More reason

Add this Jacob Sullum post to the ever-increasing list of reasons of why I wish I was Jacob Sullum.

Reason In the Washington Post

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have a "Ron Paul -- What does this all mean" opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it's clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.

Read the whole thing.

Bill O'Reilly: Not A Fan of Reason

Via the new Reason.tv, Jacob Sullum takes the "try to complete a sentence while disagreeing with O'Reilly" challenge.

O'Reilly calls Sullum an "irresponsible libertine" and tells him "don't come near my family." It's about what you'd expect from Bill O'Reilly, but much credit is due to Sullum for putting up with that prick for five minutes.

I've made a mental note to read Sullum's book soon, despite the fact that I've already been Saying Yes for years.

CommunistHall.com

In response to Jacob Sullum's reasonable column on Townhall.com in opposition to the executive branch's unchecked, warrantless spying on U.S. citizens, the readers of Townhall.com show precisely why liberty-minded people should stop voting Republican. Conservatives would give up every last right in the Bill of Rights if it had even the slightest chance of leading to the arrest and/or death of a foreigner somewhere. Jacob has a good sampling of responses over at Hit & Run. Here are a few of my favs:

Every post you make shows your total ignorance of the situation at hand...we are under attack you friggin moron...b*llless Sallys' like you are the real reason these towelheaded embeciles think we are weak...grow a pair and get out and defend yourself before its too late. And as a side note, drooler, it will be people like me who will defend you and the other morons when the time comes so dont disparage us true Americans too much...have a nice day at the methedone clinic.
****
Pleeeeese! 9/11 changed our world forever. When I as a 67 year old grandmother must remove my shoes, and allow complete search of all my possessions and my body in order to fly in a plane, (this inside my own country!) it has all changed.At this point, since I have nothing to hide, I'd prefer everyone was treated with the same scrutiny. In that way, maybe, just maybe, they'll ferret out the scum intent on harming all of us. My phone calls have nothing to hide, and I fear not if anyone needs to listen in.
***
To the author: We are in a war. A war in which many of the enemy combatants reside overseas but have compatriots stationed here in America. They talk in order to plan to KILL US. Not chatting with their mommas, you boob. Do you not think that FDR and his administration listened in to phone calls during their prosecution of WWII? Of course they did. Did Lincoln's minions not read the mail of Southerners in the North? Yes, they did. In today's tech world, communications are instantaneous and the good guys (our guys, pal!)must have the ability to act and listen when the intel says so, not when some judge gets around to letting them. Wake up! This is a war, not some law class in some ivory tower. If we miss some crucial conversation, it could lead to the death of thousands of real actual people. Until this war is settled, your supposed 'privacy' be damned, sir.

With Americans like this who needs enemies. What's next? "FDR put American citizens in concentration camps, so why shouldn't we? If you have nothing to hide, why would you be against concentration camps?"

Be Afraid

Reason's Julian Sanchez gives the 411 on the Democrats' recent 9-11-panic-induced capitulation to King George on monitoring our phone calls. Scary stuff, but an entertaining read. He should get some sort of he-good-with-words award for this line:

Suddenly it became urgent that Congress "modernize" what was invariably described as "the 1978 FISA statute," conjuring images of forlorn agents in white polyester leisure suits vainly hunting for al-Qaeda terrorists hidden under Pet Rocks.

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) for President

It's not every day you hear a Congressman speak so much truth. Highlights from David Weigel's interview with him.

if you want to be loyal to the troops in the field, if you're saying you're patriotic, then you'll read a book like Anthony Zinni's The Battle for Peace. You'll read a book like Fiasco. You'll turn the damn television off every night for two hours and read some objective opinions on this thing. Ignorance is pervasive in any culture and ours is not an exception.
[...]
I think the GOP was dissolving. Now it's drying up and the wind's going to blow it away. I just don't think we have the depth of knowledge, intellect, and experience necessary for a viable political party any more.
[...]
I don't worry about a primary challenge. It's inconvenient. My eternal soul will last a lot longer than my short, pathetic political career.

Pittsburgh

Leo brought up the depressing state of Pittsburgh, I and others seconded it. Over at Reason Pittsburghian (? I have no fucking clue what they call themselves) Bill Steigerwald dismisses his city as the "Most Livable City."

The almanac didn’t subtract livability points for the City of Pittsburgh’s high tax rates, decades of moronic management, and the millions in subsidies handed to the Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins for their new playpens, as well as to national retailers whose outlets that then went belly up.

Pittsburgh is in a death spiral. It’s bankrupt. Its school district spends $16,000 a year per kid. Its parking tax is the highest on Earth: 50 percent. City police and firefighters irresponsibly pad their numbers, salaries, and pensions—and openly trade their mayoral votes for sweetheart contracts. Meanwhile, local school and property taxes are among the highest in the country. So are public bus and taxi fares. And, oh yeah, highways are congested, in bad shape, and under-built.

Full article here.

Reason(s) to Never Invite Me to a Party Again

Like many DC libertarians I was invited to a celebration last Friday of Brian Doherty's new book "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement" (Wall War Street Journal review here) at Reason's lovely new DC office. At first I thought their office was a new gay club. Elegant with a rustic feel. Showers in the bathrooms. I expected a disco ball to drop at any moment. It's everything I thought a Reason office would be. And should be. I could have taken pictures of it. Or the people there. Or that Heritage Foundation guy sucking George Bush's dick in the bathroom (totally inappropriate at a Reason event if you ask me). But I'd rather post this picture of the labor and other regulatory notices that DC and federal law require businesses to put up. Reason hasn't fully moved in yet. No art on the wall. No framed Constitution. No bust of Hayek or Rothbard. No pictures showing Virginia Postrel's bust. Just a lone, government-mandated list of regulations on one of their walls. Sell outs. But at least they had free beer and wine. And free (I assume) copies of "Choice". I also took a lap top. Hey, Nick said feel free to take stuff.

I'm about 200 pages into Doherty's 600-page book. Some really good stuff in it. Not enough gossip for me though. Unless he's saving that for the history of Cato and the LP. I mean he mentions in the section on Leonard Read that Read's sexual exploits are legendary. Like Wilt Chamberlain legendary. But he doesn't elaborate. Why not? If Ayn Rand swallowed Read's cum and said "I did that for me" I want to know about it. Oh, don't pretend like you don't. You're not better than me.

Jacob Sullum Makes More Sense than Rob when Trying to Say the Same Thing

Automatic contender for the most understated TtP post title ever. I'm also unsure when Rob started referring to Rob in the 3rd person, but it's too late to stop now. From a Hit&Run [emphasis Rob's] post

Vancouver, which already has "a free needle exchange, a methadone maintenance program, a drug injection site where nurses supervise as heroin addicts shoot up, and a clinical trial testing whether chronic opiate addicts can be helped with prescribed heroin," is now experimenting with "maintenance treatment" for stimulant addicts. But it isn't really "treatment," is it? Or I guess I should say that it's treatment in the same sense that chewing nicotine gum or wearing a nicotine patch is "treatment" for nicotine addiction, even though many smokers use them as long-term substitutes for cigarettes. These smokers are healthier for making the switch, but the "disease" (addiction) remains.

More troubling is the Vancouver model of free needles, free methadone, free heroin, and free amphetamines, all courtesy of the taxpayers. This strikes me as exactly the wrong way to achieve drug policy reform, guaranteed to alienate people who might be willing to let others use drugs but don't want to pick up the tab for it. The message should be freedom coupled with responsibility, not government-subsidized drug addiction.

I guess know some people think the expansion of "treatment programs" like the Vancouver example should be considered victories for drug policy reformers. A step forward in the right direction. I've never felt that way. All one must do is to look at our current policy for a classic example of ignoring the means and focusing instead on the ends. i.e.: Drugs are bad and the cause of much societal disruption. Because of this we as a society must combat drug use and proliferation wherever and however possible. Then we find ourselves gunning down elderly citizens, throwing non-violent drug offenders in prison by the millions and spending billions of tax-payer dollars all in a futile attempt to accomplish what can not be accomplished.

Well that same logic applies to the side who is fighting the status-quo. You can't lose sight of how we should/do reach the desired end to our current War on Drugs. The argument isn't about how to more appropriately (for lack of a better word) treat the drug problem and its supposed victims. Rather it should be how do we effectively limit the harm that government does while trying to help the situation. Milton Friedman would often argue about how the other side needed to have the "right guy" to manage a particular government program for it to be even remotely effective. It's a similar situation with drug policy; no matter if you are advocating drugs to be treated as a criminal problem or a public health problem.

Feel free to discuss.

Our Long, National Mooninitemare

Dave Weigel, in Reason, nails the inanity of the Ignignokt and Err controversy spiraling out of Boston.

Not all public manias are acceptable. This one is. After a terror scare, the scared -- in this case Boston Mayor Thomas "Mumbles" Menino, some Bostonians, and the national media -- don't ask whether they overreacted. This is impossible; you can never overreact to terrorism. Those terrified mayoral statements to cameras are defensible, not uninformed. Those bright, red, clanging news alerts are informing the public, not exploiting viewers' basest fears. Does the hyping of bomb threats make urbanites more skittish and more likely to report a souped-up lite brite as a "suspicious device"? It doesn't matter. As Brian Doherty noted yesterday, panicked civilians calling to report those lite brites are considered a "perfect example" of "taking part in Homeland Security."

It's strange logic. The Bostonian who called in the phony threat is considered diligent, even though citizens in every other location where advertisers place the lite brites got the jokes.

It's worth noting that Menino took exactly this same overheated and especially incomprehsensible tone when Sony launched the PS3.