Hit & Run

David Brooks Wonders Why Those Muslims Are So Violent and Hateful

2009-11-11T23:42:00-05:00

Glenn Greenwald contemplates David Brooks' latest, and is amazed:

here's a person who is constantly advocating and justifying the killing, bombing, and slaughtering of Muslims, including well over 100,000 innocent civilians. And yet today he writes a column saying: Look over there at those radical Muslims; can you believe how degraded and inhumane they are? In fact, he says, "they" -- those Muslims over there -- "don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so." That's from the same person who cheerleads for the endless deaths of Muslims and destruction of the Muslim world while thinking that it makes him strong, resolute, Churchillian, righteous and noble -- exactly that which he accuses "fringe Muslims" of doing.

A piece I wrote back in 2003 on why being pro-war means never having to say you're sorry.

"No, We Just Meant Electric Cars Were Vital to Our Future in that You Wouldn't Give Us $12 Billion Unless We Promised Them"

2009-11-11T21:16:00-05:00

We should just be happy that the government isn't forcing them to--yet--but Chrysler pulls a switcheroo on its previous promises proferred to pull plenty of public pennies, as summed up by USA Today:

If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you're in for a big disappointment.

Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job, Automotive News reports today. Chrysler cited its devotion to electric vehicles as one of the key reasons why the Obama administration and Congress needed to give it $12.5 billion in bailout money, the News points out.

Reason magazine's August/September cover story on why the auto bailout was "Illegal. Illiberal. Ill-fated."

Frederick Douglass, Classical Liberalism, and the Fight for Racial Equality

2009-11-11T19:27:00-05:00

Writing at Christianity Today, University of Colorado historian Paul Harvey has some unkind words for the recent book Race & Liberty in America, which was edited by Southern Illinois University historian Jonathan Bean. As I discussed in my review of the book, it’s a wide-ranging collection of speeches, articles, legal decisions, and other documents demonstrating the long and essential role that classical liberal ideas have played in America’s fight for racial equality.

Harvey takes a much dimmer view of that role, arguing that there is no coherent classical liberal tradition when it comes to race, and that Bean failed “to investigate the complexity and contradictions within classical liberalism with the same zeal that he applies (especially in the conclusion) to left liberalism.” I’ll leave Bean to mount his own defense against those and other charges, but I would like to challenge Harvey on a few matters pertaining to the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose writings feature prominently in the book, and whose status as a classical liberal Harvey calls into question. Here’s Harvey:

Douglass certainly drew (as did most antislavery activists) from the classical liberal tradition, and the contribution of classical liberalism to the antislavery movement stands as its proudest moment. But of course, the most representatives defenders of that classical liberal tradition were southerners such as Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, who perceived the Republicans as the party of big government, conspiring to take away local authority, individual freedom (especially property rights), and the proper Constitutional authority of the states. The Confederate revolution was, in large part, a classical liberal one, an inconvenient truth for the thesis presented here.

There are some major problems with this. First, Harvey confuses classical liberal ideas with the various individuals (and governments) who sometimes selectively espouse them. So while Confederates like Davis and Stephens may have struck a libertarian note by complaining about the “tyrant Lincoln” trampling on state’s rights, the Confederacy itself violated the most basic and essential tenet of classical liberalism: the right of individual self-ownership, or as Frederick Douglass put it in his famous letter to his former master, “You are a man, and so am I...In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me.” To call the Confederate revolution “a classical liberal one” is to fundamentally misunderstand what classical liberalism is all about.

In fact, one of Douglass’s greatest achievements was to employ the classical liberalism of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as weapons against slavery and against the Confederacy. As an escaped slave and self-taught author and orator, Douglass understood better than most just how potent the promise of liberty, equality, and “unalienable rights” could be, and he never tired of pointing that potency out to his mostly white audiences.

In contrast, consider John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who was perhaps slavery’s most eloquent defender, and who Harvey dubiously places in “a long line of classical liberal thinkers.” Unlike Douglass, Calhoun hated the Declaration of Independence, denouncing its assertion that “all men are created equal” as “the most dangerous of all political error.” As Calhoun put it in an 1848 speech, the Declaration’s false notion of equality “had strong hold on the mind of Mr. Jefferson…which caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the former, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the latter.”

In other words, both Calhoun and Douglass understood that slavery and classical liberalism were incompatible. This led Calhoun to denounce classical liberalism, and led Douglass to embrace it. So if anyone from that era deserves to be called classical liberalism's "most representative defender," it’s Frederick Douglass.

New at Reason: Michael C. Moynihan on Anti-Muslim Backlashes

2009-11-11T18:00:00-05:00

One can always find, in a nation of 300 million people, examples of boorish behavior towards religious minorities, writes Michael C. Moynihan. But if Muslims that embrace violence against non-Muslims are a tiny minority, it is time to acknowledge that attacks on Muslims by non-Muslims in the United States are perpetrated by an even tinier minority. That the United States doesn’t do backlashes needs to be restated frequently and forcefully, rather than ignored in favor of exploiting a “teachable moment” of religious tolerance.

Police Defend, Lie About Devices That Extract Money From and Cause Bodily Harm to Citizens

2009-11-11T17:56:00-05:00

In Los Angeles, there are 32 intersections outfitted with red light cameras. "The LAPD," reports David Goldstein of the local CBS television affiliate, "claims accidents are down after they installed cameras, but are they telling the whole truth or just trying to make money off motorists? We crunched the numbers and the results may surprise you."

Well, they won't surprise you, maybe, but they're jarring nonetheless:

We wanted to know actual numbers of accidents at red light camera intersections to see if they really went down.

When we asked, the LAPD became very defensive. The sergeant in charge told me in an e-mail, "The city would hope that it is the goal of KCBS/KCAL to discuss the positive aspects of the photo red light program."

So we filed a public records request. The department charged us more than $500 for a computer run. When we got the numbers back, they told a different story.

We looked at every accident at every red light camera intersection for six months of data before the cameras were installed and six months after.

The final figures? Twenty of the 32 intersections show accidents up after the cameras were installed! Three remained the same and only nine intersections showed accidents decreasing.

The problem? Motorists see the cameras flash, slam on their brakes, and get rear-ended. Helpfully, the LAPD does not measure rear-end crashes in front of red-light intersections; but only the crashes of people who've run a red. Those are down 34 percent, which the department crows about. When confronted with overall intersection data, which tells an unhappier story, the LAPD suddenly says this:

"It would be improper to draw a correlation between all accidents going up and the red light cameras," a spokesperson from the LAPD said.

Read the whole thing; link via LA Observed. Reason on red-light cameras here.

Klaatu Meet Benedict - The Vatican Contemplates the Meaning of Space Aliens

2009-11-11T17:16:00-05:00

The Vatican held a conference last week on the scientific, philosophical, and religious implications of the existence of extraterrestrial life. The head of the Vatican's Observatory, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, convened the meeting. The AP reports:

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues "whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds."

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican's daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

"If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound," he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions.

In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said in that interview.

"Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom."

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered "part of creation."

The religious implications of the existence of intelligent life have been explored in a variety of science fiction novels. For example, Christian apologist C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy uses Venus and Mars as backdrops for considering what would have happened had Eve resisted temptation in the earthly Garden of Eden. Probably my favorite in this genre is James Blish's A Case of Conscience (1958). A Jesuit priest travels to the planet Lithia which is inhabited by a race of beings whose society is characterized by peace, logic, and understanding in the complete absence of any belief in God. The priest comes to believe that such a happy race of aliens must be a snare and delusion of Satan. Naturally, bad things happen.

Ultimately, the chief theological question for believers would be whether their deity had arranged for a separate salvation (whatever that is) of intelligent aliens or should they be proselytized?

Hey Polar Bears, You're Blocking the TV!

2009-11-11T16:51:00-05:00

OK, that last post was depressing. So here's some awesome polling news to balance it out:

Most adults (53%) say being able to buy whatever kind of TV they want is more important than conserving energy.

Americans Not Hopeful

2009-11-11T16:45:00-05:00

A new Pew poll finds that Americans are feeling very "meh" about political goings-on these days. Says Pew:

Two-thirds of the public is dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. Fully nine-in-ten say that national economic conditions are only fair or poor, and nearly two-thirds describe their own finances that way—the most since the summer of 1992. An increasing proportion of Americans say that the war in Afghanistan is not going well, and a plurality continues to oppose the health care reform proposals in Congress.

Still Americans polled (rightly) recognize that third parties are not going to save them from this morass. About half of of Americans said they'd like to see some third party action, but that number hasn't changed much in years and hasn't spiked recently. Why? The system isn't structured to admit third parties into the ring, so they don't represent a source of hope.

Strictly speaking, I suppose the correct answer to the question "Should we have a third party in the U.S.?" is "Yes, and I would also like a pony." But neither is likely to happen.

New at Reason: David Harsanyi on Abortion and the Health Care Bill

2009-11-11T16:30:00-05:00

If liberals are so disturbed by Congress' dictating whether abortion is a legitimate health care issue or not, writes David Harsanyi, it only makes sense that they should be equally troubled by government management of other health care decisions. But as we've seen, health care "reform" is an ideological crusade immune from logic.

The Ayn Rand T-Shirt! And Other Reason-Emblazoned Goodies!

2009-11-11T15:59:00-05:00

As Reason.tv's 10-part, two-week series Radicals for Capitalism: Celebrating the Enduring Legacy of Ayn Rand's Ideas enters its final stretch, let me pitch one piece of merchandise that no Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, or Reason magazine fan—or Whittaker Chambers critic—should be without: a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of Reason's classic 1973 special issue on the former Alisa Rosenbaum.

It's available in many colors and many sizes, in women's and men's styles, in organic and less-than-organic fabric, at prices ranging from $21.99 to $24.99. Only Ellsworth Toohey could say no!

Go here or click on the image for ordering information and to see other Reason products ranging from aluminum water bottles to baby bibs to trucker hats to (dast we advertise it?) a made-in-the-USA thong featuring the logo of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.

Earlier today, Reason.tv released an exclusive interview with Rand confidante Barbara Branden, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand. Tomorrow, we follow that with a new interview with Nathaniel Branden, Rand's one-time "intellectual heir" who chronicled his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Rand in Judgment Day and My Years with Ayn Rand.

Intern at Reason This Winter/Spring!

2009-11-11T15:02:00-05:00

Reason is now accepting applications for the winter/spring 2010 Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship. The intern works 10 weeks in our Washington, D.C. office, beginning in January 2010, and receives a $5,000 stipend.

The job includes reporting and writing for Reason and Reason Online, and helping with research, proofreading, and other tasks. Previous interns have gone on to work at such places as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, ABC News, and Reason itself.

To apply, send your résumé, up to five writing samples (preferably published clips), and a cover letter to:

Gray Internship
Reason
1747 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009

Electronic applications can be sent to intern@reason.com, with the subject line: Gray Internship Application.

The deadline for applications is November 13, 2009.

America's Finest News Source

2009-11-11T14:50:00-05:00

"Afghan Presidential Election A Celebration Of All Forms Of Government," reports The Onion:

While the election is being hailed as a testament to Afghanistan's devotion to autocratic, theocratic, and possibly even oligarchic ideals, it was not without its share of tragedy. On the day of the vote, Taliban insurgents fired more than 120 rockets in Kandahar alone, causing many Afghans to lose their lives in the name of whatever form of government they were or were not actively participating in.

"People have to realize that any burgeoning exilarchy, autocracy, or tyranny will, from time to time, experience setbacks," Robert Carlisle, an international adviser to the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, told reporters. "The same goes for a burgeoning feudalistic, fascist, or kratocratic society, which is another thing we've had here over the past several months. Actually, if one has ever studied consociationalism, there was a little bit of that, too."

Whole thing here.

Reason.tv: Barbara Branden on The Passion of Ayn Rand

2009-11-11T13:40:00-05:00

Arguably, no two people were closer to Ayn Rand than Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, whom Rand once named as her "intellectual heir." Indeed, when the Brandens married in 1953, the author served as bridesmaid (Rand had also urged the pair to wed).

A decade later, the Brandens would collaborate on the first biography of Rand, Who Is Ayn Rand? In 1986, Barbara published a second biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand, which eventually was made into an award-winning Showtime movie starring Helen Mirren.

Despite the ruinous and controversial romantic affair between Rand and Nathaniel Branden, and her eventual ouster from Rand's inner circle, Barbara still feels fondly for the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. As Branden, now 80, recalls in this Reason.tv interview, "I felt like she's answering questions that I've been looking for answers for, and nobody's been giving me any sort of answer until now."

Approximately seven minutes. Interview by Seth Goldin, camera by Alex Manning, and editing by Hawk Jensen.

This is part of the Reason.tv series Radicals For Capitalism: Celebrating the Ideas of Ayn Rand. Go here for more information, other videos, and related materials.

Go here for embed code and downloadable versions of this video.

This video is also available on Reason.tv's YouTube channel. Go here to subscribe.

Does Washington Post Columnist Ruth Marcus Not Know What a Tax Is?

2009-11-11T13:07:00-05:00

In today's Washington Post, columnist Ruth Marcus takes on the weary task of refuting "a GOP blizzard of untrue statements" about the Democratic health care reform effort. Some do appear to be the kind of political exaggeration to the point of prevarication that passes for discourse in DC nowadays. However, one alleged untruth that caught my eye was the following:

Kentucky Republican Brett Guthrie: "The bill raises taxes for just about everyone."

Not true. The bill imposes a surtax on the top 0.3 percent of households, individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million.

Yes, strictly speaking the Democratic bill does call only that a tax. Other assessments that apply to nearly all Americans go by other names, e.g., "contributions" and "fines." But as my Reason colleague Jacob Sullum recently explained, a tax by any other name still smells as stenchy:

...the bills would establish a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage” and an “individual responsibility excise tax,” respectively. “If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code and you tell the IRS to collect it,” a tax expert told the Associated Press in September, “I think that’s a tax.”

The president disagrees. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” he insisted during a squirm-inducing September 20 exchange with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.” Stephanopoulos responded by literally getting out the dictionary to demonstrate that “a charge…imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes” is commonly considered a tax.

If Obama can deny that a charge is a tax even when it’s collected by the IRS and identified as a “tax” in the legislation creating it, he surely sees nothing tax-like in the money people are required to spend if they want to avoid that charge. Yet forcing people to buy insurance they do not want so their premiums can subsidize other people’s health care looks a lot like a tax-funded welfare program, even if the money does not flow through the public treasury....

“What we are saying,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) explained last week, “is everybody will contribute…to making sure that health care options are available to all of our citizens.” So we're talking about a legally required contribution that will be used to provide a government-arranged benefit. If only there were a shorter way of expressing that concept.

I do wish that Marcus would get on to investigating the whopper that the Congressional health reform bills will "assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans."

The whole excellent Sullum column on "Obama's Hidden Fees" can be found here.

Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Detroit's Downward Spiral

2009-11-11T12:45:00-05:00

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia looks at whether Detroit Mayor Dave Bing can save the Motor City from economic collapse.

Read all about it here.

Follow Reason on The YouTube, The Facebook, & The Twitter

2009-11-11T12:37:00-05:00

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Traffic Ticket to the Exciting World of Ratting on Violent Criminals

2009-11-11T12:04:00-05:00

When Richard Furlong, a Buffalo labor lawyer, found out that his 20-year-old daughter, Bianca Hervey, had been nabbed for driving without a license in Attica, New York, he was angry. Partly he was angry that Hervey had neglected to pay several traffic tickets, which resulted in the suspension of her license. But mostly he was angry that Attica police had used the occasion to pressure Hervey into becoming a drug informant. Hervey, a college student who says she doesn't use drugs and doesn't know anyone in Attica who does, told her father she signed a contract agreeing to be a confidential informant after the police threatened her with jail. Furlong had the contract rescinded, but he has been unable to convince Attica officials that it's bad policy to look for informants among people who are not involved in the drug culture. "There has to be a nexus into the drug world," a narcotics officer tells The Buffalo News. "If there is no connection, you're asking them to introduce themselves into a seedy underworld of drugs, corruption and violence, so you can gain some future targets."

Even when people are arrested on drug charges, the News notes, making them into informants can have deadly results. It cites the case of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old who was murdered by alleged drug dealers in Tallahassee last year after she was busted for marijuana possession and pressured to be an informant. The incident led the Florida legislature to pass a law that tightened the rules for the use of informants. Attica Police Chief William Smith, who refuses to discuss his department's informant policy, is unapologetic about endangering the lives of naive young people arrested on minor charges. "Mr. Furlong doesn't like the way police do things, I guess," he tells the News.

It's worth noting that, while police may always feel a need for informants, laws that criminalize consensual activities such as drug sales greatly magnify that need, since there are no victims to complain or provide evidence. To its credit, the News quotes Peter Christ, the former Tonawanda, New York, police captain who founded Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, regarding the seeming desperation signified by recruiting someone like Hervey as an informant. "When you have a doomed, failed policy," Christ says, "these are the kinds of things you do to try to make it seem like it's working."

Radley Balko discusses the Hoffman case here, here, and here.

[Thanks to Richard Gross for the tip.]

Don't Mess With Ron Paul's Army

2009-11-11T12:01:00-05:00

Here's a happy headline! "Airport rules changed after Ron Paul aide detained." The story:

An angry aide to Rep. Ron Paul, an iPhone and $4,700 in cash have forced the Transportation Security Administration to quietly issue two new rules telling its airport screeners they can only conduct searches related to airplane safety. [...]

The new rules, issued in September and October, tell officers "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security" and that large amounts of cash don't qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety. [...]

The ACLU sued in June on behalf of [Steve] Bierfeldt, who was detained after he sent a metal box with $4,700 in cash and checks through an X-ray machine at the airport.

He had the cash as part of his duties as director of development for the Campaign for Liberty, the offshoot group that Mr. Paul, Texas Republican, created from his failed presidential bid.

Mr. Bierfeldt recorded audio of the confrontation on his iPhone, including threats, insults and repeated questions about where he obtained the money.

"Are you from this planet?" one officer told him, while another accused him of acting like a child for asking what part of the law forced him to answer their questions about the money.

Whole thing here. Reason on the Bierfeldt case here, and make sure to re-read our classic February 2004 cover story on the TSA, "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."

Health Reform Gone Wrong

2009-11-11T11:32:00-05:00

Last month, I pointed out that health-care reforms at the state level have not been terribly successful. One of the states I looked at was Maine, which promised in 2003 that all 128,000 of the state's uninsured citizens would be covered by 2009. But $155 million later, only about 3,400 are covered through the state's public insurance option, and the rate of uninsured has stayed roughly the same. Today, the New York Times takes look at the troubled reform efforts, many of which mirror national proposals now in Congress, and concludes:

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.

Whole thing here.

New Documentary Exposes Mass Corruption in New Jersey Public School System

2009-11-11T11:24:00-05:00

Over the weekend, I spoke at a conference in Philadelphia hosted by Students for Liberty, an impressive, rapidly growing national affiliation of libertarian-minded college students. One of the other speakers was Bob Bowdon, the occasional "reporter" for the Onion News Network (where he goes by the character name Brian Scott) and host of a forthcoming talk show on PBS.

Bowdon was speaking to promote The Cartel, a serious documentary he produced exposing some jaw-dropping corruption in the New Jersey public school system. New Jersey spends more education dollars per pupil than any other state, which Bowdon says made the state ideal for a documentary showing how much of that money goes to waste—and how little it buys in terms of actual education.

Here's a trailer:

Reason on education here. Our dizzying illustrated flow chart showing how to fire an incompetent New York City public school teacher here.

More Stimulus Shenanigans

2009-11-11T10:46:00-05:00

The Boston Globe investigates job-creation claims in the Bay State, and finds something stinkier than week-old chowder:

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The Globe's finding is based on the federal government's just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was "almost nothing." Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually - subsidies for affordable housing, for example - was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports.

"There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds," said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. "It's hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this."

Governments that lie to you are not worthy of respect.

Link via Drudge. Reason Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy on other bogus stimulus claims here, here, and here.

Public Option Advocate Claims Death-Dealing Insurance Companies Could Kill More Americans Than the Iraq War

2009-11-11T10:46:00-05:00

Is the House health reform bill as liberal as any health care bill is going to get? Some liberals think so, and Politico's reporting that they aren't happy—and that they're not being quiet about it. Indeed, Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has blown its bankroll attempting to boost the public option recently, has entered full rhetorical overkill mode, telling Politico:

Politically speaking, undermining the public option is the 2009 equivalent of voting for the war in Iraq — except more Americans will die at the hands of insurance companies than died in Iraq.

I'm not even sure how to respond this sort of super-heated nonsense. Do I point out that there's nothing even remotely credible to back it up? The only study I'm aware of that goes into insurance-related deaths concludes that roughly 45,000 people die each year because of lack of insurance coverage. But that's become a talking point because it bolsters the liberal case for forcing people to buy insurance (yes, from insurance companies). I could also point out that even the rosiest projections for the public option—under parameters not being considered, even in the House—result in only about 135 million people being enrolled, meaning that tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people would still be insured by private companies. Unless, of course, Green is taking the we-don't-say-it-except-around-other-liberals view that the public option would eventually lead to a fully government-controlled single-payer system. But in that case, he's not actually complaining about the public option being undermined, he's complaining that we're not getting single payer. But that was never really on the table to begin with, and complaining about that would make Green—who I suspect wants to remain an effective advocate for public policy—seem like kind of a crazy, ranting radical, wouldn't it?

New at Reason: Remember The Veterans' Bodies

2009-11-11T10:42:00-05:00

"Veterans Day is never a happy occasion," writes Nick Gillespie, "especially when we remain at war in two different places, with leadership in both parties who have manifestly failed to define victory or mission or goals with any sort of clarity or consistency. We can and should honor past veterans for their service and sacrifice. And we can honor those currently serving by taking their lives more seriously than we have."

Affirmative Action for Males - Gender Discrimination in College Admissions

2009-11-11T10:42:00-05:00

NPR's Morning Edition aired a story in which the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is beginning an investigation into claims that colleges are favoring the admission of less qualified males over more qualified women. Today women earn about 60 percent of all bachelor's degrees. The concern is that some colleges are so worried about becoming overwhelmingly female that they are discriminating against qualified women and choosing less qualifed males. The story quotes an analyst who suggests that male students do worse academically when they attend schools whose student bodies are composed of more than two-thirds women. One Commission member notes that any such admissions policy would violate Title 9 which prohibits gender discrimination in college education programs.

Is such discrmination happening? A few years back, a friend who teaches in a graduate political science department at a prominent university told me that the women who applied to his school's program were so much more qualified than the male applicants that if all applicants were selected solely on the basis of academic merit, no men would be admitted to the program. That would be fine with my friend except for the fact that highly qualified women will not attend a program that is all female. Thus this program actually engaged in what amounts to affirmative action for males in order to attract and keep highly qualified female students.

One further observation: If it's OK to discriminate in order to enhance racial and ethnic diversity, why is it wrong to discriminate in order to enhance gender diversity?

The Armistice Day Horror

2009-11-11T10:12:00-05:00

Ninety-one years ago today, Allied and German forces adopted the armistice that ended World War I. It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month; the Germans accepted the terms at 5:10 in the morning, but the ceasefire officially went into effect at the eleventh hour. And before that hour, though it was known that the shooting would soon be over, officers kept sending soldiers into battle.

Joseph E. Persico told the story in the Winter 2005 issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. "Armistice Day exceeded the ten thousand casualties suffered by all sides on D-Day," he writes, "with this difference: The men storming the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, were risking their lives to win a war. The men who fell on November 11, 1918, lost their lives in a war that the Allies had already won."

Reason.tv: "Every Day is a Bonus": Veteran's Day in DC, November 2009

2009-11-11T09:17:00-05:00

On Saturday November 7, 2009 Reason.tv's Dan Hayes caught up with the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight from Wisconsin. Honor Flight is an organziation that provides World War II vets and terminally ill patients from other conflicts free travel to Washington, D.C. to tour memorials.

Hayes talks with veterans who recognize that this is not only their first visit to the World War II monument, but may well be their last trip away from home. "Every day is a bonus," is the motto of Honor Flight and it's a sentiment that rings true for the men who fought and those of us who continue to benefit from their service and sacrifice.

For more information about Honor Flight, go here.

Thanks to Joe Dean, Jane Dean, Mark Grams, Liane Baranek, Nancy and Steve Hayes, and all the guardians and the vets we spoke with Saturday.

Music by Josh Christiansen.

This video is posted at Reason.tv's YouTube channel. Go there for embed code and other videos.

Reason Morning Links: Blackwater Bribes, AMA Wants Marijuana Change, "Hybrid" Option in Afghanistan

2009-11-11T08:26:00-05:00

Ft. Hood investigation shows Pentagon wasn't informed of Hasan's contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen; raises concerns that cross-agency intelligence sharing hasn't improved since the September 11 attacks.
NY Times reports that Blackwater executives approved $1 million in bribes to buy support from Iraqi officials after the firm's employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's office demands prior approval of any student newspaper articles covering his speech at a New York high school.
American Medical Association urges the federal government to reclassify marijuana, allowing clinical trials on medical cannabis.
Obama now considering "hybrid" option of troops and military trainers for Afghanistan.

CEI's Fred Smith/Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds to GOP: Don't be Dems-Lite

2009-11-11T07:30:00-05:00

The irrepressible Fred Smith of Competitive Enterprise Institute talks with Instapundit Glenn Reynolds about the need for Republicans to find a spine, global warming alarmism, and more. Click above to watch. About 11 minutes.

New at Reason: Jacob Sullum on Fort Hood's Gun-Free Zone

2009-11-11T07:00:00-05:00

The victims of last week's shootings at Fort Hood were unarmed because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not allowed to carry guns. Senior Editor Jacob Sullum argues that the massacre, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once again the folly of “gun-free zones,” which attract and assist people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.

John Allen Muhammad And The Death Penalty Challenge

2009-11-10T21:44:00-05:00

The D.C. Sniper, John Allen Muhammad, who terrorized the Washington metropolitan area in 2002, has been executed in a Virginia prison.

The execution came more than seven years after the 48-year-old Gulf War veteran and his young accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 24, killed 10 people and wounded six others. Malvo is serving a life prison sentence.

More here.

Depending on who you talk to (the prosecution or the defense), Muhammad either showed no remorse or unmistakable signs of severe mental illness. On a procedural level, there is no question of the legitimacy of his trial. But he is nonetheless the latest in an age-old question: Does the state ever have the right to kill a criminal?

I think Muhammad is as guilty as a man can be, but I don't think the state has that right. The state exists to protect citizens from violence while using as little force as possible (force, not costs). Contra various well-spoken Supreme Court justices, the cost of civilizations is not paying taxes, sterilizing apparent mental defectives, or executing cold-blooded killers, even apart from an infinite number of procedural questions. It is maintaining something less than chaos while perpetrating as little violence as possible.

Muhammad should have rotted in prison rather than be killed via lethal injection.