants to require background checks of anybody teaching ESA students, fix tuition prices, impose instruction requirements, and subject recipients to strict red tape. No student could use an ESA until they attend a public school for 100 days, though families still have to pay taxes that fund them (good luck to new residents of the state). She also wants to do away with tax credits for donations to groups that pay private school tuition.
Arizona Leads in School Choice. But for How Long?
“ESAs strengthen ALL schools because competition delivers the best product—leading to better students, families, and communities,” observes the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. “That’s why the program has become so popular—and why Hobbs knows she has to hide behind a flood of regulations rather than pushing for a repeal or cap on it.”
“Gov. Hobbs policy proposal claims to improve the ESA program for the sake of parents, taxpayers, and students—particularly those with disabilities,” comments Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. “But let’s not forget that if the governor had had her way in 2011—when she voted against the original ESA program even for special education students—that thousands of students with special needs would still today be trapped in schools failing to serve their needs.”
Right now, Arizona is a national leader in educational freedom for students. Gov. Katie Hobbs is the living embodiment of all the control-freakery families escape when they exercise their power to reject government institutions and guide their kids’ learning.
Canadian military police are threatening to press charges against Christina Lea Gilchrist, a sex worker who offers a 25 percent discount to customers presenting a valid military ID. Her sex work is legal, but the military objects to ads Gilchrist has posted showing her in uniform, which it claims is illegal. Gilchrist said she has never presented herself as a member of the military. “People in movies dressed up as soldiers aren’t impersonating soldiers, so why do (military police) think that I am?” she said. The military has also warned soldiers not to use Gilchrist’s services. But she says that has just raised her profile and led soldiers from across the country to ask about her services.
The New York Times put Charles Murray on the cover of its Sunday magazine, calling him “The Most Dangerous Conservative.”
That was after he co-wrote the book The Bell Curve, which argued that different ethnic groups have, on average, different IQs. As Murray puts it in my new video this week, “Blacks on average have a lower IQ than whites. However, whites are not at the top. East Asians, on average, have a higher IQ than whites. Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQs.”
Other researchers agree.
An article in ScienceDirect journal puts it this way: “East Asians and their descendants average an IQ of about 106, Europeans and their descendants about 100, and Africans and their descendants about 85.”
But many people don’t believe it. Many don’t even want such topics discussed.
Last time Murray tried speaking to college students, a mob shouted him down.
“They’re angry at you because you’re perpetuating racism,” I tell Murray.
“These kids,” he replies, “never read a word of anything I’d ever written.”
That’s probably true. It’s more likely that they just read slander against him from smear sites like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
They call Murray a “white nationalist” and claim he says, “White men…are intellectually, psychologically, and morally superior.”
“I’ve never said anything remotely like that!” says Murray.
“Do you believe that blacks are intellectually inferior?” I ask.
“If you give mental tests to a representative sample of whites and a representative sample of blacks,” he says, “there will be about a one standard deviation difference. To then translate that into people being inferior and superior is idiotic.”
He goes on to say that there are other differences between racial groups.
“I don’t think there’s been a white winner of the 100-yard dash in the Olympics for a zillion years.”
Actually, 20 years. A white woman won 20 years ago; a white man hasn’t won for 40 years.
It’s probably because some black people have more fast-twitch muscles fibers, says Murray.
I don’t see why saying that is controversial. It’s just obvious that there are differences between groups.
But Murray has been canceled.
It’s too bad.
Everything should be talked about. People who don’t agree with Charles Murray should debate him, not shun him.
He is good at revealing unpopular truths.
He once had a job working for the government, evaluating social programs. He discovered that the “war on poverty” was not lifting people out of poverty. In fact, programs like welfare perpetuated poverty.
He wrote a book about that titled Losing Ground.
It soon became a bestseller, and influenced presidents from both parties. Welfare “reformers” Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton cited Murray’s work. Clinton said, “Murray has done the country a service.”
Then Murray wrote In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government—a book that changed my thinking.
He describes his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. He watched Thai government “experts” create what they said would be a “model community.” They gave the village a fishpond, a rice cooperative, a health clinic. But this aid diminished community activities.
“They weren’t as happy as they used to be,” says Murray. “I saw what government looks like from Bangkok and how it looks to the villager. It’s the same in the United States.”
The United States has spent $25 trillion (so far) on our war on poverty. But the poverty rate has stayed about the same. Instead of eliminating poverty, the war created a new “underclass”—fatherless kids who give birth to other fatherless kids—generations of families who become dependent on government handouts.
Yet the programs keep growing.
“Aren’t you upset?” I ask Murray.
“I’m deeply depressed,” he says. “We have watched, in our own lifetime, our hopes and dreams turned to smoldering ruins.”
Then he smiles and says, “The good news is that old people are habitually too pessimistic.”
Charles Murray, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has interesting ideas. They deserve to be heard, not shouted down.
I will do a second video, covering more of his work, in a few weeks.
Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of foreign autocrats, recently has been inveighing against the dangers of holding politicians and police officers accountable for breaking the law. If the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee wants to convince general election voters that there is nothing to charges that he harbors dictatorial ambitions, this is probably not the best way to go about it.
To some extent, Trump’s argument that “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY,” as he put it in an all-caps Truth Social post last week, mirrors the position his lawyers have taken in seeking dismissal of federal charges stemming from his attempts to remain in office after losing reelection in 2020. Although a former president can be prosecuted for “purely private conduct,” they say, he can be prosecuted for “official acts” only if they resulted in impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.
As one judge noted when a skeptical D.C. Circuit panel probed the implications of that position earlier this month, it could literally give presidents a license to kill by ordering the assassination of their political opponents. Trump’s understanding of presidential immunity is, if anything, even broader.
“ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY,” Trump says, even when their actions “CROSS THE LINE” between legitimate exercises of presidential power and criminality. Otherwise, he warns, presidential “AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS” will be “STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER.”
Tellingly, Trump draws an analogy between a former president’s criminal liability and safeguards aimed at preventing police officers from violating people’s constitutional rights. “YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL ‘ROGUE COP’ OR ‘BAD APPLE,'” he says. “SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH ‘GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.'”
In Trump’s view, remedies for police abuse, such as insisting that officers obey the Constitution or authorizing criminal charges and civil rights lawsuits when they don’t, are dangerous to public order. Just as presidents should not have to worry about criminal prosecution when they “CROSS THE LINE,” he thinks, police officers should not have to worry that they could face charges or litigation simply because they broke the law, and maybe a few heads, while doing their jobs.
Trump has promised to “restore law and order” by indemnifying police officers “against any and all liability.” Without such protection, he says, cops are “forced to let a lot of bad people do what they want to do.”
That claim is doubly mistaken. Thanks to “qualified immunity,” which allows federal civil rights claims against police officers only when their alleged misconduct violated “clearly established” law, suing cops is much harder than Trump implies. And even when victims of police abuse manage to overcome that barrier, officers already are routinely indemnified by their employers.
As Trump sees it, however, accountability is the enemy of effectiveness for cops as well as presidents. That view is consistent with Trump’s praise of brutal rulers who take decisive action, unencumbered by statutory or constitutional constraints.
China’s leaders “almost blew it” during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Trump toldPlayboy in 1990, before they realized that maintaining order required a “vicious” and “horrible” response, which “shows you the power of strength.” Trump also admires the strength of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he described in 2016 as “very much of a leader” with “very strong control over a country.”
The following year, Trump bragged about his “great relationship” with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who likened himself to Adolf Hitler while urging the murder of drug users. Trump thought Duterte had done an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”
Trump’s notion of strong leadership, like his understanding of what it takes to be an effective cop or president, reflects authoritarian impulses that should repel anyone who values civil liberties and the rule of law. This election is a test of how much voters care about those things.
With 23 percent of the votes counted, the Associated Press reports that former President Donald Trump has beaten former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his lone remaining primary opponent. With 25 percent of the ballots counted, Trump has captured 53.6 percent of the vote, compared to Haley’s 45.5 percent.
Haley handily outperformed the most recent polls, which had her losing by over 20 percent. Her concession speech was upbeat, vowing to fight on and taking a few digs at Trump.
“With Donald Trump, Republicans have lost almost every competitive election,” she said tonight. “You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.”
Still, she wasn’t running against the polls; she was running against Trump, who pulled off a clear victory in the two-person race.
A majority of the Republican Party appears to be consolidating around Trump. The past couple of days also saw him collect the endorsements of former opponents Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, and Doug Burgum.
Haley’s noticeably didn’t even net the endorsement of Chris Christie, the most anti-Trump of the former GOP primary contestants.
Even some of Haley’s campaign surrogates seem disappointed in her performance. Politico captured some awkward moments where New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley backer, had to watch his candidate flub interview questions while he whispered alternative answers to himself.
Haley’s lack of personal charisma was potentially compounded by the fact that her campaign largely skirted policy issues in the New Hampshire primary, while Trump relentlessly attacked her for being soft on immigration, ready to cut Social Security, and allegedly willing to raise taxes.
Haley’s stump speech in New Hampshire was heavy on calls to stand up to China, Russia, and Iran. Meanwhile, Trump called Haley a “warmonger” and his campaign emails attacked her for being the candidate of “globalists.” (And also for allegedly being soft on China. Trump is not exactly a consistent dove himself.)
Haley is not contesting the February 8 Nevada GOP caucus, where Trump had 73 percent in the polls before DeSantis dropped out. Trump is also averaging 62 percent support in South Carolina, which will hold its primary on February 24.
On the Democratic side, more than 70 percent of the votes at this stage of the counting are unprocessed write-ins, most of them presumably for President Joe Biden, whose name is not on the ballot. Rep. Dean Phillips (D–Minn.) and Marianne Williamson are presently getting 20 percent and 4 percent of the vote, respectively. Democratic candidate Vermin Supreme, known for promising free ponies and wearing a boot on his head, currently has 46 votes.
Because of a dispute between New Hampshire Democrats and the Democratic National Committee about when to hold the state’s primary, none of the state’s votes will actually count for anything in determining the nomination.
The bottom line: Tonight’s results bring us one contest closer to the depressing prospect of a Donald Trump/Joe Biden rematch.
