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Southern Oregon University administrators told
students that they couldn’t freely distribute copies of the
Constitution out in the open, on public university property.
Officials tried to usher the students indoors, to the
preposterously unconstitutional “free speech zone” where political
activity is deemed permissible.

The students, who wish to start a Students for Concealed Carry
chapter at the university, recorded their interactions with various
officials. The footage was published by Campus Reform.
One telling exchange with an administrator who defended the free
speech zone:

“Clearly there is a number of reasons why [the free speech zone]
exists. I think we need to look at all those, good, bad, and
indifferent. It’s not just abut the free speech of students. When
you open it up to free speech that means anyone, anywhere can come
on and do that and that might create some other challenges for this
campus that we are not prepared to manage.”

My goodness, what is he afraid of? It’s a public university:
Anyone, anywhere should be able to walk onto the campus
and express opinions!

The students wisely asserted their First Amendment right to
canvass wherever they want. The administrators, on the other hand,
seemingly made an effort not to address the fundamental free speech
argument—and have decided not to take any disciplinary action
against the students—which leads me to believe that they were well
aware they would lose. Is the point of college merely to trick
teenagers into thinking their rights are nonexistent?

A reminder: When colleges push this, the Foundation for
Individual Rights
eviscerates them.

Hat tip: Fox News

Wait! Before you illegally
download that copy of Justin Bieber’s latest hits, you’ve got to
know something: It could cost you a gig with the FBI.

TorrentFreak, a blog dedicated to all things copyright-
and piracy-related,
reported last week:

Monday this week Sacramento State’s Career Center welcomed
the FBI for a visit concerning recruitment of students for
its paid internship program. One of the topics discussed were
historical actions that could exclude applicants from the
program.

In addition to drug use, criminal activity and even defaulting
on a student loan, students were informed that if they had
illegally downloaded content in the past, that could rule them out
of a position at the FBI. It appears that to the agency,
downloading is tantamount to stealing.

The student-run
State Hornet spoke with an FBI representative, Steve
Dupre, who says there’s no point in lying about it:

During the first two phases of interviews, everything is
recorded and then turned into a report. This report is then passed
along to a polygraph technician to be used during the applicant’s
exam, which consists of a 55-page questionnaire. If an applicant is
caught lying, they can no longer apply for an FBI agent
position.

“If you are accepted to intern at FBI and fail the polygraph you
can no longer apply to FBI again.” Dupre said.

This policy isn’t terribly surprising, since the FBI has gone
after high-profile file-sharing sites like MegaUpload. Though, that
doesn’t mean it’s a policy that makes much sense.

While the agency considers
piracy “a growing threat,” several
studies have
shown that musicians and entertainers actually benefit from the
illicit distribution of their art. A 2012 survey found that 46
percent of all Americans illegally download copyrighted material,
and among people aged 18-29, it’s 
70 percent. By barring young people who participate in an
increasingly common activity, the FBI is limiting its own pool of
technologically curious and savvy potential employees—just
as it’s doing by not hiring marijuana users. Whether the policy
even works is up for debate, since it’s been documented just how
much members of
the FBI (and Congress and the Department of Justice) like to
snatch free copies of their favorite shows and movies,
too. 

Americans are living under a dire threat that
could quickly escalate into a national emergency. No, not Ebola or
the Islamic State but the hugely overhyped fear of them. The public
resembles one of those cartoon elephants perched on a chair in
trembling terror of a mouse.

Ebola has killed one person in the United States, which is one
more than the Islamic State has killed. But Americans spooked by
horrific tales and ominous images are responding as though mass
death looms before us.

A Washington Post poll found that 43 percent of Americans are
“very worried” or “somewhat worried” that they or their immediate
family members will contract Ebola. In a CNN poll, 45 percent
described the Islamic State as a “very serious” threat. Humorist
Andy Borowitz says CNN’s new slogan is “Holy Crap, We’re All Gonna
Die.”

But, as Steve Chapman writes, Americans have a way of letting
their fears get the best of them. That’s where things get truly
scary.

View this article.

The Affordable Care Act not only makes
hiring full-time workers more expensive for employers than
part-timers, according to a new research paper, it also directly
penalizes full-time workers. That will drive at least some people
to—perversely—reduce their hours in order to increase their
compensation. The end result for the country is likely to be the
equivalent of 4 million fewer full-time-workers.

In “The
Affordable Care Act and the New Economics of Part-Time Work,”
Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of
Chicago, writes, “Three major provisions of the ACA introduce
incentives to change the workweek. The most obvious is the explicit
penalty on assessable large employers that do not offer health
insurance to their full-time employees.” Employers are not required
to offer benefits to part-time employees, creating an obvious
incentive to reduce working hours and rely on part-time and
contract employees instead of full-time workers.

In fact, Federal Reserve Banks around the country find exactly
that pattern underway when they survey employers. After polling
manufacturers and business leaders in August, the
New York Federal Reserve Bank found:

About 20 percent of respondents in both surveys said that
they were reducing the number of workers and/or raising the share
of part-time workers. A similar proportion said they were paying
less compensation per worker because of the ACA, and a similar
proportion of manufacturers said they were outsourcing more
work.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
received remarkably similar answers to a survey of
service-sector employers. Because of costs imposed by the Afordable
Care Act, 20.8 percent of them said the number of people they
employ will be lower (2.7 percent say it will be higher).
And 22.4 percent say they’ll use a higher proportion of
cost-reducing part-time, contract, or temporary workers (7.1
percent will use fewer).

Federal Reserve Banks in
Philadelphia and Atlanta reported similar responses.

But Mulligan adds that, in addition to disincentives for
employers to use full-time workers, the ACA also nudges workers to
reduce their hours with the “provision that full-time employees and
their families cannot receive subsidized health coverage on the
ACA’s health insurance exchanges…unless their employer fails to
offer affordable coverage.” Some employees also have an incentive
to work less because of “the provision that gives lower subsidies
to families with higher incomes.” Under the law, a good many
workers stand to make more money, once subsidies are included, by
working below the part-time threshold than by working
full-time.

These pressures on workers to put in fewer hours may actually be
stronger than those more widely discussed incentives for employers
to cut hours.

How big a disincentive? Mulligan compares a 40-hour-per-week
full-timer at $52,000 annually to a 29-hour-per-week part-timer at
$37,700. After taxes, expenses, and subsidies, the part-timer walks
away with $28,854, compared to $27,021 for the full-timer.

The bottom line, says Mulligan, is that:

• The ACA’s employment taxes create strong incentives to work
  less. The health subsidies’ structure will put millions in a
  position in which working part time (29 hours or fewer, as defined
  by the ACA) will yield more disposable income than working their
  normal full-time schedule.
• The reduction in weekly employment due to these ACA
  disincentives is estimated to be about 3 percent, or about 4
  million fewer full-time-equivalent workers. This is the aggregate
  result of the law’s employment disincentives, and is nearly double
  the impact most recently estimated by the Congressional Budget
  Office.
• Nearly half of American workers will be affected by at least
  one of the ACA’s employment taxes—and this does not account for the
  indirect effect on others as the labor market adjusts.
• The ACA will push more women than men into part-time work.
  Because a greater percentage of women work just above 30 hours per
  week, it is women who will be more likely to drop to part-time work
  as defined by the ACA.

Hmmm…Many Americans can make more by working less and taking
tax-funded subsidies. And we’ll have the equivalent of 4 million
fewer people working, as a result (and paying the taxes for those
subsidies).

You have to wonder what that will do to the economy.

Time magazine’s cover story on Rand Paul
starts like this:

Can he fix what ails the GOP?

The tattooed and pierced longhairs never showed up to see
Senator Rand Paul speak with students at the University of South
Carolina in Columbia last month. Those in attendance drew instead
from the preppy set, with brushed bangs, blue blazers and proper
hemlines, some wearing sunglasses on neck straps like jock jewelry.
They mostly hailed from college Republican circles, and the room
where they gathered, a wood-stained memorial to the state’s old
power structure, was named for the politician who led the fight to
protect school segregation in the 1960s.

You could call them activists, even rebels in their way. But
this was not a gathering of losers and outcasts. Paul knew
this.

Whole
thing here.

Back in 2011, Reason dubbed Paul “the most interesting
man in the Senate” and put him on our cover. Congratulations
on the promotion, senator.

Our most recent interview with Paul, from this past summer, when
he announced “Republicans could only win in general if they become
more live and let live.”
Transcript here. Click below to watch:

One of the few positive things to be said
about city code enforcement officers is that they rarely shoot dogs
during the performance of their duties and they don’t carry
flash-bang grenades. Cities claim they serve public safety by
enforcing a million property regulations, but really they often end
up harassing poor people with constant demands and threats of fines
for poorly maintained homes and yards. In my time, I’ve encountered
any number of leaders of relatively poor cities who were certain
that they could draw in big development projects and turn things
around if only people’s homes looked better, while in the meantime
the city streets and infrastructure crumbled into dust. Residents,
annoyed by the guy down the street with the car on blocks in front
of his house, often support code enforcement anyway.

During one dry summer, I knew of a desert city out in California
threatening code enforcement fines for properties that didn’t
maintain yards because they created fire risks. Then they had a
wildfire threatening a neighborhood that originated from exactly
the kind of unmaintained property the city worried about. Except it
turned out the dangerous property was owned by the city itself.

Code enforcement harassment took a strange turn out in Lenoir City,
Tennessee (population: 8,800. Median household income:
$28,000). A mother in the small town, Karen Holloway, was sent to
jail after being cited for failing to maintain her lawn. As

reported by WVLT in Knoxville, Tennessee:

Holloway, who has two kids still at home, says she’ll be the
first to admit this yard needed some attention. But she feels the
city has gone too far by imposing jail time.

“[The bushes and trees] were overgrown. But that’s certainly not
a criminal offense,” she said.

She was shocked at a hearing last week, when Judge Terry Vann
handed down a five-day jail sentence.

“It’s not right,” she said. “Why would you put me in jail with
child molesters, and people who’ve done real crimes, because I
haven’t maintained my yard.”

She says she was never read her rights nor told she could have a
lawyer present.

The judge eventually reduced her sentence to six hours but
refused her request for community service. According to Holloway,
Vann said he knew this wasn’t a criminal case but sentenced her to
jail anyway. And he set a follow-up hearing for November, where she
could face even more penalties if he’s not happy with her yard.

WVLT was unable to reach either the judge or the town’s chief of
police to get any answers. Out of curiosity, I looked up Lenoir
City’s
municipal code (pdf) online. It’s almost 300 pages, but I got
lucky scrolling through and found the property maintenance
regulations beginning on page 135. Here’s what it describes as the
penalty for having an overgrown or trashed yard:

The penalty for violating this section shall be a fine up to and
including fifty dollars ($50.00) and costs for each offense and/or
the judge of the municipal court may punish a violation in the same
manner as prescribed by any other city ordinance (Tennessee Code
Annotated, § 6-54-306). Each day during which a violation continues
to exist following the initial citation shall be considered a
separate offense.

Well, that’s an easily abusable citation system, isn’t it? (And
likely extremely common.) The basic “penalty clause” of the
municipal code declares that violations are civil offenses unless
stated otherwise, with maximum fines of $500 and “hard labor”
should the offender be unable to pay. It doesn’t seem to authorize
any sort of jail time for these violations, but admittedly, I’m not
a lawyer and there may be some sort of loophole I’m missing.

(Hat tip to Felix Finch)