Table of contents for May 2016 in Reason

IN THE ONGOING AUTHORITARIAN outrage that is the 2016 presidential primary season, many self-described libertarians are in an oddly celebratory mood. “If Trump gets the Republican nomination the neocons are through as a viable political force on the Right,” Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo enthused at the end of February. “And if Trump actually wins the White House, the military-industrial complex is finished, along with the globalists who dominate foreign policy circles in Washington.” Raimondo was far from alone in his desperately wishful thinking about the coming golden age of anti-interventionism. “Only Trump’s brash bombast can finally displace the toxic neocon ideology that has mutated the GOP into the handmaiden of the Warfare State,” former Reagan budget director David Stockman wrote that same week. Paleoconservative godfather Patrick Buchanan chimed in with a…

“Those who advocate protection and managed markets, from Ross Perot to Patrick Buchanan, are aligning themselves not against trade, but against innovation. The dream of managed trade is functionally equivalent to the utopia of scientific planning: Neither can achieve the results their supporters hope for.” —John V.C. Nye, “No Trade, No Gain” “Yet free people—even those on the Net—want to live by reasonable rules. Before Congress considered regulating the Internet, the denizens of cyberspace spontaneously developed tools to accommodate the wishes of parents, and others who appreciate civil discourse, without infringing on those who enjoy tougher talk.” —Rick Henderson, “Code Blue” “For too long environmental policy has been shaped by people who demanded that environmental values trump all other considerations and who assumed that a regulatory elite possessed all necessary…

In “You Are Now Free to Speak About Politics,” reason’s December 2010 cover story, I laid out the history behind Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court decision protecting the right of corporations to spend money to influence the political debate, and defended its logic against the left’s apocalyptic rhetoric. “The over-the-top reactions to Citizens United reflect a view of corporations as giant, soulless automatons that are...bound to wreak havoc if let loose in the halls of political power,” I wrote. “That view obscures the fact that corporations, no matter how large or profit-driven, are by definition associations of individuals who have joined together for a common purpose.” Nearly six years later, the Democratic Party’s top candidates for president, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, have both made it clear they’re…

IT’S THE TIME OF YEAR again when most Americans will be filing their income taxes. As if that’s not painful enough all by itself, here’s a little more salt for your wounds. First, some history: In 1913 the U.S. federal individual income tax was enacted following the passage of the 16th Amendment, which granted Washington the authority to take a piece of citizens’ paychecks. According to the Tax Foundation, the top tax rate that year (adjusted for inflation) was 7 percent on income above $11.5 million; the lowest rate was 1 percent on income under $463,826. Oh, how things have changed. The tax code today is a 76,000-page monstrosity, and the current top marginal rate of 39.6 percent will hit all married filers with taxable income of $466,950 and higher.…

ACTIVISTS AND PROSECUTORS in the picturesque mountain town of Whitefish, Montana, believe police prevented a bloodbath when they arrested 29-year-old David Lenio. “Best way to counter the harm #jewish #policies is causing [sic] is #ChapelHillShooting styling [sic] killing of #jews till they get the hint & leave,” one of his tweets read. In another, Lenio said he was “not even opposed to shooting up a random school like that sandy hoax stunt only realer.” As University of California, Los Angeles law professor and Washington Post blogger Eugene Volokh points out, “Speech can’t be suppressed because of the ideas it expresses, no matter how offensive and wrong we might view those ideas to be.” But that didn’t stop authorities in Montana from locking Lenio up for five months over charges that…

Supergirl (CBS), one of this TV season’s many adaptations of comic book settings, feels like a feminist riff on Superman for millennials. Supergirl fights evil space aliens, including malicious Kryptonians, just like Superman. She works at a newspaper, just like Clark Kent (except her boss is a woman). Jimmy Olsen works alongside her. She even has her own sinister businessman to fight, but he’s not Lex Luthor. His name is Maxwell Lord. The television version of Lord is a Randian inventor who is deeply distrustful of government authority and believes people need to solve problems on their own. In Lord’s case, this corrupts him into villainy when he forces changes onto a comatose girl to give her powers like Supergirl’s, to prove humanity doesn’t need an alien savior. The show,…

With Sinatra: The Chairman (Doubleday), Fred Kaplan has completed one of the most wildly entertaining American biographies around. This second volume of what adds up to 1,600 pages on Frank Sinatra is the tale of a singer hovering near several centers of American power, from music to movies to organized crime to the presidency. Contained within these lurid and fascinating tales of a life both sublime and depraved is an education in the expansive nature of postmodern American culture. Sinatra worried in the late 1960s and early ’70s he’d made himself an anachronism by his association with seemingly obsolete song styles. But Ol’ Blue Eyes’ evergreen reputation even past his 2015 centennial year shows he was wrong. Seemingly antique styles retain luster precisely because they crystalize techniques with enduring independent…

“Computer becomes sentient, attacks humans” is hardly a novel storyline, but recent seasons of CBS’ initially routine police procedural Person of Interest breathed life into the formula. The series also presents countless examples of the folly of letting government sacrifice liberty for security. “The Machine”—a surveillance program initially designed to help intelligence agencies prevent terrorist attacks—isn’t as flashy as Skynet or HAL 9000; Instead, it transmits cryptic codes and instructions to the protagonists, for whom it feels increasingly human affection. Then a rival program, “Samaritan,” comes online. Samaritan classifies all people as either assets or threats to its existence. The heroes eventually accept that it can’t be beaten— the best they can do is hide by creating a glitch that causes Samaritan to mislabel them. A showdown between Samaritan and…

“In the 500-channel universe, writing about television is the greatest job in the world,” says Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin, who serves as a TV critic at reason.com. “It’s a license to write about literally anything you want. A documentary on Lincoln is a chance to explore the imperial presidency. A gangland melodrama like Boardwalk Empire is an opportunity to examine how progressive efforts to invoke the power of government on behalf of morality midwifed the birth of organized crime.” Garvin, 62, is no stranger to politics, either. Beginning on page 18, the Miami Herald staffer paints a portrait of the democratic socialist who wants to lead the free world (“The Sanders Surprise”). JOHAN NORBERG is a Swedish author documentary filmmaker, and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Perhaps best known…

“I don’t know. That’s what they offered.”—Hillary Clinton, responding to a question at a Democratic town hall about why she accepted $675,000 for three speeches to Goldman Sachs, February 3 “Wouldn’t you rather have Trump as president if we’re attacked? We’ll beat the shit out of them.”—Donald Trump, during a rally in New Hampshire, on what will happen if the U.S. is attacked on his watch, February 2 “These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty—these types of guys that come from Connecticut and New York. They come up here, they sell their heroin....Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.”—Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage, on the problem of substance abuse in his state, at a town hall, January 6 “They’ve evolved into magic…

Why have certain places at certain times become hubs of innovation and novel thought? That’s the question at the heart of travel writer Eric Weiner’s latest book, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places, from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley. By examining the cultures that fostered history’s greatest minds, he pieced together a list of ingredients for creativity, some of which may surprise you. Reason TV Managing Editor Meredith Bragg sat down with Weiner in January. For a video of the interview, visit reason.com. Q: Let’s talk about chaos. A: A little bit of chaos is good. There was a neuroscientist named Walter Freeman who hooked up rabbits to [electroencephalograms] and then introduced them to smells. He noticed that whenever the rabbits were introduced to…

CURING SICK BABIES shouldn’t be controversial. But when it comes to limiting parental rights to use all the tools at their disposal to have healthy kids, old-fashioned doctor-knows-best paternalism is quickly being replaced by bioethicistknows-best paternalism—or worse, by panelof-bioethicists-knows-best paternalism. That is what’s happening with a promising new set of treatments called mitochondria replacement therapy (MRT). Every cell has scores of mitochondria swimming in its cytoplasm, providing the energy that keeps the cell functioning. Human mitochondria have their own sets of 37 genes located outside the cellular nuclei. Because egg cells, but not sperm cells, contribute mitochondria to developing embryos, children can only inherit their mitochondria from their mothers. As with other genes, sometimes mitochondrial genes mutate and cause disease. As many as 1 in 200 Americans carries a mitochondrial…

THERE IS MUCH to cheer about the unlikely success of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary. Starting with the fact that it has come at the direct expense of a joyless power politician, Hillary Clinton, who has bad policy ideas, worse constitutional instincts, and an above-it-all contempt for personal honesty and accountability. By the admittedly low standards of the 2016 race (and national politics in general), Sanders is decent, likable, and authentic. Some of Sanders’ policies, too, are among the best of those major-party candidates still in the hunt. He is the only one in the field who would repeal federal marijuana laws, junk the PATRIOT Act, and shut down the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. He was the only one to meaningfully come out against the Iraq…

Reason magazine is published with the help of supporters who invest more than the price of a subscription by making contributions to Reason Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. We are grateful for their support of our journalism and public policy research. In this issue of Reason, we acknowledge members of our Torchbearer Society, a community of people who advanced the cause of “Free Minds and Free Markets” by making a contribution of $1,000 or more in 2015. Torchbearer Council Anonymous Tom & Suzy Beach The Bond Fdn Lynde & Harry Bradley Fdn Timothy W. Butcher Trust Chase Fdn of VA (M/M Derwood S. Chase Jr.) Cintra CLAWS Fdn Peter Copses & Judy Mueller E.L. Craig Fdn In honor of Harry and Anna Teasley-Martha, Raymond, Mary & Harry Demere Bob &…

The obvious question upon learning an action flick about Benghazi would be released two weeks before the Iowa caucuses was: Will it hurt Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances? The former secretary of state has been harshly criticized for claiming, in the days after Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the 2012 attack, that the violence was “sparked” by a YouTube video perceived as insulting Islam. Michael Bay’s 13 Hours depicts as absurd the idea that the confrontation was anything other than a pre-planned act of jihad. Upon discovering what the news back home is reporting, one commando responds sharply: “We didn’t hear any protest.” Neither Clinton nor President Obama can be found in the film. But Bay doesn’t shy away from highlighting the government’s incompetence in handling…

Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency, by Charlie Savage, Little, Brown and Company, 784 pages, $30 “The national security bureaucracy is a powerful force,” Charlie Savage writes in Power Wars. The influence of this permanent security state, the New York Times reporter shows, is subtle but nonetheless pervasive, and it does not disappear when a new president takes control: A remarkable number of officials held the same or similar jobs under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Key decisions are repeatedly made or influenced by hold-overs and careerists who fight to maintain the status quo. The laws governing their conduct is blurry and elastic, giving them broad power that’s exercised with little accountability. They thrive on secrecy. “The permanent bureaucracy gets nothing from transparency and sees it only in…

Why does our immigration system fail anyone who uses it? We’ve gathered reason’s best articles on the subject since 2006. This ebook, featuring work by Nick Gillespie, Brian Doherty, Shikha Dalmia, Tim Cavanaugh, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and others, is intended to advance an informed discussion about realistic and workable reforms appropriate to America’s self-understanding as a Land of Immigrants—and to help, at long last, to put these reforms over the finish line. Head to reason.com/ebooks to download your copy for Kindle, iPad, or Nook today!…

Flint water crisis Poisonous Stimulus Shikha Dalmia Conventional wisdom has it that Flint’s lead poisoning crisis is the result of austerity measures imposed on the city by a fiscally conservative state government. And indeed, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager in 2011 to help the city balance its books and avoid bankruptcy. But one of the real culprits may have been a misguided effort to stimulate the local economy through increased government spending. The mess occurred because Flint decided to switch from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) to the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA). The KWA was planning to build an expensive pipeline from Lake Huron to the Genesee County area, where Flint is located. But the city’s contract with DWSD ended before the new facility had…

English taxi driver Tony Kemp says he lost business and his reputation was damaged after the North Yorkshire County Council banned him from taking students to school because of an allegation made against him. Someone had reported him hugging and kissing two girls outside a local school. The girls were his daughters. Jackson, Mississippi, City Council member Kenneth Stokes is calling for an investigation of a local gun dealer who posted a sign saying that people who vote for Stokes or Barack Obama are too stupid to own a gun. “If this gun dealer feels that it’s legal for him to display negative images of the president of the United States, keep in mind that he must have some kind of license,” Stokes said. “We’re asking the attorney general of…

DONALD TRUMP, THE FRONT-RUNNER for the Republican presidential nomination, has promised to deport the 11 million people who live in the United States without the government’s permission. Ted Cruz, Trump’s closest rival, echoes that commitment, while Marco Rubio, who as I write is vying with Cruz to be the anti-Trump, has renounced the “path to citizenship” he used to support and wants to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol, even as net migration from Mexico has dropped below zero. On the face of it, the Republican Party is not in a very pro-immigrant mood. Yet the positions staked out by Trump and Cruz are unpopular even among Republicans and could prove fatal to a party that needs support from Hispanic voters to win. Hostility to immigration is one…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED to know about the 2016 race for the Democratic presidential nomination can be found in a single moment in one of the early debates, when Bernie Sanders was asked for his thoughts on banks. His face creased in pharisaical rage. “They trample on the middle class, they control Washington, and why do they chain all their pens to the desks?” he demanded. “You gotta break up the banks into little pieces and then flush the pieces down the toilet so you can never put the banks back together. Then you just make the bankers pay for college for everyone, and America’s fixed!” As Sanders spoke, Hillary Clinton shamelessly mugged crazy faces—until it dawned on her that the wild applause from the crowd was for him, not her.…

NATIONAL SECURITY WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden remains in exile in Russia, but on February 20, the former federal contractor who exposed government incursions on privacy spoke with reason’s Nick Gillespie via a secure satellite link at Liberty Forum, a gathering of the Free State Project in Manchester, New Hampshire. For video of the interview, go to reason.com. reason: Let’s talk about Apple being requested by court order to unlock the cellphone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. You recently tweeted, “This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means Google picked a side, but it’s not the public’s.” Can you elaborate on that? Is Apple really on the public’s side? And how does strong encryption of personal communication, even when utilized by terrorists, strengthen freedom and liberty?…

The Texas press didn’t know what to make of Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, the eccentric businessman, broadcaster, and bandleader who plunged suddenly into the Democratic primary during the state’s 1938 gubernatorial race. They certainly didn’t expect O’Daniel to get anywhere. He had no political experience. For most of his life, he hadn’t been a Democrat. He hadn’t paid his poll tax, so he couldn’t even vote for himself. Surely, they reasoned, the voters would instead choose one of the established leaders in the race— probably Railroad Commissioner Ernest Thompson or Attorney General William McCraw. Or maybe Tom Hunter, an oilman from Wichita Falls who had run for the office several times before. Meanwhile, O’Daniel embarked on a 20,000-mile trek across Texas. The candidate would roll into town in a long…

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, by David Ulin, University of California Press, 152 pages, $16.95 DAVID ULIN IS NOTHING if not indecisive. At one point in Sidewalking, the former Los Angeles Times staffer’s book about walking around L.A., he listens, “by turns sympathetic and unsympathetic,” to a prelate; the prelate’s church, he adds, is “both familiar and unfamiliar.” A few pages later, he’s contemplating a moment in his life “that could have been any moment in my life or any other.” In one of his most remarkable hedges, he writes: “One of the ideas I want to argue against is a sense of Los Angeles’ exceptionalism, that this city is fundamentally different than any other, although in many ways it is.” He calls Park La Brea “a nonlandmark…

In Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking (Microcosm), journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore and the Ladydrawers Comics Collective take a mixedmedia dive into the global clothing industry and how it “seeps uncomfortably quickly into larger issues” including women’s employment options, human trafficking, immigration laws, and the criminalization of sex work. Divided into four sections (the U.S., Austria, Cambodia, and “The World”), Moore’s prose introductions are important— the strips themselves often leave you craving more context. The book is plagued by off-topic interjections, such as a section shaming a Cambodian aid org head who helps trans sex workers for not using their preferred pronouns. But there is interesting and thoughtful material here too, including sections on Homeland Security’s obsessive bra-import inspections, how well-funded nonprofits shuffle sex workers back into the jobs that they…