The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”
“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”
Because I’m in a giving, holiday mood.
Today’s revolting defense of a murderous communist regime comes by way of the Times of London.
The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please.
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
That’s prolific author Simon Winchester, standing athwart the tide of history and yelling, “Starve!”
The actual column is behind a paywall. (Via Libertarian Samizdata.)
Dear God, this is funny.
Other candidates get the same treatment here. And yes, Ron Paul will haunt your prostate.
(Via Hit & Run)
Here are the 20 most-read posts of the past year. The first one went viral in both conservative/limited government circles and organic food/locavore circiles. Consequently, it is far and away the most trafficked post of all-time. By a factor of about five. Guest blogger Dave Kruger also cracked the top 20.
Here’s the list:
1. Does Michelle Obama Know About This?
2. We’re Going To Molest You. And Then We’re Going To Make You Pay for It.
3. The Trial of Tiawanda Moore
4. He Won
5. Video of the Pima County SWAT Raid
6. So How Is This Different From Armed Robbery?
7. First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops.
9. Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams Should Be Arrested
10. Ignornace of the Law Is No . . . You Know the Drill.
11. L.A. Teen Charged With “Attempted Lynching” Now Raided by Police
12. It’s His Party, and He’ll Cry If He Wants To
13. MSNBC Marches Ahead With Its Own Set of Facts
14. When Donald Trump Didn’t Need Proof
15. Petty Thuggishness in Rochester
17. Email From a Cop
19. Why Is Rick Perry the Poster Boy for Limited Government?
20. Indiana Court: You have no right to keep cops out of your house
I have a new post at the Nashville blog profiling Manuel, the tailor to the music industry. He has dressed five presidents, is the one who talked Johnny Cash into wearing black, and can claim credit for the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones (maybe) logos.
His studio is right down the road from me, so I walked over to have a chat with him.
The case started four years ago when a married couple named Mike and Chantell Sackett received an EPA compliance order instructing them to stop construction on what was supposed to be their dream home near Priest Lake, Idaho. The government claimed their .63-acre lot was a federally-protected wetland, but that was news to the Sacketts, who had procured all the necessary local permits. Their lot, which is bordered by two roads and several other residential lots, was in fact zoned for residential use.
The Sacketts contend that the compliance order was issued erroneously and they would like the opportunity to make their case in court. Yet according to the terms of the Clean Water Act, they may not challenge the order until the EPA first seeks judicial enforcement of it, a process that could take years. In the meantime, the Sacketts risk $32,500 in fines per day if they fail to comply. And complying doesn’t just mean they have to stop building; they must also return the lot to its original condition at their own expense.
Moreover, if they did eventually prevail under the current law, the Sacketts would then need to start construction all over again. By that point they would have paid all of the necessary compliance costs plus double many of their original building expenses. And who knows how much time would have been lost. Where’s the due process in that? The Sacketts understandably want the right to challenge the government’s actions now, not after it’s become too late or too expensive for them to put their property to its intended use.
For its part, the EPA argues that old-fashioned judicial review would simply get in the way. As the agency states in the brief it submitted to the Supreme Court, “A rule that broadly authorized immediate judicial review of such agency communications would ultimately disserve the interests of both the government and regulated parties, by discouraging interactive processes that can obviate the need for judicial action.”
Of course, the whole point of due process is that people sometimes do have “the need for judicial action” against overreaching government officials. Why should those people have to give up that right to the EPA? More to the point, why should the Supreme Court allow it to happen?
Nick Gillespie has a a fine tribute up at Reason. The first of many we’ll see today, I’m sure.
More than anything, the world lost one of its most gifted writers last night. The guy could put words together in a way that could only inspire envy from those of us who do this for a living, even when we disagreed with him. I’ve also long admired Hitchens’ willingness to trample on the tradition of venerating the recently dead. Some people don’t deserve veneration. (Though I didn’t always agree with his assessments.) I imagine we’ll see some of Hitchens’ detractors attempt to out-Hitchens him on that front in the coming days. And I imagine he’d have appreciated a well-executed corpse-prodding as much as the glowing tributes.
Gillespie’s comment on Hitchens personal generosity resonates, too. The only time I drank with Hitchens, I remember being struck by his social awareness and graciousness. He didn’t need to, but he went out of his way to bring the fawning young journalists around him into the conversation, to probe and debate them. He then entertained us with dirty limericks. But the guy’s vocabulary and syntax were so beyond me, I really only know they were dirty because he said so. (That’s an exaggeration. But only a little.)
My only other personal Hitchens story comes from a few years ago, when Washington, D.C. was fist considering passing a ban on smoking in the city’s bars. I had gone to the city council hearing to speak against it, and was one in a long line of speakers. Hitchens showed up and sat down next those of us opposing the ban. He had a commitment later that afternoon, and the wait to speak was a few hours long. So I offered to switch slots with him. When he started to speak, he reminded Councilman Jim Graham, the sponsor of the smoking ban, that he lived in Graham’s district, and had actually hosted a fundraiser or two for him. Graham’s face lit up. Here was a titan of the left, come to praise him, Jim Graham!
Hitchens then lit into Graham with a tirade against paternalism that included the phrase, “you’re treating us as if we were helpless retarded children.” Graham was crestfallen. It was a beautiful thing.
. . . says Obama as he reverses his position on indefinite detention.
. . . says the House as it debates a bill that would crush free expression on the Internet.
. . . says the Border Patrol, as it declares that giving a ride to an undocumented immigrant is illegal.
Cato’s Tim Lynch reviews the sorry state of the Bill of Rights. And his list is of course by no means comprehensive.
As we get close to the holidays, I always get quite a few emails asking what organizations I give to, or for recommendations on where to donate to support the ideas and issues we cover on this site. So here are some suggestions:
Libertarianism
For general support of libertarian ideas, I’d recommend Reason and Cato. (Disclosure: I’ve worked for both.) There are obviously lots of different varieties of libertarianism out there, and there are lots of other libertarian think tanks and advocacy groups that do great work. But I subscribe to the Reason/Cato philosophy, both in the ideas, which ideas to emphasize, and how they advocate them.
I’ve recommended them a number of times before, but in terms of winning tangible results for your donated dollar, no one is better than the Institute for Justice. IJ consistently wins precedent-setting cases that codify new protections for economic freedom. Perhaps just as importantly, IJ is brilliant at choosing its cases. In fighting for the economic freedom of people who have been plowed over by rent-seeking corporations and burdensome regulations, IJ is the walking, talking, litigating rebuttal to the lie that libertarians don’t give a damn about the poor or the powerless.
For supporting/encouraging the next generation of libertarians, I recommend two organizations, Students for Liberty, and the Institute for Humane Studies (Disclosure: I’ve given speeches, paid and unpaid, for both organizations.) Students for Liberty is relatively new, started up just a few years ago by Alexander McCobin. The way the group has grown has been inspiring. It’s been a joy to watch the size of the conventions and groups I speak to grow each year. More importantly, they’re attracting smart, articulate, socially well-adjusted students. Also important: They’re bringing in women. I’m not being flip, here. Any non-mainstream ideology will inevitably attract cranks, conspiracy theorists, and other folks from the fringe. SFL has done a fantastic job of making libertarian ideas more mainstream on college campuses.
IHS has been around for a while. But I was a faculty member at their journalism seminar in June, and, again, was really impressed with the quality of the 75 or so students who attended. IHS has been sponsoring seminars, internships, and handing out scholarships to liberty-minded students for a long time.
As I say, there are lots of other great libertarian groups out there. My recommendation of the groups above isn’t meant to imply that other aren’t worthy of a donation.
Criminal Justice
First and foremost, the Innocence Project. There isn’t an organization on the planet that has done more to expose the inadequacies of the criminal justice system. They’ve almost single-handedly moved the criminal justice debate, on issues from forensics to prosecutorial misconduct to police misconduct to issues like false confessions and eyewitness testimony. Oh, and they also get innocent people out of prison.
I’d also highly recommend Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which has had great success in focusing public attention on the problems with taking sentencing discretion away from judges. They too have won some tangible policy changes. Like IJ, FAMM understands the value of a sympathetic story to change policy.
Friend of The Agitator Eapen Thampy has started a promising new organization called Americans for Forfeiture Reform, which works to raise awareness about forfeiture abuses, to change forfeiture laws to make them more fair, and to match victims of forfeiture abuse with attorneys or legal organizations who can help them out.
I have more disagreements with the American Civil Liberties Union than any group I’ve mentioned so far. But there’s no question that they’re an indispensable force for good on the drug war and, more than anyone else, in defending civil liberties in the war on terrorism.
Journalism
I’d also like to recommend supporting investigative journalism, in whatever way jibes with your politics. Though I just moved from a non-profit to a corporation, I think journalism on the whole is moving more toward a non-profit model. I think that’s great, and I think it will lead to a more honest kind of investigative journalism, where the biases of the reporter and publisher are clear up front.
That said, the non-profit model does require donors to keep it afloat. So if you’re a libertarian, I’d again recommend Reason. If your politics lean left, consider supporting publications like Mother Jones and The Nation. I don’t agree with everything they do, but both have done some great reporting on civil liberties and criminal justice abuses. New journalism non-profits like ProPublica (which has done some great work on forensic science) and the Center for Investigative Reporting are also worth supporting even if, again, libertarians may not be fond of everything they put out.
Unfortunately, the conservative political magazines don’t tend to do much investigative reporting. (And James O’Keefe is only marginally more of a journalist than Ashton Kutcher.) But there are some free market-oriented, non-profit investigative journalism programs. State free market think tanks like the Goldwater Institute are now starting their own journalism programs. And we’re seeing more organizations like CalWatch, which focuses on exposing government waste and abuse.
Other
The other advocacy group I gave to this year was the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group currently fighting SOPA, that took on Righthaven, and is generally on the correct side of most web and privacy issues. (Even their position on “net neutrality” is refreshingly nuanced.) The Sunlight Foundation and Sunshine Review also do great work on government transparency.
These are all policy-oriented suggestions, of course. My only recommendations outside the policy world is that local is usually better than national, and to be wary of the big, well-known disease-fighting organizations, whose concept of prevention often leads to advocating legislation to ban or severely restrict the stuff they’ve decided is bad for you.
I’m sure I’ve left some good groups out. Feel free to make your own recommendations in the comments.
(One more disclosure: This year, I gave to Reason, Cato, IJ, SFL, EFF, and the Innocence Project.)
Brazen criminality masked as “code enforcement.”
A federal racketeering complaint accuses high-ranking Philadelphia code-enforcement officials of looting the residences of elderly and disabled citizens “under the fraudulent pretenses of needing to clear the homes of various code violations.”
The scheme, carried out as part of a purported anti-blight initiative called the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP), “has so far resulted in at least nine felony convictions” on charges that include perjury, theft and gun running, according to Steven Tengood, a longtime civilian worker in the Armed Forces who says the home he’s lived in for nearly 45 years was plundered by CLIP workers.
Tengood says that when he tried to appeal the bogus violations through the city’s administrative review process, a deputy city solicitor “willfully supported defendants inspectors’ underlying plan to rob Mr. Tengood” and baselessly accused him of being a “hoarder.”
Accusing CLIP crews of committing a city-funded “crime wave” of “break-ins and thefts,” a Grand Jury in 2009 found that the crews “didn’t simply pocket stray knickknacks. They drove trucks to the houses and took everything …
“In several cases, the property owners were forced out or locked out of their houses, even though the CLIP crew had no legal authority to enter the properties or displace the occupants,” the Grand Jury found.
CLIP was designed to allow officials to respond quickly to property-code violations, by giving owners 20 days to remediate a violation or face unilateral action by city workers, who could cut weeds, remove trash or otherwise clean a property, then bill the owner for the services.
But what may have begun as a well-intentioned anti-blight program quickly transformed into something far more nefarious.
This isn’t the first time an “anti-blight” program has resulted in wholesale disregard for the property rights of (mostly poor, mostly minority) homeowners. Well-intentioned or not, anti-blight programs, asset forfeiture laws, and private-use eminent domain are all policies that assume the government has the power to co-opt private property on the flimsiest of pretexts. Just as asset forfeiture policies have resulted in margarita machines for prosecutors’ offices and tanning salons for the police chief’s wife, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that some of the public servants in this particular program might make the leap to out-and-out theft. Nor should it be surprising that city officials would back them up.
Bill O’Reilly has a long history of sending his producers out with cameras to conduct surprise interviews on people Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like (including one producer who staked out a reporter in front of her home).
So what happens when someone ambushes Bill O’Reilly with a camera? Looks like O’Reilly smacks the guy with his umbrella, then asks the cops to arrest him.
Love, love, love Fark’s year-end headline-of-the-year competition. (See here and here.) Some of my favorites:
And finally . . .
My intern Jessica Greene just wrote her first published article, and it’s the top story at Huffington Post this morning. Not a bad way to kick off a journalism career.
Snippet:
In June 2010 the Nashville Metropolitan City Council passed legislation raising the city’s minimum fee for limo and sedan rentals, bumping it from $25 to $45. Drivers were prohibited by law from charging less. Other new regulations forbid limo companies from using leased vehicles, require cars to be dispatched only from the place of business, compel companies to wait 15 minutes before picking up a client, and ban parking in front of hotels and bars to wait for customers. More laws that take effect in January 2012 would also require companies to replace all sedans and SUVs over seven-years-old, and all limos 10-years-old and older. Vehicles older than five years cannot enter into service.
Passed under the guise of consumer protection, the net effect is to give large, existing car companies (also known as livery services) a huge advantage over smaller companies, and to effectively prevent any new companies from entering the market. Prior to the new laws, Tennesseans could purchase transportation from downtown Nashville to the airport in a limo or sedan for the same price as an average taxi ride. Nashville residents and visitors will now pay almost double for the same service . . .
A transportation battle currently playing out across the country pits large, established car service companies against their smaller and independent competitors. State or local governments in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Oregon, have all passed minimum fare regulations. The fight over new laws in Nashville, where a group of smaller car service owners have filed suit in federal court, belies the black-and-white approach the both Democrats and Republicans take to regulation.
Wesley Hottot, an attorney for the Texas Chapter of Institute for Justice, a non-profit libertarian law firm, says the Tennessee Livery Association (TLA), a coalition of expensive limousine companies, pushed the bill through with a number of provisions that benefit only its members. “There is no point in this regulation. It has nothing to do with public safety. It has everything to do with economic protectionism,” Hottot says. Hottot and his team have litigated similar cases involving economic liberty and property rights in federal and state courts across the country.
Now that I no longer work there, I can encourage you to donate to Reason without feeling like I’m encouraging you to donate to me. Although I guess I’ve done that in the past, too. In any case, Reason is having its annual fundraising drive. You should donate. (Preemptive rebuttal: No, donor-supported organizations are not incompatible or even inconsistent with free markets or with libertarianism.) With new hires Mike Riggs and Lucy Steigerwald (in addition to Jacob Sullum, Tim Cavanugh, and the Reason.tv crew), they’ve more than kept the criminal justice beat alive since I left. In fact, those issues are probably getting more attention over there than ever.
Also, if I may shamelessly self-promote, I somehow missed these kind words Jonathan Rauch had for Reason’s criminal justice issue, which Jacob Sullum and I co-edited:
Hats off to Reason for its July special issue on criminal (in)justice. Strong journalism examining, among other things, the unaccountable “culture of misconduct” among gung-ho prosecutors (names are named); and the prevalence of wrongful convictions; an immigration detention system “that treats treats suspected illegal aliens like criminals, but with fewer rights.” Special kudos to Jacob Sullum for a compelling and, in today’s climate, brave takedown of politically sacred sex-offender laws.
I read the whole magazine with mounting admiration. Every article is solid and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, on a subject about which Americans are too complacent. This kind of enterprise is why God invented magazines.
Coming from Rauch, a journalist’s journalist, that’s damned flattering.
This is great. Explanation/key and more videos here.
I missed this when it came out a few weeks ago. The state of Illinois will appeal its case against Michael Allison.
I first wrote about Allison in the January issue of Reason. He’s facing up to 75 years in prison for recording police and other public officials with a digital recorder. In September, a Crawford County judge ruled that the state’s eavesdropping law violates the First Amendment. It’s now up to the Illinois Supreme Court. And, after that, I’d imagine the loser will at least try to get the case before a federal court.*
This is bad for Allison, but good for getting the law overturned once and for all. Allison has told me that is his aim. He has said he won’t take a plea bargain.
*A commenter reminds me that a challenge to the law is already before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The TSA continues to find new ways to make itself look ridiculous.
Vanessa Gibbs, 17, claims the Transportation Security Administration stopped her at the security gate because of the design of a gun on her handbag.
Gibbs said she had no problem going through security at Jacksonville International Airport, but rather, when she headed home from Virginia.
“It’s my style, it’s camouflage, it has an old western gun on it,” Gibbs said.
But her preference for the pistol style didn’t sit well with TSA agents at the Norfolk airport.
Gibbs said she was headed back home to Jacksonville from a holiday trip when an agent flagged her purse as a security risk.
“She was like, ‘This is a federal offense because it’s in the shape of a gun,’” Gibbs said. “I’m like, ‘But it’s a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?’”
After agents figured out the gun was a fake, Gibbs said, TSA told her to check the bag or turn it over.
By the time security wrapped up the inspection, the pregnant teen missed her flight, and Southwest Airlines sent her to Orlando instead, worrying her mother, who was already waiting for her to arrive at JIA….
TSA isn’t budging on the handbag, arguing the phony gun could be considered a “replica weapon.” The TSA says “replica weapons have prohibited since 2002.”
It’s a rule that Vanessa feels can’t be applied to a purse.
“Common sense,” she said. “It’s a purse, not a weapon.”
A TSA official at JIA said it’s not that uncommon for passengers to wear something that could be considered a gun replica, but the official encourages everyone to check the prohibited items list, which can be found online or at the airport before going through security.
Mull that over for a sec. TSA isn’t budging . . . over a design of a gun on a handbag.
These are the people charged with keeping us safe.
…in a case we’ll just call “The Department of Justice vs. Cancer Patients.”
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a unanimous opinion granting victory to cancer patients and their supporters from across the nation in a landmark constitutional challenge brought against the U.S. Attorney General. The lawsuit, filed by the Institute for Justice on behalf of cancer patients, their families, an internationally renowned marrow-transplant surgeon, and a California nonprofit group, seeks to allow individuals to create a pilot program that would encourage more bone-marrow donations by offering modest compensation—such as a scholarship or housing allowance—to donors. The program had been blocked by a federal law, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), which makes compensating donors of these renewable cells a major felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Under today’s decision (PDF Download), this pilot program will be perfectly legal, provided the donated cells are taken from a donor’s bloodstream rather than the hip. (Approximately 70 percent of all bone marrow donations are offered through the arm in a manner similar to donating whole blood.) Now, as a result of this legal victory, not only will the pilot programs the plaintiffs looked to create be considered legal, but any form of compensation for marrow donors would be legal within the boundaries of the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and various other U.S. territories.
It’s a shame it had to be litigated in the first place. Now, let’s repeal the ban on organ sales, too.
The sad thing is, it will probably help him.
Here you have a power-mad, office-abusing sheriff who has misspent millions in taxpayer funds, and who once let a celebrity drive a damned tank into a man’s home (on suspicion of cockfighting, no less).
And the leading candidates vying for the nomination of the alleged party of “limited government” have been falling all over themselves to win his blessing.
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