Reason August - September 2016

It was the Libertarian National Convention’s moment of truth. After selecting Gary Johnson as the party’s presidential nominee on the second ballot, skeptical delegates—riven by a decades-old third-party conflict between purity and pragmatism—were now voting for a second time on whether to hold their noses and accept as their veep Johnson’s pick, the internally unloved but externally impressive former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. Weld, distrusted and openly booed by many of the assembled for his 1990s support of an assault weapons ban, his 2016 endorsement of Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president, and his 2006 broken promise to run for governor of New York as a Libertarian, had fallen a tantalizing eight votes short of the vice presidential nomination on the first ballot. Now the simmering conflict between the radicals…

ROBERT EVERETT JOHNSON is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm based in Arlington, Virginia. His role as Elfie Gallun Fellow for Freedom and the Constitution involves a lot of writing and speaking about America’s founding principles. “The Constitution is a thoroughly radical document,” the 32-year-old Harvard Law graduate likes to say. “The 14th Amendment, the most important part of the whole document, was drafted by a group of abolitionists and anarchists who literally described themselves as ‘Radical Republicans.’” Before joining the institute, Johnson clerked for both Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Nick Sibilla has been a writer at the Institute for Justice for almost four years. He resides in Northern Virginia (“Mordor,”…

Mandatory minimums Retroactive Relief Scott Shackford When changes in laws result in reduced sentences for crimes, people currently in prison for those offenses don’t necessarily see mercy. So when the Supreme Court in 2015 declared a federal mandatory minimum sentencing trigger unconstitutional, it didn’t automatically mean prisoners already sentenced would see their time in custody reduced. In that case, Johnson v. United States, the justices ruled 8–1 that a provision of the Armed Criminal Career Act of 1984 was unconstitutionally vague. That guideline imposed a 15-year mandatory minimum under certain circumstances, one of which was a third “violent felony.” But the law’s definition of a violent felony included “conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” This overly broad description resulted in the government declaring that…

“To counter the avalanche of progovernment persuasion, who comes to Washington to criticize spending programs? In the case of most programs, no one.” —James L. Payne, “Bad Influence” “Unfortunately, political reformers routinely define apathy as ‘not voting.’ While this hypothesis is easy to test (all you have to do is count heads), it ignores the proud tradition of, say, the Constitutional Convention delegates who threatened to walk out unless the document included a Bill of Rights. Sometimes not voting reflects the belief that the lesser of two evils is evil.” —Rick Henderson, “It’s OK to Hate Politics” “Efforts to prevent globalization by imposing immigration barriers or boosting corporate welfare amount to nationalist economic planning. Like more familiar socialist economic plans, they are based on the false assumption that a small…

“It just doesn’t make sense to require a nonviolent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison.” —President Barack Obama, announcing the commutation of 58 prison sentences, Medium, May 5 “On the one hand, I’ll say #NeverTrump, and on the other hand, I’ll say never say never.” —The Weekly Standard founder and editor Bill Kristol, The Steve Malzberg Show, May 2 “Call the government.” —North Carolina tow truck driver Kenneth Shupe, refusing to tow a car outfitted with Bernie Sanders stickers, May 2 “We are witnessing a compression of the working period in which bad policy shelters in the shadows, the time frame in which unconstitutional activities can continue before they are exposed by acts of conscience.” r —Edward Snowden, writing about whistleblowing, The Intercept,…

The national debt is the total amount owed by the federal government of the United States. It accumulates over time as Congress and the president run yearly budget deficits. Since 2012, the U.S. national debt has been larger than our total annual gross domestic product (GDP), or the value of all the goods and services produced in the country in a year, combined. Today the debt stands at $19.2 TRILLION That’s 240x the net worth of Bill Gates. If the debt were paid at the rate of a dollar per second, it would take over 600,000 years to retire. The federal debt now exceeds total GDP. for sources visit reason.com/federaldebt…