Tag: news

This may be the strangest porn-prosecution story I’ve ever
seen. According to The Independent,

A bus driver wrongly accused of
owning a film of a woman having sex with a tiger is trying to
change the law on extreme pornography after a 14-month campaign to
clear his name.

Andrew Holland, 51, suffered a heart attack, received hate mail and
was targeted by vigilantes after being charged with possessing two
videos that he was sent by friends as a joke.

After more than six months on bail, the charge of possession of an
extreme pornographic image was dropped in December 2009 when
prosecutors realised that the “animal” was a man dressed up in a
tiger suit.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it only recognised that it was a
man when the tiger was heard on the soundtrack saying “that’s
grrrrrrreat”, like Tony the Tiger from Frosties’ breakfast cereal
adverts.

The other video, called The Pain Olympics, is
described in The News Statesman as a “clip depicting
simulated damage to a man’s genitals.” The Independent
reports that it was made with “prosthetics, cocktail sausages and
ketchup.”

The U.K.’s law banning possession of “extreme pornography” was
passed in 2008. According to The Independent, it

has resulted in more than 5,500 prosecutions, the
majority for clips of bestiality. Ministers had predicted that
there would be just 30 cases a year.

Under the law, a person can be prosecuted for possession of a
pornographic image labelled “extreme” if it shows necrophilia or
bestiality, threatens someone’s life or could cause serious injury
to anus, breasts or genitals. In addition, the law applies to
“grossly offensive” or “disgusting” images—a highly subjective
test.

Bestiality itself has been illegal in the United Kingdom for
ages—and even if it hadn’t been explicitly prohibited, the
producers of bestiality videos could probably be prosecuted under
the statutes governing animal cruelty. This law was aimed at people
who merely possess such movies, even if they did not
purchase the videos and thus cannot be said to be creating a
financial incentive to produce more of them. Indeed, as Holland’s
prosecution shows, the law can be wielded against people who merely
receive clips in unsolicited emails. It’s hard to defend that, and
it’s even harder when the ban is enforced by officials who can’t
tell a real beast from a furry doing Tony the Tiger cosplay.

The Democratic Party is not having much luck in
the midterm elections. Public opinion
polls and statistical models
have been showing a clear path to victory for Republicans in both
houses of Congress.

One of the most interesting Senate races has been, of all
places, in South Dakota, where a three-way battle between Democrat
Rick Weiland, Republican Mike Rounds, and Independent
(ex-Republican) Larry Pressler is taking place. The Huffington
Post has highlighted the “wildly inconsistent polls,
a flood
of new advertising money from the national parties and
PACs, and renewed interest in an immigration
and corruption scandal from Rounds’ gubernatorial days,”
and the National Journal points out the
tipping power of the state’s Native American vote, all of which
indicate this election could come down to a photo finish.

The race just got even more interesting, because Weiland has
accused his own party of sabotaging his campaign. From the

Argus Leader:

Weiland said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s ads
attacking Republican incumbent Mike Rounds have backfired and hurt
him.

“You put negative on a candidate and you put your disclosure at
the bottom that says ‘Paid for by the Democratic Senate Campaign
Committee,’ the Democratic candidate’s going to get blamed for
that,” Weiland said.

But Weiland went a step further and said this wasn’t just an
inadvertent side effect of the negative ads. He said it was
deliberate — an attempt to sabotage him and boost independent Larry
Pressler.

“My national party — that I’m a member of — (was) trying to
drive votes to Larry Pressler and trying to drive up my negatives,”
Weiland said.

A spokesman for the DSCC declined to comment on Weiland’s
charges.

The DSCC announced earlier this month that they
would spend
$1 million in the South Dakota Senate race — but that the
money would be spent primarily on attacking Rounds. Experts
speculated that the party would be content with either Weiland or
Pressler winning, as Pressler, though an independent, could be
persuaded to caucus with the Democrats.

Significantly, Weiland does not
have a good relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,
whereas Pressler does. Weiland went so far as to say last week
during a debate that if he were elected he wouldn’t vote for Reid
to maintain his position as majority leader.

The Washington Post
states that Weiland has raised only about one-fourth the funds
of his Republican counterpart. This morning Politico

reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is
cancelling over $300,000-worth of advertisement cash from Rounds,
not because they’re sabotaging him, but because they figure he’s
already won. 

Former Reason intern Jeff Winkler has an
interesting piece over at Maxim that drills down into the economics
of “sexy” Halloween costumes:

The costume industry is a serious business that the
International Council of Shopping Centers expects to bring in $11.3
billion this year. That number drops to $7 billion if you
believe the National Federation of Retailers’ figures. Either way,
it’s a lot of money and the $1.2 billion spent on adult
costumes (roughly $77 per paying customer) is nothing to
sneeze at.

And Yandy can’t reliably make more by selling less fabric.
According to company execs, “cute and cuddly” costumes have been
gaining traction. A spokeswoman for Spirit Halloween, confirmed the
trend, saying the market “saw sexy costumes reach their peak about
4 to 5 years ago.” That has to do with both sexual politics and
popular culture. Game of
Thrones and The Walking Dead are
massively popular and neither lends itself particularly to adult
role play.

Mainstream fashion also affects the market.
“We’ve seen a trend of people moving away from short skirts and
more towards rompers and shorts,” said Horstman, adding
reassuringly that “They’re still sexy but just a different
kind.”

Read the whole thing here.

And here’s a Buzzfeed list of “25
Sexy Halloween Costumes for Men that Shouldn’t Exist.” Buzzfeed
may be the least reliable news source on the planet but as this
image makes clear, it got this story dead-to-rights.

Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in
Comptroller v. Wynne, a case arising out of Maryland’s
efforts to collect personal income tax from state residents whose
income is partially earned—and taxed—outside of the state. As Santa
Clara University law professor Bradley W. Joondeph
observes at SCOTUSblog, this case presents a “collision between
the imperatives of state sovereignty and free markets—between the
states’ autonomy in matters core to their separate existence, and
the axiom that commerce among the states must be protected from
parochial trade barriers.”

The constitutional issue presented by this case is what’s known
as the dormant Commerce Clause. It says that in addition to
granting Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, the
Commerce Clause also imposes an independent and judicially
enforceable limit on the power of the states to erect interstate
trade barriers. Under this reading of the Constitution, the dormant
Commerce Clause mandates what we might call a domestic free trade
zone. If a state law trumpets intrastate commerce at the expense of
interstate commerce, it should be struck down.

Maryland residents Brian and Karen Wynne are part-owners of a
business called Maxim Healthcare Services. They earn income from
that business, and pay taxes on it, in more than 30 states. Yet
Maryland expects them to pay personal income taxes on 100 percent
of that income, regardless of the taxes they’ve already paid on it
in other states. To give some perspective, unlike Maryland, most
states offer a tax credit to their residents when it comes to
personal income earned and taxed elsewhere.

The Wynnes argue that Maryland is violating the dormant Commerce
Clause because it imposes a harsher tax regime on people like them
than it does on those residents whose income is earned entirely
within the state. “The State’s tax scheme discourages interstate
commerce,” the Wynnes argue in their
brief to the Supreme Court, “by penalizing tens of thousands of
small businesspeople and business owners for operating across state
lines.”

Maryland, by contrast,
asserts that “the Constitution does not require a state to
subordinate its own legitimate taxing authority to the taxing
authority of other states.” In effect, the state argues, if
Maryland (or any other state) wants to impose multiple taxes on the
personal income of its residents, the Supreme Court has no business
standing in the way.

How might the Supreme Court settle this dispute? At the Law
& Liberty blog, Michael S. Greve worries that the Court may
well let
“the Taxman Cometh, Twice.” He writes:

Barring a major revamp of this jurisprudence, it’s hard to see
how the Wynnes can lose. The state court got this right, and
there’s no conflict with binding decisions elsewhere. So why did
the Supreme Court—which grants cert to state courts only
in exceedingly rare cases—yank this case up?

I have a fear: in a string of cases, Justice Thomas and Justice
Scalia have argued, both with characteristic force and clarity,
that the entire dormant Commerce Clause is completely made up.
(Justice Thomas seems prepared to jettison it altogether.) To their
minds, the doctrine is an extra-textual invention—an interstate
version of Lochner, and a constitutional common law rule
of the sort that we’re not supposed to have. The Chief has
expressed sympathy with that view. Maybe they found a fourth vote
to grant cert.”

We’ll see. Oral argument in Comptroller v. Wynne is
scheduled for November 12.

Vote for inertia. Vote to keep bad public
policy from getting worse. Vote Democrat November 4. Because,
like Seinfeld, made-for-cable Decision
2014 is a political show about nothings,
says former Democratic National Committee Press Secretary and
current Washington Center for Politics & Journalism
Director Terry Michael. Short of a coup d’etat assault on The
Homeland (über alles!) by The Terrorists or collapse of Western
Civilization from failure to fully fund the “we’re all gonna die”
Ebola Fighters at the CDC/CNN (same thing), we will have a
Democratic president and a Republican House of Representatives from
January 3, 2015. But what about the Senate, though? Michael argues
that believers in free markets and free minds would be served best
by keeping the upper house under modest Democratic control.

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