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Libertarian Funny Pages

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:10:00 EDT

Entertainment Weekly gives a thumbs up to the new coffee table biography of Spider-Man co-creator and Ayn Rand fanatic Steve Ditko, calling the artist's life "one of the strangest comic-book tales ever: not just how a talented man was ripped off by others, but how he denied himself a larger place in comics history."

Ditko is one strange bird, no doubt about it. As reason contributor Julian Sanchez tells it:

[A]fter falling out with his Marvel collaborator Stan Lee, Ditko, well, went round the bend a little, and began churning out turgid, nigh-unreadable comics devoted to expounding Rand's Objectivist philosophy in tedious, rambling lectures punctuated by the odd fistfight. His primary mouthpiece was the costumed avenger Mr. A—as in "A is A," the tautology from which Rand purported to derive an elaborate system of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Along with another Ditko creation, The Question, Mr. A would serve as the model for Rorschach in Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen.

In other comic book-related news, Eric Alterman described the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, as "both libertarian and fascistic," while reason contributor Ilya Somin weighed in on the "libertarian law and economics of Batman."

"Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack."

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:25:00 EDT

Those are the words of lefty journalist Robert Scheer, who comes out swinging against the candidate of change in a great rant over at The Nation. A sample:

Both candidates supported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has everything to do with violating the basic freedoms of our citizens and nothing to do with making them safer....

To use the failure of the President to pay attention to his daily-briefing warning of an impending attack as an excuse for shredding the fundamental rights of our citizens is appallingly illogical. Providing legal protection to the government and the telecommunications giants for unfettered spying on the people does not represent the change we desperately need.

And a quick history lesson, too:

Obama has one-upped McCain's bluff to win in Iraq by raising the prospect of an even more deadly quagmire in Afghanistan. If his goal was to remind us that Democrats have been more often the party of irrational wars than the Republicans, he has succeeded all too well.

Whereas Dwight Eisenhower refused to wage war against Vietnam and Cuba, it was John Kennedy, that charmer of change, who launched both of those military disasters. And then there was that crafty "progressive," Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, in order to defeat Barry Goldwater, the right-wing menace of his day, lied about a nonexistent attack in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify escalating a war that killed almost 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese.

Whole thing here.

What's Made Brooklyn Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:57:00 EDT

Sunday's New York Times brought word of the latest twist in the saga of New York's Brooklyn Brewery and its president Steve Hindy, purveyors of various fine beers, including the great Black Chocolate Stout. Back in 1996, Hindy and partner Tom Potter set up shop at a former matzo ball factory in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, then a mostly rundown industrial neighborhood but today a thriving hipster paradise, replete with bars, gourmet shops, and luxury condos. The only problem is that now the brewery can't afford to stay. So Hindy looked to city officials for help:

He and his partners are willing to spend $15 million for a bigger brewery that would employ at least twice as many workers as he has now and would have a beer garden where customers could sample his growing roster of specialty brews. But after four years of searching and two failed bids to be included in redevelopment projects in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens, they have not found a suitable building in the borough at a feasible price.

[...]

Mr. Hindy has plenty of company in the hunt for affordable industrial land. Manufacturing space has become scarcer and more expensive as city officials have encouraged developers to replace crumbling factories and warehouses with amenity-laden condominiums.

As the Times notes, Hindy had been a vocal supporter of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial 2005 rezoning of Williamsburg and neighboring Greenpoint, a process he now says left him in the dust:

We have seven more years on our lease in Williamsburg, and we would love to stay in this neighborhood. We worked hard in support of the administration's rezoning of this area in the hope that it would include "industrial zones" that would enable us to stay here among the residential zones that were enabled on vacant industrial land.
The industrial zones that finally were approved included language allowing hotels and other commercial businesses to locate here. One property adjacent to our brewery just rented for between $15 and $20 a foot. It will house a performance space and a bowling alley.... It is hard to make money brewing beer on land that rents for $20 a foot. Property owners are hoping that eventually they will be able to claim hardship and get their properties rezoned for residential.

There's a cautionary tale or two here about getting in bed with city officials and their shady real estate allies, but the worst of it has been Hindy’s support for controversial developer and New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, the driving force behind the atrocious Atlantic Yards project, a massive boondoggle that, if realized, will produce a taxpayer-subsidized basketball arena for Ratner’s Nets along with various office buildings and luxury complexes that will displace more than 40 business owners and tenants via eminent domain and other measures.

Still, what do you expect from the wolf's lair of New York's corrupt and massively regulated real estate market? As Hindy admitted to the New York Observer last year, "Things like the development at Coney Island and things like Atlantic Yards—that’s what we have to work with, and we have to make the best of it.”

"It's that old-time Lennon/Bono rock idealism reimagined for a post-Cannibal Corpse world"

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:28:00 EDT

Yesterday's New York Times carried a great little review of Mark LeVine's new book Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam. According to reviewer Howard Hampton, LeVine, a longhaired Jewish rocker and professor of Middle Eastern studies, travels among the believers only to find death metal bands, riot grrrls, and other assorted thrashers:

Eagerly seizing on the stereotype-busting possibilities of "an 18-year-old from Casablanca with spiked hair, or a 20-year-old from Dubai wearing goth makeup," LeVine would like us to see them as the faces of an emerging Muslim world, potentially a much less monochromatic place than the one represented on TV by the usual "Death to America" brigades. "Heavy Metal Islam" turns the notion of irreconcilable differences between Islam and the West on its head, appealing to the universality of youth culture as "a model for communication and cooperation" in the Internet age. LeVine reckons the likes of Metallica and Slayer provide a brute lingua franca that knows no borders, opening up breathing room in cloistered societies, gradually undermining rigid belief systems—a benign, bottom-up brand of globalization as opposed to the ruthless corporate or state-sponsored kind.

I'm not sure if the guys in Slayer have ever been called agents of tolerance and goodwill before, but there's no question that openly listening to a Slayer classic like "Altar of Sacrifice" might get a young Iranian in some trouble with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. But, as Hampton argues in his review, LeVine is on pretty shaky ground describing Slayer and Metallica as alternatives to "ruthless corporate" globalization rather than as explicit products of it. Who does he think releases and distributes their records, anyway? Along those lines, here's Hampton's final word:

The punch line of LeVine's informative, valuable and moderately mad book is twofold: this conscientious anti-imperialist has written a swell tract in favor of large-scale cultural imperialism—a Marshall Amps Plan—and his program is undoubtedly the first to enlist death metal as the spearhead of a new Peace Corps(e).

Whole thing here. Charles Paul Freund on how vulgar culture liberates Islam (and the West) here.

Power to the People and the Beats

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:03:00 EDT

Writing in The Times (London), cultural critic Clive Davis offers a great introduction to the brouhaha over John McWhorter's new book All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America. As Davis tells it, McWhorter's beef isn't with the misogyny, violent imagery, and bling so essential to today's hip-hop, it's with the lefty politics of "conscious" rap and the liberal academics that have embraced it as the vanguard of revolutionary change:

Nothing could be further from the truth, McWhorter argues. Far from being truth-tellers, he says, so-called "conscious" rappers recycle endless clichés and conspiracy theories about inner-city blight, the drugs trade and Aids. Instead of generating a desire to change the system, rappers and their acolytes in the media and academia simply encourage a sense of passivity. "Insisting that things are still so simple that black people need to get together and rise in fury against an evil oppressor makes for entertaining hiphop," he writes. "It sounds good uttered fiercely and set to a driving beat. But this way of parsing things does not correspond to what black America really needs today, as opposed to what it needed 50 years ago."

Turns out that McWhorter even likes some rappers. In one of the article's better details, we learn that he "occasionally listens to Snoop Dogg while cooking dinner."

But the real action comes a few paragraphs later, when Clive Davis empties the clip on New York jazz lord Wynton Marsalis, who has denounced hip-hop as "ghetto minstrelsy" and as "a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves." Here's Davis:

Brave words. The problem with Marsalis's assessment, however, is that the kind of retro-jazz he has championed in the past two decades is, bluntly, an overreverential facsimile of the music of 40 or 50 years ago. Although his restless campaigning on behalf of jazz has paid dividends in the creation of a splendid new performing base at the Lincoln Center, in New York, it is still not entirely clear whether the venue will ever amount to more than a museum for the well-heeled Manhattan middle class, black and white.

Whole thing here.

(Via the great Arts & Letters Daily)

"Unfortunately, his jurisprudence is likely to be anything but conservative"

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:34:00 EDT

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Bob Barr took John McCain to task for his lousy judicial philosophy, arguing that conservatives shouldn't get too excited at the prospects of a McCain-appointed Supreme Court. For one, McCain doesn't think that the First Amendment protects all forms of political speech, which is only a problem, I suppose, if you hold the quaint opinion that the Constitution means what it says. Then there's McCain's sweeping view of presidential power:

In fact, if Mr. McCain nominated someone in his own image, the appointee would disagree with not only the doctrine of enumerated powers, which limits the federal government to only those tasks explicitly authorized by the Constitution, but also the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and even its explicit grant of the law-making power to Congress.

Mr. McCain has endorsed, in action if not rhetoric, the theory of the "unitary executive," which leaves the president unconstrained by Congress or the courts. Republicans like Mr. McCain believe the president as commander in chief of the military can do almost anything, including deny Americans arrested in America protection of the Constitution and access to the courts.

Interestingly, Barr suggests that cats and dogs won't start living together under an Obama Court:

Nor is it obvious that Barack Obama would attempt to pack the court with left-wing ideologues. He shocked some of his supporters by endorsing the ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms, and criticizing the recent decision overturning the death penalty for a child rapist. With the three members most likely to leave the Supreme Court in the near future occupying the more liberal side of the bench, the next appointments probably won't much change the Court's balance.

Finally, after some throat clearing about the risk of "judge-made rights," Barr makes a great point about the judiciary's duty to check the other branches:

However, the Constitution sometimes requires decisions or action by judges—"judicial activism," if you will—to ensure the country's fundamental law is followed. Thus, for example, if government improperly restricts free speech—think the McCain-Feingold law's ban on issue ads—the courts have an obligation to void the law. The same goes for efforts by government to ban firearms ownership, as the Court ruled this term in striking down the District of Columbia gun ban.

Whole thing here.

The Brady Center and Heller

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:28:00 EDT

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence's Dennis Henigan has written a very interesting response to Robert Levy's Cato Unbound essay on the future of gun rights after D.C. v. Heller. Essentially, Henigan argues that the Court's conservatives have mangled the Constitution in order to reach a preferred outcome that will have little real world impact:

Although we will no doubt see an avalanche of Second Amendment claims (most by criminal defense lawyers on behalf of their clients seeking to avoid indictments and convictions for violations of gun laws), generally the lower courts are likely to interpret Heller as giving a constitutional green light to virtually every gun control law short of a handgun ban. Regardless of whether the Heller majority's newly discovered right eventually is incorporated as a restraint on the states, its significance may well prove more symbol than substance.

While it certainly makes rhetorical sense for Henigan to downplay the victory (and link it to criminals and their shady attorneys), it's not at all clear that the lower courts will see (or will continue to see) things his way. As David Kopel noted in reason after Heller came down, "Rome was not built in a day, and neither is constitutional doctrine."

For most of our nation's history, the U.S. Supreme Court did nothing to protect the First Amendment; it was not until the 1930s when a majority of the Court took the first steps towards protecting freedom of the press. It would have been preposterous to be disappointed that a Court in, say, 1936, would not declare a ban on flag-burning to be unconstitutional. It took decades for the Supreme Court to build a robust First Amendment doctrine strong enough to protect even the free speech rights of people as loathsome as flag-burners or American Nazis.

Moreover, the importance of the Court finally recognizing that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—shouldn't be minimized. And I must say, I find it pretty hard to believe that Henigan and his associates at Brady are really so lackadaisical about the incorporation of the amendment against the states. Chicago officials, on the other hand, are gearing up to protect the city's handgun ban in court. As deputy corporation counsel Benna Solomon told the Chicago Tribune, "We are prepared to aggressively litigate this issue and defend this ordinance."

Cato Unbound debate here. reason.tv's interview with Heller attorney Alan Gura here.

Rangel's Down, But He's Not Out

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:58:00 EDT

In a gesture of solidarity with Harlem's many struggling residents, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has announced that he will vacate one of the four rent-stabilized apartments he currently maintains in the Lenox Terrace luxury complex. The unit in question, a one-bedroom costing Rangel just $630 each month, currently serves as a campaign office, a cozy arrangement that quite clearly violates city and state rent-stabilization guidelines (he's holding on to his two-bedroom, his other one-bedroom, and his studio). But as the New York Times notes, the immaculately dressed Congressman isn't out of the woods yet:

While it appears legitimate for Mr. Rangel to have one rent-stabilized apartment for his home, some Congressional ethics experts question whether his acceptance of the additional units, given at the discretion of the landlord and not generally available to the public, violates the House of Representatives' ban on members accepting gifts of more than $100.

Under House ethics rules, a gift is defined as any "gratuity, favor, discount, entertainment, hospitality, loan, forbearance, or other item having monetary value." And some suggest that the difference between what Mr. Rangel pays for the second, third and fourth apartments and the market rate could fit that definition.

Whole thing here.

Is Justice Antonin Scalia a Judicial Activist?

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:59:00 EDT

In the latest edition of the Cato Institute's excellent Cato Unbound, Robert Levy has a fascinating article on the future after D.C. v. Heller. It's a great piece, examining both the likely fate of various gun control laws, the legal and political ramifications of the ruling, and the perennial question of whether the Court's actions count as judicial activism or judicial restraint. As Levy notes, Justice John Paul Stevens chastised Scalia in his dissent for entering the "political thicket" of gun control, the sort of charge normally made (at least these days) by conservatives against liberal judges. Is Stevens right? Did Scalia arrogantly and inappropriately substitute his views for those of the people of Washington, D.C. (via their local officials)? Here's Levy:

Judges have a responsibility to invalidate all laws that do not conform to the Constitution. Courts would be derelict if they endorsed unconstitutional acts merely because our elected representatives passed them. In that respect, overturning the D.C. gun ban was a clear example of principled judicial engagement.

That's the crucial point: The Court has a duty to nullify unconstitutional laws, regardless of what the majority has to say about it.

Whole thing here.

I Love Livin' in the City

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:40:00 EDT

The New York Times reveals that my old Congressman, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), is one of the many wealthy New Yorkers hoarding a rent-stabilized apartment. Four of them, in fact, all located in Harlem's coveted Lenox Terrace building on 135th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues. From the Times's report:

State officials and city housing experts said in interviews that while the law does not bar tenants from having more than one rent-stabilized apartment, they knew of no one else with four of them. Others suggested that the arrangement undermines the purpose of rent regulation.

The fourth apartment, by the way, a 10th floor one-bedroom for which Rangel is paying just $630 a month (he also has a two-bedroom, a one-bedroom, and a studio on the 16th floor), is serving as his campaign office, a pretty clear violation of state and city laws mandating that rent-stabilized apartments serve as a tenant's primary residence. Then there's this:

Some Congressional ethics experts, while saying it appears legitimate for Mr. Rangel to have one rent-stabilized apartment, question whether his acceptance of the additional units may violate the House of Representatives' ban on members' accepting gifts of more than $100. They suggest that the difference between what Mr. Rangel pays for the second, third and fourth apartments and what a new market-rate tenant would pay—some $30,000 annually—could be considered a gift because it is given at the discretion of the landlord and it is not generally available to the public.

Whole sordid story here. Nick Gillespie on Califorinia's rent control laws here. The Cato Institute's William Tucker on how rent control drives out affordable housing here.

The Candidates and the Constitution

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:38:00 EDT

In an interesting column over at Findlaw, law professor Vikram David Amar argues that John McCain is the big loser from this year's Supreme Court term. "Two of the biggest half dozen 5-4 rulings this year," Amar writes, "forcefully rejected his work as a Senator and, more importantly, his understanding of constitutional basics." He's referring here to Boumediene v. Bush, which recognized habeas corpus rights for prisoners held at Guanantamo Bay, something that legislation drafted by Congress and the White House did not do, and Davis v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down the "Millionaire's Amendment" to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a provision that gave special privileges to candidates running against wealthy, self-funded opponents.

Given McCain's publicly expressed preference for "clean government" over "quote First Amendment rights," not to mention his contempt for "so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits," I'd say that Amar has got his number. What about McCain's Democratic opponent? Amar doesn't give equal time to the candidates, but Barack Obama's record is also worth considering. Despite his Harvard and U. of Chicago credentials, the Illinois Senator hasn't exactly been a beacon of constitutional light. As Jacob Sullum has noted, Obama's position on Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban has undergone a pretty dramatic metamorphosis, from his staff informing the Chicago Tribune last December that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional," to Obama's lame attempt last month to spin D.C. v. Heller in his favor, claiming, "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children... The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view." And as I've previously argued, Obama's position on the Commerce Clause puts him squarely in favor of Gonzales v. Raich, a terrible ruling which struck down California's medical marijuana law in favor of federal anti-drug laws with extremely dubious connection to interstate commerce.

Whole Amar column here. reason coverage of John McCain here, Barack Obama here.

Punk's Dead, You're Next

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:34:00 EDT

New York magazine's Alex Morris recently spent some quality time with the latest crop of NYC gutter punks, those unwashed Sid Vicious wannabes who crowd St. Mark's Place every summer, begging for change and literally stinking up many of the punk and hardcore shows. Here's a typical paragraph, giving Suvy, the star of the article, plenty of space to express his deepest thoughts:

Punk, says Suvy, is "the only view that makes sense to me." Work is for yuppies. Rent is for yuppies. Shelter is a basic human right. The government is bullshit. Corporations are bullshit. He "fucks capitalism" by pissing in the corner of the Dunkin' Donuts.

Wow, dude, that'll show those capitalists—or at least the poor employees responsible for cleaning up the mess. Here's Morris on two of Suvy's supporting players:

Alex goes to college, but during summer break he comes down to the city from Westchester to get stoned. Toast lives in Queens and wears Armani glasses and calls himself Toast "because I'm always toasted." They're both house punks, meaning that they have homes they sleep in every night and at least some money, and for this the squatter kids—even the ones from the city who can go home when it rains or if they need a good meal—find them both slightly suspicious and also intermittently useful for buying things like beer and weed. But make no mistake: A house punk is not a punk punk. They water down what's left of the scene.

"A house punk is not a punk punk." Did Morris actually type that sentence? Since when was homelessness a job requirement? Lefty favorite Joe Strummer (of the Clash) was the son of a diplomat, for heaven's sake, educated in boarding school. And what about New Jersey's hardest working band, the Misfits? Brothers Jerry Only and Doyle (bassist and guitarist, respectively) put in 12-hour days at their father's machine shop while singer Glenn Danzig ran the band's mail order Fiend Club business. Those guys definitely weren't squatting in Tompkins Square Park. Hell, even end of days Sid Vicious had a bed at the Chelsea Hotel.

This whole notion of watering down the scene reminds me of the lefties I used to know who thought historian Howard Zinn was more important than the immortal band Black Flag. For these types, let's call them P.C. punks, left-wing politics weren't just encouraged, they were required. I once actually argued with someone who said that guitarist Johnny Ramone didn't count since he was a Republican. Johnny's band (the Ramones) basically set the musical template followed by every punk rocker for the last three decades. If he doesn't count, nobody does.

Along the same lines, it's always interesting to remind the P.C. crowd that the Bad Brains, the legendary Afro-punks who combined Rastafarianism, reggae, and hardcore, also happened to be virulent homophobes. As Steve Blush records in his great oral history American Hardcore, Bad Brains's singer H.R. let loose with the occasional sermon, including, "We're in Babylon! This is holy Hell! San Francisco is Babylon! All these faggots and bald-headed women running around!" Try to squeeze that into A People's History of the United States!

All of this gets at one of the key problems with the New York piece. Morris buys into the idea of an "authentic" punk identity when the reality is an incoherent and frequently contradictory mess, blending music, attitude, and, yes, sometimes some pretty ridiculous politics. But not always.

For more reason punk coverage, check out Brian Doherty and Nick Gillespie on the P.C. eulogizing of Joey Ramone, Radley Balko on Los Lobos's L.A. punk origins, and Tim Cavanaugh on how the Clash's "Sandinista! sucks a million times more than Combat Rock."

The Decider?

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:01:00 EDT

Over at Balkinization, legal scholar Sanford Levinson throws some cold water on David Broder's description of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as "arguably...the single most influential arbiter of domestic policy in the land." Not so fast, Levinson says:

The overestimation of the power of the Supreme Court, which usually includes Tocqueville's demonstrably wrong quotation from his 1835 book Democracy in America on all political issues turning into judicial issues, is one of the continuing scandals of American political analysis.... Why isn't it enough to say that the Supreme Court is an institution of some importance with regard to some issues and, therefore, that Kennedy plays a key role with regard to those particular issues (i.e., where the Court is otherwise evenly split on ideological grounds)?

Mark Tushnet made a related point in a great reason interview a few years back, arguing that the Court basically just affects American society at the margins. "10 years down the line," he maintained, "the society's going to be pretty much where it would've been even if the courts hadn't said a word about it."

I'm curious what reason's readers make of this. Is Kennedy as influential as Broder makes him out to be? What about the Court in general? One more thing to consider: Narrow majorities do issue landmark decisions. To take a recent example, D.C. v. Heller came down 5-4 in favor of an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. And while Justice Kennedy's comments during oral arguments gave a strong indication of his eventual majority vote, it's at least conceivable that he might have voted the other way, hamstringing the Second Amendment for decades to come.

Workin' Man Blues

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:46:00 EDT

Over at The Nation's political blog, John Nichols reports on efforts by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to get steelworkers and other union members to throw their support behind a black presidential candidate:

Trumka knew that the steelworkers had backed John Edwards for this year's Democratic presidential nomination—and that the union had only endorsed Obama when Edwards finally came around. He understood that a part of his job was to get a union that is especially strong in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania excited about a candidate who must win those states.

Trumka knew, as well, that there are steelworkers—and autoworkers and machinists and others—who are committed to the labor movement but cautious about backing a person of color for president. So the Pennsylvania populist went to the heart of the matter—challenging ignorance and fear and calling on the House of Labor to identify and reject the politics of race in order to elect an ally to the presidency.

Whole thing here.

Left unexamined is the American labor movement's long, ugly history of racism and discrimination, one that older left-leaning historians tried their best to downplay. But the problem historically wasn't just racist attitudes among white workers, it was the monopoly bargaining powers that the government granted to racist unions, allowing them to exclude blacks and other unwelcome groups from participating in the only game in town. For instance, under the collective bargaining practices established by the National Recovery Administration (which went into effect in 1933 as part of Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act), a union representing a majority of employees was granted exclusive representation over all employees. White-controlled unions, in other words, were given a state-sanctioned monopoly, one that forbid competition from unions representing a minority of workers. Here's something I wrote about the practice in 2004:

While such compulsory unionism is routinely celebrated as a milestone for the American worker, many African Americans saw things differently. The NAACP's publication The Crisis, for example, decried the monopoly powers granted to racist unions by the NRA, noting in 1934 that "union labor strategy seems to be to obtain the right to bargain with the employees as the sole representative of labor, and then close the union to black workers." Members of the black press had something of a field day attacking the NRA, rechristening it the "Negro Removal Act," "Negroes Robbed Again," "Negro Run Around," and "No Roosevelt Again."

The Supreme Court unanimously struck the NRA down in 1935, but the collective bargaining provisions were reinstated a few months later via the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, after its sponsor, Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.). And the Wagner Act, it's worth pointing out, originally contained a clause forbidding discrimination against African Americans, but it was removed at the behest of the AFL.

Needless to say, this is some of the necessary background you don't hear about when the pundits question Obama's ability to reach "working class" voters.

Palmer for President

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:17:00 EDT

First, Republican presidential wannabe Tom Tancredo told America that when the terrorists strike, "I'm looking for Jack Bauer," a reference to the federal agent and torture enthusiast portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland on TV's 24. Now, Dennis Haysbert, the actor who portrayed President David Palmer on several seasons of the hit show, is taking partial credit for the phenomenon known as Barack Obama. From CNN's account:

"If anything, my portrayal of David Palmer, I think, may have helped open the eyes of the American people," said the actor, who has contributed $2,300 to the Illinois Democrat's presidential campaign.

"And I mean the American people from across the board—from the poorest to the richest, every color and creed, every religious base—to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first," he said Tuesday.

Culture matters, no doubt about it. So what about President Tom Beck, expertly portrayed by the great Morgan Freeman in the asteroid epic Deep Impact? (I retain no memory of the president's color or creed in the related Bruce Willis classic Armageddon.) And I suppose this means that Geena Davis's turn on Commander in Chief wasn't enough to save Hillary Clinton's floundering campaign.

As usual, The Onion was there first.

Rush Limbaugh, Francophile

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:13:00 EDT

There are tons of fascinating details in the New York Times's long profile of talk radio king Rush Limbaugh, from his twelve-step pill purge to his dismissals of competitors Michael Savage ("He's not even in my rearview mirror") and Sean Hannity ("I have no competitors...Hannity isn't even close to me"). But who knew Limbaugh favored pommes frites over freedom fries?

Unlike many right-wing talk-show hosts, Limbaugh does not view France with hostility. On the contrary, he is a Francophile. His salon, he told me, is meant to suggest Versailles. His main guest suite, which I did not personally inspect, was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris.

Whole thing here.

Damon Root on the Radio

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:30:00 EDT

I’ll be on Jerry Hughes’s Straight Talk radio show today at 3 p.m. to discuss the Supreme Court's recent habeas corpus and Second Amendment decisions.

Click here to listen live.

Individual Rights and the Supreme Court

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:25:00 EDT

George Mason's David Bernstein wrote a great article for the Cato Institute last week making the necessary point that the Supreme Court's liberals aren't necessarily its most reliable defenders of individual rights. As Bernstein notes, the dissents in D.C. v. Heller presented "the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides." As he notes, there's also liberal malfeasance on cases dealing with election-related speech, eminent domain abuse, racial classifications, and "hate speech" to keep in mind.

The only thing I would add is that the Court's conservatives aren't exactly eager to take up the slack. As Radley Balko pointed out, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are

judges who defer to police and prosecutors on criminal justice issues, who would put broad restrictions on your ability to sue government agents who have wronged you, and who embrace the Unitary Executive, essentially the belief that when it comes to foreign policy and national security (and a number of other issues), the president's powers are unlimited, absolute, and unchecked by either Congress or the courts. That isn't an exaggeration.

Justice Antonin Scalia, of course, voted the wrong way in Gonzales v. Raich, siding with the majority against California's medical marijuana law. And in his ugly Boumediene v. Bush dissent, Scalia viciously asserted that recognizing habeas corpus for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Perhaps it goes without saying, but wouldn't a few genuine libertarians be a nice improvement?

"Yeah, sure, I know, it's a free country and I ain't got the right. But I got a badge. What do you got?"

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:42:00 EDT

Yesterday's New York Times brought the shocking and bizarre story of "Sergeant Bill" Jakob, the unemployed former trucking company owner and wedding-performing minister (among other things) who apparently hoodwinked the entire town of Gerald, Missouri into thinking he was a federal agent sent to save them from the scourge of methamphetamine.

The whole outrageous and sadly hilarious thing is well worth your time, but here are a few particularly notable details:

In addition to having a badge and a car that seemed to scream law enforcement, Mr. Jakob offered federal drug enforcement help, [Mayor Otis] Schulte said, (a notion local officials said must have somehow grown out of their recent application for a federal grant for radio equipment) and asked [Police] Chief McCrary to call what he said was his supervisor's telephone number to confirm Gerald's need for his help.

When the call was placed, a woman—whose identity is unknown—answered with the words "multijurisdictional task force," and said that the city's request for federal services was under review, the mayor said. Mr. Schulte said he now suspects that Mr. Jakob adapted the nonexistent task force name from the "Beverly Hills Cop" movies starring Eddie Murphy.

Read it and weep.

Gun Powder, Trigger Locks, and Justice Stephen Breyer

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:45:00 EDT

During the oral arguments for D.C. v. Heller last March, one of the more interesting—and, as it turns out, important—exchanges concerned a comparison between Washington, D.C.'s strict trigger lock provisions and early American laws regulating the storage of gunpowder in cities. In essence, the question was whether or not D.C.'s trigger locks left residents effectively unarmed and thus unable to protect their homes, and were there any historical precedents for this outcome? In his dissent today, Justice Stephen Breyer returned to this comparison, arguing that even if the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to self-defense (which he accepts, though he maintains that the amendment does not contain "a specific untouchable right to keep guns in the house to shoot burglars"):

colonial history itself offers important kinds of gun regulation that citizens would then have thought compatible with the "right to keep and bear arms," whether embodied in Federal or State Constitutions, or the background common law. And those examples include substantial regulation of firearms in urban areas, including regulations that imposed obstacles to the use of firearms for the protection of the home.

Thus Breyer accepts the District's position that the handgun ban and accompanying trigger lock provisions do not deprive individuals of the right to self-defense. Moreover, they represent "a permissible legislative response to a serious, indeed life-threatening, problem," that of "high-crime urban areas."

Supreme Court Watch

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:31:00 EDT

Big morning today at the Supreme Court, which ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional in cases of child rape "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in death of the victim." Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the 5-4 majority, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and by Chief Justice John Roberts. You can find the decision here.

For those of us eagerly awaiting the Court's decision in DC v. Heller, which looks at the constitutionality of Washington, DC's sweeping handgun ban, as well as whether the Second Amendment protects an individual or collective right to keep and bear arms, that ruling will be issued tomorrow. And it is looking very likely that Justice Scalia will be the author of a plurality, if not a majority decision, which suggests a big win for individual rights.

"When it comes to public health, I don't think I have any apology for that"

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:01:00 EDT

At his great food blog Crispy on the Outside, reason contributor Baylen Linnekin has some choice words for the Texas officials that nearly derailed a Juneteenth celebration over a few hundred "illegal" sandwiches. From the KSWO story:

Black Cultural Council President Jo Ann Davenport-Littleton said health inspectors told organizers it was illegal for the group to serve 600 free barbecue sandwiches because the sandwiches weren't prepared at the site where they were served.

Organizers say volunteers and the black community felt "humiliated" by the incident.

[...]

The county's top health official, Gino Solla, said state law prohibits any food service operation from having food prepared in a private home for public consumption.

Linnekin also found this gem from the charming Mr. Solla:

"We have to be aggressive when the public interest is involved," [Solla] told the [Dallas Morning News]. "If there was any kind of forwardness and if it was perceived as rude, that I'll apologize for. But when it comes to public health, I don't think I have any apology for that."

Whole thing here.

Mr. Modesty

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:15:00 EDT

During his Senate confirmation hearings, soon-to-be Chief Justice John Roberts stressed his belief that the Supreme Court should practice judicial "modesty," a respect for precedent and consensus that he extended all the way to the abortion-affirming Roe v. Wade, a decision he described as "the settled law of the Land."

Did Roberts mean what he said? Jeffrey Rosen thinks so. In a provocative piece for the New Republic, Rosen argues that while it's too early to say for sure,

it seems increasingly clear that liberals dodged a bullet when President Bush nominated [Roberts] to be chief justice. Instead of siding with conservative extremists like Clarence Thomas, who are eager to press the limits of the so-called Constitution in Exile, resurrecting limits on federal power whenever possible, Roberts prefers narrow opinions that can attract support from the center. Liberals ought to applaud this instinct because, even if Barack Obama gets to appoint the next justice or two, it's the only thing standing between them and a Court eager to roll back progressive reforms.

Setting aside Rosen's tiresome crusade against the non-existent "Constitution-in-Exile" movement, the point about Roberts and narrow opinions rings true. As Rosen learned from the chief justice himself, Roberts has, among other things, encouraged the Court to hear more business cases, since those tend not to divide the justices along stark ideological lines, contributing to "a culture and an ethos that says, 'It's good when we're all together.'"

Interestingly, Rosen's conclusions are very different from those of other liberal legal scholars, particularly New York University's Ronald Dworkin, who has argued that Roberts and his fellow conservatives have been fomenting a revolution that is "Jacobin in its disdain for tradition and precedent."

As evidence against such claims, Rosen points to the differences between the recent habeas dissents of Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia. There is definitely something to that. As I've previously noted, Scalia's dissent is an ugly, even menacing document, while Roberts's makes the surprising point that, "the habeas process the Court mandates will most likely end up looking a lot like the [Detainee Treatment Act] system it replaces." That's a long way from Scalia's vicious assertion that Boumediene v. Bush "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

But of course we're not done with the current term yet. There's still the eagerly anticipated District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Supreme Court will decide on the constitutionality of Washington, DC's sweeping gun ban and most likely settle whether the Second Amendment protects an individual or a collective right to keep and bear arms. That decision may come as early as tomorrow morning. We'll see if Rosen still wants to call this term "something of a bipartisan lovefest" after that.

Eminent Domain Abuse in Brooklyn

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:21:00 EDT

As previously noted, today is the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's terrible Kelo decision, which upheld New London, Connecticut's use of eminent domain to seize private property on behalf of the Pfizer Corporation. Unfortunately, though perhaps fittingly, the Court today signaled its unwillingness to revisit the issue, refusing to hear the case of Goldstein v. Pataki, one of the first major eminent domain appeals since the Kelo ruling came down.

At issue in Goldstein is the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, New York, a 22-acre boondoggle centered on a new taxpayer-subsidized basketball stadium for the New Jersey (soon-to-be Brooklyn) Nets. All told, more than 40 business owners and tenants face losing their property to the real estate developer (and New Jersey Nets owner) Bruce Ratner, whose Forest City Ratner Companies is overseeing the project along with New York's quasi-public Empire State Development Corporation. As someone who just relocated from one of the thriving neighborhoods sitting in dangerous proximity to the proposed site, I'm here to tell you that the Atlantic Yards will be a catastrophe and a disgrace, ruining many more lives and livelihoods than this lawsuit could ever hope to reflect.

But all hope isn't lost. Matthew Brinckerhoff, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, has declared his intentions to take the fight to New York's state courts:

We are, of course, disappointed that the Court declined our request to hear this important case. This is not, however, a ruling on the merits of our claims. Our claims remain sound. New York State law, and the state constitution, prohibit the government from taking private homes and businesses simply because a powerful developer demands it. Yet, that is what has happened. Recent events have revealed that the public, and the Public Authorities Control Board were sold a bill of goods by Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation. We now know that Ratner's project will cost the public much more than it will ever receive.

Another interesting fact: Justice Samuel Alito noted that he would have granted review to the case. No other member of the Court shared their votes, nor is it common for them to do so when simply denying review. While this doesn't reveal how Justice Alito would have actually voted on the case, it does suggest that he's a potential ally in future property rights fights.

What Ever Happened to the Kelo House?

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:17:00 EDT

This Monday is the third anniversary of Kelo v. City of New London, the notorious decision where the Supreme Court upheld that city's use of eminent domain on behalf of the Pfizer Corporation. So what's the status of the "comprehensive" and "revitalized" development site today? Here's the Institute for Justice, the libertarian public interest firm that litigated the case:

Like so many other projects that use eminent domain and rely on taxpayer subsidies, New London's Fort Trumbull project has been a failure. After spending $78 million in taxpayer dollars, the city of New London and the private developer have engaged in no new construction since the project was approved in 2000. Indeed, since the property owners disputing the takings owned less than two acres in a 90-acre project area, the city has always had a vast majority of the land available for development. Yet, no new development has occurred. The preferred developer for part of the site, Corcoran Jennison, recently missed its latest deadline for securing financing for building on the site and was terminated as the "designated developer."

The property at the center of the case, the house owned by plaintiff Susette Kelo, has since been relocated in its entirety to another part of town. And tomorrow is the grand re-opening, complete with a ribbon cutting ceremony. If you're in the area, stop by and thank Susette Kelo and the fine folks at the Institute for Justice for fighting the good fight. Details here.