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The Top 3 Things I Learned at the Bitcoin Conference

2013-05-20T15:45:00-04:00

This past weekend I attended the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose, where over one thousand enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and, yes, lawyers gathered to chart the future of the virtual currency. Here are the top three things I learned at the conference.

Bitcoin is about more than payments

Bitcoin is an even bigger deal than I thought. While the currency is best known as a censorship-resistant and somewhat-anonymous payments system, it has the potential to be so much more.

“Ultimately bitcoins are data, and you can use a data transit protocol to transit information other than just ‘I’m sending you bitcoins.’ It could be ‘I’m sending you a stock,’ or it could be ‘I’m sending you a bet,’” says Jeff Garzik, one of the six Bitcoin core developers.

Thought of this way, the Bitcoin network is a platform on top of which other layers of functionality can run, much like the Web or e-mail are protocols that run on top of the Internet’s foundational TCP/IP protocol. Bitcoin therefore has the potential to spawn any number of other services that are decentralized, and thus difficult to regulate or control.

One application for such an extension to Bitcoin would be decentralized electronic markets—whether for futures contracts, sports betting, or anything else.

J.R. Willett, author of a white paper proposing such a system, explains with a thought experiment: Suppose two parties, A and B, want to bet on the future price of Google stock, and there is a third party, C, that publishes the price on the network every few minutes. A thinks the price of Google will go up and publishes a message to that effect, while B thinks it will go down and publishes a message accepting the bet.

“Now, they’re interacting on a protocol layer above bitcoin; they’re using a currency that’s on top of bitcoin that recognizes these kinds of messages,” says Willett. “So they’ve actually both committed and there’s an agreement that everybody in the world can see.”

Others on the distributed network don’t know the identities of who placed the bet, but they can see that A said it would go up, and that B said it would go down, and they can see C publish the price of Google in the future.

“If the price goes up, then the whole protocol recognizes that A won that bet; the whole protocol recognizes that A now owns B’s coins,” says Willett.

And voila, welcome to a world of decentralized electronic futures markets. The predictions market Intrade, a darling of academic economists and political scientists, recently ceased operations after it was sued by the CFTC. Yet such a predictions market built as a peer-to-peer network on top of Bitcoin could not be easily shut down, nor would there be an operator that could run away with user’s funds, as it’s also alleged of Intrade.

And it’s not just markets. Treating Bitcoin as a protocol would allow for a vast number of other decentralized applications, including communications messaging and broadcasting, a decentralized domain name system, and much more.

The hobbyists give way to the pros

Bitcoin to date has been the domain of geeks, gold bugs, and cypherpunks, but sensing its disruptive (and profitable) potential, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are pouring into the space.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund last week made a $2 million investment in merchant services firm BitPay, Google Ventures recently backed bitcoin exchange Ripple, and Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures has invested $5 million in the transactions platform Coinbase.

This transition from ideological enclave to professionalized financial network was on display at the conference’s exhibit hall. Row after row was lined with the booths of professional venture-backed businesses, while nestled in between were those of the Seasteading Institute and Antiwar.com.

It’s just like the late-90’s rush to commercialize the Internet once entrepreneurs recognized its revolutionary potential. And just like the late ‘90s, the early adopters are not all fond of the gentrification.

“A year or more ago there was very much an ‘Occupy’ type feel to Bitcoin, where this is the anti-establishment currency, and now the establishment is getting interested in Bitcoin,” says Garzik. “There is a tension and you definitely see the libertarian crypto-anarchist roots bang heads with the venture capital that’s coming in right now.”

One point of contention is mixing. As professional and regulated businesses enter, they are keen to tie real identities to transactions, and they are loath to touch bitcoins of unknown provenance. Many in the community rightly see this as a threat to Bitcoin’s fungibility.

“If someone says, ‘I will not accept these bitcoins over here because I think they are stolen funds,’ then their value is different from these other bitcoins that are not necessarily stolen funds,” explains Garzik. “And so some people of the crypto-anarchist, libertarian mindset feel it’s very important to mix because that preserves the fungibility of Bitcoin.”

Mixing is essentially laundering. It is combining bitcoins of different origins in a pool before handing them back to their owners in order to obfuscate who has which coin. Some even suggest that mixing should be built into the Bitcoin protocol itself. Businesses, to say the least, don’t like the sound of that. Everyone, however, will have to accept that Bitcoin is an open source project, and it’s ultimately consensus that will resolve the differences.

There’s no escaping regulation

Just two days before the conference, the Department of Homeland Security seized accounts belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange (and a major sponsor of the conference), in what looks like the beginning of a criminal enforcement. You’d think this would have put a pall on the festivities, but in a way it only served to underscore the growing professionalization of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Mt. Gox seems to have been operating without the requisite money transmitter licenses, and DHS alleges it lied about its status as a money transmitter in bank documents. In contrast, the new Bitcoin businesses that are springing up are working with state and federal regulators to cross every T and dot every I. And panelist after panelist on the conference’s “Legal and Regulatory” track explained to attendees how to comply with the law, as uncertain as it is. Dilettante time is over.

If the message wan’t clear enough, the Bitcoin Foundation—which helps organize Bitcoin’s development on the same model as the Linux Foundation—announced that it would be hiring a full time lawyer in Washington to represent the community’s interests. The thinking is that Bitcoin businesses and users are going to be regulated even if the protocol itself can’t be, so it’s time to engage the regulators and policy makers before they make any hasty moves.

This willingness to lobby and work with regulators, however, was not well received by many of the old guard. As one exasperated Foundation member tweeted, “I got into Bitcoin to improve this miserable planet and ESCAPE the iron grip of privileged moneyed interests, not JOIN THEM!”

But the fact is that Bitcoin is growing up. Its revolutionary potential is greater than most have yet understood. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are seeking to professionalize and legitimizing the network, and to do that regulators will have to understand and accept it.

It’s true that Bitcoin could continue to operate even if it was outlawed outright, but then it would only serve as an underworld currency, and its development would not doubt be hampered. The more subversive path may well be to let regulators create their rules for what at base is an uncontrollable system.

The IRS v. the First Amendment

2013-05-20T13:53:00-04:00

Of all the discouraging news in the scandal involving President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service, the most illuminating is that one of the things that triggered additional scrutiny from the IRS for groups applying for tax-exempt status was any plan for “educating on the constitution and bill of rights.”

As the details of the situation have emerged, various explanations have arisen for the behavior of the IRS officials involved. A 2,700-word report issued over the weekend by a team of seven New York Times journalists attributed the problem to “an understaffed Cincinnati outpost that was alienated from the broader I.R.S. culture.”

A more straightforward explanation is that, rather than being culturally alienated, the IRS officials, and their bosses, right up to and including the president, were genuinely afraid of what Americans might find out if they did actually have a careful look at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The most potentially devastating development would be if people read the First Amendment. That says “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and the petition the government for the redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment doesn’t say “Congress shall make no law so long as you apply to the IRS and register under section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code, but if your ‘major purpose’ under the Federal Election Commission’s regulation is politics, you have to register with the FEC and disclose your donors, and if you are a lobbyist, you have to register and disclose your clients.”

The First Amendment doesn’t say that if a person wants to exercise the rights of speech, assembly, or petition, the person should have to wait months for IRS approval and spend all kinds of money on lawyers and accountants who have expertise in navigating these shoals. It doesn’t say there’s a higher bar for Tea Party groups, or that those groups have to wait longer or supply more information.

What the First Amendment does say is pretty plain: “Congress shall make no law...”

The rest of the document is pretty clear, too. The powers of the Congress and of the President are enumerated. Nowhere among those enumerated powers is the power to demand that individuals disclose their donors, their plans to run for elective office, or their social media posts as a condition of exercising their rights to speech, assembly or petition. And the Ninth Amendment makes clear that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

In other words, if people read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they might realize that the entire elaborate regulatory apparatus that politicians and bureaucrats have erected to limit these rights of speech, assembly, and petition rests on constitutional ice that is thin-to-nonexistent. The response from the “campaign finance reform” crowd is that it’s not speech, assembly, or petition that is being regulated, but money, and that there’s a legitimate government interest in regulating money to prevent corruption. A Supreme Court majority has agreed with that argument up to a point, but only up to a point.

There’s a case to be made that a way to fix all this would be to get rid of both the corporate income tax and the charitable giving tax deduction. That way there’d be no need for the IRS to pass judgment on which corporations are taxable and which are tax exempt, and on which of the tax-exempt ones get to have their donors qualify for the charitable deduction.

But an even more basic fix is education on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so that people have a crystal clear understanding of their rights to speech, assembly, and petition for redress, and of how those rights are not subject to abridgment by Congress. That understanding, sadly, is what the IRS under President Obama seems to have been determined to prevent. And if there’s a positive aspect of the IRS scandal, it’s that it turns out that despite the IRS, enough Americans already have a robust understanding of the First Amendment that they met the IRS’s behavior with the outrage it deserved.

Parking Regulations Driving Away Business!

2013-05-20T11:19:00-04:00

"They've been working on the problem for 28 years," says Duane Gautier, CEO of Arch Development, a nonprofit that tries to help struggling businesses open and flourish.

Gautier is talking about a Washington, D.C. regulation that requires all retail stores to provide on-site parking for customers. In Anacostia, a poor section of Southeast D.C., the parking regulation has driven away much-needed commerical activity from the neighborhood.

The parking regulation dates back to 1958, a time before the Washington Metro system existed and when automobiles were seen as the primary mode of transportation in the city. That's no longer the case and although Anacostia is well-served by public transportation and accessible to pedestrians, the parking regulation makes it that much harder for the struggling area to add stores.

About 1.30 minutes.

Narrated by Kennedy and produced by Amanda Winkler.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive notification when new material goes live.

Obama Is Not Nixon

2013-05-20T07:00:00-04:00

"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know," said Harry Truman, who made it his task to absorb a lot of it. Many people who have not followed his example are not averse to using what little they do know, with the inadvertent effect of exposing how much they have to learn.

In recent days, those people have triumphantly likened Barack Obama to Richard Nixon, particularly on the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service for political advantage. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon because, among other reasons, he tried to cause "income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

This, of course, is exactly what the IRS now admits doing when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. The Treasury Department's Inspector General found, "The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions."

The misconduct happened under the current president. Therefore, Obama = Nixon.

But equating the two is like concluding that babies are like poisonous snakes because some of them have rattles. Maybe information will someday emerge to confirm the conservative suspicion that Obama thuggishly subverted the IRS to win re-election, but so far, it falls in the realm of make-believe.

Here is what the 44th president had to say about how the agency should operate: "Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I'm angry about it. It should not matter what political stripe you're from. The fact of the matter is the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity." Obama said this as he announced the dismissal of the acting commissioner for failing to prevent political abuse.

Here is what the 37th president had to say about how the agency should operate: "Are we looking over the financial contributors to the Democratic National Committee? Are we running their income tax returns? ... We have all this power and we aren't using it. Now, what the Christ is the matter?"

Nixon did not have a fetish for maximizing revenue. The point, a memo from the White House counsel helpfully explained, was to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." On multiple occasions, at the behest of the president or his top aides, the IRS was told to audit individuals whose activities created dissatisfaction in the Oval Office.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Lawrence O'Brien, got special attention. One of Nixon's top aides called the commissioner of the IRS and demanded action, hoping to "send him to jail before the elections." Nixon ordered investigations of Democrats who might run against him.

Obama's complaint is that the IRS engaged in unfair treatment of groups that oppose him. Nixon's was that it was reluctant to engage in unfair treatment of those that opposed him.

In 1971, weary of improper pressure, Commissioner Randolph Thrower asked for a meeting with the president to advise him that "the introduction of political influence into the IRS would be very damaging to him and his administration, as well as to the revenue system and the general public interest." Nixon refused to see him.

When another commissioner closed down a unit that was used for political retribution, the president tried repeatedly to fire him -- while griping profanely in private that he, as The New York Times paraphrased, "was prissy about legal procedures."

Not that revenge was Nixon's sole mission. "If harassment of 'enemies' was half the White House strategy, the other half was succor for friends," wrote New York Times reporter J. Anthony Lukas in his book "Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years." When evangelist Billy Graham and actor John Wayne got audit notices, the president demanded that the IRS back off.

In Nixon's mind, using tax agents as political operatives was not only excusable but exemplary. In the case of Obama, there is no evidence that he or his Treasury Secretary was aware of the mistreatment of conservative groups -- much less that either of them requested it.

Many of his critics nevertheless claim to detect in him a ruthless mendacity unseen in the White House since 1974. The result of this distortion is to highlight not how much Obama resembles Nixon, but how much they do.

A New Kind of Republican

2013-05-19T13:00:00-04:00

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), often touted as “the next Ron Paul” (by this magazine, among others), had a rocky start to his second term in Congress. After overcoming a redistricting effort to win re-election by a comfortable margin in November, Amash was welcomed back to Washington with a pink slip: He and a group of libertarian-leaning backbenchers were stripped of their committee assignments by the GOP leadership. Adding insult to injury, the party establishment claimed that the rebuke wasn’t ideological; that it had more to do with what Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) termed “the asshole factor.”

Amash, seen as the ringleader of the House “liberty movement,” responded by leading a failed coup against House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in what was supposed to be a rubber-stamped re-election as majority leader. Meanwhile, on a series of crucial votes—the “fiscal cliff” tax hike in January and the March agreement to raise the debt ceiling—Amash and several of his uppity libertarian colleagues voted against party leadership. If Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the leading liberty-movement troublemaker in the United States Senate, Amash is shaping up to be his main counterpart in the House.

Endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus and Young Americans for Liberty, the 33-year-old Amash has made waves by explaining all of his votes on social media, a practice he began during his single term as a Michigan state legislator. He has earned a 100 percent rating from the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, and has taken up where Ron Paul left off on civil liberties.

The son of Syrian and Palestinian immigrants, Amash has made a name for himself as a non-interventionist. “It’s very dangerous if we get in the habit of deciding who the good guys are and who the bad guys are,” he says of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and other unsavory characters. He’s also a social conservative, describing himself as “100 percent pro-life,” but opining that ultimately, “marriage is a private contract that has nothing to do with government.”

In March, reason.com Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie interviewed Amash in his office, where the walls are adorned with likenesses of Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Carl Menger, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand. For video of the interview, go to reason.com.

reason: Talk a little bit about your general political philosophy. At reason we’ve called you the heir to the mantle of Ron Paul—is that accurate?

Justin Amash: Well, I’m a libertarian Republican, a constitutional conservative, a classical liberal.

reason: You’ve got more Austrians on your wall than the Von Trapp family.

Amash: I’m a big believer in the Austrian school of economics. But you know, I’m an independent and a moderate. Many people would look at my voting record and say: This is a moderate guy, he’s willing to work with both sides, he’s willing to do what the Founders intended for this country and not just play the political games.

(Interview continues below video.)

reason: Talk a little bit about foreign policy. You’re what is called an isolationist or—in more polite company—a non-interventionist. How do you define your foreign policy? And what’s a libertarian vision of foreign policy that is not simply saying “the world should just go away”?

Amash: It’s a constitutional foreign policy. You’re right to say it’s not isolationist. When you decide how to deal with countries that are threats and you put sanctions on them and isolate them, that’s isolationist. I’ve called for non-interventionism: We don’t send our troops everywhere else in the world to deal with everyone else’s problems, we have to defend the homeland here, and we follow constitutional policy.

reason: Meaning?

Amash: If there’s a threat, the president comes to Congress. Congress has to pass an authorization for war and then the president is authorized to do what he needs to do. But it should always go back to the people’s house.

reason: So the American forces that were used in Libya, that’s clearly unconstitutional?

Amash: Yeah, clearly unconstitutional.

reason: What about in Afghanistan and Iraq? Because there was an authorization for the use of military force. Is that still binding? What’s wrong with that as a blank check for the president to keep prosecuting the war on terror?

Amash: I think it’s okay for Congress to give authorizations that—it doesn’t have to read “Declaration of War.” I think what the Founders really intended was that Congress would be the starting point for all this. So whether you call it an authorization or a declaration of war is not as big a deal to me. But the war in Afghanistan, that’s the longest war in U.S history, and now—

reason: Should we have invaded Afghanistan?

Amash: I think so, at the time. And it should have been for a limited purpose: to take out the terrorists who targeted us on 9/11.

reason: You have been an outspoken critic of the use of drones, particularly in countries we’re not officially at war with. But going after bin Laden in Pakistan, say: Is that legal under the authorization that sanctioned intervening in Afghanistan?

Amash: I think so, to go after bin Laden. He was clearly in charge of the operation and I think it was legal to go after him. There are a lot of other situations where it’s more questionable. If we’re going after people who have nothing to do with 9/11, whether they are terrorists or not, it’s the president’s job to come back to Congress and say, “This is who we’re going after and this is why,” and for Congress to give the authorization.

reason: You were 21 when 9/11 happened. Was that a formative experience for you, in terms of how you thought about politics and America’s role in the world?

Amash: It had a big impact on me. I think I cried for six days. It was not a small deal to me when that happened, like for every American. It got me more interested in politics. I don’t think I developed some of my more libertarian leanings in a clear way until I was well out of college, well out of law school even. It did have a big impact on my life. I felt like this country is important. It is the beacon of liberty for the world.

reason: Do you think the 9/11 attacks were a result of blowback?

Amash: I think you can’t blame everything on blowback and you also can’t [say] our actions overseas don’t have an impact on other people. You’ve got to look at the totality of it. Certainly there are things that we do overseas that incite people and get people upset. That doesn’t give them any justification to come here and commit terrorist attacks against innocent people. But we need to look at our foreign policy and make sure we’re not riling people up.

reason: Here we are a dozen years after 9/11 and Iran and Syria are our front-burner foreign policy issues. What should we be doing with Syria? Here we have a dictator who is a horrible, horrible leader who commits atrocities on a daily basis, but what does that mean to the United States?

Amash: Well, my mom is Syrian so I understand the situation a little bit. I think, of course, that Assad is a dictator. What his regime is doing is horrible. They are committing war crimes against the people on a daily basis. But the fact is that our national defense should be used for our defense here in the United States. And it’s very dangerous if we get in the habit of deciding who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Because as bad as Assad is, you don’t know who is going to come and replace him. They may be just as bad, and suddenly you’ve helped arm people who are going to commit the same atrocities and maybe come use [those arms] against the United States. You have to be careful when you get involved in this stuff. If there’s a clear threat to the United States, then the president should come to Congress and get the authorization necessary.

reason: So how does that play out in relation to Iran? Should the U.S be isolating Iran through trade sanctions? Should they be engaging them through open trade? What’s the best way to work toward some kind of positive resolution both for people in Iran as well as the United States?

Amash: Iran is a much more real threat. They speak out against the United States on a regular basis; it’s pretty clear they’re trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Sanctions that are directed toward preventing them from getting weapons of mass destruction, I think those sanctions are useful and helpful in the short run. I’m not sure you’d want to use them for 20 years.

But there are other sanctions that are targeted at the people of Iran. Those are not beneficial to the United States. If I felt Iran was a genuine threat to the United States, I would give the president authorization to do what’s necessary.

reason: I assume that you think that Americans should be able to trade freely with Cuba?

Amash: Yeah.

reason: Should we be able to trade with Iran in the same way? Subject to certain restrictions on military technology or something? Would that be a better situation than the one we’re in now?

Amash: I think so, but again it depends on what you’re trading with them. I think there should be efforts to prevent any sorts of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction, from entering Iran. Trading handbags and those sorts of things, that’s not a threat to the United States.

reason: Is what you’re saying about a libertarian foreign policy getting through to your colleagues in the Republican caucus? You hear Republican think tanks saying: We need to have a certain amount of the budget going to defense, we can never cut spending, etc.

Amash: I think it actually is. If you look at some of the newer members in Congress, if you look at Thomas Massie [(R–Ky.)], many of the new members, they have a different perspective on this. I wouldn’t say that they all have a libertarian perspective on foreign policy, but you have maybe three dozen who lean in that direction. I don’t think you had that 10 years ago.

The message of “spend, spend, spend” on military spending doesn’t make sense. We have a huge national debt, and the biggest threat to our country is to let that national debt grow. Eventually, when we have a situation when we need military spending, when we actually need the money to go to our military to fight a major war, we won’t have that money. Why would we burn that money now when we don’t have a major threat to the United States, instead of saving the money so that when we do have a major threat, we actually have it? Then we might have a defense that is even bigger than it is now, but it would be justified because there’s an actual threat to the United States.

reason: You mentioned that your mother is from Syria. Your father is from Palestine. He moved to Michigan in the late ’60s—

Amash: In ’56.

reason: Talk a little bit about how the experience of having parents who were immigrants to America. How does that inform your position on immigration?

Amash: Immigration is an important thing for this country. Everyone at some point, for the most part, was an immigrant; they came here from somewhere else. It’s important to have a regular flow of immigrants. The biggest problem is having a welfare state. And this is the problem that Europe has—it’s not that they have a large immigrant flow into the countries, it’s that when you have a large welfare state, there’s not as much assimilation into the culture. So what’s happened historically in the United States, because we haven’t had as strong of a welfare system as they do in Europe, [s0] people come here and they assimilate, they adapt, they go to work, they become a part of the culture, and they become Americans, and that’s what we’d like to see going forward.

reason: Let’s talk a little bit about your intellectual underpinnings. Where did your interest in Austrian economists—or in Frederic Bastiat, the French journalist and thinker—come from?

Amash: It developed after law school, actually. I found that my views, although I was Republican, were different than a number of conservatives in my class. There weren’t that many, there were probably five at my law school, but I was different than those five. I was wondering: What is it about me that makes my views different or not fit in with the typical Republican way of thinking?

reason: One of the things you noticed was that when you would talk to conservatives in a legal setting, they would always be on the side of the prosecutor and you would be on the side of the defendant.

Amash: Yeah, I had a natural sympathy toward the defense side. I believe strongly in protecting people’s constitutional rights and making sure they get due process.

I spent some time thinking about what my views were. I actually did a Google search. I went on Google and searched terms that were basically my views.

reason: Do you remember what they were? And was “safe search” on or off?

Amash: I don’t remember, but F.A. Hayek popped up pretty quick. His Wikipedia article.

reason: What was it about Hayek’s work that you find particularly interesting and relevant to your life as a legislator?

Amash: With Hayek the connection was pretty clear instantly. He believed really strongly in this spontaneous order, that things would come together on their own. Sort of like an evolutionary process. If you allow people to make decisions, they’ve got the knowledge because the decisions they’re making are closest to them. Why should someone else make it from far away? And if you allow people to make their own decisions, you actually get good outcomes for society. That’s something that I think about a lot as a legislator.

reason: Behind me on the wall there’s a picture of Ayn Rand. How does she speak to your worldview?

Amash: Rand speaks in a sort of different way. I mean, it’s more of an emotional appeal.

reason: I’m sure she would be very angry to hear that.

Amash: I know! But when I read some of her works, I find myself connecting to a lot of the characters, feeling the same frustrations they feel. And I think that’s an important aspect of her work.

reason: When did you first encounter Rand?

Amash: Probably not until four or five years ago.

reason: So when you read a novel—Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead—you find yourselves hemmed in by the sort of over-reaching legislators of businesses?

Amash: Yeah, sure. And Rand’s philosophy is very different from Hayek’s. They come to many of the same conclusions about what kind of government you should have and what kind of social order you ultimately would get, but they think about it in very different ways. And I find that interesting. Bastiat is another person who appeals emotionally. He’s very different from Hayek but adds something to the conversation.

reason: What’s the spice that this Frenchman adds?

Amash: It’s a nice French spice. It’s short stories—almost parables—about folly, the folly of government and interventionism. And the folly of restricting free trade. I think that’s beautiful to read. When you read Bastiat’s work, people are really compelled to agree with him. It’s hard to refute. I actually give away The Law when people stop by my office.

reason: You come from a part of the country, though, that is very steeped in protectionism. Not all parts of Michigan, but certainly the auto industry got fat off of protectionism. The industrial Midwest had a lot of tariffs against steel and various other things. Is it a hard sell in contemporary Michigan to say, “Look, guys, your economy has been tanking here for a long time and the answer is free trade,” as opposed to “The answer is more protectionism”?

Amash: Well, it’s always going to be a hard sell with some people, there’s no doubt about that. If you’re in a particular industry that’s getting benefits from protectionism, then yeah, it’s going to be a hard sell to you. But protectionism doesn’t help people. It helps the people in those companies. And those people in those companies are a small percentage of the population. I’m concerned about the entire population in my district, the entire population in the state of Michigan, and the entire population in the United States. Everyone is a consumer. Only some people work in a particular industry. It doesn’t make sense to have laws in place to protect a particular industry and then hurt 100 percent of the people.

reason: You also have a picture of Murray Rothbard. Rothbard is a big time anarcho-capitalist bomb-thrower. What do you find particularly compelling in his work?

Amash: He gives an interesting, more anarchist perspective. I’m not there; I fall more in the Hayek camp. I think it’s important to understand his work, to understand his way of thinking. Because when you have discussions with those who are on the anarcho-capitalist side of things, it’s important to understand where he’s coming from and where they’re coming from so you can make your arguments to persuade.

I ultimately think there’s got to be some government. I believe in a minimal state, and you’re going to have different amounts of government at different levels. At the federal level, it should be very small in how it affects your daily life; it should just deal with things of national scope. And at closer levels—local government, or your neighborhood association—well, it might have a huge impact on your daily life, but it’s certainly not going to protect you from an invasion.

reason: Should there be federal recognition of same-sex marriages?

Amash: I don’t think there should be a federal definition of marriage. I think the federal government should just stay out of this. Really, marriage is a private contract that has nothing to do with government.

reason: How does that play into things like the tax cut? Should we get rid of any sort of “married” status in the filing of taxes?

Amash: Ultimately, yeah, I think so. We’re not even close to that situation now, and it may be the case that marriage is so tied into the tax code and other benefits that what will ultimately happen is that gay people will be allowed to marry under some federalized version of marriage. But my preference would be that the federal government just stay out of it. And government just stay out of it in general. It’s a private issue. It shouldn’t be something that government deals with.

reason: What about abortion?

Amash: I’m pro-life. One hundred percent pro-life.

reason: Should the federal government ban all abortions? Or should that be left to localities or states?

Amash: When you have the case of abortion, you’ve got two people involved. You’ve got a baby and you’ve got a parent. I think it falls within the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

reason: Under current federal law, the constitutional reading is the state does not have an interest in a fetus or in a pregnancy for the first trimester. You would say that that is an error. How far back to the moment of conception should it go?

Amash: It’s a tricky question, but I think that where we have it now is not correct. It should be closer to the point of conception. Whether it’s instantly or the first three days, I think that’s more sensible and that’s what I think would be correct.

reason: You’re an Orthodox Christian. Talk a little bit about how that informed your upbringing and how it informs your legislative profile, if it does.

Amash: There’s a strong emphasis in our church on free will and on the mystery of the order of the world. I think that really fits in well with my views. I’m not sure that my political views were necessarily shaped by that, but they definitely do mesh together very well. I believe strongly in an idea of free will. People can make up their own mind about how they live their lives, and they will be judged accordingly.

reason: What are the most important issues that America has to grapple with in this next congressional term?

Amash: It’s got to be debt, and civil liberties as well. Debt is number one. You have to get the debt under control.

reason: Does that mean not raising the debt limit at the end of March? Or brokering a tough deal to say, “We will have a short term increase but it’s got to start coming down”?

Amash: I don’t think you raise the debt limit unless you get major reforms to major programs. You’ve got to get the laws changed now. Some of those mandatory programs, it does take a while for the cost savings to kick in because of the way they work, but you’ve got to make the changes immediately.

reason: Talk a little bit about how your votes against things like the National Defense Reauthorization Act played out in your party and how you will continue to push for broader civil liberties going forward.

Amash: I think it’s important that we do have someone who is pushing on this issue, because we haven’t had good protection for civil liberties in either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party for many years. You have a few members, but not that many who are outspoken about it.

I think the Republican Party is actually coming along in the direction of my way of thinking, and of many young Republicans. Protecting civil liberties is one of the most important things our government should do. It’s really the reason for the Founding, to protect civil liberties of Americans. So when you look at various issues like drones—I’m not against drones as an object. I don’t object to the idea that there’d be drones. I think drones can be a useful weapon in war. But any use of drones should be authorized by Congress. It shouldn’t just be an open-ended use of force against anyone that the president sees as a threat without any approval from Congress.

The same with the National Defense Authorization Act. There may be reasons to detain people, but it should be in the context of war. It can’t be so broad that you can actually come into a home in the United States and grab an American citizen out of his home and detain him, not tell his family anything, and say, “Well, we think he might be associated with terrorists.” That’s the current law, and that’s frightening. That’s not what our Founders intended.

reason: Final question. You’re the parent of three children. What would you say the odds are that they will come of age in a richer and freer America?

Amash: I have to say the odds are pretty high. It’s still 90 percent odds, because I really do believe in the American people. My dad and mom came here as immigrants. They came here with nothing. There is a spirit here that is independent. It’s libertarian in many ways, and it’s in pretty much everyone I run into, regardless of their political affiliation. I think that it’s still strong. And when I go to town halls I get a good reception. I think we can turn this thing around, but not with the current Congress or the current president. It’s going to take some changes and some time.

Abolish the IRS (and the Income Tax With It)

2013-05-19T08:00:00-04:00

The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot ” in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS.

Nothing will have been learned from this scandal if all that happens is the firing of some IRS administrators and the issuance of new guidelines on 501(c)(4) applications. That is not nearly enough.

Obviously, tax exemptions exist only because individuals and some organizations are subject to income and other forms of taxation. Congress levies a tax on incomes, then in its “wisdom” chooses to exempt certain activities but not others. This is social engineering, with Congress seeking to encourage some kinds of organizations — while not forgoing more revenue than necessary. The IRS then writes rules to carry out the directions of Congress.

Where possible, people will naturally strive to qualify for exemption by pushing the boundaries of the regulations. That incentive will always be strong because a nonprofit organization that is exempt from taxation will have more resources with which to pursue its mission. Since the language of statutes and regulations is inevitably vague, the IRS will have room to interpret when ruling on who qualifies and who doesn’t qualify for exemption. The line between vigilance and harassment is not bright, and the potential for abuse is great.

It should be apparent that this power, which is inherently arbitrary, ill suits a society that sees itself as free.

Take the current controversy. The IRS says that to qualify for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, a nonprofit organization must “be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.” To do that the “organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community (such as by bringing about civic betterment and social improvements).”

What exactly constitutes the common good and general welfare of the people of the community, or civic betterment and social improvements? The IRS will let you know. What does “primarily” mean and how does it relate to the seemingly contradictory exclusivity requirement? This is subject to a “facts and circumstances” test — that is, the IRS will decide. Approved activities are generally regarded as educational, but how broadly or narrowly that term is interpreted is left to the IRS and, if challenged, to the courts. Lobbying for “legislation germane to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes.” However, direct or indirect participation in political campaigns is not regarded as promotion of social welfare — although an organization “may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax.”

As this demonstrates, once government undertakes to tax income, it acquires even more power through its authority to define “income,” “taxable income,” subsidiary terms, and the rules of exemption. There is no escape from arbitrariness and caprice.

One might propose to remove the government’s arbitrary power by ending tax exemption. But that would make the tax burden worse. And besides, politicians aren’t likely to agree, because they would be giving up the power to dispense favors that manipulation of today’s tax code affords.

There’s a better way to go that’s demanded by liberty and justice. Since taxation is nothing less than the confiscation, under threat of force, of what belongs to productive individuals, it has no place in a free society. In other words, everyone should be exempt from income and other taxation. (Americans lived without income taxation for more than 125 years.) If something can’t be accomplished through consent, contract, and cooperation — without aggressive force — we should ask whether it is worth doing.

When the income tax was first proposed in America years ago, opponents always had the same word of warning: inquisitorial. How right they were.

This column originally appeared at the Future of Freedom Foundation.

The IRS Abuse Scandal Keeps Growing

2013-05-18T13:00:00-04:00

Reading the highly critical report by the Internal Revenue Service’s auditor, you get the sense that rogue, lower-level agents ran amok, writing up watch lists, targeting conservative agencies, and stalling their applications for tax-exempt status.

At least IRS management has painted a picture of misguided underlings who acted “inappropriately,” finally offering a mea culpa a couple years after claims that Tea Party groups being hung up, even harassed, by tax agents began filtering in.

Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’ exempt organizations unit, apologized a week ago for front-line employees who inappropriately flagged for further review organizations with the descriptors, “tea party” or “patriot.”

“We had a shortcut in the process. It wasn’t appropriate. We learned about it and we fixed it,” Lerner said, emphatically denying that the segregation of applications and the lengthy delays in processing them merely based on conservative-sounding names had absolutely nothing to do with partisan politics.

But a report released late Tuesday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the independent overseer of the IRS, points to lax management and at least ignorance of federal code governing tax-exemption review. And while TIGTA may not employ the term “targeted” in its scathing review, the auditor blasts the IRS for singling out conservative groups, asking them a host of unnecessary questions and, in many cases, grinding the application process to a halt.

More than anything, the IRS’ “inappropriate” measures threaten public confidence, the report notes.

“The mission of the IRS is to provide America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and by applying the tax law with integrity and fairness to all. According to IRS Policy Statement 1-1, IRS employees accomplish this mission by being impartial and handling tax matters in a manner that will promote public confidence,” the audit states.

“However, the criteria developed by the (IRS) Determinations Unit gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission. The criteria focused narrowly on the names and policy positions of organizations instead of tax-exempt laws and Treasury Regulations.”

BOLO List

The audit depicts agents in 2010, earlier than IRS brass previously had stated, pulling out 501(c)(4) applications with “Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in the organizations name,” as well as “political-sounding names.” In May 2010, the Determinations Unit began developing a spreadsheet that would become known as the “Be On the Look Out” list, according to the audit. By August, the unit began distributing the first formal BOLO list.

A 501(c)(4) is designated for the promotion of social welfare and cannot include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.

“However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax under section 527(f),” according to the IRS.

It is the IRS’ tax-exempt division’s job to sort all of that out.

The “look out” criteria were expanded over time, including:

Issues include government spending, government debt or taxes.

Education of the public by advocacy and lobbying to “make America a better place to live”.

Statement in the case file critical of how the country is being run.

“By June 2011, the expanded criteria included additional names (Patriots and 9/12 Project) as well as policy positions espoused by organizations in their applications,” the audit states.

The 9/12 Project refers to a group created by radio personality Glenn Beck.

Top IRS officials told auditors the BOLO lists were not influenced by an individual or organization outside the agency. They said only first-line management approved references to the Tea Party and the BOLO listing criteria before it was rolled out.

But it was “insufficient oversight” that allowed the “inappropriate” signaling out of certain groups to go on for so long, the audit notes.

“As a result, inappropriate criteria remained in place for more than 18 months,” according to the TIGTA report, which also notes IRS employees did not consider the “public perception of using politically sensitive criteria when identifying these cases.”

Beyond that, the audit found the employees lacked knowledge of allowed activities under code.

The IRS’ director of Rulings and Agreements, defending the agency’s employees and management, told auditors the fact that the team of tax-exempt specialists worked applications that did not involve the Tea Party, patriots, or 9/12 groups “demonstrated that the IRS was not politically biased in its identification of applications for processing by the team of specialists.”

The inspector general’s response: Sure, but all cases with Tea Party, patriots, or 9/12 in the statistical review were flagged and the applications were forwarded to tax-exempt specialists.

Waiting Game

Some applications were delayed more than three years, crossing two election cycles, the report notes. Of 296 total applications screened for further intervention, 160 had been open from 206 to 1,338 calendar days.

The IRS Strategic Plan 2009–2013 has several goals and objectives involving timely interaction with taxpayers, including enforcement of the tax law in a timely manner while minimizing taxpayer burden.

Applications were delayed in part by questions the inspector general deemed “unnecessary.” The audit lists seven questions IRS agents had no business asking applicants

1. The names of donors.
2. A list of all issues that are important to the organization and asks that the organization indicate its position regarding such issues.
3. a) The roles and activities of the audience and participants other than members in the activity and b) the type of conversations and discussions members and participants had during the activity.
4. Whether the officer, director, etc., has run or will run for public office.
5. The political affiliation of the officer, director, speakers, candidates supported, etc., or otherwise refers to the relationship with identified political party–related organizations.
6. Information regarding employment, other than for the organization, including hours worked.
Information regarding activities of another organization -- not just the relationship of the other organization to the applicant

The audit notes overt double standards by an agency that demanded prompt information from applicants.

“These letters requested that the information be provided in two or three weeks (as is customary in these letters) despite the fact that the IRS had done nothing with some of the applications for more than one year,” the TIGTA report states.

When the agency did in 2011 correct the criteria used in signaling out the conservative groups, IRS specialists “subsequently changed the criteria in January 2012 without executive approval because they believed the July 2011 criteria were too broad,” the audit notes.

“The January 2012 criteria again focused on the policy positions of organizations instead of tax-exempt laws and Treasury Regulations. After three months, the Director, Rulings and Agreements, learned the criteria had been changed by the team of specialists and subsequently revised the criteria again in May 2012,” the report adds.

TIGTA has made nine recommendations to fix its problems, including “better documenting the reasons why applications potentially involving political campaign intervention are chosen for review.” The inspector general also wants to the see the IRS develop and publish tax-exempt guidance, and “before each election cycle, expeditiously resolve remaining political intervention cases.”

The IRS’ response: Yeah, we see your point on seven of the nine recommendations, but we’ve got our own corrective action plans for the other two, thanks.

“TIGTA does not agree that the alternative corrective actions will accomplish the intent of the recommendations and continues to believe that the IRS should better document the reasons why applications potentially involving political campaign intervention are chosen for review and develop and publish guidance,” the audit notes.

The IRS did not return a request for comment.

A version of this article originally appeared at Watchdog.org.

Ag Gag Laws Sputtering

2013-05-18T08:00:00-04:00

Laws meant to crack down on farm whistleblowers, commonly referred to as “ag gag” laws, have been drawing fire around the country from various quarters—from animal rights activists to free speech advocates. Detractors often refer to “ag gag” laws as such because these laws serve to gag or stifle the speech of persons who cry foul over some facets of animal agriculture.

I’ve been very vocal in opposing ag gag laws, blasting them as unconstitutional and wrongheaded in a September column and speaking out against them during a recent lecture in Iowa, one of a handful of states with an ag gag law on its books.

While momentum appeared to favor ag gag laws this past autumn, two recent decisions have dealt a serious blow to that support.

Last month, a prosecutor in Utah brought the state’s first prosecution under its ag gag law, passed in 2012. Just as quickly as he had filed the case, though, prosecutor Ben Rasmussen dismissed it.

Then, earlier this week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a conservative Republican, decided to veto the state’s proposed ag gag bill. Gov. Haslam, on the recommendation of his attorney general, rejected the bill as a violation of the constitutional rights of state residents.

In states with ag gag laws on the books, as in Tennessee, many in-state and national farm interests supported adopting the measures. They claimed it would have done everything from helping keep farm animals safe to alleviating on-farm meddling by animal rights groups. Meanwhile, a coalition of animal rights activists and free speech advocates in these states and across the country opposed the measure. They argued that the bill is an unconstitutional imposition on free speech rights, and that it is meant first and foremost to shield animal abusers.

In my time studying ag gag bills and laws, I have never seen one that passes constitutional muster, isn't filled with vagaries and loopholes, and doesn’t risk creating serious unintended consequences.

Utah’s loopholes are gaping. For example, as I wrote last year, if “the recording itself was carried out off farm property, a good argument could be made the law would not apply.”

That was exactly the reason that Prosecutor Rasmussen cited for dismissing its case.

“I determined that in interest of justice I wouldn’t pursue the matter,” he told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s law would have imposed unintended and severe burdens on the state's farmers and law enforcement officers. It would have given a person who photographs or videotapes farm animal abuse twenty-four hours to report the incident to police. It would also require that person to turn over to law enforcement all photos and videos of the abuse by the same deadline.

The intended consequences of the Tennessee law would indeed have violated residents' First Amendment rights. It would have done so by unconstitutionally restricting and compelling speech—forcing anyone who photographs or films animal abuse to turn over all unedited media to the police within twenty-four hours on the one hand and barring those who film or photograph farm animal abuse from demonstrating whether any one incident is part of a larger pattern.

The unintended consequences of the law could have ensnared agricultural producers in the state who unwittingly recorded farm animal abuse—such as with their own farm security cameras.

How?

Currently, Tennessee’s animal cruelty law punishes anyone “who intentionally or knowingly” abuses a farm animal. But the ag gag bill has no requirement that photos or film have been “intentionally or knowingly” captured. Consequently, a farmer whose own security camera filmed a trespasser abusing the farmer’s own animal on the farmer’s own farm could have faced misdemeanor criminal charges under the ag gag law if they didn’t report the abuse—even if they haven’t watched the video and had no idea the abuse took place.

I strongly support the right of farmers everywhere to raise livestock for food. I also believe that the overwhelming majority of food producers in this country take proper care of the animals they raise for food.

But, as I wrote back in September, those who argue that farm photography and filming shouldn’t be protected under the Constitution because it’s a “politically motivated” means of popularizing an “anti-meat agenda” appear to be unfamiliar with the Constitution.

To reiterate, a person needn’t share one shred of support for an anti-meat agenda to wonder if “politically motivated” speech is not to be protected under the First Amendment, then what speech is protected?

Future of Spaceflight: XCOR's Doug Jones Talks With Brian Doherty

2013-05-18T06:34:00-04:00

If you've ever dreamed of soaring to the stars, liftoff may be coming sooner than you think.

Just ask XCOR's Chief Test Engineer Doug Jones, who has designed a commercial suborbital spaceship that can fly up to four times a day, six days a week - sort of like an airplane. And for the low, low price of $95,000, you too can have a ticket to ride.

On May 16, Reason's Brian Doherty talked with Jones in the latest Reason TV livestream webcast from our Los Angeles studios Watch the interview now.

About 25 minutes. Produced by Zach Weissmueller.

Watch past livestreams - including conversations with underground artist Chris Cooper (Art of Coop), Reason education analyst Lisa Snell, and First Amendment lawyer Robert Corn-Revere - by going here now.

Nick Gillespie Discusses 3-D Printed Guns, Obama's Call to Trust Government, and Chris Christie on Fox's Red Eye

2013-05-17T17:50:00-04:00

Reason TV Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie appeared on Fox's Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld to discuss 3-D printed guns, Obama's call to millenials to trust in government, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's fight against spiders.

Airdate: May 7, 2013.

About 40 minutes.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.

Are Hispanics Too Stupid to Become Americans?

2013-05-17T13:30:00-04:00

Last week, the conservative Heritage Foundation issued a new study purporting to show that letting illegal immigrants from south of the border become citizens would cost more than $6 trillion dollars in social benefits by 2050. Researchers from all segments of the political spectrum contested that finding. In the midst of the controversy, it turned out that one of the study’s authors, Jason Richwine, had argued in his 2009 Harvard dissertation that immigration policy should focus on selecting and admitting individuals with higher IQs. Naturally, all hell broke loose, and the brave leadership at Heritage tossed the hapless Richwine overboard by the end of the week.

So what exactly did Richwine’s dissertation say? And is there any truth to it?

For most of his analysis, he relies on the work of the University of Ulster psychologist Richard Lynn and the University of Tampere political scientist Tatu Vanhanen, which focuses on differential average IQs between nations. Consequently, Richwine’s main argument is that Hispanic immigrants and their American descendants have low IQs because they have immigrated from countries whose citizens have low average IQs. As further evidence, Richwine cites a review of 39 studies by the Clemson psychologist Philip Roth and colleagues that reports that Hispanic-American IQs average 89.2 points. Richwine also reviews research suggesting that second-generation average Hispanic-American IQs and incomes do increase, but that there is not much of an increase in either over subsequent generations. Richwine agrees that these IQ deficits in poor countries are partially the result of bad nutrition, pervasive infections, and lack of adequate schooling, but he also suggests that there is a significant genetic component.

Early in the 20th century, various immigration restrictionists made a somewhat similar argument. While Richwine is aware of the debates over immigrant IQs that took place in that period, he concludes that “there was hardly any consensus at all about that topic.” A brief look back at leading research at the time finds that Richwine is being overly dismissive: Now-discredited theories about ethnicity and IQ dominated the field.

For example: In 1919 Lewis Terman, one of the founders of intelligence testing, reported in his book The Intelligence of School Children that the American-born children of Spanish immigrants had an average IQ of 78. For the children of Portuguese immigrants, the average was 84; Italians, 84; northern Europeans, 105; and Old Stock Americans—descendants of British, German, and Dutch immigrants—106.

The Princeton psychologist Carl Campbell Brigham, using data from intelligence tests administered to army draftees during World War I, reported the results in his 1923 opus A Study of American Intelligence. The Yale psychologist Robert Yerkes, summarized Brigham’s data in a 1923 article for The Eugenics Review, asserting that American army officers scored an average of 18 on Brigham’s intelligence scale, whereas the average white draftee scored 13.77. Immigrants from England scored 14.87; from Germany, 13.88; from Norway, 12.98. Irish immigrants scored 12.32; Greeks, 11.90; Russians, 11.34; Italians, 11.01; Poles, 10.74; and “U.S. Colored,” 10.41.

Similarly, the eugenicist Paul Popenoe claimed in a 1924 article that if a mental age of 20 years was taken as the point attained by a very intelligent adult, 16 years was the average normal adult of white American stock. Popenoe added, “The young men of Grecian birth measured below the average mentality of a 12-year-old American schoolboy; the larger contingents of Russia and Italy are not far above the level (10.37 years) of the American negro or of a white adult who is of ‘dull mentality.’” And in 1926, after 5,000 Massachusetts schoolchildren were given intelligence tests, the Harvard researcher Nathaniel Hirsch published the results in his monograph, A Study of Natio-Racial Mental Differences. His list of ethnic groups, from smartest to dullest, was: “Polish Jews, Swedes, English, Russian Jews, Germans, Americans, Lithuanians, Irish, British Canadians, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Italians, French Canadians, Negroes, and Portuguese.”

Richwine is right that not every IQ researcher in the early 20th century agreed that many immigrant groups were dim-witted. For example, the Hartford Public School researcher Gustav Feingold reported in 1924 that “American-reared children of foreign-born parents show insignificant mental differences among themselves.” Similarly, K.T. Yeung reported in a 1921 article that there were “no striking differences in the intelligence of the Chinese and American children.” Nevertheless, the restrictionist researchers were far more prominent in the public debate over immigration.

Richwine suggests that the research reporting low immigrant IQs played essentially no role in the passage of the highly restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. As evidence, he notes that there is practically no mention of such research in the congressional testimony related to that legislation. But it was clearly part of the larger public debate about immigration. In 1924, Feingold, for example, worried that as a result of the research into immigrant IQs, “Educators and congressmen have become alarmed at the possible inferiority of our future immigrants. The present immigration laws are proof that no uncertain fear was evoked following the publication of the data.”

In his review of Hirsch’s book, the Tufts University psychologist George Van Ness Dearborn opined, “It is to be hoped that our present immigration law if not strengthened will be at least maintained indefinitely and stringently enforced, for the 'melting pot' is running over however slow the fusion of these alien stocks within it.... We have enough people but they have not enough education or intelligence.”

Richwine acknowledges that this earlier work claiming that immigrant groups suffered intelligence deficits was premature and muddled. He notes, “There is no modern evidence of substantial IQ differences among American whites of different national backgrounds.” In other words, the average IQs of the descendants of all those Poles, Jews, Italians, Russians, Greeks, and other low IQ immigrants have converged upward to the American average. But the lower average IQ of Hispanics—both American-born and new immigrants—is “persistent,” he argues, so he doubts that they will so converge.

So what does Richwine want to do about immigration? Unlike the early-20th-century restrictionists, he rejects the notion of ethnic and national quotas. “Group differences in intelligence do exist,” he writes, but “that does not mean that any individual should ever be judged on the basis of group membership.” Richwine wants instead to give intelligence tests to individual prospective immigrants from wherever they may hail and to let the smartest ones in.

As noted above, Richwine relies a great deal on the research of Lynn and Vanhanen that finds persistent IQ deficits in many nations. Recently, American Conservative publisher Ron Unz analyzed their work and concluded that in fact, their data suggest that low average national and ethnic IQs are not persistent. Instead, average IQs rise as countries become wealthier. For example, Lynn and Vanhanen cite four studies from 1967 in which West Germans’ average IQ scores ranged from 99 to 107 while East German scores were as low at 90. Now both eastern and western scores in Germany average around 102.

In 1961, according to Lynn and Vanhanen, the average Greek IQ was 88. According to other data, Croatians had an average of 90, Bulgarians were at 91, Romanians were at 94, Poles were at 92, and Sicilians were at 89. In 1972, the lowest IQ scores in Europe belonged to the Irish, who averaged just 87 points. These results are not far off from those that the early 20th century psychometricians found for immigrant groups coming to America. But as Unz points out, by the 21st century the incomes and educational attainments of American descendants of Greek, Slav, Italian, and Irish immigrants are now comfortably above those of the Old Stock white natives whose purity Brigham, Hirsch, and Yerkes were so anxious to defend.

And the Irish? Even Lynn and Vanhanen’s data find they’ve largely caught up. In the 2009 results from the triennial Program for International Student Assessment, the Irish now outscore the British on reading and are very close on math and science. Interestingly, the current Hispanic-American IQ is slightly higher than the average Irish IQ in 1972. It isn’t definitive, but using data from the Wordsum test in the General Social Survey, which correlates fairly well with IQ, Unz reports the IQ scores of second-generation Mexican Americans have likely risen a full 10 points in the past 20 years.

Hispanic educational achievements and incomes do lag behind those of white Americans. And certainly there is a substantial genetic component to intelligence; genes are, after all, the recipes that build bodies and brains in response to environmental cues. Yet as Unz’s analysis of Lynn and Vanhanen’s data shows, the average IQ of a population can change in a generation whereas its genetic makeup cannot. So what else might account for relatively lower Hispanic achievement so far in the U.S.?

The University of Texas economist Stephen Trejo suggests a number of possibilities. For example, Mexican immigration has lasted longer than immigration from any other country, promoting the growth and stability of culturally comfortable ethnic enclaves and slowing the process of assimilation. Trejo also proposes that earlier generations of unskilled immigrants faced a far less steep learning curve for moving up in a modern economy. In his 2005 book Italians Then, Mexicans Now, the Bard College sociologist Joel Perlman bolsters this point: “The crucial difference between the immigrant experience a hundred years ago and today is that relatively well-paid jobs were plentiful for workers with little education a hundred years ago, while today's immigrants arrive in an increasingly unequal America.” Trejo also wonders if some fairly significant proportion of Mexican-Americans have simply already melded into the white population and so are not counted in the sorts of IQ, income, and education statistics cited by Richwine and other researchers.

Perlman concludes that “Mexican economic assimilation may take more time—four or five generations rather than three or four.” Possibly so. But ultimately, modern Hispanic immigrants seem to be no stupider than the immigrant ancestors of other Americans.

Obama’s Scandals Reveal the True Face of Government

2013-05-17T12:00:00-04:00

The Obama administration has gotten itself into a fix between its contradictory stories about the Benghazi incident, reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s grabbing of phone records from AP reporters. There are few things more fun to watch than arrogant political leaders -- folks who spend their lives bossing everyone around -- getting a comeuppance.

My favorite take wasn’t from any serious commentator but from comedian Jon Stewart, who noticed that the president routinely claims ignorance about embarrassing events by saying that he learned of them while watching the news: “I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announcing it on television.”

I take a bipartisan approach to Washington, DC’s political scandals and find myself savoring them all, regardless of the party that is in control of the White House. Any sane person would conclude that all administrations and bureaucracies essentially are corrupt given that they thrive on the exertion of power of other people. We know about the corrupting influence of power, and DC has become like ancient Rome that way. It’s a magnet for those seeking favor, money, or a big title administering some pointless program.

I visited DC last week and was astounded at the booming economy, the endless new construction, the astronomical prices, and garish displays of wealth everywhere -- not to mention the haughty attitudes of every pissant assistant to the whatever. That’s what Other People’s Money buys you. When Ronald Reagan talked about the Shining City on the Hill he was speaking metaphorically about America, but the new shining city is DC -- funded on the backs of all those Americans who blithely vote for people who promise to solve their problems.

That’s the main lesson from this latest mess: the federal government is an untamable beast. These superficial scandals are nothing compared to the things we will never learn -- i.e., the way the CIA conducts its business overseas.

Still, there are so many things to savor as President Obama circles the drain. Obama has always exuded an intellectual arrogance. Yet if he’s so smart, why would his Justice Department target reporters? The national media has fawned over the president, but the quickest way to end that love affair is to go after their personal records.

Unfortunately, many people insist on seeing every scandal in terms of partisanship. Conservatives are aghast, as they should be, at the thought of an IRS auditing groups based on their political views. That is eerily totalitarian. But where would they have been had a Republican administration done the same thing to liberal critics? I doubt the activist groups would be sending out the alarmist direct-mail pieces if the latest Bush were still president.

The best news from the ongoing drama is that people on the left and right see problems here. Let’s use that as a foundation for a renewed civil-liberties coalition that understands that there are many bright red lines in which the government -- regardless of who nominally is at the head of it -- does not cross. That’s easier to do when one realizes that our supposedly limited government is so limitless in its size, power, and taxing ability that no president can control it.

When pundits complain about excess partisanship, what they usually are really saying is they are tired of all the political fighting. Yet political fighting is good -- it’s a sign of differences of opinion and assures that important issues get debated, however clumsily, in the public.

In Sacramento, California, the Republican Party has imploded and there is little worry about partisanship. But the state’s Democratic Party is now engaged in policies so secretive that even liberal-oriented pundits are getting concerned. No one has the power to say no, so the Democrats are ramming through every manner of dangerous bill.

The new health-exchange law shields most contracts under a veil of secrecy so that public money can be dispensed to friends and cronies without the public learning about where it is going. Democratic leaders have embraced a gut-and-amend frenzy -- proposing dozens of bills with placeholder language that will be stripped away at the last minute with new and completely different language inserted. This circumvents normal debate and oversight.

This is not a Democratic problem per se, but a government problem. And local governments are arguably even more dangerous to our liberties. In Bakersfield recently, after Kern County sheriff’s deputies beat to death a young father (after being called to the scene for a minor incident -- public drunkenness), they grabbed the cellphones of bystanders who were recording the incident. That’s right out of a police state.

Government is about power and force. Many people charged with power over others will abuse it. That’s human nature. Unfortunately, the nation’s founding ideals -- limited, accountable government, with separated powers and checks and balances -- have been fading away. Government is so big that even the president and the attorney general claim they have no idea what their departments are doing. I almost believe them.

We need to rebuild a coalition of civil libertarians of the left and right who agree to some basics, on some bright red lines that no government should cross. We need to provide a unified, bipartisan front on behalf of individual liberties and against any official from any party who would trample them. Maybe we can learn that constructive lesson from the administration’s unreconstructed behavior.

Peter Suderman Discusses the Wasted $833 billion Stimulus on C-SPAN's Washington Journal

2013-05-17T11:00:00-04:00

Reason Senior Editor Peter Suderman appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal to discuss his Reason May 2013 issue cover story "Down the Drain" and how the federal $833 billion stimulus was unable to recover the economy.

Airdate: May 15, 2013.

About 40 minutes.

Star Trek Into Darkness

2013-05-17T09:00:00-04:00

Star Trek Into Darkness really should be seen in the full thunderous crush of IMAX projection, with 3D starships and ambient space junk pouring off of a screen that rises above you like the towering wall at Helm’s Deep. Techno overkill is a big part of the movie’s fun, and nothing overkills quite like IMAX.

Director J.J. Abrams, returning for his second foray in the rebooted franchise, provoked squeals of Trekkie indignation with his recent comment that he was never much of a Trekkie himself. But he simulates a convincing enthusiasm for this never-ending story (now in its 47th year); and while the 3D is a post-production conversion, Abrams appears to have constructed the action with maximum face-flaying detail in mind from the beginning. Returning screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman -- joined this time by Damon Lindelof, Abrams’ collaborator on the Lost and Alias TV series -- have worked up a narrative that, while not fully committed to the principle of making sense, does offer a couple of sly surprises. (Every Trekkie with an Internet connection will already know what these are, but I’ll be oblique anyway.)

The movie hits the ground running with a Bondian pre-title sequence that has Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and company fleeing for their lives on an alien planet. Spock (the excellent Zachary Quinto) steps in to save the day by sacrificing his own life. When Kirk revs up the Starship Enterprise to rescue his pointy-eared associate, Spock becomes furious about this violation of the Prime Directive (never interlope in a primitive culture), and back on Earth he turns Kirk in to their boss, Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood). Pike relieves Kirk of his starship command (“You don’t respect the chair!”), and the pouty captain slinks off to bury his sorrow in a bed full of lightly-clad alien girls with tails. (A very brief and totally PG-13 interlude.)

This opening spat between Kirk and Spock is quickly forgotten when a renegade nutcase named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) blows up a Starfleet facility in London, and then proceeds to do something even more annoying in San Francisco. When Harrison escapes to the faraway Klingon home planet of Kronos, Starfleet chief Marcus (Peter Weller) reinstalls Kirk on the Enterprise and sends him off in pursuit, armed with a mysterious new line of “photon torpedoes.”

Now we’re on familiar ground. Spock is back aboard as science officer, joining the peppery engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg), ship’s doctor “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), and the minimally employed Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), and Sulu (John Cho). Also signing up is a new science officer named Carol (Alice Eve), who we soon learn is using a fake name. (Trekkies will immediately know that this woman has to return for a sequel.) Scotty is alarmed by the military-grade photon torpedoes (“I thought we were explorers!”), but the mission proceeds, and after a violent encounter with some nasty Klingons, Harrison is captured. Sure.

The actors bring a welcome human coloring to all of this interplanetary uproar. Pine is still a bit too frat-boy to be all that interesting, but Quinto continues to mine the comic possibilities of Spock’s divided nature (he’s half Vulcan, half human, you’ll recall) with great skill. The love-mumbling between Spock and Uhura is a limp distraction, and I could’ve done with a little less of Bones’ overdrawn whining (“Dammit, man, I’m a doctor, not a torpedo technician!”). But the movie’s most serious flaw is the casting of Cumberbatch, whose character provides the movie’s big surprise. Cumberbatch is an actor of riveting intensity on the BBC series Sherlock, but he’s too classically accomplished to downshift into flamboyant sci-fi evil -- he’s just intense, which isn’t the same thing. Judging by the movie’s conclusion, however, he’ll probably be back for a sequel, too, so we’ll see what else he can do with the role.

The movie is a study in near-perpetual motion, with Abrams’ camera skittering all around and into and up above the action. The 3D processing is admirably unafraid to milk the technology for every cheap thrill available, and the image resolution (parts of the film were shot with IMAX cameras) is so concentrated that in some scenes you can detect the powder-puff trails in Chris Pine’s makeup. This is the best kind of summer blockbuster, unashamed of its mass-market intentions, adequately respectful of its source, and enterprising beyond the call of big box office. It wanders into uninspired digital uproar well before refusing to end at the two-hour mark, but up till then there’s not a lot to dislike.

West Wing Weak: Your Guide to Obama's Scandal-Filled Week

2013-05-17T08:00:00-04:00

The Obama White House has released the latest installment of its ongoing and self-congratulatory video series, West Wing Week. But despite touting itself as "your guide to all things 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," the new episode seems to be missing some of the key stories that have hit the headlines over the past few days. There's no mention, for instance, of Benghazi or the AP phone tapping - and the IRS scandal is barely mentioned in passing.

Perhaps the White House is just too busy completely redacting documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act to fully document its recent highlights.

In a surge of civic pride, Reason TV is happy to offer "West Wing Weak," our look back at the administration's past seven days.

"West Wing Weak" is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also narrates.

About 1:30 minutes.

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Federal Court Slams Obama's Use of Recess Appointment Power

2013-05-16T14:00:00-04:00

It’s been a bad week for Barack Obama, and things just got worse. On top of the growing scandals over the I.R.S. targeting conservative groups and the Justice Department snooping on journalists, the president has just received a major constitutional reprimand from the federal courts over his dubious exercise of executive power.

According to the Constitution, the president must seek the “advice and consent” of the Senate when filling certain government positions. The president may only bypass this confirmation requirement in those rare cases where a temporary appointment is needed to "fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate." This is known as the president’s recess appointment power.

In a decision handed down Thursday morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that Obama violated the Constitution by making a recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board in 2010 when the Senate was not actually in recess. In an unprecedented move two years later, when the Senate was holding pro forma sessions for the precise purpose of denying him the lawful ability to make a recess appointment, Obama simply ignored this legal impediment and made four purported recess appointments anyway, including the addition of three members to the NLRB.

In its decision, the 3rd Circuit strongly rejected Obama’s unilateral action. “Nothing in the text of the Clause or the historical record suggests that it is intended to be a type of pressure valve for when the president cannot obtain the Senate‘s consent, whether that be because it has become dysfunctional or because it rejects a president‘s nominations,” the court held. Indeed, the opinion continued, under the government’s interpretation, “If the Senate refused to confirm a president‘s nominees, then the president could circumvent the Senate‘s constitutional role simply by waiting until senators go home for the evening.” So much for the separation of powers.

This is the second major ruling against Obama’s recess appointments. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voided all three of the president’s 2012 additions to the NLRB. As Chief Judge David Sentelle held in that case, Obama’s actions “would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction.”

These are strong arguments against Obama’s behavior. The recess appointment power was designed to act as a sort of safety net covering the long stretch between formally enumerated Senate sessions—not to help the president and his nominees duck a difficult Senate confirmation process. As University of San Diego law professor Michael Rappaport, one of the leading authorities on the Appointments Clause, has observed, “If the original meaning were followed... the President could only make recess appointments during the single annual intersession recess and only for vacancies that arose during that recess.”

Last month, the Obama administration appealed the D.C. Circuit’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that it would “dramatically curtail the scope of the President’s authority.” Today’s decision by the 3rd Circuit increases the already strong chances of the justices agreeing to take the case.

They should take it—and the president should lose. Obama’s impatience with the Senate is no excuse for his infidelity to the Constitution.

Editor's Note: This article originally misstated the dates of the president's recess appointments.

Let's Get the IRS Out of the Speech Business

2013-05-16T12:00:00-04:00

So, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups (or, more precisely, groups displaying a bit too much gusto for limited government) was far more widespread than its initial apology would have led Americans to imagine.

Yes, it is disturbing -- a dangerous abuse of power, no doubt. What's more disturbing -- or should be, at least -- is the fact that the IRS has the capacity to undermine free speech in the first place. Despite President Barack Obama's assurances, there are no safeguards that can be put into place to stop abuses of power.

The IRS doesn't just collect taxes. It also enforces speech codes. Americans assembling to gripe about Washington should not have to petition Washington for the right to do so. Yet Democrats (and Republicans such as John McCain) have, for a long time, advocated deputizing the IRS with deep and wide-ranging powers over free speech.

Some liberals have argued that it's reasonable for the IRS to pay special attention to the flood of tea party groups asking for 501(c)(4) applications (even though similarly motivated left-wing groups experienced little problems doing the same). In a 2012 editorial, in fact, The New York Times' editorial board praised the IRS for targeting tea party groups because they did not "primarily" engage in "social welfare," the designation used to merit tax exemption under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

I suppose I would argue that any organization advocating unfettered free markets is advocating social welfare. Somehow I assume The New York Times has other ideas about the world. The real mystery is why the IRS should have any opinion on the matter at all.

Washington already knows that the 501(c) designations are a joke, as those involved rhetorically tiptoe around any exceptionally partisan phrases. But to engage in a concerted political effort doesn't pivot on the need for direct communication when, intuitively speaking, everyone knows what to do.

Example: It's not as if the Obama administration sends The New York Times' editorial board talking points, yet The New York Times' editorial board always seems to get it just right.

Why have so many on the left been defensive? Well, politics, of course. But there are other reasons. Just listen to the left treat tax-exempt status as a privilege bestowed by government. Taxes have morphed from a societal obligation into moral code. And our convoluted tax structure reflects this mindset, allowing politicians to favor trade and offer populist giveaways to solidify political power. Any simplification or flattening of that code would strip Washington of its most effective tool.

Any attack on the credibility of the IRS matters because soon enough, it will be forcing us to buy things, as well as regulating speech. Obamacare's unprecedented expansion tasks the IRS as dispenser of the "penalty" coercing Americans to partake in a collective health insurance scheme -- and discerning the intent of more than 40 new taxes, to boot. This will be handled by the same fine organization that was recently hit with a class action suit alleging it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans -- some 60 million medical records, including psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

Yes, reasonable people understand that government isn't systematically trying to find out what they had for breakfast or what they watch on TV. That would be as paranoid as believing that the National Rifle Association and the Koch brothers have the power to control millions of voters. But rational people understand that abuse happens. If you're worried about the government's invading your privacy, there is no agency with more means to do it than the IRS.

So though this is a fine time to push the politics of scandal -- because occasionally, politics is substantive -- it would be more constructive for the GOP to push for tax and IRS reform.

Parents, Pot, and Prohibition: Daisy Bram's Story

2013-05-16T09:00:00-04:00

As her children were being taken away from her, Daisy Bram screamed, "My babies! My babies!"

In 2011, Daisy Bram and Jayme Walsh lived with their two small children, Thor and Zeus, in Butte County, California. Like so many other people in northern California, Bram and Walsh had medical marijuana recommendations and a small cannabis garden in their back yard. In September, their home was raided by Butte County sheriffs. Bram and Walsh were charged with cultivation of marijuana, possession with intent to sell, and child endangerment. Thor and Zeus were taken by Child Protective Services and placed in foster care for four months.

A year later, Bram gave birth to their third son, Invictus. With their Butte County cases still unresolved, Bram and Walsh decided to move their family to neighboring Tehama County.

In January of 2013, Tehama County sheriffs raided Bram and Walsh's new home. This time they found a cannabis garden in a locked room off the back of the house. Child Protective Services once again seized Bram and Walsh's children and placed them in foster care, where they remain to this day. On January 30, Tehama County officers seized Bram's car. Walsh is currently in jail with bail set at one million dollars. Bram is out on bail awaiting future court dates.

"There is nothing worse that someone can be accused of than doing something to harm their own children. If someone from the government is going to come after someone and make that accusation, they better have the ammunition ready to go," said Michael Levinsohn, Daisy Bram's attorney.

Learn more about Daisy's story at Green Aid and The Human Solution.

Approximately 7.5 minutes.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

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President Obama Is Not Doing His Job

2013-05-16T07:20:00-04:00

Government is bad for personal freedom. That argument is premised upon the truism that everything government does interferes with freedom because it either prohibits or compels. Everything it owns it has taken from others. Much of what it says is divorced from the truth. President Obama, like President George W. Bush, has argued that his first job is to keep America safe, and if he impairs personal freedom in the process, that is a small price to pay for safety. Many of my colleagues in the media on the left and right have bought this argument, notwithstanding its fallacies.

Until now.

This past week, we learned that the IRS has targeted for additional scrutiny the tax exemption applications of groups with whose messages it disagrees. We also learned that the Department of Justice obtained the personal telephone records of hundreds of reporters and editors employed by the Associated Press without a search warrant issued by a judge. And during this past week we learned that the White House, the Department of State and the CIA all engaged in a conspiracy of disinformation so that the official version of events of what caused the murders of four Americans at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, would not impair Obama's re-election campaign in 2012.

The common threads in all of this government secrecy and lying are a general rejection of government's moral obligation to tell the truth, a disturbing yet brazen willingness to evade and avoid the restrictions the Constitution has deliberately built around government, and a glib admission that the government can do as it pleases so long as it can politically get away with it.

The Constitution's Equal Protection Clause requires that the government treat all similarly situated entities in a similar manner. The Constitution's First Amendment prohibits the government from using the speech and expressive activities of persons in America as a basis for the disparate treatment of them.

Thus, on its face -- that is, on the basis of what the IRS has admitted and without any further investigation -- we have violations of these constitutional principles. If the IRS were to examine the applications for tax exemption of Media Matters with the same level of scrutiny as it does with Tea Party Patriots, it would not run afoul of these principles. But Congress has given the IRS broad latitude to scrutinize the behavior of the taxpayers it chooses to scrutinize, and the IRS has given itself authority to probe, prod and plunder wherever it wishes. I say "given itself," because the IRS has rule-making power, which when overlooked by Congress (as is almost always the case) actually serves to enhance IRS powers beyond what Congress permits.

Short of criminal behavior such as bribery or conspiracy, the IRS employees who have singled out applications for tax exempt status for more scrutiny based on anticipated political expression are subject to removal from office, but they cannot be prosecuted or sued. Here again, Congress is to blame, as both Republicans and Democrats have used and abused the IRS to their advantage, and neither party inwardly wants laws that will prevent it from doing so in the future. Is this what you expect of our tax collectors?

The First Amendment also assures the right of professional journalists to seek and protect their sources, and it gives them immunity from government prosecution or retribution for truthfully publishing matters of material public interest, even when it involves information stolen from the government. The Supreme Court taught us this in the Pentagon Papers case.

Moreover, the Fourth Amendment requires that if the government wants private information about who stole its secrets, it needs a search warrant from a judge. But the Patriot Act, which was celebrated by some in the media whose telephone records have since been seized, permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when they seek records from a third party like a telephone company and can claim that pursuit of terrorists is at stake. The Patriot Act makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment, and the government knows that. When the government chills free speech, we all suffer. Thomas Jefferson preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers. Whose personal records will the government authorize itself to seize next?

The lesson of Benghazi is that we had no lawful right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the Libyan government. It was unlawful for Obama to bomb Col. Gadhafi without a congressional declaration of war. The organized assault on our consulate was the unintended consequence of us using force to infuse American-style democracy on a people whose culture is unable and unwilling to accept it.

But the president's people were terrified that the murder of our ambassador to Libya during the 2012 presidential campaign might impair Obama's re-election chances. So they and he tried to rewrite history, and the more they and he lied the more they and he needed to lie to cover up their original lies. Would you retain an employee who lied to you about the deaths of innocents and lied more to cover up the original lies?

Now, back to Bush and Obama and the president's job. According to the Constitution, the president's first job obligation is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. According to the Constitution, that means preserving Americans' freedom first and safety second. Freedom is our natural state and is the ultimate natural right. Safety is a need that we ourselves can provide when unimpeded by the government. If the president keeps us safe but not free, he is not doing his job. Do you know anyone who feels freer or even any safer because the government trampled personal freedoms and so far has gotten away with it?

Matt Welch Discusses the IRS Scandal and the DoJ Seizing AP's Phone Records

2013-05-15T17:15:00-04:00

Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch discusses the revelations that the IRS was targeting tea party and conservative groups and the Department of Justice secretly seized phone records of AP journalists on Jansing & Co. Airdate May 15 2013.

13 minutes.

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10 Takeaways from the Latest CBO Budget Projections

2013-05-15T16:30:00-04:00

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper for Congress—released its updated budget projections for the next decade. This year’s deficit projections are down dramatically. So is the federal budget suddenly in good shape? Far from it. In fact, debt levels are expected to remain unusually high for the foreseeable future.

But that’s not all the report tells us. Here are 10 takeaways from the CBO’s newest look at the future of federal spending and revenues.

1. This year’s deficit will be lower than expected. The Congressional Budget Office now projects that the deficit will clock in at $642 billion this year, down from its earlier estimate of $845 billion.

2. But the downward revision in the annual deficit is mostly due to one-time changes. The revision is a product of two factors that won’t be repeated in the years to follow: a $95 billion dividend payment from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a $105 billion revision in estimated tax collections. The CBO changed its revenue projections by just $95 billion for the entire upcoming decade—meaning that this is more of an unexpected bonus than a permanent change.

3. Projections of total annual deficits over the next decade aren’t down by much. In February, the CBO projected that total deficits over the next decade would add up to $6.9 trillion. The revision puts that number at $6.3 trillion.

4. Federal debt will remain unusually high. For the next decade—and beyond—the CBO expects that federal debt levels will continue to equal more than 70 percent of the GDP, hitting a low of just less than 71 percent next year before climbing to 74 percent in 2023. As the report notes, that’s a lot higher than the average of 39 percent over the past 40 years. And it’s also a lot higher than it was just a few years ago: In 2007, the federal debt was just 36 percent of GDP. It won’t stop rising at the end of the decade either. After 2023, debt as a percentage of the economy will “continue to be on an upward path.”

5. High debt levels will have major economic consequences starting in just a few years. The nation’s high and rising federal debt levels will “have serious negative consequences,” the budget office says. Namely, interest payments: “When interest rates return to higher (more typical) levels, federal spending on interest payments would increase substantially.”

6. Interest payments will soar to near historic highs. The CBO says that higher debt levels, combined with higher expected interest rates, can be expected to “sharply boost interest payments.” Assuming no changes in the law, net spending on federal interest will more than double as a percentage of the economy by 2023. In 2014, federal interest payments will equal about 1.4 percent of the economy. By 2023, the CBO projects, those payments will be about 3.2 percent—a figure that has only been exceeded once in the last 50 years.

7. More individuals will be paying higher taxes. The CBO expects that individuals will pay more relative to the size of the economy, in part because they will have higher inflation-adjusted incomes. As a result, those making more money will end up in higher tax brackets.

8. Medicaid spending will take up a greater share of the national economy, rising from 1.8 percent of GDP to 2.1 percent. The increase will be the result of both the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare and increases in how much the program spends on each individual on average.

9. Major health care programs are finally going to beat out Social Security as the top spending category. By 2015 spending on what the CBO calls “major health programs”—which include Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and private health insurance subsidies offered through Medicaid—will rise above Social Security. Here’s the chart:

10. This is already the rosy scenario. Under an alternative budget path, things will be noticeably worse. The CBO’s headline projections are based on the assumption that Congress will keep current laws in place. But if Congress decides to override scheduled cuts to Medicare reimbursements to physicians (as it has done every year for a decade), to end the spending trims called for by sequestration (as legislators continue to call for), and to extend certain other tax carve-outs that are typically renewed, then the budget picture looks worse: total deficits will be $2.4 trillion higher, for a total of $8.8 trillion, and federal debt levels will hit 83 percent of GDP—which, as the CBO reminds us, is the highest it’s been since 1948.

Feds Push Insane New Speech Codes!

2013-05-15T16:08:00-04:00

"It is so broad that it turns every single student and every single faculty member on campus, at least arguably, into harassers," warns Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

He's talking about sweeping speech codes just imposed by the Departments of Justice and Education on virtually every college campus in the United States.

The new mandate was revealed in a letter from the DOJ and DOE to the University of Montana that states "sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as 'any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature," including "verbal conduct." The new rules apply to all colleges and universities receiving any sort of federal money, including Pell grants, federally backed student loans, and more. The letter contends the conduct in question need not be offensive to an "objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation." That means that there is effectively no check on what might count as harassment. Course materials, overheard comments, stupid jokes - it's all potentially actionable.

Lukianoff, the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, hopes that "this is the last straw that causes the universities themselves to start pushing back against this ridiculous overregulation."

About 3 minutes.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher. Interview by Matt Welch. Camera by Jim Epstein and Fisher.

Special thanks to the Museum of Sex, New York City.

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Nick Gillespie Discusses Speaker John Boehner on Fox Business' Money

2013-05-15T15:40:00-04:00

Reason TV Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie appeared on Fox Business' Money with Melissa Francis to discuss House Speaker John Boehner, the disastrous U.S. tax code, and the future of the GOP. Airdate: May 7, 2013

About 6 minutes.

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The Free State Project Grows Up

2013-05-15T13:30:00-04:00

In 2001 a Yale doctoral student named Jason Sorens published an essay in the small webzine The Libertarian Enterprise, lamenting the failure of libertarian efforts at the ballot box. “Nothing’s working,” he wrote, because libertarians are scattered. The only way to have a real impact, he argued, would be to concentrate thousands of libertarian activists in a state with a small population and an easily accessible government. Sorens settled on an ideal target of 20,000 people, an imaginary cluster of libertarians he christened the Free State Project.

Twelve years later, against all odds, Sorens’ peculiar dream is coming true. At press time, nearly 14,000 liberty lovers had pledged to move to New Hampshire once the Free State Project reaches its goal of 20,000 signatories. More than 1,100 of them, known as “pre-staters,” have already moved to Manchester, Concord, Nashua, and even the state’s rural northern region to prepare the ground for the coming influx of libertarians. These activists are penetrating New Hampshire’s political and judicial establishment, joining community organizations, befriending (and antagonizing) the locals, and generally making themselves at home in New England.

Free Staters in the Legislature

The first Free Stater, Jackie Casey, packed her bags in 2003, just after an online vote determined that New Hampshire would beat out Wyoming and other contenders for the Free State title. Casey had been a Wyoming partisan. “I didn’t vote for New Hampshire,” she told the Boston TV station WCVB in 2004. But “I moved here because I made a commitment.”

One of the main reasons New Hampshire won was the state’s accessible corridors of power. Town meetings are the predominant style of government in most of its municipalities, and the state legislature is the third largest in the world, with 424 seats.

Pre-staters had an easy time picking up seats right away. After the 2012 election, they held about a dozen legislative positions on both sides of the aisle. The number may actually be higher, since some elected Free Staters have been quiet about their affiliation with the movement, due to concerns about backlash at the ballot box. But since the average annual salary of a New Hampshire state legislator is just $100, the work has to be a labor of love and passion—a Free Stater specialty.

The professional breakdown of the Free Staters in the legislature is a reflection of the diversity of the movement; there are real estate brokers, lawyers, writers, EMTs, couriers, and computer programmers. Some are New Hampshire natives, while others hail from Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and libertine Nevada.

The libertarian influence already has paid some dividends in governance. In 2007 the New Hampshire legislature voted to block implementation of a national ID card system in the state. The battle against REAL ID was lead by Joel Winters, the first member of the Free State Project to win a statewide representative seat. Winters, a Democrat and Floridian, ran for office on a platform focused on civil liberties and privacy just two years after he moved to New Hampshire.

Winters, who is a building contractor by trade, notes that other Free State legislative victories are less conspicuous, because they involve stopping bad laws before they start. “There’s always proposals to expand licensing requirements, and we’ve helped stopped those,” he says, ticking off thwarted gun restrictions and seat belt regulations as examples.

Another victory for the Free Staters came in 2010, when state Rep. Jenn Coffey (R) managed to pass a bill that repealed all of New Hampshire’s knife laws with astounding ease. Until Coffey’s legislation passed, the state’s knife restrictions were stricter in some cases than its gun laws. Stilettos, switch blades, daggers, and other collectible knives were poorly defined in the relevant statutes. Coffey’s legislation passed unanimously through both chambers and was quickly signed into law. It was accompanied by another law barring municipalities from passing restrictions reversing Coffey’s legislation.

In 2011 state Reps. Mark Warden (R) and Calvin Pratt (R) stood up for beer freedom, sponsoring a law that gives home brewers permission to open breweries and sell their product without having to set up a working kitchen and offer a full menu to drinkers. The result: a micro-boom in nano-breweries. Warden says there are now at least eight new small, independent brewers in the Live Free or Die State.

Many Free Staters will tell you that one of their biggest wins so far was the passage and strengthening of jury nullification laws. Nullification takes place when jurors acquit a defendant not because they think he is innocent but because they believe the law or its application in that case is unjust.

The effort to resurrect and formalize jury nullification in New Hampshire, which began in the early 2000s, has been the passion of Free Staters such as Cathleen Converse, Richard Angell, and John Connell. They have spent countless hours working with a longtime New Hampshire resident, Bob Constantine, to raise awareness about the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts of the case. Their efforts kicked into overdrive in 2005 when the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in State v. Sanchez that the state laws on jury nullification were too murky.

Free Staters, along with some liberty-loving locals, run a group modeled after Montana’s Fully Informed Jury Association called New Hampshire Jury Information, which educates prospective jurors and the general public about jury nullification. Its members frequently stand outside courthouses distributing flyers and pamphlets to prospective jurors. For at least a decade, this was the only legal way to let jurors know they could nullify. Then in June 2012, after seven unsuccessful attempts, activists finally pushed through a law allowing defense attorneys to “inform the jury of its right to judge the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts.”

All this activism produced a high-profile victory in 2012, when a jury that included Converse acquitted a Rastafarian named Douglas Darrell of marijuana cultivation charges after Belknap County Judge James O’Neill read New Hampshire’s rarely heard model jury instruction regarding nullification: “Even if you find that the State has proven each and every element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt, you may still find the defendant not guilty if you have a conscientious feeling that a not guilty verdict would be a fair result in this case.” At the time of Darrell’s trial, New Hampshire law let judges decide whether the nullification instruction was appropriate on a case-by-case basis. O’Neill decided it was after Darrell’s lawyer argued with the prosecution about the justice of convicting him, in light of the fact that he was growing cannabis for his own religious and medicinal use.

On the lighter side, in 2012 state Rep. Seth Cohn (R), in response to the attempted repeal of the 2009 New Hampshire law recognizing same-sex marriage, submitted legislation that would have banned marriages between two left-handed people. In previous years the jokester had submitted bills outlawing all marriages and replacing them with civil unions.

The merrymaking isn’t limited to the legislature. In Keene there’s a vogue for Robin Hooding, a form of activism where people monitor routes of parking enforcement officers and place coins in on-street parking meters nearing expiration. The practice is driving local officials nuts but winning praise from residents. The Free Keeners have seen a steady stream of small donations to the cause of rescuing unlucky car owners via their website.

“It’s come a long way and it’s gaining more traction and more steam,” says Free State Foundation Board President Carla Gericke. “Part of [our] success is we chose the right state. There is that rugged individualism here. It’s almost like we’re awakening the natives who might have been totally disengaged and they’re reawakening to these ideas of liberty.”

Statist Squabbling

The Free State Project has not been all smooth sailing. During a 2012 campaign for the state legislature two Free Staters faced off, hurling the insult “statist” at one another. But internal Free State squabbles have been minor compared to the growing hostility they have drawn from local political interests.

In December 2012, state Rep. Cynthia Chase (D) called Free Staters “the single biggest threat the state is facing today.” Chase, writing on the liberal blog Blue Hampshire, called on Free State opponents to be as unwelcoming as possible, the better to discourage the coming influx of libertarians. Victoria Parmele, a member of the Strafford County Regional Planning Commission, told New Hampshire Magazine in 2013 that she found Free Staters to be very aggressive, calling the movement “libertarianism on steroids.”

Rep. Warden’s Democratic opponent in 2012, Aaron Gill, alleged that Free Staters threatened New Hampshire’s ideals. “Imagine what happens when 20,000 Free Staters move here, get elected and vote,” he said in a letter to the Concord Monitor. In an irony that has not escaped the Free Staters, neither Chase nor Gill is a New Hampshire native: Chase moved from Rhode Island in 2006, and Gill moved from Massachusetts in 2002.

The Movement Matures

The Free State Project’s momentum is palpable at Liberty Forum, an annual winter gathering in Nashua featuring speeches, seminars, and trade show booths. At the 2013 Liberty Forum in February, Gericke beams with excitement and energy from the podium. “We are going to make history!” she enthuses. “We are pioneers. We are changing the world in such a fundamental way, with a bunch of smart, a bunch of brilliant people. We can make this change!”

A native of South Africa, Gericke, a corporate lawyer, moved to frigid New Hampshire from California in 2008 after working as in-house counsel for several Fortune 500 firms. She now splits time between Free State activism and the New Hampshire Writers Project. She traces her activist roots back to growing up in the police state of apartheid South Africa. “I guess I’ve always been a rebel,” she says.

When she lost her job after the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s, Gericke became increasingly fascinated with how markets work. She dove into every economics book she could find during this stressful period, and eventually concluded that she was a libertarian.

Gericke’s mission is to accelerate the final phase of recruitment. The project is on track to reach its goal of 20,000 Free Staters (or porcupines, as they are affectionately known—a creature dangerous only when attacked) by 2018, but she wants to speed it up to 2015. What they need now, she says, is money. “I think the Free State Project has matured,” Gericke tells the audience, “and hopefully we’ll continue to mature, and one of those things about maturing is ‘Hey guys, we’ve got to get down to business.’ ” She launches into a brief fundraising pitch, explaining why the Free State Project needs to raise the once-unthinkable sum of $270,000 to get over the 20,000 finish line.

One key factor in accelerating progress toward the recruitment goal has been the two presidential campaigns of Ron Paul. Since New Hampshire is an early-primary state, Paul made a series of visits from 2007 to 2012, drawing libertarian loners out of the woodwork and into various Internet fora. Paul repeatedly endorsed the Free State Project, spoke at some of its events, and benefited (especially in 2012) from the porcupines’ on-the-ground organizational knowledge. “We ran on his coattails. A lot of people started opening their eyes, young people in particular,” says Jody Underwood, a Free State Project board member and owner of Bardo Farm.

The people who filtered in from the Paul movement were younger and more female than the people who had previously enlisted in the Free State cause, helping to expand the group’s demographic base.

The Incrementalist Approach

None of this seemed remotely possible in 2001, even to Free State Project originator Jason Sorens. “Unfortunately, I am neither an ‘organizer’ type nor a well-known libertarian ‘personality,’ ” he wrote in his initial call to arms. “I’m an aspiring political scientist, a thinker; I don’t know the first thing about leading, and my name doesn’t have cachet.” Now Sorens, who lives and teaches in Buffalo but has visited New Hampshire and the Free Staters several times, might finally make the move himself.

“When I started it,” Sorens says, “I thought it could work, and I thought there was a real possibility people would move, but I had no idea what it would look like. A thousand people moving and taking over a community? That’s amazing.”

Sorens thinks the project’s success stems partly from its modest approach. “The whole point behind the FSP was to avoid utopianism,” he says. Rather than trying to “build this new society,” he says, Free Staters “opted instead for incrementalism, making small but noticeable, meaningful changes.” Building an entire new world requires a massive investment before anybody sees results, big or small. The Free State Project already has won victories without spending much money or ripping up social architecture.

Will all of the 20,000 volunteers move to New Hampshire once the signature threshold is crossed? Probably not, but it may not matter. “If we had 2,000 solid, committed people that made it their business to get involved,” says Cohn, “we might be at least as powerful as either party, quite possibly both.” Even a fraction of the total would be OK with Sorens too. “Look at the change they’ve made with just 1,000,” he says. “Even 5,000 would be mind-boggling. I think our goal right now is to attract as many people as possible. It doesn’t matter what the precise number is. We’re just trying to make New Hampshire a beacon of liberty.”

America Needs More Free-Range Kids

2013-05-15T12:13:00-04:00

Are you a real man (or woman)? Do you have "grit"?

Compare yourself to the man on the $20 bill: Andrew Jackson, our seventh president.

During the Revolutionary War, Jackson volunteered to fight. He was just 13 years old at the time. The British captured him and made him a servant for British officers. When one ordered Jackson to clean his boots, Jackson refused, and the officer slashed Jackson's hand with a sword. When Jackson became president, he showed off the scar.

Jackson had grit.

Do your kids have that much grit today? I doubt it. Parents now try to protect kids from all danger. In New York City, some won't let teenagers go to school by themselves.

Lenore Skenazy, author of "Free-Range Kids," thinks that's absurd.

"Free-range kids are kids we believe in," she told me. "They can do things on their own."

Once she allowed her own 9-year-old to ride the subway alone. After she wrote about that, she was labeled "World's Worst Mom." Really. Google "world's worst mom." Skenazy's name comes up.

"Free-Range Kids" promotes events like "Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day." Skenazy says leaving kids in the park without adult supervision teaches them grit. Kids get used to bugs, rocks and a lack of constant supervision. They become leaders by discovering how to organize their own lives without parents bossing them around.

And they are not likely to be kidnapped. The horror of what happened to the three women in Cleveland makes all of us more frightened of sexual assaults and other threats. Skenazy says that today's parents are so frightened that only 6 percent allow young kids to play outside unsupervised. But the risk of harm is small, and we put our kids at greater risk, says Skenazy, if we don't allow them the freedom to learn from their own mistakes -- to acquire grit.

It shouldn't surprise me that parents want to shelter their kids from all risk. The parents themselves live in a society where risk is less and less acceptable. We expect regulations to protect us from accidents. We expect police to protect us from every imaginable criminal threat. We demand welfare, unemployment insurance and bailouts to protect every level of society from economic risk. When something goes wrong, we sue.

It wasn't always like this.

Our country's founders left relatively safe places to tough it out in the wilderness, to turn what a character in a John Wayne movie called "empty land used for nothin'" into ranches and farms. Doing that required long days spent hunting, plowing, fighting off enemies, digging in through cold winters, sometimes starving, losing children, losing wives and husbands -- it took grit to create American civilization.

Grit requires delaying gratification, wanting something bigger than yourself.

As John Wayne's character himself put it in "The Big Trail": "We're building a nation. We've got to suffer. No great trail was ever blazed without hardship. That's life."

Grit is the stuff of life. Greatness is often achieved only after repeated failure.

Cartoonist Charles Schulz had every cartoon he submitted to his high school yearbook rejected. "Peanuts" later became one of the most successful cartoons of all time.

Thomas Edison's teachers told his mom he was "too stupid to learn." Edison went on to accumulate 1,000 U.S. patents. His success with the light bulb followed 1,000 unsuccessful attempts. That's grit.

It's great that we live in a wealthy country -- one with a welfare state so big that we now worry about poor people getting fat. But what makes most people happy is not comfort. It's earned success, success you struggle for.

The opposite of earned success, says psychologist Martin Seligman, is "learned helplessness." In lab experiments, when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's happiness. It produced helplessness. People gave up, became passive.

That passivity (and America's welfare state) is a threat to our future. Everyone goes through pain and loss. We face obstacles. It's the struggle to overcome obstacles that matters.

That's the stuff of life -- and the route to happiness and prosperity.

Denial: 25 Years Without a Soul - Q/A with Jonathan Rauch

2013-05-15T12:00:00-04:00

"I felt I was a monster incapable of love," says Jonathan Rauch, author of moving new memoir, Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul. "Love to me would have to mean love for a man."

Rauch, an award-winning journalist, guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, and Reason contributor, recounts his intense and confusing struggles coming of age as a homosexual in 1970s' America. Trapped with the knowledge he was different, Rauch convinced himself that he would never find love or get married since either would require acknowledging his sexual preference. The result, writes Reason's Nick Gillespie at Amazon, is "one of the best essays on adolescence, sexuality, and love imaginable" and an absolutely compelling tour through the past 50 years of changing mores and attitudes toward the varieties of human experience.

"When I showed [Denial] to people, especially straight people," says Rauch, "they said again and again, 'I lived through a version of that.'"

Gillespie sat down with Rauch to talk about Denial, his first crush and sexual awakening, and his eventual marriage.

Denial is available as a Kindle single e-book at Amazon and elsewhere. It is published by The Atlantic, whose whole slate of e-books is online here.

About 10 minutes.

Camera by Amanda Winkler and Joshua Swain; edited by Swain.

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The Bogus Public Health Attack on Sugar

2013-05-15T10:30:00-04:00

Health activists are in a tizzy over sugar and fast food, which they blame for the obesity “epidemic.” Responding to these concerns, politicians have sought to tax or regulate the alleged culprits. Tort lawyers, smelling tobacco-settlement-scale greenbacks, have been gearing up to sue companies producing sugary beverages. Last week, in an attempt to pre-empt this barrage of legislation, tax, and litigation, the Coca Cola Company announced that it would from now on “market responsibly, including no advertising to children under 12 anywhere in the world.” But none of these actions are likely to have much impact on our waistlines; indeed, some may be counterproductive, while others are likely to burn a hole in our wallets. And for most of us, life just wouldn’t be as sweet. Fortunately, there are better ways to achieve a healthy weight.

In the 1950s, less than 10 percent of the U.S. population was obese on standard measures; being overweight was viewed as a risk factor for some diseases; and weight control was considered a matter of individual responsibility. Today, more than a third of Americans are classed as obese. Meanwhile, obesity is widely described as a disease in its own right, which is blamed on companies seeking to sell us pre-prepared food and drink. If those claims were true, then the lawyers would make like thieves. But are they true?

Let’s start with the claim that food and drink companies have made us fat. In The End of Overeating, published in 2010, former FDA commissioner David Kessler argued that we live in an “obesogenic” society in which companies are constantly tempting us with products high in salt, sugar and fat. This meme has caught on: in Salt, Sugar Fat, released in February, New York Times journalist Michael Moss repeats Kessler’s accusation that food manufacturers seek to ensure that their products approach our “bliss point,” by loading them with—you guessed it—salt, sugar, and fat.

It does appear that the main cause of our expanded girths is that we have been consuming more calories. Most of the increase in obesity has occurred since the mid-1980s (rates rose to around 13 percent in the 1960s but stayed more or less constant until the early 1980s), which coincides with a sustained binge on the part of a significant portion of the American public. The amount of calories consumed per day by an average American man rose from about 2,080 calories per day in the late-1970s to 2,400 in the mid-1990s to 2,600 in the early 2000s. Equivalent figures for women are 1,500, 1,650, and 1,850, respectively. Meanwhile, we seem to be expending about the same amount of energy as we did in the 1970s: In a 2003 paper, Harvard economists David Cutler, Edward Glaeser, and Jesse Shapiro concluded that “The available evidence suggests that calories expended have not changed significantly since 1980.”

OK—so we’ve been eating too much. But are those food and drink companies to blame? Well, most of the increase in calories does seem to have come from pre-prepared snacks. Cutler et al. explain that the increase in availability of pre-prepared food and drink made it easier for us to eat more by lowering the “time costs” of preparation. That makes sense. In 1913, we certainly could have eaten lots of chips and cake and drunk lots of juice but it would have taken considerably more time to prepare them than it takes to open a few packages, so most of us would not have had the time to snack in the way that we do today.

But there is a twist. Cutler et al. calculated that even taking into account the consequences of our increasing girth, we have benefitted on net from the wider availability of pre-prepared foods and drink because they have reduced the amount of time we have to spend in the process of preparation. In that light, all the efforts made by food and drink companies to identify our “bliss point” seem benign, not malign as in the Moss account.

Moreover, it turns out that obesity is not quite the health disaster the tort lawyers would like it to be. In a 2005 paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Katherine Flegal and her coauthors showed that people who are “overweight” but not obese are less likely to die of any cause than people of “normal” weight. Meanwhile, people who are “grade 1” obese are as likely to die as “normal” people. Only people who are underweight or have grade 2 or 3 obesity are more likely to die. In other words, obesity can lead to health problems but does not necessarily do so—and is only a serious concern for people who are very obese. These results were confirmed in a follow-up study by Flegal published in JAMA in January, which analyzed 97 studies giving a sample size of more than 2.88 million individuals.

Now, the proportion of people with grade 2 or 3 obesity did increase significantly in the 1980s and 1990s, rising from about 5 percent of the population in 1980 to about 15 percent in 2000. But over the same period, the proportion of those with grade 2 or 3 obesity who died from all causes fell. The most likely explanation for this is some combination of the following: First, improvements in medical interventions addressing a range of obesity-related problems, from diabetes to cardiovascular disease, mean that people suffering these obesity-related ailments fare better today than they would have done 30 years ago. Second, whereas previously obese people tended not to get much exercise, many more are now both physically fit and obese. Most likely, the group that really do suffer substantial increases in health problems are those who are “grade 3” obese; and this may in part be because above a certain weight there seems to be a vicious circle of declining exercise and increasing weight—even though those who are most obese are likely to benefit most from exercise.

And so to “solutions.” In an influential study published in Science in 2003, James Hill of the University of Colorado and three coauthors estimated that a reduction in calorie consumption—or increase in energy use—of 100 calories per day would be enough to keep most of us trim. Many health advocates argue that taxes or even regulation are the simplest way to achieve that objective. But would those policies work?

Soda taxes have been extensively studied. Initially, it looked like they would work. Several studies found that a tax would reduce consumption of the beverage in question. However, these studies failed to factor in offsetting behavior by consumers. In particular, when faced with a tax many consumers either buy a cheaper (own-brand) variety, or switch to other drinks that are equally calorific, such as juice or milk. In a 2010 paper in Contemporary Economic Policy, Jason Fletcher of Yale, and colleagues David Frisvold of Emory University and Nathan Teft of of Bates College, found that increases in taxes on sugary beverages do reduce the number of calories adults consume but, because of these offsetting behaviors, the effect is very small. In a subsequent paper published in the Journal of Pubic Economics, Fletcher and co. looked at purchasing habits of schoolchildren and found that “the decrease in calories from soft drinks in response to an increase in the soft drink tax rate is completely offset by the increase in calories from whole milk.”

If taxes don’t work, what about regulation? The main regulation promoted by health advocates is calorific labeling at restaurants. This might work if people paid attention to such labels—but most don’t. In a detailed study of the impact of NYC’s food labeling law published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2010, Tamara Dumanovsky and co. found that only about 20 percent of consumers used the calorie information. This probably explains why such labeling has little impact on calorie consumption at restaurants. Moreover, since most of the extra energy people consume (now about one third of all calories) is in the form of snacks rather than meals at restaurants, such a regulation is unlikely to have a significant effect on most people’s waistlines. The same goes for regulations limiting the size of soda beverages sold in restaurants.

At this point, you may be throwing up your hands in despair. And maybe you should. But not at me. You should throw up your hands in despair at the false bill of goods you have been sold by the public health researchers who, as Helen Lee observes in a fascinating study recently published by the Breakthrough Institute, “set about defining the causes of obesity in ways that they believed would predispose the public to support societal action to bring the industry to account.” Lee observes that this involved, first, redefining obesity as an “epidemic” (it isn’t—because it is not a disease) and, second, defining obesity as an “involuntary risk” (it isn’t—otherwise we’d all be obese, given that the alleged risk factors are so ubiquitous).

Unfortunately, this distortion of the nature of “obesity” has led us down a blind alley from which we must now retreat. The government is incompetent to decide what and how much each of us should eat and drink. Its attempts to influence our decisions have mostly been futile and sometimes counterproductive: for example, at least one study found that college-age men increased their energy intake when purchasing food at restaurants where the energy content was displayed. At the same time, government regulations and taxes distort our consumption decisions in ways that may reduce our level of satisfaction: for example, soda taxes encourage us to consume lower quality unbranded sodas—or reduce the amount of money we have to spend on other items.

What we eat and drink is, first and foremost, a matter of individual responsibility. Fortunately, some researchers have been investigating the real reasons some of us consume too many calories—and this research is yielding practical advice. Brian Wansink and his colleagues at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Laboratory have been investigating practical measures that can be taken by individuals and organizations to encourage us to eat fewer calories. Many of Wansink’s findings, detailed in his book, Mindless Eating, focus on addressing various cognitive biases that lead us to consume more calories than we intend. So, for example, when we eat off a large plate, we tend to underestimate the amount of food we’re eating. Solution: eat off smaller plates. Likewise, when we drink out of shallow glasses. Solution: drink from tall glasses. When we eat chips straight from a giant container, we consume more than if we portion out chips into small bowls. And so on.

Meanwhile, contrary to the dire assessments of people like David Kessler and Michael Moss, companies are beginning to realize that they can provide nutritious food and beverages in ways that enable people to maintain a healthy weight. A group of CEOs of food and beverage companies has created the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, which seeks to encourage the public to manage their weight better by “balancing calories in with calories out.” Because of the significant presence of member companies in the supply of food and beverages, the Foundation has great potential to communicate important messages about how most effectively to maintain this healthy balance. Beyond that the Foundation is reaching out directly to teachers, who have the potential to influence how kids think about diet and exercise. According to its website, the Foundation has so far reached over half of all U.S. elementary schools; that’s pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, Coca Cola’s decision to “market responsibly” might not help and could even be counterproductive. While the small-print qualifies the company’s apparent blanket prohibition on marketing to children, saying that it will “not buy advertising directly targeted at audiences that are more than 35% children under 12,” that still means it will have difficulty marketing healthy products and healthful messages to kids.

But there are also things the government can do. Or, rather, there are things the government can stop doing, such as distorting our consumption decisions. Among other things, the federal government could end its subsidies to food production, distribution, and consumption. That includes food stamps, which may only be used to purchase foods and beverages and has been linked to increased obesity; if instead people simply received a cash transfer, they could then make decisions themselves about how to spend their money. And governments at all levels could stop imposing arbitrary, discriminatory taxes on food and beverages. To the extent that these taxes incentivize consumers to avoid brand products, they may actually reduce access to the kinds of information that the brand companies seek to provide about maintaining a healthy weight.

Too Stoned to Drive?

2013-05-15T07:00:00-04:00

Last week, when the Colorado General Assembly passed groundbreaking legislation aimed at taxing and regulating marijuana, it also passed a bill redefining when cannabis consumers are considered too stoned to drive. The revised rule seems consistent with the voter-approved policy of treating marijuana like alcohol and therefore may be copied by other states that decide to follow Colorado down the path to legalization. But the standard has little scientific basis, and it creates unfair legal risks for people who pose no threat to public safety.

The new law allows a jury to convict someone of driving under the influence of a drug (DUID) based on nothing more than a test indicating that his blood contained five nanograms or more of marijuana's main active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), per milliliter. The Colorado legislature had rejected the five-nanogram cutoff on five other occasions based on concerns that it is a poor measure of impairment.

Those concerns are well-founded, because there is wide variation in how people respond to a given dose of THC. Although some people may be dangerously impaired at five nanograms, regular consumers, including patients who use marijuana as a medicine, can drive competently at much higher THC levels because they develop tolerance to the drug's effects and learn how to compensate for them.

Since THC accumulates in fatty tissue, it can be detected in the blood of frequent users days after their last dose. But that does not mean regular pot smokers can never drive safely.

In a 2012 experiment by KDVR, the Fox station in Denver, a medical marijuana user arrived with a THC level of 21 nanograms per milliliter, even though he had not consumed any cannabis that day. He performed fine on a driving simulator both before and after smoking marijuana, which raised his THC level to 47 nanograms.

This year KIRO, the CBS affiliate in Seattle, enlisted three volunteers—a daily medical marijuana user, a weekend smoker, and an occasional smoker—to navigate a car through a test course under the watchful eyes of a driving instructor and a police drug recognition expert. The volunteers completed the course satisfactorily both before and after smoking various amounts of marijuana, at THC levels ranging from four to seven times as high as five nanograms. The daily user smoked 1.4 grams of pot, reaching a THC level of 58.8 nanograms, before she was clearly too stoned to drive.

Last month Teri Robnett of the Cannabis Patient Action Network told Colorado legislators "patients like me...will continually maintain a blood level far above five nanograms and without any impairment." A five-nanogram standard unjustly exposes people like Robnett to the risk of being treated as a public menace whenever they get behind the wheel.

Suppose Robnett is driving down a highway and briefly drifts from one lane to another before moving back—not because she is stoned but because she is distracted by a wasp that flies into her car. A cop pulls her over, thinking she is driving erratically. It emerges that she consumes marijuana regularly, and a test shows a THC level of 10 nanograms. Under Colorado's new DUID law, it would be understandable if Robnett chose to plead guilty, even though she wasn't.

Unlike the marijuana legalization initiative approved by Washington voters last fall, Colorado's law does not establish a per se rule, under which a driver is automatically guilty at five nanograms. Instead it creates a presumption of guilt that defendants can try to rebut by presenting evidence that they were not in fact impaired.

In practice, however, there may be little difference between those two standards. With a "permissible inference" of DUID at five nanograms, says Denver attorney Rob Corry, "A person coming into court is guilty until proven innocent. If you put a number on it, juries are going to latch onto that five-nanogram number, whether it’s a permissible inference or a per se [standard], and the effect will be that innocent people are convicted."

Matt Welch Discusses the Boston Bombings, Jason Collins, and Kitty Cats on Fox News' Red Eye

2013-05-14T20:00:00-04:00

Reason Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch appeared on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld to discuss the three men charged in connection with the Boston bombings case. Airdate: May 2, 2013

About 6 minutes.

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Benghazi: What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make?

2013-05-14T16:30:00-04:00

It was one of Hillary Clinton’s most infamous utterances during her tenure as secretary of state: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” The comment came at a Senate committee hearing on the attack in Benghazi, and it encapsulated the attitude that Barack Obama’s self-described “most transparent administration in history” has taken to actual transparency.

At issue was who knew what and when about the nature of the Benghazi incident. Was it a preplanned attack by terrorists or a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video on YouTube? The question didn’t seem to matter to Clinton, who pushed the YouTube narrative, leading the way in placing blame for the violence on an American’s exercise of free speech. A little later in the same answer, she offered these thoughts about accountablity: “it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime.”

When the attack was fresh, the story of a mob killing on a whim was embraced both by officials and their boosters in the media. (“It’s all about the video,” Chris Matthews told a Romney supporter last October. “Read a newspaper.”) Yet just three days after the assault, a report in The Independent suggested senior officials were becoming “increasingly convinced” the assault on the U.S. compound in Benghazi had been “planned.” Last week’s hearings helped drive home the fact that the YouTube video had nothing to do with the violence. A New York Times editorial published just last week managed to miss the point, denouncing the “Republican obsession” over Benghazi while neglecting to mention the deliberately misleading statements government officials had made about the nature of the attack.

The Sunday after the Benghazi assault, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the political talk-show circuit to push the narrative of a spontaneous protest. It’s now been revealed that the talking points she relied on had been edited several times to excise all reference to any terrorist connection. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney deflected concern about that by pointing out that Republicans knew about the process. But that’s not relevant. The issue is that the government decided to mislead the American people. Whether the revisions came from the CIA or the State Department, they sought to conceal facts from the public. And government officials didn’t lean on any supposed national security concern for that deception, merely the understanding that what the American people were informed of is what they ought to know.

This “move along, nothing to see” attitude is hardly new to the Obama administration. But this president and his apologists have wrapped themselves in “the truth” in a way few of his predecessors have, even while acting in a relentlessly untransparent manner. Obama promised his would be “the most transparent administration in history,” yet his administration has brought up more cases against leakers (six) than all his predecessors combined, a fact that came up in reporting on the government seizing two months’ worth of phone records from the Associated Press.

The phone record seizures are part of the Department of Justice's efforts to identify who leaked information about a foiled terrorist plot in May 2012 involving an IED and a CIA operation in Yemen. "Once someone leaked information about interdiction of the IED and that the IED was actually in our possession," CIA Director John Brennan explained, "it was imperative to inform the American people consistent with Government policy that there was never any danger to the American people associated with this al-Qa'ida plot." Days before the AP found out about the foiled terrorist plot, the administration was busy insisting there was no terrorist threat around what was the one-year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. The leak forced the administration to acknowledge there was something where it insisted there was nothing—but Brennan's comment suggests he doesn't think the government should have had to tell the American people anything about it if it hadn't been leaked. The most transparent administration in history doesn't like to tell us all that much.

And so it is with Benghazi. When the government said it was a spontaneous reaction to unfettered online speech, the media, by and large, believed what officials said. Now the president would like us to believe it’s all just a sideshow, even as important questions remain unanswered. And the most transparent administration in history becomes just a little more transparently not so.

Related video: 3 Reasons Benghazi Still Matters (original release date: May 10, 2013)

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