Generic Blog News and Commentary

Open Thread

2026-08-30T04:29:26.129-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 30, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Lawmakers Want To Stop Kids From Nicknaming Their Pokémon

2026-08-29T10:29:29.866-04:00

By Andy Jung - August 29, 2026 at 07:00AM

It may sound Farfetch'd, but lawmakers are advancing a bill that would stop minors from nicknaming their Pokémon online—in violation of the First Amendment.

Last month, the House of Representatives passed the KIDS Act, a wide-ranging package of youth online safety bills. It includes the Safer GAMING Act, which would require interactive online video games to "limit communication between" players "under the age of 17" and "any other user."

That limit must be "enabled by default" and "set to the most restrictive setting," automatically blocking all "verbal, written, or visual messages" to and from minor users. Parents could adjust the safeguard "to a less restrictive setting," but silence is the starting point, in every online game.

This sweeping regulation would violate the First Amendment. Minors have a First Amendment right to both speak and receive information, including through video games and the internet. As the Supreme Court explained in 1975 in Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection…and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them."

The Safer GAMING Act goes far beyond that. The act draws no line between certain restricted categories of speech, such as material that is obscene to minors and true threats, and gamer chatter.

Even if courts ruled that the Safer GAMING Act is content-neutral—regulating only the time, place, or manner of speech rather than its substance—it would still fail intermediate scrutiny, because it fails to "leave open 'ample alternative channels for communication.'" The act cuts off every channel by default, including "written" and "visual messages," leaving minors with no way to reach their "intended audience" of other gamers.

The prohibition also reaches well past in-game chat, into far more innocuous communication. In the Pokémon games, for example, gamers can give their Pokémon nicknames. When they battle online, they see their opponents' nicknames, communicating without messaging directly. Players often nickname for fun—expressing themselves, cracking jokes, and riffing on memes. Nicknames can also be strategic, used to intimidate, tease, or trick opponents. Either way, Pokémon nicknames qualify as "written messages" exchanged online within the meaning of the act. If enacted, this harmless feature would be switched off for young gamers by default.

The bill also bans "visual messages" such as taunts in Super Smash Bros., moves "unrelated to battle" that "show your opponent a little flair." Taunts work online too, letting players celebrate, "provoke, intimidate, annoy or mock opponents." Mario taunts by spinning around; others include audio, like Sonic the Hedgehog saying, "You're too slow." These are visual or verbal "messages" exchanged between online users, and therefore banned by the act as applied to minors.

Allowing parents to change the default setting does not save the bill. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to children without parental approval because "such laws do not enforce parental authority over children's speech and religion; they impose governmental authority, subject only to a parental veto." Under the First Amendment, the government lacks "the power to prevent children from hearing or saying anything without their parents' prior consent."

Congress banning nicknames and taunts may seem implausible—lawmakers, one assumes, meant something narrower. But judges interpret laws by the "plain and ordinary meaning of the statute's terms," not by what drafters may have intended. On its plain terms, the Safer GAMING Act draws no line between a slur and a Pikachu nickname, between a threat and a Mario taunt.

Ignoring the First Amendment and attempting to silence minors in online video games is a Team Rocket–level blunder. Unfortunately, Congress is blasting off again.

The post Lawmakers Want To Stop Kids From Nicknaming Their Pokémon appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

9/11 Turbocharged America's Worst Foreign Policy Impulses—but Didn't Change Its Direction

2026-08-29T07:29:22.299-04:00

By Emma Ashford - August 29, 2026 at 06:00AM

Like many others in the Washington, D.C., or New York metro areas, my experience of 9/11 was horrifying and yet unremarkable at the same time.

I was a 16-year-old British student spending a year in an American high school in Arlington, Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. That Tuesday morning dawned like any other. It was sunny and warm; D.C. was experiencing its traditional third or fourth blast of summer heat well into September. In second period, someone flipped on the TV, which was showing images of a plane disaster in New York. Tragic, but hardly cause to break routine. The band teacher flipped it back off and returned to teaching.

It wasn't long, though, before things went off the rails. While walking to my next class, there was a commotion down the hall: someone screaming, the hysterical sound bouncing off the tiled corridor. I would later learn that a girl was trying to reach her parents at work in the Pentagon—and failing. By the time the principal made the announcement that school was closed, rumors and panic had begun to spread throughout the student body.

Things after that are a disconnected blur. Waiting in classrooms for parents to come and collect students without transportation; some arrived crying. My mother managed to get a phone line and briefly call me. She was trapped on a Metro platform, the trains disgorging all their passengers and going out of service. Even the television news was frenetic and unclear: Another plane was headed for the White House. No, it was headed for CIA headquarters in McLean. There are car bombs downtown. The president has been taken to a secret location. One classmate's father, who worked at the Pentagon, saw the crash in his rearview mirror as he drove to a dentist's appointment.

My mother finally made it to school and took me home. It would take several more hours for my father, who worked mere blocks from the White House, to arrive: Like many others, he had been forced to walk out of Washington, across the bridges, and through miles of suburbs to get home.

These experiences remain etched in my mind, horrible enough to be fresh even all these years later, and yet they were in no way unique. In the days, months, and years to follow, I would hear so many distinct variants of the same story: a group of students on a trip who'd seen the plane as it descended toward the building; a classmate whose father was whisked away by government helicopter to some unknown location, leaving them to wonder where he was; a think-tanker whose child attended an on-site daycare at the Pentagon. I kept thinking back to that last story after I became a mother myself. Could I even imagine the panic and terror of a parent in that situation?

It's tempting to look back at the shock and horror of 9/11, a trauma shared by much of Washington's foreign policy class, as the genesis of many foreign policy mistakes that would follow. Hurt people, as the saying goes, hurt people. And as the events of the following years unfurled—the toppling of the Taliban, the invasion of Iraq, the internments at Guantánamo Bay, the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, and so on—it became tempting to blame it all on that singular day of pain and horror.

But as we approach the 25th anniversary of the attacks, it's important to understand the limits of that story. The events of 9/11 undoubtedly had a major impact on foreign policy. Yet this impact was less a change of direction and more an intensification of already existing trends. The 9/11 attacks would create a permissive political and psychological environment for a particular foreign policy vision, but it did not set America on the path to liberal interventionism and forever war all by itself. For that, we must look back into the 1990s.

The Unipolar Moment

The collapse of the Soviet Union unchained America. Economic and social malaise had been undermining the USSR for decades, as an aging parade of apparatchiks presided over stagnation and discontent. The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and a sudden, unexpected series of arms-control agreements brought an era of détente, while a series of popular revolutions in Eastern Europe severed the USSR from its Eastern bloc dependencies. By the time the Soviet flag was lowered on the Kremlin walls on Christmas Day 1991, it was clear to all involved that America had won the Cold War.

This outcome raised hopes in Washington of a better world. As President George H.W. Bush told Congress, the dawning of something better might be visible: "Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge….An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony." The Soviet collapse, leaving America as the only superpower, offered policymakers a chance to use America's overwhelming power to build that better world.

The end of the Cold War was thus marked not only with a sense of righteous victory, but also with a feeling in Washington that a new foreign policy consensus needed to be forged. The early 1990s was nicknamed the "Kennan Sweepstakes." Thinkers vied to become the next George Kennan, whose 1946 telegram created a doctrine for the Cold War, with new missions and new rationales for U.S. foreign policy. The bipartisan consensus that emerged married Republican primacists and neoconservatives to Democratic liberal internationalists around a form of "liberal hegemony."

What united these groups was a conviction that America—the "indispensable nation"—could transform the world into something better, whether that was by toppling prospective enemies of the United States or engaging in humanitarian intervention. Each administration from Bill Clinton to at least Barack Obama held it as an article of faith that if America could make the world more interconnected and more liberal, it could also make the world more peaceful.

U.S. foreign policy thus became increasingly assertive. It is an oft-forgotten irony that George W. Bush was elected in 2000 promising to reject excessive humanitarian intervention and nation building, sentiments that helped him to win the Republican nomination over noted hawk John McCain.

The nation building in question was President Clinton's repeated interventions in the Balkans, designed to prevent atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. Crimes like the mass killing at Srebrenica in the 1990s led U.S. officials to embrace the "responsibility to protect"—the notion that if a state did not or could not protect its own citizens, the international community was obliged to intervene to protect civilians. In practice, "the international community" meant the United States.

Indeed, when conflict broke out between Serbian forces and Kosovar separatists, the Clinton administration ran an air campaign not with the approval of the U.N. Security Council, where Russian and Chinese vetoes prevented action, but under the auspices of NATO. The campaign forced Serbia to accept a peace deal and in effect created a new country in Kosovo.

Other elements of U.S. foreign policy under Clinton were similarly ambitious and transformative. His administration engaged in strenuous negotiations with Congress over the admission of China to the World Trade Organization. Concerns about China's growing economy and undemocratic government were smoothed over by the notion that greater trade and interdependence could bring greater global stability in the long run. By bringing China into the community of nations in this way, it was believed, China's rise could be managed, turning it into a "responsible stakeholder" in the existing American-led order.

Then there was NATO expansion. With the collapse of the USSR, NATO no longer had an enemy to protect against, raising the possibility that the alliance was obsolete. But as early as George H.W. Bush's administration, U.S. policymakers demanded that a unified Germany stay in NATO, inherently implying that the pact still had a role to play in European security.

It was the Clinton administration that suggested that NATO might also have a place for the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. By the end of his term, Clinton had authorized the first round of NATO expansion and set the stage for more. NATO expansion was increasingly seen as a way to lock in stability, democracy, and economic reform in Eastern Europe.

NATO's expansion was coupled with an American push to expand its scope, transforming it from a deterrence force inside Europe to a global peacekeeping army that could act when the United Nations could not. More than 60,000 NATO-associated troops participated in the Bosnian implementation and stabilization efforts that followed the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995.

What tied many of these Clinton-era policies together was the aim of prolonging the post–Cold War period of American predominance over both allies and adversaries. One way this manifested itself was the idea that the United States should not withdraw from European security, keeping European allies purposefully weak. Another way was a policy of "dual containment" against both Iraq and Iran. Across the 1990s, the U.S. would sustain a no-fly zone over Iraq, enforce U.N. sanctions on Iraqi oil, and engage in several bombing campaigns against Iraqi military targets and to protect civilians in Kurdish areas.

As we exited the 1990s, American policymakers were riding high. No challengers were on the horizon, proto–rogue states like Iraq were contained, and globalization and liberalization were flourishing around the world. Perhaps nothing exemplified the mood surrounding U.S. foreign policy better than a declaration by Madeleine Albright, Clinton's secretary of state: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future." At home, the president might have been embroiled in a sex scandal, but abroad, America's destiny as leader and prophet of the post–Cold War world seemed assured.

Turbocharged

It was in this messianic ground that the seeds of 9/11 were sown. An introspective observer might have wondered how the nation who "saw further into the future" had so disastrously missed the threat from Al Qaeda. Future inquiries would conclude that the attacks would not have been possible without serious lapses in both Clinton and Bush's counterterrorism policies, as well as institutional and intelligence failures.

The 9/11 attacks were clearly terror and barbarism; thousands of grieving American families at funerals proved that beyond any doubt. But they were also a challenge to America's post–Cold War image. A terrorist group had been able to hatch a plan in caves in one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries (never mind that most of the actual plotting and preparation had taken place in Germany!), turning the very tools of global connectivity against America. The attacks came to be seen as an affront to America's new world—a challenge to the forces of civilized, liberal order.

Photo: U.S. Army soldiers search travelers in Afghanistan on March 9, 2012; Sgt. Ken Scar/7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

The invasion of Afghanistan was a logical and justified response to the attacks. The Taliban had sheltered Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden; they had, in a very real sense, declared war on the United States. The toppling of the Taliban was swift and merciless. Less than three months after the attacks, Kabul was conquered and an interim Afghan government was in place.

But in the atmosphere of the time, mere military victory was not enough. Bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants were still at large. "Rogue states" such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and North Korea might need to be deterred. Other "ungoverned spaces" might pose a similar threat in future.

In response, the Bush administration formulated the "freedom agenda," a hugely ambitious strategy that sought to address all of these problems at their root. This freedom agenda turned the war in Afghanistan into an exercise in modernization and nation building, which was used to sell a separate war of regime change in Iraq. In each case, U.S. military power was to transform whole societies. Iraq and Afghanistan were prototypes, proving grounds for the idea that a democratization campaign could act as a catalyst for change across the whole of the Middle East. "The great strength of this nation," the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy document put it, "must be used to promote a balance of power that favors freedom."

Though U.S. public opinion began to turn decisively against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as Bush's presidency ended, his successors continued to pursue similarly transformative goals on the world stage. President Barack Obama, for example, had come into office promising to pull back from the global war on terror, but he ended up surging troops into both Afghanistan and Iraq. His administration also engaged in regime change in Libya and covert intervention in Syria.

Obama was building not just on Bush's freedom agenda but on the Clinton administration's invocation of the responsibility to protect. Several of Obama's foreign policy advisers—Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Susan Rice—were true believers in using U.S. power to protect human rights and spread democracy. As the Arab Spring crashed across the Middle East in 2011 and mass protests in Libya spilled into open civil war, the administration authorized a NATO-led campaign that quickly advanced from a no-fly zone designed to protect civilians to an open campaign of regime change.

Photo: A car bombing in Iraq in 2005; U.S. Army SPC Ronald Shaw Jr./DOD Defense Visual Information Center

America's Middle East interventions after 9/11 even bolstered its other ambitious post–Cold War policies. For example, NATO now had more impetus to focus on expeditionary and "out of area" capabilities. The alliance played an active role in the International Security Assistance Force process in Afghanistan and then in the Libya campaign. NATO expansion and the war on terror would become practically symbiotic: For newer members, providing political support and token military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was viewed as a quid pro quo for membership, while the sacrifices made by their soldiers became a justification for that membership.

The Hangover

Public disillusionment with all of these policies grew throughout the 2000s and 2010s. By 2016, Donald Trump was reaching swing voters by declaring the Iraq War a mistake; by 2020, Democratic primary candidates would be pledging en masse to extricate the U.S. from the Middle East. Twenty-five years after 9/11, elements of the war on terror still linger across the Middle East and, increasingly, Africa—and the war is generally viewed as a failure. The Middle East became less a proving ground for democracy and human rights promotion, and more a graveyard for the notion that freedom can be built at the point of a gun.

Yet with 25 years of space, it also becomes easier to see how the war on terror fits into the broader trajectory of post–Cold War U.S. foreign policy. America's response to 9/11 turbocharged many of its worst impulses but did not fundamentally change its direction. The zeal of the indispensable nation mixed with the shock of a large-scale terrorist attack—one experienced firsthand by many of Washington's foreign policy elites—created a permissive environment in which ambitious theories of global peace and change could flourish.

The war on terror is simply the best-known and most visible of the transformative impulses that characterized the post–Cold War pursuit of liberal hegemony. Would regime-change wars in Iraq or Libya have happened without 9/11? Would America have spent two decades bogged down in the Middle East, wasting blood and treasure while China rose quietly? Perhaps not. But a quarter-century later, we should ask ourselves how much of what followed the 9/11 attacks stemmed from shared trauma and panic—and how much was merely an intensification of existing trends.

The post 9/11 Turbocharged America's Worst Foreign Policy Impulses—but Didn't Change Its Direction appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-29T06:29:38.260-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 29, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Canada Should Ignore Trump's Protectionism and Unilaterally Enact Free Trade

2026-08-28T08:29:41.198-04:00

By J.D. Tuccille - August 28, 2026 at 07:00AM

Towards the beginning of the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles, Sheriff Bart, confronted by hostile but not especially bright townspeople, takes himself hostage to make his escape. It's hilarious precisely because it makes no sense. Just as nuts but less funny is the recent confrontation between United States President Donald Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney in which the Canadian matched the American's protectionist threats by vowing to force his own people to pay high tariffs on goods imported from the U.S. It's silver-screen-quality idiocy, but it's not very entertaining if you understand the advantages of free trade and the pointlessness of holding your own side hostage.

Countering Self-Inflicted Harm With Self-Inflicted Harm

After trade talks between Canada and the U.S. fell apart over the weekend, the prime minister's office warned, "at midnight tonight, the U.S. intends to impose a 50% tariff on roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods. Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses."

Sure enough, in dueling announcements, the White House growled, "Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades—and President Donald J. Trump is done letting them get away with it," while the Canadian government answered, "effective September 8, Canada will impose counter-tariffs of 15, 25 and 50 per cent on products drawn from those targeted by U.S. Section 338 and Section 232 tariffs, with the rate for each product matching the corresponding U.S. rate."

It was an impressive demonstration of political chest-beating—impressively moronic if you understand that tariffs are largely paid by businesses and consumers in the countries that impose them.

"When the US imposes tariffs on imports, businesses in the United States directly pay import taxes to the US government on their purchases from abroad," Tax Foundation Senior Economist Alex Durante pointed out last year. "The economic burden of the tariffs, however, could fall on others besides the US business directly paying the tax, including foreign businesses selling goods to US businesses (if foreigners lower their prices to absorb some of the tariffs) or US consumers ultimately purchasing the goods (if US businesses raise their prices to pass on the tariffs)."

Businesses and consumers might also substitute goods imported from other countries or produced locally. But there's often a cost or quality reason they weren't buying those alternatives to begin with. Ultimately, Americans end up worse off than they were.

Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that in the U.S. "small businesses were particularly challenged by higher tariffs in 2025 to which they mostly responded by passing on higher tariff costs to their customers."

The same consideration applies to other countries, including Canada. That is, the U.S. government mostly hurts Americans with tariffs imposed on Canadian goods, and the Canadian government mainly harms its own people with retaliatory tariffs. It's the townspeople vs. Sheriff Bart all over again.

"Think about what retaliation actually means," comments Quebec-born Vincent Geloso, an economics professor at Virginia's George Mason University. "Trump imposes a tax on Americans who buy Canadian goods. So our response is supposed to be…imposing a tax on Canadians who buy American goods? How exactly does making Canadians poorer punish Donald Trump?"

"Canadian retaliation will lead to higher costs for our firms and consumers, put additional strain on integrated North American supply chains, and slow overall economic growth on our side of the border," agree Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman of Canada's Fraser Institute.

Holding Canadians Hostage Won't Deter Trump's Protectionism

Carney's defenders north of the border argue that retaliation is the only way to get American attention—Canada must punish itself with tariffs to convince the U.S. to back down on its own trade barriers. Many economists remain unconvinced that this sort of self-inflicted pain will prove decisive.

"Retaliatory tariffs will increase the cost of living for Canadian households but are unlikely to weaken Trump's tariff fixation," caution Finlayson and Globerman. "Indeed, the Trump administration may respond to any incremental Canadian 'retaliation' by announcing additional market access restrictions targeting various Canadian industries."

"Canadian Prime Minister Carney's retaliatory tariffs come from understandable feelings of frustration and betrayal but will not change Trump's behavior," adds Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Economist Ryan Young. "Restraint is difficult in the face of such taunting but is probably the right thing to do."

Geloso notes that Canada has attempted countering American protectionism in the past with retaliatory tariffs that did more harm than good: "Canada tried this in the 1930s in response to Smoot-Hawley. It changed absolutely nothing for the better. If anything, it simply deepened the Depression in Canada."

Worse, Geloso adds, imposing protectionist measures creates an environment in which companies expect and demand special favors: "What you ultimately get is more protection, more subsidies, higher costs, less competitiveness, and, yes, even more collusion between firms."

Unilateral Free Trade Is Easy To Enact and Benefits Everybody

Geloso's advice to Carney and company is that "Canada's response to American tariffs should be incredibly simple: slash our own tariffs and trade barriers. And do not impose counter-tariffs." He adds that "free trade does not require the other guy to be smart enough to reciprocate. Historically, a huge share of trade liberalization has been unilateral."

In this, Geloso is hardly alone. His suggestion is the same that Milton Friedman offered decades ago when Americans were worried that Japan would outcompete the United States while closing its own markets.

"We only increase the hurt to us—and also to them—by imposing additional restrictions in our turn," the prominent economist wrote. "The wise course for us is precisely the opposite—to move unilaterally toward free trade. If they still choose to impose restrictions, that is too bad but at least we have not added insult to injury."

Undoubtedly, it's emotionally and politically satisfying to push back against Trump's bullying. But countering self-inflicted harm on Americans with self-inflicted harm on Canadians doesn't lead anywhere good. Carney's threats against his own people aren't likely to end as well as things did for Sheriff Bart.

The post Canada Should Ignore Trump's Protectionism and Unilaterally Enact Free Trade appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Brickbat: No-Time Delivery

2026-08-28T06:29:33.096-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 28, 2026 at 04:00AM

In Ottumwa, Iowa, U.S. Postal Service carrier Jill Ranae Brown has been charged with fourth-degree theft after investigators say she stole Menards rebates from the mail and redeemed them. The Wapello County Sheriff's Office began investigating after a customer reported that a Menards rebate had been stolen and later used at the Ottumwa store. Investigators, working with Menards and the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, say they uncovered a pattern dating back to 2024 in which rebates mailed to customers were allegedly taken before delivery. They also say that Brown stole receipts that Menards had customers mailed in to claim rebates, and submitted them under her own name.

The post Brickbat: No-Time Delivery appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-28T06:29:32.065-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 28, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

He Spent Nearly 6 Years in Prison Based on the Word of a Notoriously Dishonest Houston Drug Cop

2026-08-27T11:29:18.057-04:00

By Jacob Sullum - August 27, 2026 at 06:00AM

On a Wednesday afternoon in February 2008, Houston police raided a house at 5603 Elmlawn Drive, where they found a gram of PCP and 132 grams of cocaine. They arrested several men at the property, including Byron Prophet, then 23, who was ultimately convicted of two drug charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

During Prophet's trial, Gerald Goines, a narcotics officer who had been employed by the Houston Police Department (HPD) for 24 years, testified that he saw the defendant enter the house twice through a door from the garage, unlocking the bars covering the entrance with a key that was later found in his pocket. Prophet testified that he had never been inside the house and had no key.

Although the jury believed Goines, a deadly 2019 drug raid that he instigated by fabricating a heroin sale revealed that he was completely untrustworthy. Thanks to the belated scrutiny triggered by that scandal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Prophet's convictions in 2024. But Prophet, who was released on parole in 2014, had already served nearly six years in prison based on the unquestioned word of a drug cop with a long history of lying to obtain search warrants, justify arrests, and secure convictions. The case illustrates how the war on drugs invites police mendacity that may go undetected for years thanks to lax supervisors and credulous courts.

In a federal lawsuit filed last week, Prophet argues that the responsibility for the injustice he suffered extends beyond Goines, who is currently serving a 60-year sentence for his role in the 2019 raid. Long before that incident, Prophet says, Goines' supervisors were or should have been aware that he had a habit of framing innocent people.

That is what Goines did in 2019, when he obtained a no-knock warrant to search the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, a middle-aged couple he falsely implicated in drug dealing. As Goines later admitted, his search warrant affidavit described a heroin purchase that never happened. As a result of that fraudulent affidavit, police broke into the couple's home and shot their dog. After Tuttle responded to that home invasion by grabbing a revolver and firing at the intruders, police killed him and Nicholas, who was unarmed. Several officers, including Goines, were grievously injured during the raid, mainly by friendly fire.

That fatal fiasco prompted the Harris County District Attorney's Office to re-examine thousands of drug cases involving Goines. It concluded that 69 people might have been convicted based on false evidence he provided. Prophet was one of them.

Prophet has always insisted he had nothing to do with the drugs that police found in the house on Elmlawn Drive. By his account, he rode his dirt bike to his grandmother's house that afternoon. His uncle, a mechanic, also lived in the neighborhood, and Prophet wanted his help in repairing the dirt bike. Prophet found his uncle working on a car in front of Louis Pugh's house, the target of the raid, which was a few doors down from his grandmother's home.

Prophet testified that he did not associate with Pugh, who was a friend of his uncle's, and never entered the house, although he fetched tools from Pugh's garage. Goines, by contrast, claimed that Prophet repeatedly entered the house, spending a total of 13 minutes inside. He also claimed to have seen Prophet's state-issued identification card on a kitchen counter near the PCP and cocaine. He said Prophet tried to flee when the raid started and had a key to the house in his pocket when he was searched.

According to Prophet, none of that was true. But the case pitted a veteran narcotics officer against a young man who admitted that he had previously been convicted of burglarly and three minor drug offenses. The jurors, who apparently did not seriously entertain the possibility that Goines was lying, accepted his account. So did the 1st District Court of Appeals, which upheld Prophet's convictions in 2010. The court deemed Goines' testimony sufficient to establish Prophet's alleged connection to the drugs.

The jurors might have been less inclined to believe Goines if they had known how he obtained the warrant for the raid on Pugh's house. "Goines wrote in the application that a confidential informant had performed a controlled drug purchase for the police at the property two days earlier," the lawsuit says. "In reality, there was no genuine confidential informant and no drugs were purchased."

That fabricated evidence foreshadowed the fraud that would culminate in the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas 11 years later. And according to the lawsuit, it was part of a pattern that should have been clear by the time of Prophet's arrest.

At that point, Goines was "well-known" for submitting search warrant affidavits that "falsely claimed a confidential informant had purchased drugs" at the targeted property, the complaint says. "Goines would fabricate evidence that led to drug raids, falsify reports, and 'pay off' officers by falsifying overtime records of officers who participated in the drug raids. The City of Houston and HPD officials were aware that Defendant Goines used these tactics and had a problematic history of violating resident's constitutional rights, but allowed him to continue operating in such fashion."

In addition to Goines, the defendants in Prophet's lawsuit include two other officers, the city of Houston, and former Police Chief Harold Hurtt, who ran the HPD from 2004 to 2009. The complaint alleges that Officers James Yencha and Richard Salter conspired with Goines to violate Prophet's constitutional rights and that the HPD "turned a blind eye" to their misconduct.

During "the period leading up to Mr. Prophet's wrongful conviction" in October 2008, the HPD "engaged in a systematic pattern of fabrication of evidence, withholding of exculpatory information, and other illegal tactics, the sum total of which completely corrupted the investigative process," the complaint says. "Before the investigation at issue here and continuing afterwards, dozens of cases have come to light in which Houston police officers were involved in suppressing exculpatory evidence or fabricating false evidence to cause the conviction of an innocent person for serious crimes they did not commit."

In 2002, the lawsuit notes, KHOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, "conducted an investigation into HPD and revealed there was a culture of untrained staff, missing exculpatory records, contaminated evidence, and inadequate supervisory oversight of officers." Although those findings should have prompted "drastic change within HPD," the complaint says, Houston officers "continued to fabricate evidence, suppress evidence, and use other illegal tactics."

The lawsuit mentions several other people who were arrested by Goines, including George Floyd, who lived in Houston at the time and would later be killed by police in Minneapolis. In 2004, the complaint says, Goines claimed Floyd had "sold $10 of crack cocaine to a third party," but "the alleged drug money was never recovered" and the alleged buyer was never identified.

Two years later, according to the lawsuit, Goines "falsely claimed" Reginald Christain "informed officers that there were drugs in his vehicle prior to its search." Goines "fabricated this statement by Christian, as well as the drugs purportedly found in Christian's vehicle."

Prior to Prophet's arrest, "dozens of residents made complaints to HPD about the wrongful arrests, fabricated evidence, and suppressed evidence, but the Department turned a blind eye," the complaint says. "Nor did the City of Houston end Defendant Goines' employment when it learned he was fabricating informants, evidence, and reports, and suppressing the truth."

The pattern continued after Prophet's arrest. In April 2008, Goines arrested Steven Mallet and his brother, Otis, claiming they had sold him crack. But that was not true, and the brothers were exonerated in the wake of the raid that killed Tuttle and Nicholas.

The National Registry of Exonerations lists more than three dozen drug defendants, including Prophet, the Malett brothers, and Frederick Jeffery, whose convictions were vacated after Goines' dishonesty came to light. If supervisors like Hurtt had done their jobs, Prophet argues, that list would be shorter.

"We have zero indication that this is a systemic problem with the Houston Police Department," Police Chief Art Acevedo, who was in charge of the HPD from 2016 to 2021, said after Goines was charged with felony murder in August 2019. Acevedo reiterated that take after Goines was indicted on federal civil rights charges three months later, dismissing "the chances of this being systemic."

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg saw things differently. "Houston Police narcotics officers falsified documentation about drug payments to confidential informants with the support of supervisors," she said in July 2020. "Goines and others could never have preyed on our community the way they did without the participation of their supervisors; every check and balance in place to stop this type of behavior was circumvented."

Contrary to what Acevedo seems to think, these are systemic issues. So are the incentives created by the war on drugs. When a crime consists of nothing but handing a police officer or an informant something in exchange for money, the evidence often consists of nothing but that purported buyer's word, along with drugs that easily could have been obtained through other means. This situation invites dishonest cops to invent drug offenses and take credit for the resulting arrests, as Goines did for years with impunity.

When your job is to create crimes by arranging illegal drug sales, it is not such a big leap to create crimes out of whole cloth, especially if you are convinced that your target is a drug dealer. And when that happens, defendants cannot count on jurors or judges to detect the deception, as Goines' many victims discovered.

The post He Spent Nearly 6 Years in Prison Based on the Word of a Notoriously Dishonest Houston Drug Cop appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Brickbat: The Streets of San Francisco

2026-08-27T07:29:35.720-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 27, 2026 at 04:00AM

The San Francisco Department of Police Accountability found that two officers used unnecessary force and violated department policies while arresting Matthew Ludwig in 2024 after an officer entered the wrong license plate number into a police database, leading them to mistakenly believe Ludwig was driving a stolen car. Body camera video showed the officers breaking Ludwig's car window, pulling him from the vehicle, and throwing him to the ground. They then pepper-sprayed him from inches away, even though the required minimum distance for pepper spray is more than four feet. The officers eventually discovered their mistake but still recommended that Ludwig be charged with resisting arrest. They also impounded his vehicle and later auctioned it off when he could not afford the fines to recover it. The department's findings were sent to the San Francisco Police Commission, which may discipline the officers. Ludwig, meanwhile, died in 2025.

The post Brickbat: The Streets of San Francisco appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-27T05:29:23.588-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 27, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

A Wall Of Separation Between LGB and T

2026-08-26T06:29:28.344-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 26, 2026 at 12:58AM

Shortly after Obergefell was decided, it became clear that transgender rights was simply the next stop on the train. But the pairing of LGB and T never made sense to me. Gays and lesbians urged society to accept them as they are. Transgender people compelled society to accept they as they are not. More pressingly, transgender rights advocates focused nearly all of their efforts on children: bathrooms in school; teachers telling students to lie to their parents about secret transitions; medical procedures for minors; biologically male athletes in sports; and so on. For generation, gay men were targeted for grooming young children. Growing up in New York City in the 1990s, I heard nonstop jokes about gay priests and Boy Scout troop leaders abusing kids. Yet the T in LGBT focused on the kids.

The issues for gays and lesbians always seemed quite different. I wondered whether gay rights groups were quietly concerned about this merger of LGB and T, but didn't speak up for fear of being labeled transphobic. I think the other shoe has finally dropped.

The Log Cabin Republicans will no longer advocate on transgender issues. Ross Hemminger, the President of LCR, published an essay in Townhall discussing the issues.

In 2015, the Log Cabin Republicans Board of Directors voted to add the "T" under the umbrella of our mission — out of a belief that all adults should be allowed to pursue their own happiness, free of government interference, as long as it did not impede on the inalienable rights of others.

At the time, we did not believe that we would find ourselves where we are today. The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all — nearly all of their efforts and those of their aligned special interest groups focus on minors. They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women's sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible.

And Hemminger recognizes how support for gay marriage is declining because of transgender ideology.

Gay men and women are losing public support across the country, and support for gay marriage and other once-widely accepted rights is eroding. Why? Because many voters today weren't alive or cognizant of the politics of gay marriage winding its way through the courts and gaining ground in public opinion. Their view of the gay community is based on today's radical transgender activists with their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America's youth.

That is why, after significant discussion with our membership, our Board of Directors voted to refine Log Cabin Republicans' national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values — in other words, we are an LGB advocacy organization, as our founders envisioned and as our moral center calls us to be.

The New York Times quotes Danny Sullivan, who previously served as the President of the Houston Chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans:

Danny Stevens, a former president of the Log Cabin Republicans chapter in Houston, said he thought the national group had made a smart move by abandoning trans rights issues, which it embraced in 2015.

The issue was a nonstarter for many Texas Republicans.

"At some point, I just kept thinking, why are we spending all this time convincing Republicans that we're not crazy while associating ourselves with a movement pushing things most of them are never going to accept?" Mr. Stevens wrote in a text message on Tuesday.

He wishes the national Log Cabin group had abandoned trans issues sooner, he said. "I actually think it was necessary," he said, if the group "wants to keep making progress within the Republican Party."

I spoke at Danny's chapter in Houston last year about Obergefell. I explained that regardless of what one thinks about same-sex marriage, Justice Kennedy's decision was legally indefensible, and a shaky foundation on which to build the institution. The audience was respectful, even if they disagreed. During Q&A, there were a number of questions about transgender rights, and it was clear to me which way the members were trending.

Danny actually stepped down from leadership, largely due to LCR's stance on the transgender issue. I asked Danny if I could publish his letter, and he gladly shared it. I think Danny makes some important points here that are worth considering:

First, I want to say that I love LCR and want the best for our chapter and the entire org. I'm also writing this as Danny. My opinions may/may not represent the singular voice of our Houston board.

I'm growing more concerned and frustrated that the trans issue is not only harming us, but it's undoing much of the work we've accomplished as a chapter and as an organization.

I plan to write a more formal letter, but I needed to get my initial thoughts off my chest now.

My belief is that we need to take a leadership position on this issue, one we have not yet taken. Yes, we have echoed the mainstream Republican positions on men in women's sports and gender transitioning for minors. But this isn't far enough.

Gender dysphoria has been and still is a clinically diagnosed mental illness. From where the illness roots and determination on appropriate treatment is above my paygrade. However, affirming this condition as an equal to sexual orientation is no longer something I'm willing to do.

What someone chooses to do with their own bodies is up to each person. But our willingness as a society to affirm their decision as healthy or normal is not up to the trans movement.

We have many allies in the local Republican Party who have personally and publicly expressed concerns to me about the effects the trans movement has on the greater LGB population. I don't disagree with them.

Furthermore, all of the hardwork, energy and resources our chapter has invested in making gains towards being recognized by the Republican Party of Texas is completely undone by a stream of headline news stories about trans individuals and despicable crimes they are committing at seemingly disproportionate rates relative to their population. Note that I realize there are good and decent trans people. But this doesn't prohibit us from stating what broader issues we are facing as an organization or as a society.

Every time I utter the acronym LGBT, I shutter knowing I'm turning off many in the audience that would otherwise support us. The very usage of this term immediately paints a picture in peoples' minds that is not valid or fair to gay men like all of us in this email.

To me, this is more of an economic argument than anything else. How many gay and lesbian prospective or current members are we losing because of our unwillingness to state what many of us are thinking? Are we really willing to lose 20 gay men to attract 1 trans member?What ratio is acceptable to LCR National?

Let's look at chapter-level contributions in time, labor and money. For our chapter, 99% of this comes from gay men, not our two trans members. In fact, one of our trans members is disenchanted with the Republican Party due to Pres. Trump's policies on trans individuals, primarily ones in the military. I suspect they will no longer be a member if they haven't already stopped membership payments.

Charlie Kirk's assassination was a real turning point for me. It's clear that we have a lot of healing to do as a nation. And we have a lot of soul searching to do as an organization. This starts with being honest with ourselves and with each other.

I'm not willing to continue pouring my heart into a cause that is continually undermined. Really, why bother?

I'm starting to ask myself if my time, energy and passion is better spent outside of LCR. I would bet others are probably asking themselves the same question.

This is a defining issue for the future of LCR. I fear it could really be our undoing unless we face this challenge head on.

Sincerely,
Danny Stevens

As I wrote in April in City Journal, the tide has turned. At some point, even progressive gay rights groups may decide to reconsider the merger of LGB and T.

The post A Wall Of Separation Between LGB and T appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Oklahoma Attorney General Responsible For Two Terrible Supreme Court Decisions Loses Gubernatorial Primary

2026-08-26T01:29:43.718-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 26, 2026 at 12:00AM

It is often said that A.G. is short for "Aspiring Governor." Such was the case in Oklahoma, where Attorney General Gentner Drummond ran for the Republican Gubernatorial Primary. The AP has now called the race, and Drummond lost by less than a percentage point.

I usually do not comment on political races, but Drummond deserves some heat.

First, Drummond argued that his own state's charter school program was unconstitutional. He litigated St. Isidore up to the Supreme Court where the case was affirmed by an equally-divided court. President Trump even mentioned this case in his social media endorsement of Drummond's opponent: "He even SUED to BLOCK a religious based charter school strongly supported by my Administration — Very troubling for Educational Freedom, and an outright attack on Christianity!"

Second, Drummond hired his lifelong friend to review the capital conviction of Richard Glossip. Drummond then asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate the death sentence. That court refused to revisit the case. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the OCCA had misinterpreted federal law. There were so many problems with that case. But even more troubling, as my colleague Paul Cassell pointed out, is Drummond's own conduct. Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent that Drummond "collusively excluded . . . highly relevant evidence" from the record.

To add insult to injury, Drummond also seemed to support Justice Gorsuch's disastrous decision in McGirt. Based on the electoral map, Indian country seemed to vote strongly against Drummond.

As the returns stand now, only 2,000 votes separate Drummond and his opponent. I'd like to think that some of those votes are due to the positions Drummond took before the courts.

The post Oklahoma Attorney General Responsible For Two Terrible Supreme Court Decisions Loses Gubernatorial Primary appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Marjorie Taylor Greene on MAGA, Congress, and the Two-Party System

2026-08-25T09:29:43.010-04:00

By Robby Soave - August 25, 2026 at 06:00AM

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) joined Free Media's Robby Soave in June to discuss her friendship with Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), her break with Trump-era politics, and why she believes both major parties are failing ordinary Americans. Greene says she once thought President Donald Trump would help crash the system. Now she argues that the two-party system itself is the problem, and that Americans are not yet engaged enough to beat it.

Q: Can you speak about your ideological evolution? You came to Washington as a fervent backer of Trump, MAGA, and MAHA. By the end of your time in Washington, you were ideologically and personally close with Massie, who was targeted by Trump for many of the same reasons you later became at odds with the administration. Massie has thought of himself as a libertarian or friendly to libertarianism. Have you felt more kinship with Massie, and with the ideology and the movement he's involved in?

A: That's actually a misconception. My entire time in Congress, I was aligned with Thomas Massie, and our voting records are very similar. He was one of my best allies and best friends the entire time I served there. We worked together on many issues, and that was before Trump was elected in 2024. I stood in both camps, I would say.

I never was a big Republican Party person. I never was elected before I won in 2020 for Congress, and I never even went to my county GOP meetings. I didn't know anybody. I was angry at Republicans when I ran for Congress, and I attacked them constantly. I didn't align with Democrats at all, so I attacked them as well. I was very naive to the entire political process, because I had no experience in it. But I was angry, completely angry at the government, totally outraged by the government. When I became a member of Congress, I spent five years of my life the most pissed off I could ever be because I hated all of it. I hated every bit of it.

I was very much fooled, like many. I was also a rallygoer—a Trump rallygoer. I believed his speeches. I believed his words when he talked about no more foreign wars and draining the swamp and "lock her up" and we're going to hold them accountable. He said, "I am your retribution." I believed all of that because I believed in crashing the system. I thought that Trump would be the vehicle to do it, and boy, was I wrong. I spent five years in Washington trying every way possible to find success in stopping everything that I felt was ruining America. But it's virtually unstoppable.

Q: The two-party system is brutal. You're frustrated, and I'm frustrated, that the Trump administration is not prioritizing some of the things it ran on. It is not trying to make it easier to start a business or build a house or prosper in America, and it is very focused on foreign conflicts. But if you withdraw support from the Republican Party, it helps the other party, and they're going down a socialist direction. Or even someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his backers, who want to confiscate the wealth of our most productive tech entrepreneurs—the people who are trying to make my life easier, who are trying to grow the economy that way. They're going to embrace ideas that shut all of that down. You just have bad choices no matter what you do.

A: That's right. It's government overreach on both sides and in all different directions. There are no choices anymore. The Republican and Democrat two-party system is the political-industrial complex. Right now, as it stands, you can't beat it. I tried to beat it. I got in it and thought, "Hey, hold them accountable." I wanted to hold Republicans accountable for what they promised on the campaign trail, and I wanted to defeat Democrats on the threats that I thought they were threatening against us as well. But no, as it stands right now, it is such a strong system.

Let me take it back. It's beatable. It just requires the American people fully getting engaged. And the American people just aren't fully engaged.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

The post Marjorie Taylor Greene on MAGA, Congress, and the Two-Party System appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Brickbat: King Bee

2026-08-25T07:29:12.283-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 25, 2026 at 04:00AM

The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals is being asked to decide whether South Charleston can ban beekeeping within city limits. The legal fight began when Alex Urban sought permission to keep bees on his property. South Charleston rejected his request and later adopted a complete ban, arguing that the city has authority to regulate animals and that beehives can create problems in densely populated neighborhoods. A Kanawha County judge ruled in 2025 that the city had exceeded its authority because state law gives the West Virginia Department of Agriculture power over beekeeping and does not define bees as animals for purposes of municipal regulation. However, the Intermediate Court of Appeals later reversed that decision, ruling that bees are animals under the ordinary meaning of the word and that state law does not prevent cities from regulating beekeeping.

The post Brickbat: King Bee appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-25T04:29:30.019-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 25, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Today in Supreme Court History: August 24, 1946

2026-08-24T10:29:24.996-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 24, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/24/1946: Justice James McReynolds dies.

Justice James McReynolds

The post Today in Supreme Court History: August 24, 1946 appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-24T04:29:19.048-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 24, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Reconciling Hayek and Mill's Divergent Defenses of Liberty

2026-08-23T10:29:21.533-04:00

By Ilya Somin - August 23, 2026 at 10:00AM

F.A. Hayek (NA)

John Stuart Mill. (NA)

Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and the great political philosopher John Stuart Mill both reached generally libertarian conclusions. But, as prominent Harvard law Porf. and political theorist Cass Sunstein points out in an excellent recent post, they did so for quite different reasons:

Mill was a romantic about choosers (about you and me, and what we know, and what we are capable of), while Hayek was not a romantic about choosers at all (not close). He was a romantic, or something like that, about undesigned orders and traditions, and a skeptic about planners.

Mill put a bright spotlight on individuals, their knowledge, their potential, and their agency. Hayek put a bright spotlight on markets and traditions, and on government planners and what they cannot know.

In sum, Mill emphasized the merits of individual freedom of choice, which he famously argued would enable each person to to exercise control over his or her affairs, and result in valuable "experiments in living." By contrast, Hayek emphasized the defects of government planners, and their lack of knowledge.

As Sunstein notes, these two ideas are not inherently opposed. They can even be mutually reinforcing, in so far as they provide alternative justifications for the same conclusion. But there is a tension, in so far as Hayek also emphasized the value of "spontaneous order" and the traditions it generates, which he viewed as better guides to decision-making than the unaided reason of individuals. This contrasts with Mill's emphasis on individual autonomy and reasoning skills.

Moreover, if tradition is so valuable, as Hayek suggests, why not use government power to enforce it against people who go against it? And if individual reason and experimentation are so beneficial, as Mill argued, why not trust voters' judgements at the ballot box, and let them use those choices to constrain individual choice?

I cannot resolve all tensions between these two perspectives. But the gap can be greatly reduced by recognizing that individuals make better decisions in some circumstances than in others. In particular, they do better when the "vote with their feet" than when the vote at the ballot box. And that divergence bolsters both Mill's confidence in individual autonomy, and Hayek's condemnation of planning and support for spontaneous order.

As I have explained previously (and more fully in my book book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom), people can vote with their feet by making choices in the private sector, by deciding with jurisdiction to live in within a federal system, and through international migration. What unites these three types of choices is that, in each case, the individual makes a decision that is highly likely to have a decisive impact. By contrast, when you vote at the ballot box, the odds that your vote will have a decisive effect on the outcome are infinitesimally small: usually one chance in a million or even less (perhaps 1 in 60 million in a US presidential election, though the exact figure varies by state).

As a result, foot voters have strong incentives to seek out relevant information and evaluate it objectively. As discussed in my book and elsewhere, historical and experimental evidence shows they often make good decisions even under bad conditions, as in the cases of people fleeing totalitarian regimes that censor information from the outside world, and poorly educated Blacks fleeing slavery and segregation. By contrast, a combination of "rational ignorance" (lack of incentive to seek out political information) and "rational irrationality" (lack of incentive to engage in unbiased evaluation). In combination, these ensure they are often ignorant of very basic political information (such as what the three branches of government are or which officials are responsible for which issues) and often act as biased "political fans" in evaluating the information they do learn.

Once we recognize that individuals generally make much better decisions as foot voters than as ballot box voters, Hayek and Mill's perspectives are much easier to reconcile.

In the case of Hayek, this distinction can explain why he had respect for traditions developed through "spontaneous order," but was also highly critical of conservatives' support for the enforcement of tradition through state power, as in his famous essay "Why I am Not a Conservative." The answer is that traditions generated by individuals' foot voting choices are likely to have greater epistemic value than those imposed by force, whether by democratic governments or authoritarian ones.

Hayek was not actually an across-the-board fan of tradition. He was more than willing to reject traditions imposed and perpetuated by government coercion. For example, he rejected anti-sodomy laws and other restrictions on consensual sexual activity, even though they were longstanding traditions. The distinction between foot voting and ballot box voting decisions can help justify this stance.

The same goes for Mill's emphasis on individual autonomy. Foot voters are likely to make better choices than ballot box voters, and thus also create better "experiments in living." Mill, in fact, worried greatly about the problem of voter ignorance. In Considerations on Representative Government, he emphasized that voters have a duty to become well-informed, and advocated giving extra votes to more educated voters in order to improve the quality of decision-making.

But he failed to consider that even relatively more educated voters are still susceptible to rational ignorance (though they do, on average, know more than the less-educated) and still likely to act as biased "political fans." Any given set of people are likely to make better decisions when voting with their feet than at the ballot box. The superior incentives of foot voters justify granting them greater scope and autonomy, while tightly limiting the power of government to override their choices.

As I argue in Free to Move and other writings, these circumstances also justify decentralizing government power so as to give people more opportunities to vote with their feet in federal systems. This last is a point consonant with Hayek's advocacy of decentralized federalism in some of his early writings, including a 1939 article where he emphasized the importance of "do[ing] away with the impediments as to the movement of men, goods, and capital between the states."

In sum, incorporating the problem of voter ignorance and the informational advantages of foot voting bolster both Hayek's argument for liberty and Mill's. Liberty enables people to make better-informed decisions in the private sector, thus reinforcing Mill's emphasis on autonomy. Voter ignorance further reduces the quality of government planning, thereby bolstering Hayek's argument against the latter, while helping to explain why he supported some traditions, but not others.

The points covered here don't do away with all differences between Mill and Hayek. And, by themselves, they don't make a comprehensive case for a libertarian/classical liberal political system. But they do show how the superior decision-making of foot voters relative to ballot box voters bolster both Hayek and Mill's arguments, and make them mutually reinforcing.

The post Reconciling Hayek and Mill's Divergent Defenses of Liberty appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Post-9/11 Fear Grew the Surveillance State. 25 Years Later, It's Still Growing.

2026-08-23T09:29:23.864-04:00

By Abigail R. Hall - August 23, 2026 at 06:00AM

"Mom, why did he take your picture?" my preschooler asked. We were making our way through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint for a family trip.

"It's to compare my face with the picture in the computer," I said. "They want to make sure I am who I say I am."

As we put our bags on the conveyor belt to be X-rayed, I received another question. "Mom—what's that big machine?"

"A body scanner. It's supposed to find things under people's clothes."

"Can it see my privates?!"

"No," I hesitated. Contemporary scanners do not capture such details, but TSA agents may use them to inappropriately fondle people. Older backscatter X-ray machines could, and did, provide the TSA with images of naked bodies.

After passing through the metal detector, we waited for our bags. A man in front of us was pulled aside to have his hands swabbed for explosives. I received yet another inquiry.

"Mom—what is that thing?"

"What thing?"

"The thing they're rubbing on his hands."

"That—that is to see if there are things on his hands that shouldn't be."

To my preschooler, these surveillance measures will undoubtedly be routine. Scan your ID, pose for the biometric screening, step into the scanner, be "randomly selected" for additional screening. My children won't know that air travel wasn't always this way. Facial scans, physical searches of your person and property, and so on are not part of some organic evolution. They are a direct response to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror. But my children won't have memories of that either.

Just as every baby boomer knows exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, people my age can tell you precisely what they were doing just after 9 a.m. on 9/11. I was in seventh grade music class. In other classrooms, my friends watched people jump out of buildings. My mom picked me up early from school, and I distinctly remember that every television channel had been overtaken by news coverage. I watched the twin towers collapse over and over again for what felt like days. President George W. Bush gave multiple primetime addresses, and soon American flags were all over the neighborhood and my school.

Some parts of 9/11's legacy are clear. Twenty-five years later, the United States government remains embroiled in a global war on terror. Members of the military bear both physical and mental wounds. The formal conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to inform the opinions of citizens and policymakers alike. Other reminders of the attack and subsequent responses abound—from the memorial at the World Trade Center site and annual memorial stair climbs to an absolute explosion of academic work related to terrorism and counterterrorism.

Other parts of 9/11's legacy are more difficult to observe, especially for Americans too young to remember life before the attacks. The U.S. government responded in many ways that either were largely kept secret from the public or are so integrated into daily life that we no longer recognize them as what they are: marked expansions of government that have weakened constraints on government and eroded our liberties.

Scale, Size, and Scope

In addition to launching the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other interventions abroad, the U.S. government underwent its largest restructuring since 1947. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began operations in 2003, uniting 22 different agencies under an integrated federal security apparatus. A cadre of new agencies appeared as well, including the TSA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Other agencies saw significant structural changes, among them the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the CIA, and the FBI.

Federal expenditures on "defense" increased rapidly, from $326 billion in 2001 to nearly $360 billion a year later. By 2010, the scale of federal military expenditures exceeded $652 billion. Estimates from 2020 suggest that the broader war on terror will cost U.S. taxpayers more than $8 trillion by 2050.

It wasn't just the raw scale or size of government that changed. If we truly want to understand how America has been transformed, we must also appreciate changes in the scope of government—the type and range of things the government does.

The fear generated by the 9/11 attacks drew citizens toward the government. This fear also generated a "disarming effect" where citizens came to accept, even welcome, measures that they would have previously regarded as gross violations of personal freedom.

The most obvious illustrations involve surveillance. Despite explicit constitutional protections against unlawful search, an overwhelming number of Americans supported increased government surveillance after 9/11, including wiretapping, collecting cellphone records, video surveillance, and reductions in restrictions on government spying.

This support, combined with the fear of another attack, led to the quick passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001. Among other expansions in the scale and scope of government, this law greatly expanded Washington's power to spy on people and reduced or eliminated constraints on surveillance. For example, the law made significant changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, the federal law regulating surveillance and data collection of foreign intelligence on U.S. soil. The PATRIOT Act allowed for longer search and surveillance periods and permitted "roving" wiretaps, meaning that government agents could "follow" surveillance targets across different phones, email accounts, and locations, as opposed to requiring new authorizations. The law also made it easier for surveillance officials to acquire pen register, or "trap-and-trace," orders, meaning the government could collect more metadata in their investigations.

Other portions of the PATRIOT Act lowered the bar for officials seeking FISA approval. Still other sections relaxed the constraints on the U.S. government to share private information about U.S. citizens with foreign governments.

Moreover, the PATRIOT Act replaced more restrictive policies about data collection on businesses with a much broader provision allowing the government to obtain "any tangible thing" that may be "relevant" to an investigation, including business and library records, financial and travel records, and telephone metadata. The act allowed broader and more direct surveillance-related coordination and information sharing between officials across various arms of the government.

Americans largely welcomed these changes, with many expressing they'd have "no concern" if the government collected their personal phone records. Others stated their opinion that the government had not gonefar enough in restricting civil liberties to combat terrorism. It was not until Edward Snowden exposed some of the abuse of surveillance technologies by the National Security Agency that U.S. citizens clearly expressed disapproval of the expansion of federal spying. Even today, while many people express skepticism about some surveillance policies, support for surveillance in some capacity largely remains.

The Ratchet

September 11 opened the door for permanent alterations in the size of government and the types of activities our government undertakes. Economist Robert Higgs foreshadowed all this in his 1987 book, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. Higgs described a "ratchet effect" in which government often grows but rarely shrinks. During normal times, there is a baseline "supply and demand" dynamic, with bureaucrats offering an expanded role for themselves when citizens ask for goods and services. But a crisis and the fear it creates dramatically increase the demand for the government to "do something."

Government grows at a steady rate until a crisis occurs. A subsequent expansion, integration of new government activities, and retrenchment following the crisis's conclusion follow. The result is a higher level of government activity than what would have occurred absent the crisis—a "ratcheting" of growth.

We can see many examples of this dynamic from the last century. Before Washington entered World War II, scientists called on the U.S. government to develop a nuclear program over fear of a possible nuclear Third Reich. The ultimate result was the Manhattan Project. In the early Cold War, the fear of communism prompted calls for government action, resulting in loyalty oaths, domestic surveillance, and public hearings. More recently, calls for government to "fix" the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in restrictions on individual movement, dictates about masking, and support for government-issued "vaccine passports."

Eventually, the crisis that sparked the expansion of government—whether a pandemic, possible "nuclear Nazis," or terrorism—abates. Some policies implemented in the name of combating the crisis are eliminated or curtailed. For example, the restrictions placed by government officials during the COVID-19 pandemic related to masking, lockdowns, etc., were eventually eliminated.

But the expansion of government is not fully reversed. Policies and programs implemented in the context of crisis become integrated into the general operations of government. New bureaus become permanent, and policies developed to address an immediate crisis come to be the status quo within expanded government operations. The crisis permanently expanded the government.

Writing in 1987, Higgs did not have the 9/11 attacks in mind. But the framework helps us analyze how the terror attacks opened the door for bigger government—and helps us to appreciate both the monetary and nonpecuniary costs of government expansion.

Fear Is the Privacy-Killer

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, a majority of Americans reported they felt afraid. This fear drove calls for officials to act—and fast. In late September 2001, nearly half of Americans worried that the Bush administration would not use military options fast enough to combat additional terrorism threats.

This passivity, if not outright support, among citizens was augmented by the incentives facing various groups of actors within government.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution purposely designed a federalist system of checks and balances that diffused powers between different levels of government—federal, state, and local. Diffusing power among smaller units of government limits the power of the federal government. Further, these smaller units may provide other checks on federal overreach by suing the federal government, leveraging yet another intentional check (the courts) to determine if the actions of federal authorities are legal.

But during times of crisis, smaller units of government are drawn toward obeying the political center. Public calls for government action open the fiscal floodgates for those government entities—at all levels—that are supposed to address the crisis. As a result, actors in smaller units of government may find it beneficial to align their policies and activities with those of the federal government.

State and local police departments, as well as other peripheral units of government, quickly integrated surveillance protocols into their work in the name of fighting terror. Framed as "first preventers" of the next terror attack, police departments and local governments were quick to link their activities with the broader goal of combating terrorism.

Today, 90 percent of U.S. sheriff's offices with 500-plus deputies use automatic license plate readers, as does every police department serving more than 1 million residents. Over the course of the war on terror, local police departments and sheriff's offices readily accepted and deployed unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2012, dozens of police departments used drone surveillance. A little over a decade later, more than 1,400 such entities were deploying drones. The rationale for their use, then as now, is counterterrorism.

Other surveillance technologies, such as "cell site simulators" or "stingrays," have also been adopted by police departments across the country in the name of combating terrorism. These devices, usually about the size of a toaster oven, trick citizens' cellphones into transmitting location data and other information by simulating the signal from a real cell tower.

Over time, the immediate crisis of the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war on terror faded. Some crisis-related programs diminished or vanished completely. In 2004, for example, the DHS scrapped its Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II—a system designed to assign a terrorism risk score to every commercial air passenger. The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, a data-mining and information sharing system, ceased operations in 2005.

True to the dynamics outlined in the ratchet effect, however, many expansions in government remain. Many provisions of the PATRIOT Act are still in effect, including those that allow expanded surveillance. Similarly, the use of biometric screening, AI, and other tools by federal and local entities are now practically expected.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, is it possible to undo these encroachments? Can we prevent new ones? In theory, formal constraints, whistleblowers, and the media can act as checks on government expansion. Unfortunately, these options might help but are likely woefully inadequate.

But consider Higgs' framework again. The earlier chapters of Crisis and Leviathan highlight the importance of citizen ideology. Higgs suggests the ideological acceptance of larger government is a necessary condition for the ratchet effect dynamics to manifest. In a similar way, ideology may prove the key for preventing future ratchets and possibly undoing previous ones.

With many intrusive policies implemented after 9/11, it was pushback from the citizenry that ultimately led to their cessation. Ultimately, it's up to us as individuals to defend liberty and reject the overbearing "protection" the government is offering.

The post Post-9/11 Fear Grew the Surveillance State. 25 Years Later, It's Still Growing. appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-23T05:29:29.998-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 23, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-22T10:29:10.042-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 22, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Video of My Keynote Speech at the Annual Libertarian Futurist Society Prometheus Award Ceremony

2026-08-22T01:29:21.223-04:00

By Ilya Somin - August 21, 2026 at 07:53PM

LFS

A few days ago, I had the honor of giving the keynote speech at the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Awards ceremony. My talk was on the topic of "Libertarianism and Science Fiction." It explains why libertarian ideas are much more prevalent in science fiction and fantasy than in other fiction genres, why it matters, and a few lessons libertarians may be able to draw from this. I also presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award to Aldous Huxley's classic work, Brave New World. The award was accepted by a representative of the Huxley estate and two of the author's grandchildren.

See here for a more detailed description of the awards and the various winners.

I addressed the issues covered in the talk in greater detail in a 2011 article on "Libertarianism and Science Fiction." The talk in some ways updates the analysis; but much more can be said. When and if time allows, I would like to revisit this theme. I have previously written various other articles and book chapters about political themes in science fiction and fantasy, most recently here.

Below is the video of the awards ceremony. My talk goes from about 1:30 to 14:40.

The post Video of My Keynote Speech at the Annual Libertarian Futurist Society Prometheus Award Ceremony appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Review: A Novel Capturing the Cruelty of Mass Incarceration

2026-08-21T10:29:38.959-04:00

By Katherine Mangu-Ward - August 21, 2026 at 06:00AM

Suzanna's fictional mother in The Hill—much like author Harriet Clark's real-life mother—is imprisoned for a botched leftist bank robbery. Suzanna's childhood is a dreamy Groundhog Day loop of visits, guards, waiting rooms, fluorescent lights, and adult evasiveness. She visits her mom every week, first with the simple commitment of a child and later with more complicated feelings.

Querulous nostalgia for communism and a mute acceptance of violent leftism structure the lives of three generations of women in the story. But if there is a political lesson of The Hill, it can be found somewhere in the foggy way it captures and condemns the cruel illogic of mass incarceration: In punishing one person, the state quietly sentences everyone around her to a life organized by her cage.

The post Review: A Novel Capturing the Cruelty of Mass Incarceration appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Open Thread

2026-08-21T06:29:25.729-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 21, 2026 at 03:00AM

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT

Today in Supreme Court History: August 20, 1866

2026-08-20T09:29:22.326-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 20, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/20/1866: President Andrew Johnson proclaims an "end to insurrection in the United States."

President Andrew Johnson

The post Today in Supreme Court History: August 20, 1866 appeared first on Reason.com.

Read Entire Article Here: Reason Magazine Articles

via IFTTT