Hit & Run

J.D. Tuccille Discusses Obama's War on Freedom of the Press on RT

2013-05-23T20:36:00-04:00

As I wrote the other day, the Justice Department's ongoing "investigation" (read: inquisition) of Fox News correspondent James Rosen builds on an already unpleasant tradition of Obama administration discomfort with scrutiny of its activities. "Taken with the already brewing scandal over the snooping of Associated Press phone records, we're looking at a full-fledged assault on the free press." On RT, I addressed just this issue — and probably clinched my name's presence on some list.

Check out the video below and chime in with your own take on the media's recent reality check with regards to the powers that be.

Shikha Dalmia in the Washington Examiner on Whether Liberals Will Swallow Obama's Crocodile Tears Over the Drone Program

2013-05-23T17:49:00-04:00

President Barack Obama spent a good part of a nice Thursday afternoon crying crocodile tears over the civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. These casualties, he said, will "haunt the U.S." But what about him, asks Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in the Washington Examiner? Will they haunt him given that he has ordered more such strikes and killed more such civilians than his predecessor?

She notes:

If former Vice President Dick Cheney had authored the drone program, liberals would demand his indictment as a war criminal. But Obama has made it the defining feature of his war on terrorism and they remain silent.

When Bush departed from bedrock conservative principles and started spending like a drunken sailor, he triggered a revolt that ultimately culminated in the Tea Party movement. It remains to be seen if liberals will hold Obama similarly accountable.

Go here to read the whole thing.

Freed From Partisan Divisions, Press-Snooping Scandal Looks Likely To Linger

2013-05-23T17:27:00-04:00

The Obama administration has finally created unity — of outrage over surveillance of news organizations and threats against journalists. By targeting both media organizations that have traditionally been supportive of the administration and organizations that have been critical of the White House, the Justice Department has managed to alienate journalists across the political spectrum. Those media organizations have become mutually supportive, too, if only to escape suspicion of tribalism and hypocrisy. Freed of partisan taint, the scandal over the Obama administration's excesses in trying to stopper leaks looks unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

From Politico:

Until this week, the recent debate over leaks largely fit a familiar frame: Republicans and national security hard-liners faulted President Barack Obama’s administration for dishing out self-serving national security secrets to news outlets that many conservatives view as liberal.

But now, conservatives have a journalistic hero to call their own: Fox News reporter James Rosen may have reported sensitive information about North Korean nuclear tests — but what’s certain is he had his email searched and his phone calls and personal movements tracked in connection with that reporting by the government to find out who gave him the information. Rosen’s network is covering his predicament extensively.

“There’s sort of a delicious irony here,” said Mark Feldstein, a former investigative reporter for CNN. “Before it was only the left screaming about WikiLeaks and the government crackdown on leaks. Now they’re in a position, if they’re going to be logically consistent, they have to defend Fox News.

“And Fox News, which has been screaming about leaks to WikiLeaks and The New York Times and other establishment papers, are going to have to do a belly flip to be consistent.”

So far, the controversy over how far the Obama administration went to figure out who was leaking sensitive national security secrets to journalists has mostly been overshadowed by a pair of other storylines dominating Washington — Benghazi and the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

But any issue that has both conservatives and liberals lining up with exactly the same question — did the Obama administration go too far in its zeal to plug the leaks? — is one that could stay on the scene for a long time to come, especially with so many questions still unanswered.

Forget summer blockbusters; stock up on popcorn to watch how The Obama Administration vs. Anybody With an Inquisitive Mind plays out.

Note: Yes, Politico's quotes on the relative sincerity of Fox News and the New York Times are tendentious, but the organizations are working together, not getting a room.

Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.

Spice up your blog or Website with Reason 24/7 news and Reason articles. You can get the widgets here. If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at 24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at @reason247.

Ron Paul Loses Attempt to Claim RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org Domain Names

2013-05-23T17:01:00-04:00

As I blogged back in February, Ron Paul angered some of his fans by relying on a UN-sponsored dispute resolution mechanism, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to try to claim he should legally own the domain names RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org, not the people who currently did.

WIPO has now decided against Paul and for the current name holders. Their full decision on the .org challenge specifically.

The core of WIPO's reasoning:

First, Respondent [current owners] has used the Domain Name to link it to an independent and legitimate fan site. As Respondent puts it, expressing support and devotion to Ron Paul’s political ideals is a legitimate interest that does not require Complainant’s [Ron Paul] authorization or approval. Moreover, Respondent’s legitimate interest in the Domain Name is strong because the site provides a place for political speech, which is at the heart of what the United States Constitution’s First Amendment is designed to protect. In this way, the Panel is persuaded by Respondent’s arguments and evidence that Respondent is making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the Domain Name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish any trademark at issue.

Moreover, Respondent has submitted evidence that there are multiple, very clear disclaimers on the website to which the Domain Name links, indicating that the site is not Complainant’s official site. In regards to Complainant’s arguments that the website is actually a “pretext for commercial advantage”, the Panel finds the website linked to the Domain Name is primarily a noncommercial service, while the products advertised and sold are ancillary to the site’s primary purpose as a source of news and information about Ron Paul, and serving as political forum.....

The website is offering goods and services that promote Ron Paul and sells only goods that promote Ron Paul. The site goes far to dispel any confusion that Respondent or JNR might have a relationship to Complainant, including use of multiple, prominently placed disclaimers. Finally, related to Respondent’s second main point, there is no evidence that Respondent has attempted to corner the market of domain names to prevent Complainant from reflecting his alleged RON PAUL mark in a domain name. To the contrary, the evidence indicates that in 2013 Respondent offered to give Complainant the <ronpaul.org> Domain Name for free.

My book on Ron Paul and his fans, Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired.

Rand Paul Responds to Obama on Drones: Power Point Presentations May Not Represent Due Process

2013-05-23T16:39:00-04:00

Rand Paul, who led a thirteen hour filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA over the issue of drones targeting Americans, responded today to the president’s most detailed comments on U.S. drone policy so far in his administration. Paul’s response, in full:

"I'm glad the President finally acknowledged that American citizens deserve some form of due process. But I still have concerns over whether flash cards and PowerPoint presentations represent due process; my preference would be to try accused U.S. citizens for treason in a court of law."

Last year, the New York Times described in some detail the “internal deliberations” that pass for due process in the drone campaign waged by the White House. Al-Awlaki, the only American killed in a drone strike the president actually mentioned today, was never even indicted in a U.S. court.

h/t Archduke Pantsfan

Obama “Haunted” By Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes, Boston an Early Adopter of Counterterorrism “Fusion Centers,” Taliban Infiltrating Afghan Police: P.M. Links

2013-05-23T16:30:00-04:00

In an address on counterterrorism policy today, President Obama said that while the deaths of civilians in drone strikes will haunt him for the rest of his life, the strikes must be compared to alternatives he says are worse.
Boston was one of the early adopters of “federal fusion centers” meant to prevent terrorist attacks.
Police in Afghanistan are being infiltrated by the Taliban, making it difficult for the U.S. troops charged with training them to trust them.
A U.S. district court ruled police need a warrant to use drug dogs in vehicle searches.
Indoor marijuana farms as large as football fields can now be zoned in Seattle.
Arizona’s fetal pain law was struck down by the 9^th Circuit, which means it could now be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Anti-fluoride activists win at the ballot box in Portland, where they were outspent three to one in challenging the city’s decision to fluoridate the water.
A 3d-printed windpipe saves a baby’s life.

Follow Reason 24/7 on Twitter!

Follow Reason on Twitter too, and like us on Facebook. You can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up here.

Have a news tip? Send it to us!

The updated Reason app for Apple and Android now includes Reason 24/7!

Obama’s War on Terror By Some Other Name

2013-05-23T16:14:00-04:00

After he first took office, President Obama jettisoned the use of the phrase “global war on terror,” preferring ‘overseas contingency operation.’ In remarks on his counterterrorism policy (or what he’d like it to be?) to the National Defense University this afternoon, Obama insisted America was “still threatened by terrorists,” but warned that America “must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” otherwise “it will define us.” In Obama’s view, most of the changes brought about by the American response to 9/11 (“hardening targets, tightening transportation security, and giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror”) were “sound” despite some causing “inconvenience.” He acknowledged issues “like expanded surveillance raised difficult questions” about security and privacy, but when talking about compromising “our basic values,” only specifically mentions torture and illegal detention, and not, say, the steady erosion of Fourth Amendment rights in the name of security over the last decade.

Nevertheless, even while warning America to define the nature and scope of the struggle against terrorism, Obama managed to expand the definition of the terrorism he believes government must protect Americans from. From the prepared remarks:

Finally, [after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and “localized threats” across South Asia and North Africa] we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States. Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; a plane flying into a building in Texas; or the extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City – America has confronted many forms of violent extremism in our time. Deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

From a mass shooting motivated by racism to a suicide motivated by government abuse to the Oklahoma City bombing to the Fort Hood rampage (classified an act of workplace violence and not terrorism by the federal government) to the bombing of the Boston marathon, these things seem to fall under the same “counterterrorism policy” rubric for the president as Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Yemen, or a local Islamic extremist group in Mali or Nigeria. “Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology,” Obama helpfully adds, referring to Islamist extremists. He compares the intensity of terrorist attacks today to the 1980s and 1990s, suggesting smart counterterrorism policies would prevent a threat of the level of 9/11 to arise again.

The closest Obama comes to a definition of the “war on terror” is when he rejects the term:

We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries. Thousands of Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives fighting extremists. In Yemen, we are supporting security forces that have reclaimed territory from AQAP. In Somalia, we helped a coalition of African nations push al Shabaab out of its strongholds. In Mali, we are providing military aid to a French-led intervention to push back al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and help the people of Mali reclaim their future.

In cases where “partnerships with other countries” is impossible, the president says, he uses drones. Here he adopts a definition used in the post-9/11 authorization of the use of military force, explaining that government took “lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces.” “Associated forces” is a broad term still, but narrower than the one that would allow Obama to choose any act of terror to include in the “struggle” against terrorism. The president defended the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. He offered that it would be a dereliction of his duty as president not to kill a U.S. citizen who went abroad and was “actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens,” (something the common criminal may do too). Obama’s description of al-Awlaki as a “chief of external operations” in Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula brings the cleric who dined at the Pentagon in the aftermath of 9/11 under the umbrella of the “associated forces” of the AUMF. The president did not mention the sixteen year old son of al-Awlaki the U.S. also acknowledged killing (though not “specifically targeting), or two other Americans who were identified as victims of drone strikes, one of whom, Jude Mohammed, was indicted on terrorist charges in 2009 (something al-Awlaki and his teenaged son weren’t). The lumping of a sixteen year old with a suspected terrorist wanted by the FBI is an illustrative example of the slippery definition of terrorism and its usefulness primarily in defending constitutionally-suspect policies like targeted killings or “expanded surveillance.”

What Made Jimmy Carter Flip-Flop on Marijuana? And Could the Same Tactic Work on Voters?

2013-05-23T15:37:00-04:00

In the space of five months former Pres. Jimmy Carter has seemingly done a 180-degree turn on marijuana policy. During a December 2012 CNN panel, Carter endorsed Colorado and Washington's decision to liberalize their marijuana laws:

Suzanne Malveaux: What do you make of the legalization of marijuana, and the states that have legalized marijuana?

Carter: I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK. I don’t think it’s going to happen in Georgia yet. But I think we can watch and see what happens in the state of Washington, for instance, around Seattle. And let the American government and the American people see does it cause a serious problem, or not.

A few states in America are good to take the initiative and try something out. That’s the way our country has developed over the last two hundred years, is by a few states being kind of experiment stations.

Last week, "at a meeting that included state legislators and regulators from Colorado and Washington, as well as most of the states targeted for legalization in 2016," Carter said something very different:

Mr. Carter announced that he “opposed the legalization of marijuana” and predicted experiments with marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado would go badly.

“I do not favor legalization. We must do everything we can to discourage marijuana use, as we do now with tobacco and excessive drinking. We have to prevent making marijuana smoking from becoming attractive to young people, which is, I’m sure, what the producers of marijuana … are going to try and do.”

In a press release last issued last week, Project SAM (the anti-marijuana group launched by former Office of National Drug Control Policy staffer Kevin Sabet and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy) claimed that Carter has been "falsely characterized as supporting legalization by pro-marijuana lobbyists nationwide," and thus his conversion wasn't a conversion at all. That claim doesn't exactly square with Carter telling CNN's Malveaux (on video, I might add) that he's "in favor of" and "OK" with Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana, but it is consistent with Carter's description of his motivation, back when he was president, for decriminalizing cannabis at the federal level. "I always said nobody should be punished worse for smoking a [marijuana] cigarette than the cigarette would be for them if they smoked it."

Carter joining the ranks of Sabet and Kennedy (and by extension, folks like Mel Sembler, who is the biggest individual funder of the anti-marijuana movement) is thus not only unsurprising, but also a modest testament to the power of Project SAM's "third way" message, which appeals to technocrats, conservatives, and public health advocates, despite its ocassional inconsistency.

While a recent Reason-Rupe poll found that a plurality (35 percent) of Americans think there should be absolutely no punishment for marijuana use, another 20 percent believed that marijuana use should be punished with mandatory substance abuse counseling. What I'm wondering is if Project SAM can grow that 20 percent between now and 2016. They landed Jimmy Carter, after all.

Obama's Empty Rhetoric

2013-05-23T15:27:00-04:00

Like the "War on Drugs," a rhetorical phrase that the Obama administration has rejected even while continuing to wage the policy it describes, many ongoing activities of the government he presides over came under verbal attack from President Barack Obama this afternoon.

So the president says "journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," even though journalists are at legal risk—from his administration—for doing their jobs. "History will cast a harsh judgment" on the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, the president warned, even though (in the words of Human Rights Watch's Laura Pitter) "there are still a number of steps the Obama administration could have taken -- and can still take now -- to begin closing the facility and ending indefinite detention without trial."

Obama worries, rightly, that "in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways." And yet at perpetual war we remain, altering our way of life by the day. "The very precision of drones strikes, and the necessary secrecy involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites." And yet we drone on, boats against the current of international opinion, borne ceaselessly back to the awesome responsibility of wielding lethal power.

There was much to like in Obama's speech today if you like words, and share the broad worries he outlined above. And it is surely true that changing policy becomes easier after you make public arguments about changing policy. But the fact is Barack Obama is the president of the United States, and according to both the Constitution and especially the way executive power has accrued over the past century, Obama actually has quite a bit of latitude to impose his values on the waging of American war. After 52 months in office, it's long since past time to stop judging the man by his words alone.

Wacko Bird Ted Cruz Goes After Angry Bird John McCain Over the Debt Ceiling

2013-05-23T14:23:00-04:00

Good C-SPAN fun on an ongoing theme. First up, warhorse Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) accuses newbie liberty-movement Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) of not understanding the basic Senate rules about reconciliation, as applied to debate over raising the federal debt ceiling yet again:

Then freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) rises to the Wacko Bird defense:

I have given a couple of talks this year on the Wacko/Angry civil war, which I claim is the most interesting action to be found in mainstream American politics. Here's one that got videotaped:

In Today's Foreign Policy Speech, Obama Says Killing Civilians With Drones "will haunt us as long as we live"

2013-05-23T14:23:00-04:00

Pres. Obama will deliver a lengthy speech today at the National Defense Univerity, during which he'll make the case for his administration's targeted killing policy, arming Syria's rebels, and liberal interventionism. You can read the entire speech after the jump.

Here's part of what he'll say about drones:

Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al Qaeda and its associated forces. Even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained. America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists - our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute them. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose – our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty. America does not take strikes to punish individuals – we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.

This last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes – at home and abroad – understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There is a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties, and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places –like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold. Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.

Below, the full prepared remarks.

It’s an honor to return to the National Defense University. Here, at Fort McNair, Americans have served in uniform since 1791– standing guard in the early days of the Republic, and contemplating the future of warfare here in the 21^st century.

For over two centuries, the United States has been bound together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and served as our compass through every type of change. Matters of war and peace are no different. Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but having fought for our independence, we know that a price must be paid for freedom. From the Civil War, to our struggle against fascism, and through the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed, and technology has evolved. But our commitment to Constitutional principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived at home. For a moment, it seemed the 21^st century would be a tranquil time. Then, on September 11^th 2001, we were shaken out of complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire, metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind of war. No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could.

And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What’s clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world, and – to this day – our interests in a vital region.

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses – hardening targets, tightening transportation security, and giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values – by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.

After I took office, we stepped up the war against al Qaeda, but also sought to change its course. We relentlessly targeted al Qaeda’s leadership. We ended the war in Iraq, and brought nearly 150,000 troops home. We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan, and increased our training of Afghan forces. We unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress.

Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world. In sum, we are safer because of our efforts.

Now make no mistake: our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. We must recognize, however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11. With a decade of experience to draw from, now is the time to ask ourselves hard questions – about the nature of today’s threats, and how we should confront them.

These questions matter to every American. For over the last decade, our nation has spent well over a trillion dollars on war, exploding our deficits and constraining our ability to nation build here at home. Our service-members and their families have sacrificed far more on our behalf. Nearly 7,000 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice. Many more have left a part of themselves on the battlefield, or brought the shadows of battle back home. From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation – and world – that we leave to our children.

So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do – what we must do – is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. To define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear, but hard-earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the threat we face.

Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11. Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al Qaeda affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse, with Al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP –the most active in plotting against our homeland. While none of AQAP’s efforts approach the scale of 9/11 they have continued to plot acts of terror, like the attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009.

Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria. Here, too, there are differences from 9/11. In some cases, we confront state-sponsored networks like Hizbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals. Others are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based. That means we will face more localized threats like those we saw in Benghazi, or at the BP oil facility in Algeria, in which local operatives – in loose affiliation with regional networks – launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to fund their operations.

Finally, we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States. Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; a plane flying into a building in Texas; or the extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City – America has confronted many forms of violent extremism in our time. Deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

Lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11. In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all deadly, and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.

Moreover, we must recognize that these threats don’t arise in a vacuum. Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology – a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the United States is not at war with Islam; and this ideology is rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of terrorist acts.

Nevertheless, this ideology persists, and in an age in which ideas and images can travel the globe in an instant, our response to terrorism cannot depend on military or law enforcement alone. We need all elements of national power to win a battle of wills and ideas. So let me discuss the components of such a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy.

First, we must finish the work of defeating al Qaeda and its associated forces.

In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Our troops will come home. Our combat mission will come to an end. And we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a counter-terrorism force which ensures that al Qaeda can never again establish a safe-haven to launch attacks against us or our allies.

Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries. Thousands of Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives fighting extremists. In Yemen, we are supporting security forces that have reclaimed territory from AQAP. In Somalia, we helped a coalition of African nations push al Shabaab out of its strongholds. In Mali, we are providing military aid to a French-led intervention to push back al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and help the people of Mali reclaim their future.

Much of our best counter-terrorism cooperation results in the gathering and sharing of intelligence; the arrest and prosecution of terrorists. That’s how a Somali terrorist apprehended off the coast of Yemen is now in prison in New York. That’s how we worked with European allies to disrupt plots from Denmark to Germany to the United Kingdom. That’s how intelligence collected with Saudi Arabia helped us stop a cargo plane from being blown up over the Atlantic.

But despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed. Al Qaeda and its affiliates try to gain a foothold in some of the most distant and unforgiving places on Earth. They take refuge in remote tribal regions. They hide in caves and walled compounds. They train in empty deserts and rugged mountains.

In some of these places – such as parts of Somalia and Yemen – the state has only the most tenuous reach into the territory. In other cases, the state lacks the capacity or will to take action. It is also not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist. And even when such an approach may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians– where a terrorist compound cannot be breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal communities that pose no threat to us, or when putting U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis.

To put it another way, our operation in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden cannot be the norm. The risks in that case were immense; the likelihood of capture, although our preference, was remote given the certainty of resistance; the fact that we did not find ourselves confronted with civilian casualties, or embroiled in an extended firefight, was a testament to the meticulous planning and professionalism of our Special Forces – but also depended on some luck. And even then, the cost to our relationship with Pakistan – and the backlash among the Pakistani public over encroachment on their territory – was so severe that we are just now beginning to rebuild this important partnership.

It is in this context that the United States has taken lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces, including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones. As was true in previous armed conflicts, this new technology raises profound questions – about who is targeted, and why; about civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about the legality of such strikes under U.S. and international law; about accountability and morality.

Let me address these questions. To begin with, our actions are effective. Don’t take my word for it. In the intelligence gathered at bin Laden’s compound, we found that he wrote, “we could lose the reserves to the enemy’s air strikes. We cannot fight air strikes with explosives.” Other communications from al Qaeda operatives confirm this as well. Dozens of highly skilled al Qaeda commanders, trainers, bomb makers, and operatives have been taken off the battlefield. Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted international aviation, U.S. transit systems, European cities and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put, these strikes have saved lives.

Moreover, America’s actions are legal. We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.

And yet as our fight enters a new phase, America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion. To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance. For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power – or risk abusing it. That’s why, over the last four years, my Administration has worked vigorously to establish a framework that governs our use of force against terrorists – insisting upon clear guidelines, oversight and accountability that is now codified in Presidential Policy Guidance that I signed yesterday.

In the Afghan war theater, we must support our troops until the transition is complete at the end of 2014. That means we will continue to take strikes against high value al Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces. However, by the end of 2014, we will no longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we have made against core al Qaeda will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.

Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al Qaeda and its associated forces. Even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained. America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists - our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute them. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose – our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty. America does not take strikes to punish individuals – we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.

This last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes – at home and abroad – understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There is a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties, and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places –like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold. Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.

Where foreign governments cannot or will not effectively stop terrorism in their territory, the primary alternative to targeted, lethal action is the use of conventional military options. As I’ve said, even small Special Operations carry enormous risks. Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage. And invasions of these territories lead us to be viewed as occupying armies; unleash a torrent of unintended consequences; are difficult to contain; and ultimately empower those who thrive on violent conflict. So it is false to assert that putting boots on the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths, or to create enemies in the Muslim world. The result would be more U.S. deaths, more Blackhawks down, more confrontations with local populations, and an inevitable mission creep in support of such raids that could easily escalate into new wars.

So yes, the conflict with al Qaeda, like all armed conflict, invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us, and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life. Indeed, our efforts must also be measured against the history of putting American troops in distant lands among hostile populations. In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of civilians died in a war where the boundaries of battle were blurred. In Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the courage and discipline of our troops, thousands of civilians have been killed. So neither conventional military action, nor waiting for attacks to occur, offers moral safe-harbor. Neither does a sole reliance on law enforcement in territories that have no functioning police or security services – and indeed, have no functioning law.

This is not to say that the risks are not real. Any U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more enemies, and impacts public opinion overseas. Our laws constrain the power of the President, even during wartime, and I have taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. The very precision of drones strikes, and the necessary secrecy involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a President and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.

For this reason, I’ve insisted on strong oversight of all lethal action. After I took office, my Administration began briefing all strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan to the appropriate committees of Congress. Let me repeat that – not only did Congress authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes. That includes the one instance when we targeted an American citizen: Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations for AQAP.

This week, I authorized the declassification of this action, and the deaths of three other Americans in drone strikes, to facilitate transparency and debate on this issue, and to dismiss some of the more outlandish claims. For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process. Nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.

But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America – and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team

That’s who Anwar Awlaki was – he was continuously trying to kill people. He helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two U.S. bound cargo planes. He was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009. When Farouk Abdulmutallab – the Christmas Day bomber – went to Yemen in 2009, Awlaki hosted him, approved his suicide operation, and helped him tape a martyrdom video to be shown after the attack. His last instructions were to blow up the airplane when it was over American soil. I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot. But we couldn’t. And as President, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took out Awlaki.

Of course, the targeting of any Americans raises constitutional issues that are not present in other strikes – which is why my Administration submitted information about Awlaki to the Department of Justice months before Awlaki was killed, and briefed the Congress before this strike as well. But the high threshold that we have set for taking lethal action applies to all potential terrorist targets, regardless of whether or not they are American citizens. This threshold respects the inherent dignity of every human life. Alongside the decision to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way, the decision to use force against individuals or groups – even against a sworn enemy of the United States – is the hardest thing I do as President. But these decisions must be made, given my responsibility to protect the American people.

Going forward, I have asked my Administration to review proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress. Each option has virtues in theory, but poses difficulties in practice. For example, the establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority. Another idea that’s been suggested – the establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch – avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into national-security decision-making, without inspiring additional public confidence in the process. Despite these challenges, I look forward to actively engaging Congress to explore these – and other – options for increased oversight.

I believe, however, that the use of force must be seen as part of a larger discussion about a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. Because for all the focus on the use of force, force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.

So the next element of our strategy involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia. As we’ve learned this past decade, this is a vast and complex undertaking. We must be humble in our expectation that we can quickly resolve deep rooted problems like poverty and sectarian hatred. Moreover, no two countries are alike, and some will undergo chaotic change before things get better. But our security and values demand that we make the effort.

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements – because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism. We are working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians – because it is right, and because such a peace could help reshape attitudes in the region. And we must help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship – because American leadership has always been elevated by our ability to connect with peoples’ hopes, and not simply their fears.

Success on these fronts requires sustained engagement, but it will also require resources. I know that foreign aid is one of the least popular expenditures – even though it amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget. But foreign assistance cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national security, and any sensible long-term strategy to battle extremism. Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent. For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.

America cannot carry out this work if we do not have diplomats serving in dangerous places. Over the past decade, we have strengthened security at our Embassies, and I am implementing every recommendation of the Accountability Review Board which found unacceptable failures in Benghazi. I have called on Congress to fully fund these efforts to bolster security, harden facilities, improve intelligence, and facilitate a quicker response time from our military if a crisis emerges.

But even after we take these steps, some irreducible risks to our diplomats will remain. This is the price of being the world’s most powerful nation, particularly as a wave of change washes over the Arab World. And in balancing the trade-offs between security and active diplomacy, I firmly believe that any retreat from challenging regions will only increase the dangers we face in the long run.

Targeted action against terrorists. Effective partnerships. Diplomatic engagement and assistance. Through such a comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of large scale attacks on the homeland and mitigate threats to Americans overseas. As we guard against dangers from abroad, however, we cannot neglect the daunting challenge of terrorism from within our borders.

As I said earlier, this threat is not new. But technology and the Internet increase its frequency and lethality. Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit themselves to a violent agenda, and learn how to kill without leaving their home. To address this threat, two years ago my Administration did a comprehensive review, and engaged with law enforcement. The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community – which has consistently rejected terrorism – to identify signs of radicalization, and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence. And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family. Indeed, the success of American Muslims, and our determination to guard against any encroachments on their civil liberties, is the ultimate rebuke to those who say we are at war with Islam.

Indeed, thwarting homegrown plots presents particular challenges in part because of our proud commitment to civil liberties for all who call America home. That’s why, in the years to come, we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are. That means reviewing the authorities of law enforcement, so we can intercept new types of communication, and build in privacy protections to prevent abuse. That means that – even after Boston – we do not deport someone or throw someone in prison in the absence of evidence. That means putting careful constraints on the tools the government uses to protect sensitive information, such as the State Secrets doctrine. And that means finally having a strong Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to review those issues where our counter-terrorism efforts and our values may come into tension.

The Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks offers a recent example of the challenges involved in striking the right balance between our security and our open society. As Commander-in Chief, I believe we must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field. To do so, we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information. But a free press is also essential for our democracy. I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. That is why I have called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government over-reach. I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review. And I have directed the Attorney General to report back to me by July 12^th.

All these issues remind us that the choices we make about war can impact – in sometimes unintended ways – the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends. And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing.

The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

And that brings me to my final topic: the detention of terrorist suspects.

To repeat, as a matter of policy, the preference of the United States is to capture terrorist suspects. When we do detain a suspect, we interrogate them. And if the suspect can be prosecuted, we decide whether to try him in a civilian court or a Military Commission.During the past decade, the vast majority of those detained by our military were captured on the battlefield. In Iraq, we turned over thousands of prisoners as we ended the war. In Afghanistan, we have transitioned detention facilities to the Afghans, as part of the process of restoring Afghan sovereignty. So we bring law of war detention to an end, and we are committed to prosecuting terrorists whenever we can.

The glaring exception to this time-tested approach is the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The original premise for opening GTMO – that detainees would not be able to challenge their detention – was found unconstitutional five years ago. In the meantime, GTMO has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law. Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will end up at GTMO. During a time of budget cuts, we spend $150 million each year to imprison 166 people –almost $1 million per prisoner. And the Department of Defense estimates that we must spend another $200 million to keep GTMO open at a time when we are cutting investments in education and research here at home.

As President, I have tried to close GTMO. I transferred 67 detainees to other countries before Congress imposed restrictions to effectively prevent us from either transferring detainees to other countries, or imprisoning them in the United States. These restrictions make no sense. After all, under President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from GTMO with Congress’s support. When I ran for President the first time, John McCain supported closing GTMO. No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States. Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for terrorism-related offenses, including some who are more dangerous than most GTMO detainees. Given my Administration’s relentless pursuit of al Qaeda’s leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened.

Today, I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from GTMO. I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.

Even after we take these steps, one issue will remain: how to deal with those GTMO detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted – for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law. But once we commit to a process of closing GTMO, I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law.

I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future – ten years from now, or twenty years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?

Our sense of justice is stronger than that. We have prosecuted scores of terrorists in our courts. That includes Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit; and Faisal Shahzad, who put a car bomb in Times Square. It is in a court of law that we will try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of bombing the Boston Marathon. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is as we speak serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison here, in the United States. In sentencing Reid, Judge William Young told him, “the way we treat you…is the measure of our own liberties.” He went on to point to the American flag that flew in the courtroom – “That flag,” he said, “will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom.”

America, we have faced down dangers far greater than al Qaeda. By staying true to the values of our founding, and by using our constitutional compass, we have overcome slavery and Civil War; fascism and communism. In just these last few years as President, I have watched the American people bounce back from painful recession, mass shootings, and natural disasters like the recent tornados that devastated Oklahoma. These events were heartbreaking; they shook our communities to the core. But because of the resilience of the American people, these events could not come close to breaking us.

I think of Lauren Manning, the 9/11 survivor who had severe burns over 80 percent of her body, who said, “That’s my reality. I put a Band-Aid on it, literally, and I move on.”

I think of the New Yorkers who filled Times Square the day after an attempted car bomb as if nothing had happened.

I think of the proud Pakistani parents who, after their daughter was invited to the White House, wrote to us, “we have raised an American Muslim daughter to dream big and never give up because it does pay off."

I think of the wounded warriors rebuilding their lives, and helping other vets to find jobs.

I think of the runner planning to do the 2014 Boston Marathon, who said, “Next year, you are going to have more people than ever. Determination is not something to be messed with.”

That’s who the American people are. Determined, and not to be messed with.

Now, we need a strategy – and a politics –that reflects this resilient spirit. Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony on a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground. Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a veteran starting a business; a bustling city street. The quiet determination; that strength of character and bond of fellowship; that refutation of fear – that is both our sword and our shield. And long after the current messengers of hate have faded from the world’s memory, alongside the brutal despots, deranged madmen, and ruthless demagogues who litter history – the flag of the United States will still wave from small-town cemeteries, to national monuments, to distant outposts abroad. And that flag will still stand for freedom.

Thank you. God Bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Hat tip: Business Insider

Poll: Public Support for Chained CPI; Only Tepid Support for Health Care Law

2013-05-23T14:19:00-04:00

Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the president’s proposal to slow the growth of Social Security by using chained CPI to calculate benefit increases, but President Obama may have the public on his side: 57 percent favor “changing the way benefits are calculated so they increase at a slower rate,” when they learn about Social Security’s financial problems, according to the May Reason-Rupe poll. Thirty-four percent oppose such a change to Social Security.

Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents favor using chained CPI, upon learning that Social Security currently pays out more than it collects in taxes and without changes, the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted in 2033 requiring a benefit reduction of 25 percent or more. Younger people overwhelmingly support this change, while a plurality of seniors and retirees oppose it.

The January Reason-Rupe poll also asked about using chained CPI to calculate Social Security benefit increases, but did not include information about Social Security’s financial situation. Without being told this, 55 percent of Americans oppose using chained CPI to calculated benefit increases while 39 percent support it. Majorities of each political group oppose it, but a majority of Americans under 35 support it.

These data suggest that even without necessarily knowing about Social Security’s financial situation, young Americans are open to entitlement reform. However, upon learning about possible future benefit cuts, a majority of non-retirees also support changing the way Social Security benefits are calculated.

Although the public may support President Obama’s proposal to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated, the president’s health care law enjoys only tepid support. Only 32 percent of Americans say they liked the health care law when it was passed and still like it today. Seven percent liked the law when it was passed, but like it less now. Meanwhile, 45 percent disliked the health care law when it was passed and still dislike it. Four percent of Americans say they disliked the law when it passed, but like it more now.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted May 9-13 2013 interviewed 1003 adults on both mobile (503) and landline (500) phones, with a margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results found here. Full methodology can be found here. Demographics and detailed tables are available here.

Peter Suderman Reviews The Hangover Part III

2013-05-23T13:50:00-04:00

Senior Editor Peter Suderman reviews the third installment in the Hangover franchise:

It’s been said that you can’t go wrong underestimating your audience. “The Hangover Part III” plays like an extended attempt to test the limits of that idea. Grating and unfunny, cynical and stupid, it’s a movie that expects exactly nothing of its viewers, and offers them the same in return.

“Part III” is predicated on a fundamental error: that being irritating is also somehow hilarious. Over the course of 100 minutes or so, it throws virtually all of its weight behind this mistaken theory of comedy. The predictable result is a movie that is incredibly irritating and not at all funny.

Granted, it is not simply irritating. It is also cruel, jaded, and deeply juvenile. Like its predecessors, the movie is rated R, which is supposed to indicate that a film is not appropriate for children under the age of 17. The movie’s general foulness probably makes it unsuitable for anyone. But even being generous, the rating’s age floor is backwards. Instead, I would suggest that 17 is actually the upper limit on the age of individuals who might appreciate the movie’s lame shenanigans.

“The Hangover Part III” is the sort of comedy that relies heavily on infantile gags involving things like human rear-end-sniffing and unwanted homosexual come-ons. LOL, right? Or so the filmmakers hope. This is a movie designed for people who spend much of the running time texting, which is exactly what several audience members at the screening I attended did.

To be clear, the problem is not gross-out humor in and of itself. It’s the movie’s lazy substitution of cheap offense for laughs. The movies that manage to turn outrage into knee slappers — think “Borat” or “Team America” — have a take-no-prisoners zeal that the latest “Hangover” can’t match. It comes across as tired and desperate, a trailer-length gimmick that has now been extended into three feature-length escapades.

Read the whole thing in The Washington Times.

Achieving Privacy in Public

2013-05-23T13:44:00-04:00

danah boyd, an anthropologist of sorts, highlights something interesting in Pew's new report on teens and social media:

Pew's report shows an increase in teens' willingness to share all sorts of demographic, contact, and location data. This is precisely the data that makes privacy advocates anxious. At the same time, their data show that teens are well-aware of privacy settings and have changed the defaults even if they don't choose to manage the accessibility of each content piece they share. They're also deleting friends (74%), deleting previous posts (59%), blocking people (58%), deleting comments (53%), detagging themselves (45%), and providing fake info (26%).

My favorite finding of Pew's is that 58% of teens cloak their messages either through inside jokes or other obscure references, with more older teens (62%) engaging in this practice than younger teens (46%). This is the practice that I've seen significantly rise since I first started doing work on teens' engagement with social media. It's the source of what Alice Marwick and I describe as "social steganography" in our paper on teen privacy practices.

While adults are often anxious about shared data that might be used by government agencies, advertisers, or evil older men, teens are much more attentive to those who hold immediate power over them -- parents, teachers, college admissions officers, army recruiters, etc....Most teens aren't worried about strangers; they're worried about getting in trouble.

Over the last few years, I've watched as teens have given up on controlling access to content. It's too hard, too frustrating, and technology simply can't fix the power issues. Instead, what they've been doing is focusing on controlling access to meaning. A comment might look like it means one thing, when in fact it means something quite different. By cloaking their accessible content, teens reclaim power over those who they know who are surveilling them. This practice is still only really emerging en masse, so I was delighted that Pew could put numbers to it. I should note that, as Instagram grows, I'm seeing more and more of this. A picture of a donut may not be about a donut. While adults worry about how teens' demographic data might be used, teens are becoming much more savvy at finding ways to encode their content and achieve privacy in public.

Veronique de Rugy on the Difference Between Good Austerity and Bad

2013-05-23T13:30:00-04:00

In testimony this week before the Senate Budgetary Committee, Reason columnist and Mercatus Center researcher Veronique de Rugy addressed the effect of tax increases and spending cuts on economic growth. As she explained, in the pursuit of debt reduction, it is important to remember that the type of fiscal adjustment that we implement is more important than its size.

View this article.

New York Times Wants Congress to be Nicer to IRS, Meaner to Apple

2013-05-23T13:01:00-04:00

Today's New York Times contains a tale of two hearings: The fairly friendly dressing down of Apple CEO Tim Cook for his company's efforts to pay billions less in taxes by moving and keeping profits overseas vs. the hostile interrogation of Lois Lerner, who oversees the IRS's decision making process about tax exemptions for organizations and supervised the suppression and delay of applications by Tea Party–affiliated groups.

Here's how Michael Shear tells it in "Torches and Pitchforks for I.R.S. but Cheers for Apple":

Wednesday’s I.R.S. hearing felt like an inquisition — unforgiving, angry, prosecutorial.

Mr. Cook, by contrast, took his hot seat in front of senators who seemed halfhearted in their desire to beat up on the rich guy who makes their iPhones, and whose products are far more popular than they are.

“With him, they were just not going to go up against an American success story,” said Neil Eggleston, a veteran Washington lawyer who has prepared many government officials to face a grilling at the hands of lawmakers.

Here's the heart of his take:

One thing became clear this week on Capitol Hill: It is better to be a tax dodger than a tax collector.

Which is, frankly, nuts. The IRS got called up in front of the class because it (incompetently) used what should have been neutral administrative papershuffling for political ends, abusing the rights of private citizens in the process. Apple, by contrast, used totally legal mechanisms to minimize their tax burden, employing an army of lawyers to stay within the letter of the law.

It looks to me like congressional pitchforks are pointed in exactly the right direction (for once).

Bonus: 3 reason to fear the IRS:

FBI Sting Nets Philly Narcotics Officer

2013-05-23T13:00:00-04:00

One of Philly’s finest has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly planting drugs on people and stealing money from them.

From the Inquirer:

In the latest blow to the Philadelphia Police Department's embattled narcotics unit, federal authorities have arrested a veteran officer and accused him of stealing money and drugs from a suspected dealer.

Officer Jeffrey Walker was taken into custody Tuesday by FBI agents after a sting operation in which they recorded him bragging about how easy it was to rob dealers.

In a complaint filed in federal court Wednesday, authorities said they had recorded conversations between Walker and a federal informant in which they discussed a plan to plant cocaine in a suspect's car and later rob him. Walker arrested the suspect, then he and the informant entered the suspect's house and stole $15,000 in cash, the complaint said.

Earlier this year, the Philadelphia District Attorney announced he was tossing hundreds of drug cases after determining testimony from six Philly narcotics officers was tainted. The FBI is reportedly investigating the officers, who nevertheless remain on the force.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don't forget you can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us at @reason247.

It's Easier to Get Juries to Convict When You Don't Let Them Understand What's Going On, Raw Milk Division

2013-05-23T12:39:00-04:00

Followup on the "raw milk" prosecution against Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger I blogged about last week from the Daily Isthmus [link fixed]:

every time the words "raw milk" are about to come up during the proceedings, the jury is ushered out of the room. It happened Monday morning and again Tuesday afternoon.

It would be funny if conviction for Hershberger didn't mean jail time -- for a father of ten children....

The state is arguing that Hershberger violated the law by selling milk (raw) while he was not licensed. But here's the problem: licensing requires that milk producers sell to a licensed processing plant. If you don't sell to a plant, you aren't licensed. At issue is not the fact that Hershberger failed to obtain a license, but that he cannot get a license, period, to sell milk because he was no longer shipping to a plant. Instead, he was attempting to sell raw milk directly to buyers or buying club "members" who had purchased shares in cows. But no one is allowed to say that.

Judge Reynolds ruled in the prosecution's favor before the trial started that there will be no discussion of whether Hershberger had criminal intent in not obtaining a license, no discussion of the safety of raw milk and no discussion even of why his farm was raided in 2010.......

A telling moment during Tuesday's testimony was when Teresa Butterworth, witness for the prosecution and employee of DATCP's Bureau of Food Safety & Inspection whose responsibility it is to license and maintain dairy farm records, could not tell the defense what dairy plants do. Lead defense attorney Glenn Reynolds (no relation to the judge): "What do dairy plants do?" Butterworth: "I don’t know." Later she stated: "I just process the paperwork."

By circumscribing so narrowly the rules of engagement before the trial even began -- despite the defense attorneys' best efforts -- the state is counting on the jury to also just process the paperwork.

The Madison Capital Times reports on the mass public support for Hershberger.

Shikha Dalmia on Ann Coulter’s Conservative Welfare State

2013-05-23T12:00:00-04:00

Conservative crank Ann Coulter has made a career out of bad manners, so it was no surprise when she slammed her libertarian hosts at the annual International Students for Liberty confab in February as “pussies.” But Coulter should pay more attention to her own shortcomings. As Shikha Dalmia observes, when it comes to infringing on personal liberty, Coulter is just as bad as her lefty enemies.

View this article.

Vid: WikiLeaks, Assange & the End of Secrecy: Alex Gibney on "We Steal Secrets"

2013-05-23T12:00:00-04:00

"It's terribly important that we see the horrors of war, because then we know what's happening in our names," says Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney. "If that stuff is kept secret, then we're on our way to tyranny."

Watch the video above to find out why Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney considers Bradley Manning a tragic hero, Julian Assange an egomaniac who "believes his own fiction," and Wikileaks a force for liberation in an age of tyrannical despots abroad and a growing surveillance state at home.

The full text, associated links, and downloadable versions are available by following the link below.

View this article.

Liberals—Including the President!—Fantasize About Obama Acting Like a Wigga Warren Beatty

2013-05-23T11:30:00-04:00

It's been hard to keep up with the crazy lately, so I'm a little late to the news that the first black president of the United States has been dreaming lately about being a little bit more like the first fictitious white rapper Senator in filmic history, Warren Beatty's Bulworth. The New York Times broke the story:

Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of "going Bulworth," a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty's character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama's desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

"Probably every president says that from time to time," said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama's movie-inspired aspiration. "It's probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you're saying.”

Not surprisingly, the type of liberal political commentator who loved the movie's message (much more than the American public did) about corporate control of politics is now urging the president to go full Bulworth. Katrina vanden Heuvel, for example, attempted some awkward white rapping of her own in the Washington Post:

Of course, to do a Bulworth requires exposing the money that so pervades and corrupts our politics. Bulworth took delight — and gained massive popular support — in calling out his donors:

You know it ain't that funny, you contribute all my money . . .

As long as you can pay, I'm gonna do it all your way

Or as Obama might say to his Wall Street donors:

You are too big to fail

And too big to jail

And we'll keep paying you that tribute

So long as you continue to contribute

That would be "massive popular support" in a movie, Katrina. The WashPost's Ezra Klein also got into the presidential ventriloquism business, using Bulworth Obama's newly found spine to take on the Republican haterz:

Look, the reason the American people can't trust their government is here in Washington. Right now sequestration is cutting unemployment checks by 10 or 11 percent. Do you hear anyone talking about that? Or doing anything about it? No. You hear Republicans aides telling Politico, anonymously, that the speaker is quote "obsessed" with Benghazi. You know, I don't think most of the Republicans screaming about Benghazi could find Libya on a map. I don't think 10 of them knew our ambassador's name. And, let me be clear, Speaker Boehner certainly wasn't obsessed with giving us the money we asked for to keep the embassy's [sic] safe.

But now he's obsessed with Benghazi. And not even Benghazi. The Benghazi talking points. Are you kidding me? He's not obsessed with global warming or unemployment or rebuilding our infrastructure. And now that there's conflict, all of you are obsessed with Benghazi talking points too, and meanwhile, we're cutting the National Institutes of Health and we're cutting too deep into the military and we're making life harder for the unemployed and we're doing nothing to keep this planet in good shape for our kids.

You can read similar fantasia from Salon's Joan Walsh, Mother Jones's Asawin Suebsaeng, the Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger, The Nation's Jeremy Pikser, The American Prospect's Paul Waldman, NewsOne's Michael Arceneaux, and The Huffington Post's William Bradley. The general gist of which is that it would be better if Barack Hussein Obama acted a bit more like Jay Bullington Bulworth. So what did Bulworth do, exactly?

He tried to fuck a young Halle Berry, was dazzled by her straight-outta-Howard-Zinn interpretation of America's hollowed-out manufacturing base, decided to start telling uncomfortable "truths" (like to a black audience: "if you don't put down the malt liquor and chicken wings and get behind somebody other than a runningback who stabs his wife, you're NEVER gonna get rid of somebody like me!"), began dressing up like an old white liberal's version of what "gangsta" might look like and chanting out some excruciatingly awful anti-corporation raps, advocated socialism, became a media and political sensation, attempted to engineer his own assassination, changed his mind, but then got shot anyway by the evil insurance companies who just couldn't handle his pro-Medicare truth. After which he was visited by a Magical Negro who told him to keep on fighting.

It was, to put it charitably, not the most racially enlightened film. The politics were also, as the New York Post’s Kyle Smith helpfully reminds us, socialist. And as Jesse Walker pointed out in a great piece from 2004, it followed the now eight-decade Hollywood trope about a mythical politician who "survives an accident, sees the light, and starts to stand up for the little guy and fight the powers that be." I would expect political journalists to prefer the lure of Aaron Sorkin-style fantasies over the messy realities of governance, but the sitting American president? That's just weird, and unseemly.

But what troubles me most about Obama's cinematic jonesing is just the massive contempt that both Bulworth and Beatty showed for their audiences. Check out the picture's ballyhooed turning point, where Sen. Bulworth throws away his stale talking points and flat-out speaks truth to the powerless:

Are there any sectors of American political life not sandblasted with contemptuous caricature here? Yes—and those get their comeuppance later in the movie. Bulworth hates himself, his supporters, his opponents, his constituents, the media, corporations, Republicans, Democrats, Jews, Hollywood...basically everyone except a chosen few wise-speaking black folk who connect him to a new sense of authenticity. The "truth" that this politician is so liberated in the telling is basically that all of you people suck. Only an enlightened few are aware enough to realize that the whole game has been rigged by evil corporations.

As for blurting out the truth and taking the gloves off, we know one thing for sure about when Barack Obama so liberates himself: That's exactly when he's most likely to lurch to the left, and/or lie.

I liked Bulworth at the time (back when I agreed with its money-is-ruining-politics theorem), and I'll still give Beatty a B- for diving so enthusiastically into awkward waters, but as a presidential template, this is just embarrassing:

Katherine Mangu-Ward Defends Plastic Bags Against Sea Turtles and Adorable Children on Huff Post Live

2013-05-23T11:23:00-04:00

Watch as Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward sticks up for bag freedom at Huff Post Live!

Here's the segment info:

After bag bans have sprouted up at the city level, Californians are now considering a statewide crackdown on plastic bags.

Originally aired on May 22, 2013

Hosted by:

Alyona Minkovski

Guests:

Abbe Land @AbbeLand (West Hollywood , CA) Mayor of West Hollywood

Katherine Mangu-Ward @kmanguward (Washington, DC) Managing Editor at Reason Magazine

Nathan Weaver @EnvCalifornia (Los Angeles, CA) Oceans Advocate at Environment California

Eli Washburn (Grass Valley, CA) Student at Grass Valley Charter School

Temma Farrell (Grass Valley, CA) Student at Grass Valley Charter School

Why Lois Lerner, the Bureaucrat Behind the IRS Scandal, Probably Won't Lose Her Job

2013-05-23T11:12:00-04:00

On May 22, just one day after visiting the White House, liberal pundits Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall both called for Lois Lerner, the head of exempt organizations for the IRS, to be fired for her role in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Two hours later, Salon's Joan Walsh demanded the same thing.

Their demands will likely go unheeded, as Dan Foster explains at National Review Online:

Statistically speaking, the firing of a federal employee is a rare event. A Cato Institute study showed that in one year, just 1 in 5,000 non-defense, civilian federal employees was fired for cause. A widely cited analysis byUSA Today found that in FY 2011, the federal government fired just 11,668 out of 2.1 million employees (excluding military and postal workers). That’s a “separation for cause” rate of 0.55 percent, roughly a fifth the rate in the private sector.

The firing of employees who fit Lerner’s profile is rarer still. Lerner is very much a “white-collar” employee, and the same analysis found that blue-collar employees (such as food-service workers) were twice as likely to be fired. Lerner is a twelve-year vet at IRS, and before that was associate counsel at the Federal Elections Commission for many years. But fully 60 percent of federal employees fired were in their first two years on the job. Lerner has averaged $185,000 in salary from 2009 to 2012, but only 0.18 percent of federal employees making more than $100,000 were let go for cause. Most relevant of all, Lerner is a lawyer, and just 27 of the government’s 35,000 lawyers lost their jobs in 2011 — six fewer than left federal employment via the Big Sleep.

Part of the reason so few federal workers are let go is surely the, shall we say, culture of lowered expectations synonymous with government bureaucracy. But the greater part of it is that firings are complex and time-consuming. Forty-nine states have “at-will” employment laws, meaning that, specific contracts and covenants aside, a private-sector employer can let an employee go for any reason at all, with a few exceptions for things like discrimination and (ironically enough) the intimidation of whistleblowers. But in Washington, the process can take 18 months or more.

Not too long ago we ran a piece at Reason explaining why cops who routinely break the law seldom lose their jobs, something that defenders of public sector employees and their insanely generous job protections seem to forget pretty regularly.

Steve Chapman on Why Government Shouldn't Lower the BAC Bar for Drunk Driving

2013-05-23T10:30:00-04:00

In its new report on how to reduce drunk-driving deaths, the National Transportation Safety Board states its goal in the title: "Reaching Zero." The agency thinks it is irreproachable to try to ensure that no one ever dies in an alcohol-related accident. In fact, writes Steve Chapman, it's a utopian goal requiring excessive compulsion in the pursuit of unattainable perfection.

View this article.

Remember, Kids: The Police Are Your Friends (And Might Be Trying to Entrap You into a Drug Buy)

2013-05-23T10:23:00-04:00

A Temecula, California, couple whose special needs son (along with 21 other students) was arrested in a massive drug sting at Chaperral High School have now, ABC News reports:

filed a claim against the Temecula Valley Unified School District for unspecified damages, alleging the district administrators did not protect their special-needs son but instead “participated with local authorities in an undercover drug sting that intentionally targeted and discriminated against their son.”

“It is shattering to our son. I don’t know how he will ever be able to trust friends again,” Doug Snodgrass, the father of the student, told ABCNews.com....

The young man was fresh to his new high school when:

“Our son was a new kid in August, and this undercover cop befriended him,” Snodgrass said. On the second day of school, Snodgrass said, Daniel asked the boy to buy drugs. “He asked my son if he could find marijuana for $20,” Snodgrass said. ”Three weeks later my son was able to bring back a half joint he received from a homeless guy.”....

It took the 17-year-old three weeks to procure a half joint of marijuana, according to court documents filed later in Riverside County juvenile court. After he was pressed again by the police officer, the student retrieved another joint for $20, from another homeless man, the documents said.

“During that time, he received more than 60 text messages from this undercover officer,” Snodgrass said. “Our son has a real problem reading social cues and social inferences because of his various disabilities. It would’ve been hard for him to figure to out that he was talking to an undercover officer.”

Snodgrass said his son had been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and various anxiety disorders.

The bust was handled classily, to be sure:

“Our son went to school the morning of Dec. 11 and he didn’t show up at home after school, because he was arrested in his classroom,” Snodgrass said. “Police went into his classroom armed, and handcuffed our son. We were not notified by anyone, and he was held for two days, and we were not able to see him,” although he said they got his medication to him the first night he was in detention through a nurse....

In January, the juvenile court judge determined there were extenuating circumstances and ruled that Snodgrass’ son could do informal probation and 20 hours of community service, which would ultimately lead to a “no finding of guilt.” The court allowed the student to return to school in March, however, Snodgrass said the school has continued to “bully” his son.

According to the claim filed on April 26 against the school district, Snodgrass’ son was suspended for more than 10 days, forced to be educated at home and subjected to the threat of expulsion.

“Our son was cleared of the criminal charge, but the school continued to try and expel him,” Snodgrass said.....

“We have now filed a claim against the school district. Part of the complaint we filed on April 26 states that they [the school district] are trying to harass and intimidate our son. I will say the teachers and students have been very supportive, it is strictly the administration.”

Temecula Valley Unified School District released a statement to ABC News via its attorney, which begins: “The district continues to act lawfully and in furtherance of its mission to educate students and better prepare them for successful adulthood...."

The Snodgrass's have learned a valuable lesson indeed, Temecula Valley.

Government Offers Weak Defense of Bogus Study that Fueled Chinatown Bus Closings

2013-05-23T09:40:00-04:00

A 30-year-old man wearing only his underwear was lying in a fetal position in the middle of a highway in Weirwood, Virginia, when a passenger bus struck and killed him. It was 1:30 in the morning. The bus belonged to a company called Virginia Seagull Travel, which is a "curbside" bus company, meaning it picks up and drops off passengers on a street curb instead of at a traditional station.

This tragic accident, which took place on July 9, 2008, had outsized influence on the findings of an error-riddled government study comparing the safety records of curbside vs. conventional buses, which I wrote about for Reason.com a couple weeks ago. The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency, published the report.

Let's even grant that this particular accident could conceivably tell us something meaningful about the safety of curbside buses, even though an official investigation absolved Virginal Seagull Travel of all responsibility. With regard to this accident, the NTSB study's main sin from a statistical standpoint was the fact that it ignored that the company is a tiny outfit. Over the course of six years, Virginia Seagull Travel maintained a fleet size of just three buses and had this one fatal accident. The NTSB converted these numbers into an accident rate of 35 fatal accidents for every 100 buses. A much larger company running 1,515 buses and 21 crashes in which someone was killed was assigned a rate of 1.3 fatal accidents for every 100 buses. Ludicrously, the large company was weighted the same as Virginia Seagull Travel. By disregarding wide variations in company size, the NTSB report arrived at a headline-grabbing and misleading conclusion that curbside bus companies were "seven times" more fatal-accident prone than conventional bus companies. By analogy, as I wrote in my article, "it’s as if a rookie baseball player with three at bats and one hit received the same ranking as a starter with 600 at-bats and 200 hits."

This instance of "statistical malpractice," which is how quantitative analyst and statistics expert Aaron Brown characterized it, isn't even the report's most egregious flaw. It also misclassified bus companies. Inexplicably, Peter Pan and Greyhound (among several other conventional carriers) were counted as curbside companies. Also, the NTSB press office trumpeted statistically insignificant findings, including the "seven times" figure mentioned above.

Now other reporters have taken a second look at the report and the National Transportation Safety Board has responded to several points in my original article.

Bloomberg News reporter Jeff Plungis, who covers the bus industry, has a piece out headlined, "NTSB Defends Study that Preceded Chinatown Bus Safety Sweep." Plungis writes:

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is defending itself against accusations it skewed a study that preceded the shutdown of 26 so-called Chinatown bus operations in the Northeast.

Anomalies in how the board classified motorcoach operators and calculated fatality rates raise doubts about its conclusion that curbside companies, including most Chinatown carriers, are about seven times more probable to have passenger deaths than companies using terminals, according to the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group for limited government.

The article goes on to state incorrectly that one of my main criticisms was that the study didn't factor in mileage when calculating accident rates. Mileage counts aren't in the raw data, so there would be no way to factor them in. Then it leaves out mention of how the NTSB distorted its findings by blending accident rates of large carriers and small ones without weighting by size.

This omission allows the NTSB to get away with making hay out of the fact that reclassifying the bus companies doesn't, as the article notes, "alter the finding that curbside operators have been more dangerous." Technically it's true that if you correct the data by moving nearly all the fatal accidents from one column to the other it doesn't dramatically change the results. That's because of the very methodological flaw the article didn't mention: The companies weren't weighted by size, so many of the accidents have a miniscule effect on the results. Aaron Brown put it best: "If virtually all your data doesn't affect your conclusion, you're doing something wrong."

Over at Next City, Matt Bevilacqua offers a pretty good summary of the NTSB report's shortcomings, noting,

In a long article published last week, Reason magazine’s Jim Epstein draws attention to what he considers a number of major flaws in the study. The most glaring of these is the fact that of 37 fatal crashes cited by the NTSB, a full 30 didn’t involve curbside buses at all. Rather, “conventional” bus companies, or those with stops at actual stations, accounted for most of the accidents. The well-known conventional bus service Greyhound, for instance, was responsible for 24 of the crashes.

Bevilacqua does allow the agency's press officer, Eric Weiss, to get away with claiming that I put too much emphasis on one chart: “'[Epstein] pulls one of nine charts on one page of a 66-page report,” Weiss said. “That’s not even one of the goals of the report, and he says that it is the centerpiece of our report.'" He's referring to the appallingly inaccurate finding that curbside bus companies are "seven times" more fatal-accident prone.

Surely Weiss is being disingenuous, since he knows full well that his organization chose to highlight this chart in its press release, which in turn inspired major newspapers around the country to repeat this absurdity either in their headlines or at the top of their stories (e.g., "Chinatown Buses' Death Rate Said Seven Times That of Others").

Anyway, as I noted in my piece, while that particular chart is particularly offensive the rest of the report is just as meaningless. If your data are wrong, your analysis is wrong across the board.

Bevilacqua also got Weiss to utter this howler in response to my charge that the NTSB reported statistically insignificant findings: "'We do not say it is statistically significant, we just put out the numbers.'”

To demonstrate the absurdity of that statement, let's assume the NTSB had looked only at Virginia Seagull Travel on the day it happened to have a fatal accident. Then it would have found that curbside buses have a 100% fatal accident rate. If that were the case, would Weiss also have just "put out the numbers?" Just "putting out numbers" without mentioning that they're practically meaningless is profoundly irresponsible.

A piece in The Weekly Standard recounts how the National Transportation Safety Board denied my request for the study data:

As [Epstein] was researching his piece, he asked the NTSB to share the data. They did not respond. So he filed a formal FOIA request for it. That was ignored, too. In particular, Epstein was interested in a chart showing the relative accident rates and confidence intervals. The NTSB told him that such a chart did not exist.

So my employer had to purchase bus accident data from a federal contractor and I had to rebuild the chart myself. Shortly after my article came out, the NTSB released the "nonexistent" chart.[*] Eric Weiss apologized to me via email, citing a "misunderstanding." As The Weekly Standard notes, "If you find that infuriating, imagine how it must feel to have been involved in one of the 27 curbside companies that was shut down" after the flawed report was published.

[*] The chart is hard to find on the NTSB's website, so I've reposted it here. It fully substantiates my case against the study. The NTSB's numbers do differ slightly from mine because the federal dataset they're drawn from is updated retroactively on a daily basis. I accessed the data about a year after the NTSB, so my numbers are more up to date.

New Poll: Parents, Not Taxpayers, Should Pay for Preschool

2013-05-23T09:37:00-04:00

President Obama has proposed expanding government preschool programs, however according to the latest Reason-Rupe poll, only 37 percent of Americans favor raising taxes to create a universal preschool system, while 61 percent oppose. When asked who should be “primarily responsible” for paying for preschool, 57 percent of Americans think parents should pay and 32 percent want the government to be responsible for paying.

Not surprisingly Republicans overwhelmingly (80 percent) oppose a proposal to raise taxes to create universal preschool, 60 percent of Independents agree, and Democrats are evenly divided at roughly 48 percent. Similar shares of each political group hold parents primarily responsible for providing preschool for their children.

Underlying assumptions about who should be primarily responsible for preschool predicts support for the proposal to raise taxes to establish universal preschool. Seventy-eight percent of Americans who think parents should be primarily responsible for preschool oppose the government-run universal preschool proposal. In contrast, 65 percent of those who say government should be primarily responsible support the universal preschool proposal.

While most Americans say parents should be primarily responsible for paying for preschool, a majority of liberals, college-aged Americans, and a plurality of non-white women, and unmarried women say government should be primarily responsible. Similarly, a majority of these groups, and partisan Democrats, favors the proposal to raise taxes to fund universal pre-school.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted May 9-13 2013 interviewed 1003 adults on both mobile (503) and landline (500) phones, with a margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results found here. Full methodology can be found here. Demographics and detailed tables are available here.

A.M. Links: U.S. Killed Four Americans With Drones, Lois Lerner May Have Waived Her Rights, Sen. Cruz Trusts Neither Party on Spending

2013-05-23T09:00:00-04:00

That which everybody knew has now been confirmed: The Obama administration admits to using drones to kill four Americans overseas.
IRS apparatchik Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights by first reading a statement asserting her innocence, claims House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. Experts debate that point, but it seems like a good time to point out: if you're going to shut up, just shut up.
Sen. Ted Cruz says he doesn't trust Republicans any more than Democrats to deal with the federal government's longstanding spending addiction.
Settling lawsuits against a Brooklyn narcotics unit has become a major expenditure for New York City, costing the rotten apple $1.5 million so far. The unit's officer in charge has also been promoted.
Charles Ramsey, who helped rescue four kidnap victims held captive on Cleveland's West Side for a decade, has been promised free hamburgers for life by a dozen restaurants. He'll sure as hell be eating better than Ariel Castro.
Weep not for the unwiped bottoms of Venezuela. The country's government has allocated money to import 39 million rolls of toilet paper to alleviate the shortage. Truly, they have mastered economic planning.
A British government emergency committee meets in the wake of a brutal, public murder of a soldier, which was apparently staged as an act of terrorism.

Get Reason.com and Reason 24/7 content widgets for your websites.

Follow Reason and Reason 24/7 on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. You can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up here. Have a news tip? Send it to us!

Attn DC Reasonoids: Nick Gillespie Discusses Kevin Williamson's New Book at Cato Today (Free Lunch)

2013-05-23T07:42:00-04:00

That headline above is a classic case of burying the lede.

In any case, I'm excited to be one of the discussants of Kevin Williamson's new book, The End is Near & It's Going to be Awesome!: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, & More Secure, at Washington's Cato Institute. Lunch follows.

If you're in the DC area, come on out (and RSVP details). If you can't make it, the show will stream live at Cato's website.

Details:

The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure

Featuring the author Kevin D. Williamson,National Review; with comments by Nick Gillespie, Editor in Chief, Reason.com and Reason TV; and Michael Tanner, Cato Institute.

12:00pm Hayek Auditorium

Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403

Phone (202) 842 0200

Fax (202) 842 3490

Judge Napolitano on the DOJ's Assault on Press Freedom

2013-05-23T07:30:00-04:00

The reason we have the due process safeguards imposed upon the government by the Constitution is to keep tyranny from lurking anywhere here, writes Judge Andrew Napolitano, much less around the corner. Justice Felix Frankfurter warned of this 70 years ago when he wrote, "The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards." That was true then, and it is true now.

View this article.