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| Police-G20-Protester Standoff Begins with Song, Ends in Chase
June 29, 2010 at 10:52 AM
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| This clip begins quietly with a crowd of G20 protesters signing the Canada's national anthem to police in Toronto, where authorities pooled their efforts to control large-scale demonstrations surrounding the global economic summit this weekend. Soon into the song, however, in what looks like a sudden change of order at 1:08, the large team of police bolt forward, pushing over activists to the ground and chasing them down the street.
Location: Toronto, Canada Date uploaded: June 27 Views: 198
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GqhHq2vpwpg&hl=en_US&fs=1& (1 KB)
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| Supreme Court Sarbanes-Oxley Decision: You Can't Keep An Executive Branch Board Two Layers from the President
June 29, 2010 at 8:40 AM
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| In a decision today, the Supreme Court declared the legal structure of the Sarbanes-Oxley enforcement body the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) unconstitutional on separation of powers grounds, because its members are two layers away from direct presidential authority. The president, you see, can order around or remove members of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (though only for good cause, though the dissent in the case argues that might not be factually true). And members of the SEC can order around and remove members of PCAOB, also only for good cause. The accounting firm Beckstead and Watts, feeling bedeviled by picayune commands regarding their corporate accounting issued by PCAOB, sued (with the help of free market advocacy group the Free Enterprise Fund) on the grounds that Congress giving enforcement powers to a body under no direct control of the president did not fit into the constitutional structure of the legislative-executive-judicial separation of powers. (They also challenged PCAOB on other grounds, though those other grounds went nowhere.) Today they won the case of Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on the separation of powers argument. Here's the heart of why the Supreme Court believes that PCAOB was one layer too many away from Barack Obama (and future holders of his office): such multilevel protection from removal is contrary to Article II's vesting of the executive power in the President. The President cannot "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" if he cannot oversee the faithfulness of the officers who execute them. Here the President cannot remove an officer who enjoys more than one level of good-cause protection, even if the President determines that the officer is neglecting his duties or discharging them improperly. That judgment is instead committed to another officer, who may or may not agree with the President's determination, and whom the President cannot remove simply because that officer disagrees with him. This contravenes the President's "constitutional obligation to ensure the faithful execution of the laws." Another bit from the majority decision, written by Samuel Alito Chief Justice John Roberts that I found delightful (addressing the dissent's argument that, more or less, complicated government requires a complicated set of enforcement agencies and structures and technical experts that can't be shoved into the tight structure we were left with by the Constitution): One can have a government that functions without being ruled by functionaries, and a government that benefits from expertise without being ruled by experts. Our Constitution was adopted to enable the people to govern themselves, through their elected leaders. The growth of the Executive Branch, which now wields vast power and touches almost every aspect of daily life, heightens the concern that it may slip from the Executive's control, and thus from that of the people. This concern is largely absent from the dissent's paean to the administrative state. The upshot of the decision is that now PCAOB members can be fired by the SEC at will, leaving only one layer of "fired only for cause" between them and the president. It does not mean that SarbOx has been "overturned." As the decision says: petitioners are not entitled to broad injunctive relief against the Board's continued operations. But they are entitled to declaratory relief sufficient to ensure that the reporting requirements and auditing standards to which they are subject will be enforced only by a constitutional agency accountable to the Executive. Reaction from the free-market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, employees of which were co-counsels to the plaintiffs, hitting on some reasons why the business community was pissed about PCAOB: The board's lack of accountability under the Constitution is reflected in its flawed rules. For example, the board's "internal control" mandate costs companies $35 billion a year and has auditors going over trivial minutiae such as the possession of office keys and the number of letters in employee passwords. Meanwhile, in the nearly eight years of its existence since Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in 2002, the PCAOB has done little to address auditing rules for off-balance sheet entities that were the core Enron's accounting problems and that flared up again to hide debt at Lehman and other financial firms. The shortcomings of the PCAOB and Sarbanes-Oxley have been recognized by members of both parties. The House-Senate conference for the pending financial regulation bill agreed to accept a measure permanently exempting smaller public companies from the PCAOB's internal control mandates. The PCAOB's mandates and possibly other sections of Sarbanes-Oxley may now be subject to legal challenge. We look forward to working through the courts and/or Congress to correct the flawed rules from an unconstitutional body that have been holding our economy back. This does not, in and of itself, overturn any specific action of the PCAOB. According to CEI's financial policy director, John Berlau, while past court cases create ambiguity about how automatically the actions of an agency found unconstitutional will be in and of themselves found invalid, today's decision opens up past Sarbanes-Oxley enforcement actions from PCAOB to future court challenges. The PCAOB, interestingly, is not considered technically a government body by Congress, which created it, although violating its dictates is a federal crime. SCOTUSwiki's great summation of the case, its meaning, oral arguments, and history. I wrote in Reason magazine's April 2007 issue about the beginnings of the case. 
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| Chrome Overtakes Safari
June 29, 2010 at 7:54 AM
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| 
Nintendo 3DS comes in March 2011, not this Christmas. Father of digital images want to make them better. How much better can they be? Social media up but by how much? Seems like a low number. Antenna patch coming from Apple. Weird. I thought there was no problem. Google trying another social media initiative. What about Orkut II. Bag of parts in the iPhone4 is $188. .XXX good to go, for now. Salesforce digs up a Microsoft enemy. Guess who! Google Chrome beating Apple Safari. Click to listen:  | Media Files
tech5-237851-06-28-2010.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 4.5 MB)
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| Chrome Overtakes Safari
June 29, 2010 at 7:53 AM
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| Nintendo 3DS comes in March 2011, not this Christmas. Father of digital images want to make them better. How much better can they be? Social media up but by how much? Seems like a low number. Antenna patch coming from Apple. Weird. I thought there was no problem. Google trying another social media initiative. What about Orkut II. Bag of parts in the iPhone4 is $188. .XXX good to go, for now. Salesforce digs up a Microsoft enemy. Guess who! Google Chrome beating Apple Safari.  | Media Files
tech5-237851-06-28-2010.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 4.5 MB)
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| Deficit-Reduction Doubts: ObamaCare's Additional Costs
June 29, 2010 at 6:57 AM
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| On the day the Affordable Care Act passed, the New York Times ran an op-ed by former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He argued that despite the current CBO's projection that the law would reduce the deficit by about $140 billion over the next decade, the more likely outcome was that the law would increase the deficit in the neighborhood $550 billion. In the newest issue of Health Affairs, Holtz-Eakin (now of the American Action Forum) and co-author Michael J. Ramlet expand on this argument, projecting that the law will add nearly $1.5 trillion to the deficit during its second decade and arguing that the CBO's official projections aren't reliable because they "[hinge] on provisions of the legislation that the CBO is required to take at face value and not second-guess." To put it another way, the CBO is not allowed to account for political or logistical uncertainty—the possibility that future Congresses or administrations might not implement the law as originally designed. So Holtz-Eakin and Ramlet's essay is not a swipe at the CBO's work so much as a recognition of the scope and boundaries of the office's duties; indeed, the CBO has made similar points about the potential uncertainty of its projections. And, as Holtz-Eakin and Ramlet write, the CBO also noted in its reports that implementing and operating the law would require a significant additional spending that was never scored for Congress—spending that the authors estimate will add hundreds of billions to the total price tag: To operate the new health care programs over the first ten years, future Congresses will need to vote for $274.6 billion in additional spending. This unbudgeted spending includes discretionary costs of $7.5 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce and $7.5 billion for the CMS to administer insurance coverage. It also includes $50.0 billion in explicitly authorized health care grant programs and $209.6 billion for the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act, which would revise the sustainable growth rate formula for physician reimbursement. Just by themselves, these additional costs, which I don't recall having seen added up anywhere else, more than wipe out the law's projected deficit reduction. It may turn out that the big-picture deficit estimates offered by Holtz-Eakin and Ramlet are high. They've taken all the areas where the law is likely to cost more than expected and added them up; it's entirely possible that some of those potential additional costs will not materialize. But given the sheer number of hidden costs, low-balled price tags, and political hurdles to implementation, it seems increasingly unlikely that the law's much-touted deficit reduction will ever come to pass.  | | |
| New at Reason: Radley Balko on Elena Kagan's Advise and Consent Theater
June 29, 2010 at 6:30 AM
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|  The confirmation process for Supreme Court justices is a charade designed to keep the public as ignorant about a nominee's actual positions and judicial philosophy as possible. Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko argues that if we aren't permitted to know anything else about Elena Kagan's beliefs regarding the balance between government power and individual rights, it may be enough to know that she once recognized how the confirmation process defrauds the American public of informed participation in how a critical part of its government is formed, and has now chosen to participate in the charade anyway.
View this article.  | | |
| Confirmation Theater
June 29, 2010 at 6:30 AM
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| My task this week is to write a column on how criminal justice issues are likely to play out at the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings, and how her expected confirmation will tilt the balance between the rights of the accused and the government's power to police. The answer to the first question is easy: As with the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, it's unlikely that criminal justice issues will get much attention at all. There's little difference between the Democrats and Republicans on these issues, which means there aren't any political points to be won by grandstanding. That's bad enough. But the answer to the second question is more disturbing still. The confirmation process has morphed into political theater designed to keep us as much in the dark about prospective Supreme Court nominees as possible. And according to Beltway conventional wisdom, that's exactly the way it ought to be. You'd think one might get a feel for how Kagan will come down on hot-button issues by looking at her time in the Solicitor General's office. Shorty after President Obama announced her nomination, I did just that, noting that during her tenure, her office argued that states should be allowed to deny post-conviction DNA testing even when it could establish innocence; argued that prosecutors should have absolute immunity from lawsuits even when they manufacture evidence that results in the conviction of an innocence person; and argued for an expansive power to censor material the government deems offensive. Salon's Glen Greenwald wrote extensively on how Kagan's office argued for further expansion of executive power on issues like extraordinary rendition, executive privilege, state secrets, and indefinite detainment. But Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog cautioned that we shouldn't judge Kagan by her tenure at the Office of Solicitor General. The purpose of that office is to defend the law, and to defend the policies of the current administration. Some of those cases were also holdovers from the Bush administration and by tradition new administrations tend not to change course from prior administrations once a case has worked its way up to the federal appeals courts. Both of those assertions are largely true—and problematic. I've never quite understood why we'd have an office whose purpose was to defend all federal law, even those laws the president personally believes are unconstitutional. We can say that she probably took the job knowing where her boss generally came down on these issues. It's safe to say that Obama interviewed Kagan for the job. And it seems likely that they discussed his priorities for the position. He obviously was comfortable enough with her positions to hire her, and she obviously was comfortable enough with his to accept. That, or Kagan was willing to take a powerful job that would require her to argue in favor of laws and policies that she believes are unconstitutional. If she did have objections to any of these policies, they weren't strong enough to force her to resign instead of arguing that the highest court in the land should give its imprimatur to laws and policies she found unconstitutional. But if we're not allowed to ascribe to Kagan the arguments she made before the Supreme Court as Solicitor General, it would at least be helpful to know on which cases she might have disagreed with the Obama administration, and in particular those cases where she may have voiced her disagreement. But we aren't allowed to know that either, thanks to executive privilege. I suppose a senator could ask her this question during her confirmation hearings this week. I'm certain she won't answer it. But Kagan also served as a legal adviser in the Bill Clinton administration. There, she argued against remedying the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, and took a hard line against medical marijuana. Can we judge her on that advice? Kagan's defenders say no. Her job there was in part to recommend legal positions for the administration with an eye toward the political climate at the time. So, we're told, we shouldn't assume these are positions she actually believes, though if she doesn't believe them we're once again looking at someone who for the sake of politics was willing advance policy positions she didn't personally believe. But if pressed by Republicans on the point, Kagan can merely defer to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. During his confirmation hearings about memos he wrote as an adviser in the Reagan administration, Roberts replied that he'd likely approach those issues differently as a Supreme Court justice than he would as a legal adviser whose client was the federal government. If we can't use Kagan's time in the Solicitor General's Office or the Clinton administration as possible indicators of how she may rule on the Court, we're left with her tenure as the dean of Harvard Law School and the 14 articles she wrote for law journals. Strangely, this means we're supposed to judge Kagan not by the decisions she made and the positions she took when she actually wielded political power, but by the positions she took and decisions she made that had little to no effect on public policy. And perhaps not even then. As prominent legal blogger and UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh explains, Kagan's law review articles were more analytical (a good thing in a law review article, Volokh explains), didn't stake out clear positions, and probably aren't reliable indicators of how she'd rule as a Supreme Court justice. Even all of this would be tolerable if Kagan were to clearly articulate her judicial philosophy this week. But that isn't likely to happen. Like her recent predecessors, Kagan is expected to play the cipher, offering only vague platitudes about the rule of law, the Constitution, and equitably applying the law. Kagan is aspiring for a promotion to one of the 10 most powerful positions in the U.S. government, where she'll likely serve for decades, and where she'll make profoundly consequential rulings on the balance between government power and individual rights. Yet we're not permitted even the slightest glimpse into what values and guiding principles might influence those decisions. There is a school of thought that says elections matter, and with winning a presidential election—particularly winning one as clearly as Obama did—a president can expect to have his nominees confirmed, provided they're qualified and hold positions that fall within the parameters of reasonable public debate. I don't buy that. The Constitution delegates to the president the power to nominate, not the expectation that the Senate will confirm his nominations. But even if you buy this line of thought, on many of the issues Kagan is likely to hear as a Supreme Court justice—particularly issues related to executive power and the war on terror—President Obama has done a 180 on the positions he advocated back when he was a candidate for the presidency. That is, if "elections matter," these weren't the positions that won the last election. And Elena Kagan is the person Obama the president hand-picked to argue his broken promises before the Supreme Court. To be fair, this column isn't about Elena Kagan so much as it's about how the evolution of the confirmation process and the federal government's increasing hostility to transparency keeps the public ever more in the dark, even on matters as important as the judicial philosophy of a Supreme Court nominee. So let's make this more about Kagan. It's been well-reported that Kagan has strong opinions on the confirmation process. She even agrees with me. In a review of Stephen Carter's book A Confirmation Mess, Kagan lamented that the confirmation process has devolved "to a place where comment of any kind on any issue that might bear in any way on any case that might at any time come before the Court is thought inappropriate." She added, "what is worse even than the hearings themselves is a necessary condition of them: the evident belief of many senators that serious substantive inquiry of nominees is usually not only inessential, but illegitimate. . . What has happened is that the Senate has ... let slip . . . the legitimacy and the desirability—of exploring a Supreme Court nominee's set of constitutional views and commitments." Kagan now plans to decline comment on any issue that might bear in any way on any case that might come before the Court. She'll do her absolute best to prevent any serious substantive inquiry into her beliefs, and she'll make it clear that it's neither legitimate or desirable for the Senate to insist on exploring her set of constitutional views and commitments. If we aren't permitted to look at her record in public office as an indication of how Kagan might balance government power with individual rights, we're left to judge her on this: Kagan recognizes that the confirmation process is a charade designed to keep information away from the public, and to prevent the public from forming an informed opinion about who will sit on the Supreme Court. And she's chosen to participate in it anyway. Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.  | | |
| Reason.tv: Reason Weekend 2010-Robert Poole and Adrian Moore on High-Speed Rail Boondoggles
June 29, 2010 at 5:00 AM
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| Politicians love to promote large-scale transit projects, and the Obama administration is no exception. The president's "Livability Initiative" strives to ensure that "transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change." But as Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation, and Adrian Moore, vice president of research at Reason Foundation, explain, the "Livability Agenda" largely consists of trying to push people out of their cars and onto trains and out of the suburbs and into cities. Poole and Moore dismantle the idea that a centralized, national transit system will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a more "livable" future. There is, they demonstrate, no way such a system will ever be economically viable or able to actually meets its ridership goals. Approximately 45 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel for automatic notification when new material goes live. This presentation was part of Reason Weekend, an annual conference held by Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason.tv. This year's event took place in New Orleans from April 15-18 in New Orleans. 
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| File Under: The Kind of Nakedly Corrupt Patronage Waste That Quietly Goes on Wherever You Have Government
June 29, 2010 at 4:40 AM
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|  Thank you, USA Today:
At first glance, Congressmen Hal Rogers and Chaka Fattah don't have much in common. Rogers, a Republican, represents a rural district in Kentucky. Fattah, a Democrat, hails from an urban district in Philadelphia. Thanks to Rogers, this year's federal spending will include $18.9 million funneled to a half-dozen non-profit groups he founded that do everything from research homeland security technologies to clean litter along his district's highways. One sponsors summer camps for students called "Rogers Scholars" and "Rogers Explorers." Fattah directed $3.5 million this year to three non-profit groups he founded that provide scholarships and educational programs. One organizes the annual "Fattah Conference on Higher Education." Fattah and Rogers are among eight lawmakers who have used special legislative provisions called "earmarks" to fund charities with close personal connections. Much more outrage at the link. Via the Twitter feed of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). 
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| Rick Barber Warns America: We Are Becoming Nazi North Korea!
June 29, 2010 at 4:30 AM
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| Rick Barber is an insane person who wants to represent you, the good citizens of Alabama! And I'll give you one guess where this historical narrative—that growing deficits and a stupid health care bill will lead to Nazi-style genocide or, failing that, will turn the United States into North Korea—comes from. Here's Barber's latest ad, which includes cameos from Dale Peterson, Abe Lincoln, and some guy with a mustache singing about America. Bonus Barber insanity here. 
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| Libertarians Respond to McDonald v. Chicago
June 29, 2010 at 4:01 AM
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| Clark Neilly, Institute for Justice: "Today's outcome is a tremendous victory for liberty, and we are pleased that it hinges on Justice Thomas's compelling account of the history and purpose of the 14th Amendment, including the central role of the Privileges or Immunities Clause." Ilya Shapiro, Cato Institute: "Thomas's clarion call for a libertarian originalism provides a step on which to build in future." Josh Blackman, Harlan Institute: "For the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, a Justice found that an essential liberty is protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause." Timothy Sandefur, Pacific Legal Foundation: "While some parts of the decision are disappointing, the bottom line is that the state of Illinois may not legally disarm law-abiding citizens. They have a constitutional right to defend themselves from criminals who never have obeyed anti-gun laws themselves." Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com: "I'd like to note that a lot of 'respectable' commentators were, just a few years ago, calling the individual-rights theory of the Second Amendment absurd, ridiculous, and something that only (probably paid) shills for the NRA would espouse." David Rittgers at National Review: "The McDonald decision is a harbinger for the end of gun prohibition as an idea. The simple, undeniable truth is that gun control does not work." My preliminary take on Justice Stevens' dissent is here. 
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| Supreme Court Upholds Christian Legal Society's Exclusion
June 29, 2010 at 3:58 AM
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| Today the Supreme Court ruled against the Christian Legal Society (CLS), which sought official recognition as a student group at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. The school, which is part of the state university system, refused to recognize CLS because the group demands that voting members adhere to a traditional moral code that rejects "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Hastings said that rule, which excluded nonabstinent homosexuals as well as heterosexuals who engage in extramarital sex, violated the school's nondiscrimination policy. CLS said the school's position violated the freedom of association, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. All nine justices seem to agree that CLS, as a private religious group, has a right to discriminate against people who do not share its beliefs. But they disagree about the significance of recognizing CLS as a student organization, a status that allows access to campus facilities and university funding. For the majority, such recognition would make the law school complicit in the group's discrimination. "The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization's expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be," Justice Ginsburg writes in a majority opinion joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. "But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity." She characterizes the law school's nondiscrimination polcy as "both reasonable and viewpoint neutral." While the Constitution "may protect CLS's discriminatory practices off campus," Stevens writes in his concurring opinion, "it does not require a public university to validate or support them." For the minority, by contrast, recognizing CLS would be a matter of treating student groups evenhandedly, without regard to the ideas they advocate. There is substantial support for that view in the Court's precedents, which include decisions saying that government-run schools violate the First Amendment if they refuse to let religious groups use their facilities or exclude them from subsidies available to nonreligious groups. In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito sums up the view that refusing to recognize CLS is an impermissible form of discrimination: Our proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express "the thought that we hate." Today's decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country's institutions of higher learning. The decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is here. Previous coverage of the controversy here. 
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| For Your Own Good: Google in Cahoots with a Federal Agency
June 29, 2010 at 3:51 AM
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|  Look, Google is a private company and can do what it wants with its property, including things that might alienate its customers. Earlier this month, Google launched its new "Medication Search" feature. The new feature is a partnership with the National Institutes of Health. So now if you search for a particular drug by brand name, Google will display government drug information pages at the top showing what the drug is, its side effects, dose and administration directions, and any dietary instruction.
For example, I googled Prilosec and, yes indeed, the NIH PubMed page is at the top. Personally, I often turn to PubMed for such information, but pharmaceutical company information is also very user friendly. According to VentureBeat, Google stands to make more money from ads using this system: You will also notice, when you search for the commercial names of drugs (as opposed to the generic), there is almost always a text advertisement in the right-hand sidebar for that drug and a yellow sponsored link box above. So, for Lipitor, you get a link to Drugstore.com where you can buy the medication online. This appears to be a huge opportunity for the search giant to bolster its pharmaceutical advertising business. The assumption is that better drug information will beget more drug-related queries, and therefore more opportunities to advertise medications to a wider audience. Doing some quick math based on how much of online advertising budgets is spent on search ads, Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land says that Google stands to make as much as $426 million off of pharmaceutical and health-related search advertising. And indeed the page showing the results of my search for Prilosec is decorated with ad links to numerous anti-acid treatments. On the other hand, Dave Anderson who runs Pharma SEM suggests that pharmaceutical companies should be concerned about the new feature: From a pharmaceutical SEO [search engine optimization] perspective, and more importantly possibly from a pharmaceutical brand strategy perspective, this is not an ideal scenario for the pharma brand. Let's analyze the results for a Lipitor search displayed in the image above. Prior to yesterday, Lipitor held the #1 spot on Google search results for "Lipitor". With the new medication search feature rolled out, we are looking at Lipitor now being bumped to the #2 spot. What's the big deal? Well, the commonly stated statistic is that 46% of all search clicks come from the #1 position, while the #2 result will capture around 12%. For a branded search, which in my experience drives a vast majority of search traffic to the branded site, this could be fairly damaging to pharma brand promotion via SEO. While I feel uneasy about future similar government Google "partnerships," I note that googling topics such as cocaine, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and climate change also produces searches with government agencies at the top or close to the top. I was happy to see that when I googled "free speech," that the Federal Elections Commission and the Federal Communications Commission were nowhere to be seen on the first page. 
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| Justice John Paul Stevens Is Wrong About Gun Rights, Again
June 29, 2010 at 2:24 AM
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| Two things jump right out of Justice John Paul Stevens' lengthy dissent in today's landmark gun rights decision McDonald v. Chicago. First, Stevens isn't backing down from his error-riddled dissent in D.C. v. Heller, where he asserted that the Second Amendment secures only a collective right to keep and bear arms, not an individual one. Here's a relevant passage from Stevens' McDonald dissent: the Second Amendment differs in kind from the Amendments that surround it, with the consequence that its inclusion in the Bill of Rights is not merely unhelpful but positively harmful to petitioners' claim. Generally, the inclusion of a liberty interest in the Bill of Rights points toward the conclusion that it is of fundamental significance and ought to be enforceable against the States. But the Second Amendment plays a peculiar role within the Bill, as announced by its peculiar opening clause. Even accepting the Heller Court's view that the Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms disconnected from militia service, it remains undeniable that "the purpose for which the right was codified" was "to prevent elimination of the militia." Second, Stevens has endorsed Chicago's misguided argument that the states should be allowed to "experiment" on the Second Amendment as part of their role as "laboratories of democracy." Here's Stevens again: even apart from the States' long history of firearms regulation and its location at the core of their
police powers, this is a quintessential area in which federalism ought to be allowed to flourish without this Court's meddling. Whether or not we can assert a plausible constitutional basis for intervening, there are powerful reasons why we should not do so. As a legal authority for this claim, Stevens cites Justice Louis Brandeis' famous dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932). The trouble with Brandies' argument—as I've previously discussed—is that the Supreme Court would never allow Chicago to "experiment" on the First Amendment, so there's no legitimate reason why the Second Amendment should receive any less respect. Thankfully, Stevens' hostility to gun rights is once again the minority view. 
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| Unfaithful Friend of Liberty
June 29, 2010 at 2:00 AM
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| As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens "gradually became the leader of the court's liberal wing," The New York Times reported, "he became increasingly skeptical of claims of government power." According to a Washington Post editorial, "his voice was consistently raised on behalf of those vulnerable to government excesses." Such descriptions, which were common after Stevens announced his retirement in April, are based on a highly selective concern about state power. A closer look at Justice Stevens' record shows that he has been anything but consistent in his opposition to government excesses and that in some ways he has become less inclined to protect constitutional rights. To his credit, Stevens has defended the rule of law in terrorism cases, and he often has resisted the Supreme Court's tendency to facilitate the drug war by whittling away at the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures." Yet Stevens has approved more than a few Fourth Amendment compromises, including decisions saying that a sniff by a drug-detecting dog is not a search, that police may search closed containers in cars and observe backyards from the air without a warrant, that a suspected drug smuggler can be detained until she defecates under supervision, and that a driver's unusually long wait at a stop sign justifies stopping him and peering into his car. He dissented from a 2001 decision that said police need a warrant to conduct infrared surveillance of a home, and in 2005 he wrote a decision that allowed police to use drug-sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops. Stevens' First Amendment record is similarly spotty. He wrote both the 1978 decision that upheld regulation of broadcast indecency and the 1997 decision that overturned regulation of online indecency. He voted to uphold censorship of student newspapers and to overturn censorship of student banners. In 1989 and 1990 he dissented from decisions overturning state and federal bans on flag burning. This year he angrily dissented from a decision that said people organized as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups, have a right to talk about politics at election time. Stevens' record on property rights, protected by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, is almost uniformly bad. In 2005 he wrote the notorious Kelo decision, which upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another in the name of economic development. And although he once agreed that the government owes property owners compensation for a "taking" when its regulations reduce or destroy their land's value, he later repudiated that principle. Another constitutional provision Stevens does not like is the Second Amendment. He dissented from the 2008 decision that overturned the District of Columbia's handgun ban as a violation of the right to armed self-defense. When it comes to reining in government excesses, the doctrine of enumerated powers, which says Congress needs explicit constitutional authority for its legislation, is at least as important as the protection of enumerated rights. Yet Stevens has consistently opposed efforts to define the limits of the power to regulate interstate commerce, treating it as a blank check. In 2005 he wrote a decision that said even a single marijuana plant grown by a patient in a state that allows medical use of the drug can be treated as interstate commerce. In many of the cases where Stevens has sided with the government, he has been opposed by Antonin Scalia and/or Clarence Thomas, justices who have undeserved reputations as authoritarians hostile to civil liberties. The truth is that they, like Stevens, have often but not always defended the rights of "those vulnerable to government excesses." If progressives and conservatives paid attention to the whole Constitution, instead of just their favorite parts, they would be in a better position to evaluate both Stevens' legacy and the fitness of his successor. Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a nationally syndicated columnist. © Copyright 2010 by Creators Syndicate Inc. 
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| If 'The Terrorists Win' Becomes a Joke, the Terrorists Win
June 29, 2010 at 1:54 AM
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| Last week, in a post about the dramatic increase in New York's cigarette tax, I suggested that Daily News columnist Celeste Katz had mocked Assemblyman Michael Benjamin's warning that the hike would help terrorists by making it more lucrative to smuggle smokes from low-tax jurisdictions. Katz assures me that was not her intent, and upon reflection the evidence that she found Benjamin's concerns "patently absurd" (mainly the headline and a rhetorical question ending with three question marks) is ambiguous. Although I am conditioned to view the formulation "if X, the terrorists win" as a joke, Benjamin himself said, "Terrorists win when smokers/grocers buy bootleg, untaxed cigarettes." My reading of Katz's piece may have been influenced by the tone of the Gothamist post that led me to it, which ended with the line, " That's right folks, pay the tax or the terrorists win." 
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| Clarence Thomas on Gun Rights and the Privileges or Immunities Clause
June 29, 2010 at 1:29 AM
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| As Jacob Sullum noted below, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in McDonald v. Chicago this morning, ruling that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. This is a major victory for gun rights—as it opens the door for legal challenges to countless state and local gun control laws and finally gives the Second Amendment its due alongside the rest of the Bill of Rights—but it's not the victory it should have been. That's because only Justice Clarence Thomas followed the text and history of the Constitution and held that the Second Amendment must be incorporated via the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment, not the Due Process Clause. As Thomas notes in his concurrence, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood—just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did—that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty. The record makes equally plain that they deemed this right necessary to include in the minimum baseline of federal rights that the Privileges or Immunities Clause established in the wake of the War over slavery. ... I agree with the Court that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the States. I do so because the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment as a privilege of American citizenship. Read the full McDonald decision here. Read more about Due Process vs. Privilege or Immunities Clause incorporation here. Note to libertarian history buffs: Thomas cites both Frederick Douglass and Lysander Spooner in his concurrence. 
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| Mitch Daniels Watch: Maybe We Need "Fewer Messiahs and More OMB Directors"
June 29, 2010 at 1:22 AM
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| Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.) is rising in the chatterati polls. Russ Smith of Splice Today writes up the budget-cutting, hair-thinning Syrian American Hoosier as a plausible and much-needed corrective to both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. The Wash Post's resident Bush apologist/retread and anti-dancer Michael Gerson writes of Daniels, who has called for a truce in the culture wars and full frontal warfare on outta-control spending and overreach: "It is difficult to imagine Daniels' rejection of uplift, ideology and activism appealing to the country at most times. But maybe, at this particular time, we are a nation in need of fewer messiahs and more OMB directors." And Andy Ferguson of The Weekly Standard (and some time in Indiana as well) writes a long profile of the guy. He treats waste in government as a moral offense. "Government isn't a business, and it shouldn't be run as a business," he said. "But it can be more like business. It has a lot to learn from businessmen." Government operates without the market pressures that produce efficiency and increase quality. The challenge for government leaders is to produce those pressures to economize internally, through an act of will. "Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose," he said in an interview last year. "We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible, because when we took it we diminished that person's freedom." When you put it like that, overspending by government seems un-American. When Daniels took office, in 2004, the state faced a $200 million deficit and hadn't balanced its budget in seven years. Four years later, all outstanding debts had been paid off; after four balanced budgets, the state was running a surplus of $1.3 billion, which has cushioned the blows from a steady decline in revenues caused by the recession. "That's what saved us when the recession hit," one official said. "If we didn't have the cash reserves and the debts paid off, we would have been toast." The state today is spending roughly the same amount that it was when Daniels took office, largely because he resisted the budget increases other states were indulging in the past decade. More here. 
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| Weigel, Journalistic Voting Records, and the Washington Post's "Perception" Problems
June 29, 2010 at 1:02 AM
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|  I don't have any real desire to throw my spit in the ocean of commentary on L'Affaire Weigel, but since Reason was Dave's longest-tenured home, we have inevitably come up enough in discussion to warrant a couple of clarifications. First this, from Weigel's own account of his career, published at Big Journalism:
After the 2008 election, I drove up from Atlanta to D.C. and was greeted by my editor, Matt Welch, with surprising news. It would be better, he said, if I worked somewhere else. I'd voted for the Obama-Biden ticket (having joked, semi-seriously, that I was honor-bound to vote for a ticket with a fellow Delawarean on it) and wasn't fully on board with the magazine's upcoming, wonky focus on picking apart the new administration. My friend, Spencer Ackerman, immediately bought me Ethiopian food and suggested I come to work at his magazine, The Washington Independent. I was dicey about the suggestion, partly because I was already doing some work for The Economist. At Reason, I'd become a little less favorable to Republicans, and I'd never been shy about the fact that I was pro-gay marriage and pro-open borders.  To the extent that this gives the impression that Dave's job was in any way tied to him voting for Obama, I need to shout from the rooftops that this is emphatically not the case. If it were, Ronald Bailey would no longer be our Science Correspondent and Tim Cavanaugh would not be our back-of-the-book columnist. If preference for Obama over John McCain in November 2008 was any kind of litmus, then I would be disqualified to work here, even if I wouldn't have pulled the lever for the guy had I bothered to get my D.C. voting registration in order. Having been on the losing end of political litmus tests in the past, and having refused to sand down the edges of my own ideological quirkiness in the pursuit of various journalism jobs, I am hyper-sensitive to even the whiff of an implication here. We are a libertarian magazine, yes, but not an enforcer of political or philosophical purity. This has been true, and will continue being true, for decades.
There were multiple factors at play in the Weigel/Reason separation, none of them having to do with voting records, and many (though not all) pointing to what Dave alludes to in his post: What he wanted to write about, and what we needed him to write about, were two different things. As I think the subsequent track record makes abundantly clear, both parties benefited from that realization.  Another clarification, especially for people unfamiliar with Reason: There is, to put it mildly, zero professional sanction at this magazine for being "a little less favorable to Republicans," or being "pro-gay marriage and pro-open borders." I have decorated this post with examples of why.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, has given off a couple of misleading impressions of its own. Particularly this: [Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees The Post's Web site] said that when Weigel was hired, he was vetted in the same way that other prospective Post journalists are screened. He interviewed with a variety of top editors, his writings were reviewed and his references were checked, Narisetti said. "But we're living in an era when maybe we need to add a level" of inquiry, he said. "It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: 'In private... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job." Seconded here: Asked about Weigel's strong views about some conservatives, Brauchli said: "We don't have the resources or ability to do Supreme Court justice-type investigations into people's backgrounds. We will have to be more careful in the future."  This makes it seem like it's just so dang hard to do background checks in the hyper-cyber-fangled 21st century! But consider this: The Post never spoke with Weigel's longest employer before hiring him. That's considerably less than even a Circuit Court justice-type investigation.
Getting back to the issue of voting records and transparency, the Post, typically, gets a couple of key points wrong (IMO): "I don't think you need to be a conservative to cover the conservative movement," Narisetti told me late today. "But you do need to be impartial...in your views." And: [Brauchli said] "we can't have any tolerance for the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work.... There's abundant room on our Web site for a wide range of viewpoints, and we should be transparent about everybody's viewpoint." You don't need to be impartial in your views at the Post, or else Ezra Klein (among many, many others) wouldn't have a job. Nor do you need to be impartial in your views to do perfectly good journalism. What you need is to not get caught. If the Post was even remotely interested in viewpoint-transparency, it would follow Reason's (and Dave Weigel's!) lead in, at bare bloody minimum, showing us who their editorial staffers–particularly in the newsroom–have voted for in presidential elections. Three chances of that happening, either at the Post or any other major newspaper: Slim, none, and fat. 
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| Risky Business
June 29, 2010 at 12:25 AM
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| The New York Times reports that a number of states are readying new high-risk health insurance pools called for by the PPACA. These high risk pools are intended to serve those who may have difficulty getting insurance because of preexisting conditions or other risk factors. According to the article, "Democrats describe the program as a bridge to 2014, when insurers will be required to accept all applicants." But if this is a bridge, it's a pretty rickety one. The pools were stuffed into the health care bill in part to give Democrats an early deliverable. As the Times' report notes, the Obama administration hopes that the pools will produce political benefits "for Democrats running in midterm elections this fall." But most of the rewards in politics come from appearing to do something helpful while misleading voters about how much it's going to cost—which may explain why the bill's authors opted to hide the program's true cost by low-balling the funding. Estimates suggest that as many as 7 million people could qualify for these new pools, but the law only provides enough funding to cover between 200,000 and 400,000 of them. Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, predicts that the $5 billion allotted to fund these pools will run out by 2012, and perhaps even by 2011. And when the money runs out, one of two things will happen: Either the states that decided to run these programs will be stuck with the tab, or the federal government will step in with more funding. No matter what though, it's going to cost more than projected, more than budgeted, and, given our ongoing deficit difficulties, probably more than either Washington or any of state capitol can actually afford.  | | |
| Let's Not Forget Sen. Byrd's Negative Legacy
June 29, 2010 at 12:14 AM
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|  As the encomia mount like rotting, fly-buzzed piles of the pork-barrel spending he so systematically shoveled back to his West Virginia home, let's not forget the late Sen. Robert Byrd's most undeniable legacy: Undermining belief in politicians as little more than self-serving glad-handers on the hunt for more and more taxpayer money for their constituents.
Here's his colleague Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), last seen killing a DC school voucher program that helped poor minority kids, laying on the baloney like Oscar Mayer after chugging a case of Red Bull: "No one in the history of the Senate could match Byrd's thunderous oratory; his sense of history; his determination to teach every President the limits of his power and his lifelong passion to fight for West Virginia, Durbin said. "Daniel Webster, set another chair at Heaven's table, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia has arrived." The cheap shot against Byrd is that he was back in the day an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan and writing letters as late as 1946 that "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation." I consider it a cheap shot because he did apologize for and disown his participation in the group. Better late than never, I suppose, even if it does make you wonder about all those politicians of his generation, even ones from the Deep South, who never felt a need to recruit for the KKK and never prattled on about "white niggers" like some back-country Norman Mailer. But it's Byrd's status as the Babe Ruth of pork-barrel spending and taxpayer-funded narcissism that is his real legacy and the one we should never forget or forgive. Here lies a man who pushed his home state to build a statue of him in defiance of a rule that such honorees be dead for 50 years. Back in 2006, Citizens Against Government Waste called Byrd the "Emperor Palpatine of Pork" and gave him their lifetime achievement award, writing In his over forty-eight years (!) in the United States Senate, Senator Byrd has achieved a pork record that is second to none. From the Robert C. Byrd Expressway to the Robert C. Byrd Freeway; the Robert C. Byrd Institute to the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building (both of them), Senator Byrd has truly left his mark on West Virginia --- and the federal budget. (And let us not overlook the proposed Robert C. Byrd rooms in the U.S. Capitol.) It would be appropriate to erect some kind of monument to his century-spanning resume --- except that he already did so himself. He was like Radar O'Reilly in the early episodes of the TV show M*A*S*H, slowly shipping home the entire federal government piece by piece to his Mountain Mama. It always happens that press corps and political opponents go mushy at the moment of death - even the execrable Sen. Strom Thurmond received a ton of unearned praise as he was finally being lowered into the ground. But in weak-kneed moments, it's all the more important to remember negative legacies. Byrd was famous for carrying a Constitution with him at all times. In some cases, he even used it to argue against things like the Iraq War. But mostly it was cover for an expansionist vision of government and you wouldn't catch him invoking limitations to the commerce clause if he wanted the spending or power attached. Even his supposed dedication to limiting executive power seemed to be mostly an argument for increased Senatorial power. Characters like Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), another recently deceased pork-barrel prodigy, and Byrd might have been larger than life but they worked to corrode any integrity voters and critics of government might find in legislators. We're grown-ups here in America and we're supposed to be able to take care of ourselves with a minimum of paternalistic help. For the times and places and people who really do need outside help, it fouls the nest when it is administered by folks such as Byrd because it becomes impossible to know if this is a legitimate exercise of state power and assistance or just one more bank job pulled under the cover of often-impenetrable Latinate rhetoric. In an age of untrammeled government spending and power grabs (an era that started long before the current administration) and with folks like Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and Ted Stevens either dead or otherwise out of office, it's worth remembering we need less characters in Congress and more character in legislators who go about faithfully executing the duties of a limited-government system. 
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| Supreme Court Overturns Chicago Gun Ban
June 29, 2010 at 12:13 AM
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| Today the Supreme Court ruled that Chicago's handgun ban violates the right to keep and bear arms. The 5-to-4 decision confirms that the Second Amendment binds state and local governments as well as federal domains such as the District of Columbia, which had a similar gun law that the Court overturned in the landmark 2008 case D.C. v. Heller. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment, like most other protections in the Bill of Rights, applies to the states by way of the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause. It rejected an invitation to revive the amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, a more plausible basis for incorporation. The decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago is here (PDF). SCOTUS Wiki has the oral argument transcript and other documents related to the case here. Previous Reason coverage here. More later. Addendum: Regarding the appropriate route for incorporation, Justice Antonin Scalia, an outspoken critic of substantive due process, has this to say in his concurring opinion: Despite my misgivings about Substantive Due Process as an original matter, I have acquiesced in the Court's incorporation of certain guarantees in the Bill of Rights "because it is both long established and narrowly limited." This case does not require me to reconsider that view, since straightforward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it. In his concurring opinion, by contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas makes the case for enforcing the Privileges or Immunities Clause: Applying what is now a well-settled test, the plurality opinion concludes that the right to keep and bear arms applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause because it is "fundamental" to the American "scheme of ordered liberty"...and "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.'"...I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to "process." Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause.... This Court's substantive due process framework fails to account for both the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the history that led to its adoption, filling that gap with a jurisprudence devoid of a guiding principle. I believe the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment offers a superior alternative, and that a return to that meaning would allow this Court to enforce the rights the Fourteenth Amendment is designed to protect with greater clarity and predictability than the substantive due process framework has so far managed. 
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mcdonaldopinion08-1521.pdf (Adobe Acrobat Document, 1.1 MB)
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| The Cop Block Team Needs a Few Good Individuals!
June 28, 2010 at 11:40 PM
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| Cop Block has been around for a scant four months and in that time we've been fortunate to assemble a kickass team of contributors that aren't just principled and effective communicators but are good people I'm happy to call friends. Each of us brings different skills and writing styles to the table but we're [...] | | |
| BP Document: Big Plans for Deepwater Drilling
June 28, 2010 at 10:13 PM
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| | A BP presentation from March 2010—a month before the Deepwater Horizon disaster—spelled out the company's growth "key sources of growth" beyond 2015. First on the list? "Expanding deepwater." The document also includes a bar graph that proclaims BP as the "leading deepwater company" based on 2009 production numbers. According to the graph, BP produced the equivalent of more than 150 million barrels of oil per day compared to its closest rival, Shell. BP's document also shows that the company spent less on production costs compared to its competitors. In a June 15 hearing before lawmakers, some of those same oil companies told Congress that BP did not follow design standards that they considered to be industry norm. BP's Doug Suttles recently joined his industry peers in questioning the administration's six month moratorium on deepwater drilling. "I understand why people might want to put a moratorium in place, but my personal view on this is we need to look very rapidly at what needs to be done that gives you confidence to restart (drilling in deepwater) because the consequences of stopping are also significant," said Suttles, in comments reported by The Times-Picayune. The moratorium was lifted last week, when U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ruled that the rationale behind it was "heavy-handed, and rather overbearing." Feldman, in 2008 and 2009 financial disclosures, reported owning stock in several oil companies. (Disclosure: Feldman is the same judge who earlier this year dismissed a libel lawsuit against ProPublica.) Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said the administration may issue a new, more narrow, moratorium. In tackling the Gulf disaster, BP has often cited the depth of this well as a primary challenge to containing the gusher. By now, multiple reports—including one in today's New York Times—document how the technology to drill to greater depths has surged ahead, while the technology to clean up a spill hasn't been updated for decades. While oil company executives assured lawmakers their companies would have done things differently than BP did in designing the well, they weren't able to put as much distance between themselves and BP when grilled on their own preparedness for a major oil spill. At the June 15 hearing, lawmakers pointed out that the major oil giants are using very similar oil spill response plans that contain many of the same mistakes, including references to marine mammals that don't live in the Gulf as well as contact information for deceased experts. All the plans were prepared by the same consulting group. "When these things happen we are not well equipped to deal with them," Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson told the House Energy panel.   | | |
| NA212-History of UK Chemical Spraying Admitted by BBC Documentary – CHEMTRAILS
June 28, 2010 at 10:05 PM
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| History of UK Chemical Spraying Admitted by BBC Documentary – CHEMTRAILS This is a shortened version of the BBC Inside out documentary series that was first broadcast on 6th November 2006. Its interesting to note that this broadcast can no longer by found in the BBC archives, which I think is actually a breach of their own charter. Between 1953 and 1964 top secret trials were carried out using a chemical concoction of zinc cadmium sulphide to simulate how a cloud would disperse biological agents. The unsuspecting population in the East of England was sprayed covertly with the poisonous compound. This is an educational not for profit production. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. 
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| NA212-The Real Truth About BP and What is Happening in the Gulf
June 28, 2010 at 10:00 PM
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| The Real Truth About BP and What is Happening in the Gulf BP is engaged in criminal negligence. It only pretends to clean-up its mess when government officials arrive for photo-ops. BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama. BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters earlier this month: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people." Small people. Expendable people. The woman in this video tells us what is really happening in Louisiana. BP, Obama, and Congress — all beholden to large corporations and bankers — are sacrificing thousands of people and keeping it hidden. The corporate media talks about Florida's beaches and lost tourism money. They talk about the marine animals covered in oil but not the children who are coming down with respiratory problems from toxic gases blowing in from the Gulf. 
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| Icelandic protest vote.
June 28, 2010 at 9:52 PM
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| It is rare for a party started with the express intention of taking the piss out of the political system, or really as a joke wins. We have had a couple of parties that were jokes achieve representation but they weren't founded as jokes. The Australian Democrats was one where a Liberal minister quit and managed to take the 'don't knows' out of the opinion polls and weld them into a solid political force. They held the balance of power in the Senate for years.
One Nation was another. It was founded when Pauline Hanson was disendorsed by the Liberals and went it alone and won a federal seat. She formed the party at a time when the Nationals members were disillusioned. Keating's removal of protectionism and trade barriers had wiped away the parties ability to implement agrarian socialism, and Pauline was able to offer them unreality for a while, and they sweept the polls in Queensland. They are pretty much gone now.
Meanwhile in Iceland the 'Best Party' has gained the majority in the Reykjavik council elections, which represents the majority of the nation. The party is the brainchild of an entertainer, Jon Gnarr, who decided to start a website to satirise politics in Iceland after the banking collapse of 08. It took off. He has offered such whimsical policies as a drug free parliament by 2020.
Some of his stuff is really funny:
Unfortunately there is little to go on as to what he really intends to do. Some of the stuff he is offering is straight left wing but I am inclined to think that it is really part of the joke. Some of them are, to improve the quality of life of the less fortunate, stop corruption, (OK), equality, increase transparency, free bus rides for students and the poor, drag those responsible for the economic collapse to court, and listen more to women and old people.
Now he is mayor he may possibly take things seriously and pull the place out of the shit. He is a man who has the proven ability to think outside the square and might just be able to get the council out of the way and let business do the job.
I am not optimistic but the slogan, "Economise, we only need one Santa," is promising.  | Media Files
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| Na212-Coalition Of The Willing on Vimeo
June 28, 2010 at 9:50 PM
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| Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo. Coalition Of The Willing on Vimeo 'Coalition of the Willing' is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a 'post Copenhagen' world. 'Coalition of the Willing' has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world's top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island. The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global publics in the fight against global warming. This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analyses of swarm activity and social revolution, 'Coalition of the Willing' makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people. To find out all about the project and to join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, or get the iPhone App visit: coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/ 
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| Attn, DC Reasonoids: Come Hear Damon Root, Eugene Meyer, & Doug Kendall Debate Libertarian & Conservative SCOTUS Issues, Kagan Nom, McDonald Decision & More, Wed., June 30
June 28, 2010 at 9:47 PM
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|  During the Kagan Supreme Court nomination hearings and in the wake of the ruling on the Chicago gun ban case, Reason magazine and Reason.tv presents:
Conservatives v. Libertarians: Judicial Restraint and Constitutional
Activism What: A debate between Reason Associate Editor Damon Root, The Constitutional Accountability Project's Doug Kendall, and Federalist Society President Eugene B. Meyer on fault lines in the Supreme Court and the future of American jurisprudence When: Wednesday, July 30, 6.30-9pm Where: Reason DC HQ, 1747 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20009 (Two blocks north of Dupont Circle; take Red Line Metro to Dupont Circle North exit) Program starts sharply at 7pm. Audience Q&A to follow debate. Soft and hard drinks served. Please RSVP by sending an email to events@reason.com. Read Damon Root's July cover story, "Conservatives v. Libertarians."  | | |
| NA212-Major US financial reform agreed
June 28, 2010 at 9:27 PM
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| Major US financial reform agreed The US Congress has all but finalised the biggest reform of US financial regulation since the Great Depression. President Obama said the reforms would "hold Wall Street to account". Legislators stayed up all of Thursday night for 19 hours of non-stop negotiations to reconcile separate versions of the bill that had been passed by the two houses of Congress. Agreement was reached to impose strict limits on banks' ability to take risky speculative bets on markets. 
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| Citizenship Should Remain a Birthright
June 28, 2010 at 9:00 PM
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| In 1848, the discovery of gold brought hordes of prospectors to California. In 1889, millions of acres of free land set off a rush of settlers into Oklahoma. Today, we are told, the chance to get U.S. citizenship for their unborn children is rapidly filling the country with illegal immigrants. Critics see this as a malignant phenomenon that ought to be stopped. So Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the new law directing police to check the immigration status of people they suspect of being here illegally, has another idea: denying citizenship privileges to anyone born in his state to undocumented parents. He plans to offer legislation refusing a birth certificate to any child unless a parent can prove legal residence, a clever attempt to nullify birthright citizenship. He says the change would eliminate "the greatest inducement for breaking our laws," since having an "anchor baby" yields all sorts of benefits. A Rasmussen poll found a plurality of Americans favor repealing birthright citizenship. Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul has endorsed legislation to that end, which has attracted 91 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform are all for it. But the idea fails on a couple of grounds. The first is constitutional. The policy originates with the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." Pearce and his allies say illegal immigrants can be excluded because they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. But that provision was included only to exempt children born to foreign diplomats. The Supreme Court has left little room for argument. In 1898, it ruled that birth on American soil is "declared by the Constitution to constitute a sufficient and complete right to citizenship." In 1982, it concluded that illegal immigrants are indeed "within the jurisdiction" of the state where they are present. To deny a U.S.-born child a birth certificate would almost certainly violate the right to the equal protection of the laws. It would be bad for common-sense reasons as well. To start with, it would call into question the status of every new baby.
A report by the Immigration Policy Center pointed out that "all American parents would, going forward, have to prove the citizenship of their children through a cumbersome bureaucratic process." This obligation is not something "we" are going to impose on "them." It would be a burden on all new parents, including those whose ancestors debarked at Plymouth Rock. Supporters of the change regard birthright citizenship as an irresistible magnet for foreigners to sneak in. But the effect is vastly exaggerated. One study cited in Peter Brimelow's 1996 anti-immigration screed, Alien Nation, found that 15 percent of new Hispanic mothers whose babies were born in southern California hospitals said they came over the border to give birth, with 25 percent of that group saying they did so to gain citizenship for the child. But this evidence actually contradicts the claim. It means that 96 percent of these women were not lured by the desire to have an "anchor baby." That makes perfect sense. The value of a citizen child is too remote to compete with the other attractions that draw people to come illegally—such as jobs and opportunity unavailable in their native countries. True, an undocumented adult can be sponsored for a resident visa by a citizen child—but not till the kid reaches age 21. To imagine that Mexicans are risking their lives crossing the border in 2010 to gain legal status in 2031 assumes they put an excessive weight on the distant future. Nor are the other alleged freebies very enticing. Most of the few that are available to undocumented foreigners, such as emergency room care and public education for children, don't require them to have a U.S. citizen child. Illegal immigrant parents are ineligible for welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, and the like. They can be deported. Barring citizenship to their newborn babies wouldn't make these families pack up and go home. It would just put the kids into a legal jeopardy that impedes their assimilation into American society—without appreciably diminishing the number of people going over, under, around or through the border fence. Punishing innocents without accomplishing anything useful? The opponents of birthright citizenship need an anchor in reality. COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM 
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| New at Reason: Steve Chapman on Why Citizenship Should Remain a Birthright
June 28, 2010 at 9:00 PM
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|  Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the new law directing police to check the immigration status of people they suspect of being here illegally, has another idea: denying citizenship privileges to anyone born in his state to undocumented parents. He plans to offer legislation refusing a birth certificate to any child unless a parent can prove legal residence, a clever attempt to nullify birthright citizenship. But as Steve Chapman writes, the idea fails on a couple of grounds. The first is constitutional.
View this article. 
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| Old Granddad
June 28, 2010 at 8:00 PM
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| Verlin Jones has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexually abusing his granddaughter, and now the girl is suing the state of Washington for taking her from her mother and placing her in a home with her father and grandparents, even though state officials had been warned that Jones had previously been convicted of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl. 
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From our July issue, Senior Editor Jacob Sullum explains why retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was an unfaithful friend of liberty.
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