Small Girls Become Zucchini-Selling Outlaws (with Bonus Lemonade Stand Download)

Posted on August 21, 2008, 2:25pm | Katherine Mangu-Ward

A burgeoning fruit and veggie empire threatens law and order in Clayton, California:

Eleven-year-old Katie and three-year-old Sabrina Lewis have been selling spare melons, radishes, and of course, zucchini from their family garden at a roadside stand on Saturday mornings. Recently, the cops showed to bust them. 

"They said traffic was being stopped and then they came up with we can't have a roadside stand and then they said it was a commercial enterprise," said Katie Lewis.

Hilariously, the mayor defends the decision to shut down this tiny lesson in capitalism, preferring to make it a tiny lesson in bureaucracy instead. His defense:

"They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they grow it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next," said Clayton Mayor Gregg Manning.

The mayor later called the girls and their father "self-centered."

For those who were in elementary school in the 1980s, you can now relive the pixelated glory that was the Lemonade Stand computer game, which encouraged this kind of abominable, self-centered capitalist behavior in school kids. And in the name of learning math, no less. Go ahead, download Lemonade Stand and play a round as a gesture of solidarity with the Lewis girls. You know you want to.

Thanks John Schwenkler!

Cementing the Revolution

Posted on August 21, 2008, 1:58pm | Michael C. Moynihan

After a round of bad-faith negotiations with the Mexican company Cemex, the government of Venezuela has decided it's high time that foreign cement factories are expropriated to benefit the proletariat (and by "proletariat" they mean the crooked oligarchs of Caracas). President Chavez sent the National Guard to seize the company's assets after negotiations broke down when Cemex representatives pointed out that their operations were being "significantly undervalued." Two other foreign-owned cement companies—one Swiss, the other French—caved to Chavista pressure, selling majority shares of their local factories to the Bolivarian highwaymen. As one analyst told Marketwatch, Venezuela can forget about attracting foreign investors:


The Financial Times makes the obvious point: "Steel, oil joint ventures, telecommunications, electricity, the third biggest bank and, on Monday, cement: the growing number of industries falling into the hands of the Venezuelan government is making President Hugo Chávez's so-called 21st-century socialism look more and more like the plain old 20th-century version."

'They Are Breasts; They're Not a Big Deal'

Posted on August 21, 2008, 1:19pm | Jacob Sullum

The annual Boobs on Bikes parade in Auckland, New Zealand, went off without a hitch this week despite attempts to block the event by local politicians and conservative activists. On Tuesday a judge rejected the Auckland District Council's request for an injunction against the topless processional, organized by porn promoter Steve Crow. The council argued that the event violated a law against offensive parades. The judge questioned the validity of the law and the offensiveness of the parade, noting that last year it attacted some 100,000 onlookers, presumably not all of them protesters. Now a group called Family First is lobbying for an explicit ban on topless parades, saying "the current law is far too liberal and vague." Crow begs to differ:

It is topless people, men and women, in a public place, which is perfectly legal under our Bill of Rights and under New Zealand law. Mr McCoskrie [director of Family First] keeps harping on that it is pornography. They are breasts; they're not a big deal.

What say you? McCoskrie raises an interesting point when he notes that police stopped three topless women from walking through Hamilton on Monday, the day before 30 topless women rode through Auckland with impunity. Are breasts offensive only in small numbers?

I discussed the economics of toplessness in a recent post about sex discrimination in Las Vegas.

[Thanks to El Destiny for the tip.]

Random House Bows to a Mufti

Posted on August 21, 2008, 12:44pm | Mike Riggs

Random House has cancelled the August publication of Sherry Jones' book, not because Jones violated the rules of her genre (it's a straight-forward novel), and not because Jones plagiarized (she conducted thorough research and wrote up a complete bibliography). Random House ditched the book because its narrative depicts a history of Islam in which women are treated as more than second-class citizens:

Life has been a roller coaster lately for Jones, 46, who went from being a Book-of-the-Month Club pick to seeing her novel dropped by Random House, which said in a statement it had received "cautionary advice" that the fictionalized story of one of Muhammad's wives might "incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."...

Earlier this month, [Denise Spellberg, who teaches Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas] wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal that the book was "provocative" and followed a tradition of anti-Islamic writings that "use sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith."

To be fair, Spellberg's principle objection is that she's listed in Jones' bibliography, but aside from that, what kind of academic uses her publishing connections to suppress an objectionable cultural artifact? Several "progressive Muslims" have come to Jones' defense, among them, Asra Nomani:

"Okay, so this isn't the next great piece of literature, but it pushes the ball forward in challenging dogmatic ideas about how you can relate to Islam," Nomani said in an interview this week. "We need movement from this static relationship we have with Islam. . . . Look, Mary and Mary Magdalene have taken hits and survived somehow."

Almost as alarming as a publishing company disappearing a book simply to avoid the possibility of a Rushdie-esque reaction from radical Muslims, is the idea that artists have an obligation to protect, or even spare religous figures. Mary and Mary Magdelene haven't "survived": they've been dead for almost two millennia, supposing they ever existed. Yes, some sects of Christianity continue to hold both women in high theological esteem, but negative literary and visual renderings have had little effect on those perceptions. 

These types of concessions were a regularity during the the Inquisition, when the Catholic Church reacted to oppositional literature with violence and terrorism. It took centuries for European intellectuals and decent Catholics to escape such oppression—what does a growing willingness to tolerate the artistic notions of Radical Islam say about the power and future of free thought in a global society?

By dropping Jones' book, Random House is doing its part to engender Radical Islam's perpetual adolescence and oppressive influence. Had it gone ahead with the book's August run, it's likely that critics would have devoted more time to analyzing Jones' writing than accusing Random House of advancing a modernist Western agenda against Islam.

Addendum: Associate editor Michael C. Moynihan tapped this story first, on Aug. 6, and closed with, "Let us hope that The Jewel of Medina gets picked up by another publisher." Several European publishers are considering the book, but all signs point to a no-go:

Recently, Jones got a boost when a Serbian publisher agreed to print 1,000 copies, but within 24 hours said it wouldn't do another run after protests from a Belgrade mufti, or Islamic scholar. Soon another mufti was quoted as saying the first one was using the book to pander to orthodox Muslims. Kern says publishers in Hungary, Russia, Italy and Spain have purchased rights to print the book, but are waiting to see what happens in Serbia.

The McCain Family's White Lies

Posted on August 21, 2008, 12:29pm | Matt Welch

The Christian Science Monitor rounds up some exaggerations the McCains have apparently made about Mother Teresa's role in the adoption of their daughter from Bangladesh, and about what exactly Cindy McCain looked at when she visited the Hanoi Hilton. A couple of points about this, and the whole cross-in-the-dirt mini-kerfuffle:

1) Humans embellish memory. It's what we do, consciously or not, like it or not. One of my favorite micro-genres of literature is journalistic corrections of the protagonist's memory (Timoth Garton Ash's terrific The File combines that sobering exercise, of a middle-aged historian fact-checking his misspent youth, with the espionage and paranoia of Cold War East Berlin).

2) Political humans embellish memory more than most. Incentive-wise, politicians obviously are geared toward doing what it takes to win elections, John McCain just as much as anyone else. One of his most ballyhooed early moments as a politician came when he refuted (accurate) accusations of being a carpetbagger to Arizona by saying "As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi." Well, as a matter of fact, he lived in Hanoi for five and a half years, but had lived in Arlington, Va. for at least five years as a kid, and then for several years after he came back from Vietnam.

A perhaps even more important factor than motive, however, is lifestyle. Which is to say, politicians –and John McCain much more than most–spend their days telling the same old stories, the same stale jokes, the same moving anecdotes from decades gone by. To cite one harmless example, if you do a Google search on "John McCain" and "live long enough" and "French," you will get 5,400 different results of him making the same stale crack about "pro-American" French president Nicolas Sarkozy. I challenge any human, let alone a politician incentivized to tell shaggy dog stories, to recite the same lines thousands of times without them becoming an almost pure abstraction. People want to bust McCain's chops for changing the professional football team in one of his favorite Hanoi anecdotes from the Green Bay Packers to the Pittsburgh Steelers while he was in Pennsylvania; but where others see cold political cynicism I see a 71-year-old man on autopilot, pressing "play" on a story he probably doesn't even remember anymore, maybe seeing the word "Pittsburgh" in his line of vision, and then making the boo-boo.

In many ways, McCain reminds me of another politician I happen to know pretty well, former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan. Both men are short, septuagenarian political rapscalians with a taste for booze and (younger) broads, who are on some level absolutely terrified of solitude, and so are just constantly yapping to a chorus of mostly charmed listeners. I've had Riordan tell me the same terrible Jonathan Winters joke within the span of 30 minutes, and add layers of, ah, fresh detail to his hoary old stories.

3) The McCains have a history of lying. This I guess still comes as a shock, but is no less true. Both Cindy and John lied to one another about their respective ages until their wedding day, to cite one funny example. 

4) McCain's history has never really been scrutinized before. This may sound hard to believe for 26-year veteran of Capitol Hill, but no less true. Like Riordan, McCain got used to being able to make a too-salty joke, or too-perfect anecdote, because the press was mostly amused and/or actively wanted to protect the guy from himself. This leads to bad habits, especially in the age of YouTube, and is one of many reasons why the Straight Talk Express is no longer a rolling press conference. But more than just malaprops, there are chunks of the McCain biography, including and especially the Vietnam chapter, that are just flat inconsistent and have never been fully examined journalistically. And it's not just the non-"pivotal" stuff like the cross-in-the-dirt story, but fundamental experiences like McCain's prison suicide attempt, which has a variety of different tellings and timelines in different settings.

5) Seriously, are we gonna argue over the timeline of a guy's suicide attempt after having been tortured to the point of confession in a Vietnamese prison? This one's pretty self-explanatory.

6) Anyone running for president automatically loses the benefit of the doubt. This one should be too.

If you'd rather read about what kind of president the guy would actually make, there's a new paperback (with fresh new afterword from the author!) I can recommend.

Relax, We're Only Assessing You

Posted on August 21, 2008, 12:12pm | Jacob Sullum

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and several of his colleagues are worried about new guidelines for FBI investigations that Attorney General Michael Mukasey is on the verge of approving. Yesterday, in a letter to Mukasey, they raised several concerns:

The guidelines permit the FBI to use a variety of intrusive investigative techniques to conduct "assessments" of possible criminal activity, national security threats or foreign intelligence collection—without any initial factual predication. We are concerned about the extent to which such authority might, for example, permit the FBI to conduct long-term physical surveillance of an innocent American citizen; interview such an individual's neighbors and professional colleagues, including based on a "pretext" or misrepresentation; recruit human sources to provide information on that individual; or conduct commercial database searches on that individual—all without any basis for suspicion....We are particularly concerned that the draft guidelines might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities.

The guidelines permit the collection of foreign intelligence information inside the United States, through both "assessments" and predicated "full investigations," with little explicit protection for information gathered about United States persons. The definition of "foreign intelligence" is broad, and covers any information relating to the activities of a foreign government, organization or person. We are concerned about the extent to which the FBI may be permitted to gather or use information about Americans under the rubric of foreign intelligence gathering when there is no suspicion of a crime, threat to national security, or any other wrongdoing.

The Bush administration has argued that FBI agents should not need grounds for suspicion to use commonly available investigative tools such as Web searches. While there is something to be said for that argument, one could also argue that law enforcement officials should be more restrained in their use of such tools than ordinary citizens, since the consequences of their curiosity have the potential to be much more serious. In any case, "long-term physical surveillance" is not something ordinary citizens can do without risking arrest for trespassing, stalking, or harassment. Likewise, FBI interviews, even when officially consensual, have a coercive aspect to them that is absent from, say, a chat with a neighbor. And if "commercial database searches" include examining sensitive information such as credit reports, which ordinary citizens can legally obtain only if they are engaging in or considering certain kinds of transactions with the subjects of the reports, that is another example of special government powers that should not be exercised willy-nilly.

This story is a good excuse to quote Feingold's comments at a June 25 hearing about border searches of laptop computers, where he castigated the Bush administration for withholding information about the frequency of the practice:

Once again, this administration has demonstrated its perverse belief that it is entitled to keep anything and everything secret from the public it serves and their elected representatives, while Americans are not allowed to keep any secrets from their government. That's exactly backwards. In a country founded on principles of liberty and democracy, the personal information of law-abiding Americans is none of the government's business, but the policies of the government are very much the business of Congress and the American people.

[Thanks to Tricky Vic for the tip.]

New at Reason: Dave Weigel on Bob Barr

Posted on August 21, 2008, 12:00pm

From our August/September issue, Associate Editor David Weigel explains how Bob Barr's candidacy may help the Libertarian Party achieve historical relevance.

Read all about it here. 

But Will the Timetable Be Done by the Time of the GOP Convention?

Posted on August 21, 2008, 11:54am | Nick Gillespie

AP report on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, where Secretary of State Rice is jawing up a storm with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari about gittin' the hell out:

A key part of the U.S.-Iraqi draft agreement envisions the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq's cities by next June 30.

Said Zebari: "This agreement determines the principle provisions, requirements, to regulate the temporary presence and the time horizon, the mission of the U.S. forces."...

In addition to spelling out that U.S. troops would move out of Iraqi cities by next summer, the Iraqi government has pushed for a specific date - most likely the end of 2011 - by which all U.S. forces would depart the country. In the meantime, the U.S. troops would be positioned on bases in other parts of the country to make them less visible while still being able to assist Iraqi forces as needed.

There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

More here.

Wasn't James Garner the Original Maverick?

Posted on August 21, 2008, 11:15am | Jacob Sullum

A McCain ad touts the Arizona senator as "the original maverick":

Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago. Only McCain has taken on Big Tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again. He's the original maverick.

By promising to fix Big Government while fighting Big Corporations, McCain clearly is trying to one-up, or at least match, Barack Obama's economic populism. But I fear this is the real McCain, a less squeaky version of Ross Perot. And what's up with "four years ago"? It's hard to believe that the crucial mistake, in McCain's view, was electing George W. Bush instead of John Kerry in 2004, as opposed to picking Bush instead of McCain as the Republican nominee in 2000.

Addendum: ABC's Jake Tapper notes that it's hard to argue the economy is worse now than it was four years ago, at the end of Bush's first term, yet not worse than it was eight years ago, at the end of Bill Clinton's second term:

Our unemployment rate is currently 5.7%. That's higher, worse, than it was four years ago—5.4%. But it's also worse than it was eight years ago: 4.1%.

Our inflation rate was 5.02% in June of this year.

That's worse than it was four years ago—in August 2004, the rate was 2.65%. But it's also worse than it was eight years ago. In August 2000, the inflation rate was 3.41%.

One thing that was "better" (depending on your perspective) in 2004 than it was in 2000: housing prices. Maybe that's what McCain has in mind.

[Thanks to Doug Riblet for the link.]

No Pot Arrests in Denver During the Convention?

Posted on August 21, 2008, 10:46am | Jacob Sullum

In 2005 Denver voters approved an initiative that repealed local penalties for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. But police ignored the initiative, continuing to arrest pot smokers for violating state law. In November voters approved another initiative, instructing city officials to make minor pot possession cases their "lowest law enforcement priority." Not surprisingly, it looks like police are ignoring the will of the people again. Yesterday drug policy reformer Mason Tvert, who led the campaigns for both initiatives, told a panel charged with implementing the new law that marijuana arrests in Denver, which totaled 1,600 last year, are on pace to hit 1,900 this year, without taking into account a surge that's likely to accompany the Democratic National Convention, which begins on Monday. "After the Democratic National Convention ends, there will be hundreds of marijuana cases all showing up at the same time," Tvert said. That's if police ignore a resolution, approved by the panel yesterday, urging them to refrain from arresting or citing pot smokers during the convention. According to A.P., "city officials say the resolution is not binding."

Start Drinking Early

Posted on August 21, 2008, 9:57am | Jesse Walker

A coalition of college presidents has aggravated the usual suspects -- and even some writers I usually agree with, like Steve Chapman and Jay Hancock -- by arguing that the drinking age should come down to 18. I'm with the anthropologist Dwight Heath, who takes their argument a step further:

[D]rinking alcohol itself is not the root of the social, legal and physical problems attributed to underage drinking. Rather, it is heavy, excessive drinking among teenagers that is causing most of the problems.

It is this culture of excessive drinking among youths that some college presidents hope to change. They want to teach young people how to drink responsibly, a lesson that I believe should include encouraging parents to drink in moderation with their underage children at home.

Heath points out that "kids who drank with their parents were about half as likely to say they had drunk alcohol in the past month and one-third as likely to say they had had five or more consecutive drinks in the previous two weeks." (He also distinguishes drinking moderate amounts at dinner, which he endorses, from supplying kids with booze for their parties, which he does not.) Most important, he points to some compelling cross-cultural evidence:

Introducing alcohol to children at a young age is a widely acceptable and culturally ingrained practice in other countries. France views drinking as an integral part of everyday life, a sociable custom usually enjoyed at the family table. Children are allowed to experiment, within limits, and no one expects that drinking will significantly change their lives. The fear that teaching kids to be responsible drinkers will only teach them to be heavy drinkers has been unfounded in other "wine cultures," including Italy and Spain. Both countries report very low rates of alcohol dependence: less than 1 percent in Italy and 2.8 percent in Spain. In the U.S., the rate is 7.8 percent.

Whatever else it may be, drinking is a learned behavior. It is shaped by a complex combination of observations, warnings and personal experience. The U.S. needs to start recreating a culture like the one we had 200 years ago where alcohol was an everyday part of family life and not the tempting forbidden fruit.

Both France and Italy, incidentally, have a drinking age of 16. I don't often get a chance to say this, so here goes: If only we were as free as France!

New at Reason: Steve Chapman on the Perils of Lowering the Drinking Age

Posted on August 21, 2008, 7:00am

In his latest column, Steve Chapman explains why 18-year-olds should not be allowed to drink.

Read all about it here.

Ron Paul 2008: Quest for the Vice Presidency

Posted on August 20, 2008, 4:19pm | David Weigel

Carey Campbell, chairman of the Virginia Independent Green Party, is a stand-up guy. He read yesterday's post about his effort to put Mike Bloomberg and Ron Paul on the Virginia ballot and walked up to reason world HQ (located somewhere between Mount Rushmore and the Atlantic Ocean) to chat about his plans. I've boiled our free-form talk into this Q&A.

reason: Why did you decide on these two candidates?

Campbell: Ron Paul could have had the nomination of all three of the "major minor" parties if he'd wanted them. I know that from talking to David Cobb and Pat LaMarche of the Greens, I put calls in to Bill Redpath [of the Libertarian Party], and I talked to people in the Constitution Party. He could have been the candidate. But he only had $35 million—well, $4 million now. And that wasn't enough. You'd need $500 million to make a go at this, and who has $500 million to spend? Hmmmmm. It all comes together.

reason: But you've thought of Bloomberg for a long time.

Campbell: I set up a draft organization and approached the mayor about this in 2005. We were reaching out to a number of people. We reached out to Daniel Imperato when we heard he had money. Remember, Bloomberg didn't rule out a third party run until this February.

reason: I talked to Paul's communications director yesterday, and he pointed out that, while flattering, the Bloomberg match-up was odd because Bloomberg and Paul don't agree on much.

Campbell: They agree on the most important issue: Our money. Just think of the two of them as stewards of our tax dollars.

reason: It doesn't quite make sense to me.

Campbell: It made a hell of a lot of sense to the people who signed these petitions. The reaction was nothing like anything I'd ever seen. More positive even than when I was getting signatures for Perot.

reason: What else are you doing, vis-a-vis this ticket?

Campbell: We have three weeks to get this ticket on enough ballots to access 270 electoral votes. I've talked to the Independence Party in New York. I've been talking with all three of the major minors, and what I've suggested is that they call new conventions to nominate this ticket. Bloomberg/Paul gets past the media blackout. Another way to get past that blackout, something I've suggested to Shane Cory [of the Barr campaign], is this: 50 states, 50 debates, 50 days. Stop whining about the two party debate and force the media's attention on you.

reason: I don't think that could work, logistically.

Campbell: It might be physically impossible, but it's a nice idea.

reason: But what's the end game? What do you want to be doing in November?

Campbell: On November 5, if I had my way, I'd be working on the Bloomberg/Paul transition team and being vetted for a job as national comptroller. I'm an accountant by trade, so that's what I'd be angling for. If this doesn't work, we've at least laid the groundwork for this kind of quicksilver effort to take off in four years.

Moby Drives China Over the Edge

Posted on August 20, 2008, 3:57pm | Katherine Mangu-Ward

China has been working hard to maintain a delicate balancing act of putting on a nobody-here-but-us-freedom-loving-semi-capitalists act for the Olympic tourists and athletes, while keeping its citizens inside the cone of silence. And this week they finally cracked.

iTunes is blocked in many parts of the country today. And who drove China to distraction in the end? Why Moby and Alanis Morissette, of course. Singing about the Dalai Lama (or something) on the Songs for Tibet album just released on the site. On Monday, "the US-based Campaign for Tibet organisation claimed on its website that "over 40 Olympic athletes in North America, Europe and even Beijing" had downloaded the album." As usual, China offers a hilariously illogical explanation for its hugely disproportionate response to 40 downloads via its quasi-official news site:

Angry netizens [internet users] are rallying together to denounce Apple in offering Songs for Tibet for purchase. They have also expressed a wish to ban the album's singers and producers, most notably Sting, John Mayer and Dave Matthews, from entering China.

Gee, those angry Chinese netizens, they sure have a lot of power over China's Internet policy.

Of course, maybe the regime is right to freak out. Your people get ahold of a few good tunes, and the next thing you know, you might have a Singing Revolution on your hands. 

Why Hillary Won't Be VEEP

Posted on August 20, 2008, 3:51pm | Nick Gillespie

Columnist Ron Hart totes up the reasons, including the following:

Part of Hillary's problem was her insistence on staying in the race against Obama after she was mathematically out of it. She felt that math was elitist, and because many Democrats are not good with numbers, she kept going. Unlike "American Idol," where Americans actually take their vote seriously and when you lose you have to go home immediately, the Democratic primary allows losers to linger and make life hard for those who beat you. And linger she did.

More here.

Change Amazon.com Can Believe In?

Posted on August 20, 2008, 3:16pm | Damon W. Root

GalleyCat has a great summary of the brouhaha over publishing house Chelsea Green's decision to offer Amazon.com print-on-demand coupons for its new book Obama's Challenge at the Democratic National Convention, making the book available exclusively on Amazon for a full three weeks before it hits the streets. (Full Disclosure: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is a donor to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit organization that publishes this website.) As Chelsea Green president Margo Baldwin put it, "This election is too important to wait around for traditional publishing lead times." Strong words, though as Publishers Weekly reports, America's long-suffering independent booksellers see things differently. PW quotes one Hut Landon, the executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, who chastises Chelsea Green for its "decision to exclude independent booksellers" and derides Amazon for its "purposeful decisions to avoid sales tax collection in most states" and for "sell[ing] books at a loss when it suits their purposes." Those blackguards!

But it isn't just the mom & pop shops that are upset with this nefarious scheme. The once powerful Barnes & Noble is feeling left out, too. As company spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating told the Associated Press, "Our initial order was based on the book being available to all booksellers simultaneously—an even playing field." In retaliation, Barnes & Noble has refused to stock the book in stores. Times certainly have changed. Remember the salad days of 1998, when Meg Ryan's charming little bookstore was menaced by the Barnes & Noble stand-in run by Tom Hanks? How far the mighty have fallen.

In possibly related news, Billboard is quoting an unnamed source that says Guns & Roses' long-awaited epic, Chinese Democracy, may be released exclusively through either Wal-Mart or Best Buy. I don't know if that counts as a minus or as a plus for America's independent record shops, but there you go.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: The United States vs. John Stagliano—the obscene prosecution of a pornographer

Posted on August 20, 2008, 2:30pm

In April, the government indicted pornographer John Stagliano in a federal court in Washington, D.C. on multiple charges of obscenity for producing and distributing two fetish movies, Milk Nymphos and Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice, and a trailer for another porn collection. All appeared on his company's adult-only website, evilangel.com.

If convicted and sentenced to maximum jail time on each charge, Stagliano, one of the most popular, innovative, and award-winning XXX-rated movie kings in history, effectively faces a lifetime sentence. His next court date is scheduled for November, shortly after Election Day.

In April, reason.tv's Nick Gillespie talked with Stagliano in a candid, wide-ranging 20-minute conversation about the government's case against him and his defense strategy, the role that porn plays in the average viewer's life, how he came to his libertarian beliefs, how contracting HIV was the best thing that ever happened to him, his record of innovation in the adult-film world, and much, much more.

To listen of an audio podcast, go here.

To read a partial transcript of the interview, go here.

For related articles and websites, and to embed the video on your site, go here.

To watch the interview, click on the image below.

On the Showdown at Saddleback

Posted on August 20, 2008, 2:22pm | Michael C. Moynihan

For the purpose of promoting debate at H&R, allow me to crib a post from Andrew Sullivan, who provides an excerpt from conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's latest. I know nothing of Parker, but hers strikes me as a eminently brave (and sensible) position to take over at Townhall.com. Indeed, the site's readers have rated the column a measly two stars out of possible five. So here she is asking what seems to be a fairly obvious question regarding the Showdown at Saddleback:

"At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong. It is also un-American.

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won... The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state. The loser was America...

His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?"

Why yes, it does.

Rudy Can't Fail

Posted on August 20, 2008, 2:04pm | David Weigel

Seriously, he can't. After his Wile E. Coyote-worthy faceplant in the primaries—$60 million in fundraising for half as many votes as Ron Paul and zero delegates—America's Mayor is giving the GOP convention keynote.

Giuliani was close to McCain before they faced off in the GOP primary and, after his disappointing third-place finish in Florida, the former New York mayor quickly threw his support to McCain. 

Since then he’s been a frequent surrogate for McCain but has received no mention as a veep prospect. The keynote slot offers Giuliani, who is said to be considering a New York gubernatorial run in 2010, a high-profile opportunity to reestablish himself and tout McCain’s national security credentials.

Don't call it a comeback, he's been here for years. "Here" being "in the pro-choice ghetto of the GOP, trotted out for parties and then trundled back into his northeastern cave."

This news wouldn't be so interesting if it wasn't that the other people responsible for Giuliani's partial-birth abortion of a campaign were also falling upwards. His communications director?

Maria Comella, a former campaign spokeswoman for Giuliani, will serve as press secretary for John McCain’s vice presidential pick — whomever that turns out to be.

A tireless worker, Comella had the mostly thankless job of tending to the daily wants and needs of the Giuliani travelling press corp.
...
She also earned her stripes in Rudyland — where loyalty is prized above all else — by sticking around to help Giuliani even after he dropped out of the race.

His campaign manager?

ABC News has learned that Sen. John McCain's campaign has hired Mike DuHaime as political director, the first new hire by Steve Schmidt in his capacity as the person in charge of day-to-day campaign operations. ... DuHaime most recently managed the failed presidential campaign of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. DuHaime brings years of experience, organizing on behalf of Republicans at the state and local level, to the job.

Is this the Kevin Costner principle at work? Are political operators who've eaten dirt and woken up in ditches more loyal than the smug types whose campaigns didn't go all Hindenburg?

My ill-fated profile of the 9/11-centric GOP's never-dimming star is here.

Can Rising Motorcycle Fatalities Be Blamed on a Lack of Helmet Laws?

Posted on August 20, 2008, 1:21pm | Jacob Sullum

The number of fatal motorcycle accidents rose in 2007 for the 10th consecutive year, hitting 5,154, 7 percent higher than the 2006 total. Meanwhile, car fatalities fell by 8 percent and light truck fatalities fell by 3 percent, "pushing the overall death rate [for motor vehicle accidents] to a historic low," The New York Times reports. The share of motor vehicle deaths caused by motorcycle crashes has more than doubled since 1997, from 5 percent to 13 percent. Although advocates of helmet laws will be inclined to blame their repeal in several states for the rising motorcycle fatalities, the chief culprit recently seems to be higher gas prices, which have encouraged people to take advantage of motorcycles' vastly superior fuel efficiency:

Motorcycle ridership appears to be rising even as the total miles for all vehicles drops....The highway safety authorities say that about 75 percent more motorcycles are registered today than 10 years ago. They suspect each motorcycle is ridden more miles, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it does not have a reliable measurement of use.

The lack of such data makes it difficult to tell how much of an increase in fatalities following repeal of a helmet law results from less helmet wearing and how much results from more riding. The Times avers that "ridership has probably become more dangerous mile for mile," but without reliable information on miles ridden, it's impossible to know for sure. Assuming the Times is right, less helmet wearing is not the only explanation:  

Safety officials say many of the [newer] riders are middle-age or older men who rode when they were young, gave it up as they raised children and have recently gone back to the bike. "They think they still have the same reflexes," said James Port, the safety agency's deputy administrator.

Motorcycle riding is inherently dangerous. While wearing a helmet reduces the risk of certain injuries, research suggests the overall impact on fatalities is modest. The unimpressive numbers are one reason motorcyclists have been so successful at defending their right to decide what, if anything, to wear on their heads. "We are the only industrialized country in the world where there is an organized effort to weaken or repeal motorcycle helmet laws," complains Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Is that a sign of backwardness or a point of pride?

Milk Cow Blues

Posted on August 20, 2008, 1:18pm | Jesse Walker

John Schwenkler pens a detailed exposé of the government's war on raw milk. An excerpt:

[O]nce the fallacy in this initial rationale was pointed out, the [California Department of Food and Agriculture] was ready with plenty of other justifications for the new standard. It was, they suggested, a matter of public safety. But when raw milk advocates argued that coliform bacteria are not themselves a health threat and that raw milk dairies were already subject to extensive pathogen testing, this justification was abandoned. Instead, the CDFA claimed that, given the growing public concern over food safety, the new regulations were really being put in place for the good of the industry. (How Claravale, which had just spent 11 years and a million dollars building a new dairy to improve their product and help conform with the state's preexisting regulations, was going to be "helped" by AB 1735 is anyone's guess.)

That last rationale actually makes sense, if "the good of the industry" is code for "the good of the biggest companies in the marketplace":

In the midst of all this controversy, California's "conventional" dairy producers--whose representatives have donated an average of just under $300,000 a year in the last five election cycles--have been strikingly silent. Ron Garthwaite argues that we should not take this at face value: "Big corporate dairy" has indeed been a factor in the controversy--but as a behind-the-scenes force aiding those who are against raw milk. Its representatives have been pushing legislation like AB 1735, and "spending lots of time and money" to do so....

This sort of cozy relationship between regulating government and regulated industry is not uncommon, and its results are not always a loosening of the regulatory bonds. Lawrence Busch, director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards at Michigan State University, explains that regulatory standards are often manipulated to key constituents' ends. Busch points to the recent push by large juice manufacturers for laws requiring the pasteurization of juice--a demand which, he says, would make "lots of small cider producers, among others, incur considerable extra costs." By taking a practice that they already have in place, or a standard they've already managed to meet, and making it mandatory across the board in the name of industry uniformity or public health, established corporations can use their political influence to put their rivals at a competitive disadvantage.

[Via Rod Dreher.]