HIT & RUN BLOG

I write in The Orange County Register today that blockbuster film Straight Outta Compton serves as a good reminder that gangsta rap is still protected First Amendment speech and it's time law enforcement stop treating it as a depiction of real life events:

The blockbuster film “Straight Outta Compton” dramatizes the emergence of Southern California rap group N.W.A. In 1988, the group’s self-titled album popularized gangsta rap music with songs like “F--- tha Police” and “Gangsta Gangsta,” highlighting street life in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles.

But in California, law enforcement still has rap in its cross-hairs. Charis Kubrin, a sociologist at UC Irvine, says California has produced an alarming number of prosecutions built on rap lyrics.

San Diego rapper Tiny Doo (Brandon Duncan) spent eight months in jail, accused of conspiring to commit a series of gang-related shootings. Duncan wasn’t accused of planning, or being at, the shootings or of pulling the trigger. Rather, prosecutors claimed he willfully promoted and benefited from the shootings through his rap music, even though it was written well before the shootings.

For more watch, "Gov't Tried to Shut Down Rap in Straight Outta Compton, and They're Still Doing It."

U.S. Library of Congress / WikimediaThe Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has had considerable cultural relevance over the last two decades, making appearances in Eminem's "Without Me" circa 2002 and John Oliver's hilarious (if counterproductive from an open internet standpoint) "net neutrality" monologue.

In the immortal words of Slim Shady, "Guess who's back"?

On August 6, the FCC released proposed new rules for regulating wireless routers that sent some of the web's most esteemed tech fora into varying states of tense disquiet, technical discourse, and tertiary digression. 

Open source tinkerers are particularly concerned about a provision that could arguably prevent them from modifying the firmware on their own routers. From the proposed rules:

Manufacturers of any radio including certified modular transmitters which includes a software defined radio must take steps to ensure that only software that has been approved with a particular radio can be loaded into that radio. The software must not allow the installers or end-user to operate the transmitter with operating frequencies, output power, modulation types or other radio frequency parameters outside those that were approved. 

Users like to modify their routers' firmware for a variety of reasons, including improving network security, streamlining user interfaces, and experimenting with mesh-networking (effectively extending the range of a signal by allowing it to hop between intermediate nodes). A popular Lifehacker post advertises using Linux-based DD-WRT firmware to "turn your $60 router into a $600 router."

Some in the tech community, though, have urged their peers not to jump to worst-case conclusions about the actual consequences of the proposed rules. Jonathan Mayer of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School posted the following on a thread on Y-Combinator's Hacker News board:

(Background: I'm a computer security lawyer at Stanford. This ain't legal advice.) This is a misunderstanding. The FCC has not tried to ban Wi-Fi device modding. What it might be requiring is locked-down radios. And only radios. The phrasing of the recent guidance is unfortunately ambiguous, and calls out DD-WRT by name. But the original rules are clear [1], and staff guidance cannot trump Commission rules. What's more, an attempt to ban third-party software would be inconsistent with the FCC's previous policy. The agency fined Verizon, for instance, when it tried to block third-party tethering apps [2].

Mayer alluded to the ostensible goal of the rules, which is to prevent router radio modifications that would interfere with vital elements of the radio spectrum, such as airport weather radar frequencies. Others in the tech community, however, are concerned that even if the FCC's intentions are narrow, the rules may have either de jure or de facto unintended consequences.

Speaking to Techdirt, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge, who analyzes FCC policy, recognized a real-world purpose for the rule in protecting the aviation radar spectrum, but he nonetheless cautioned that "we don't want the FCC to accidentally write rules that are over-broad or subject to misinterpretation by companies." For instance, he fears manufacturers might find that it's easier to comply with the rule by designing routers that prevent general firmware mods outright than by "ringfencing" the radio specs alone.

That's because the rules as written seem to regulate the company that designs the router's radio and not just the end user thereof. Section (e) of the proposed rules excerpted above goes on to put the onus for preventing router modifications on the company designing the device:

Manufacturers may use means including, but not limited to the use of a private network that allows only authenticated users to download software, electronic signatures in software or coding in hardware that is decoded by software to verify that new software can be legally loaded into a device to meet these requirements.

As PC Magazine reports, a coalition of prominent tech policy organizations, including the Software Freedom Law Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are sufficiently worried that the rules could be "bad for individuals and disrupt the market" that they launched the Save WiFi campaign.

For its part, the FCC has asked for public comments and feedback on the proposed rules. Save WiFi has written a letter to the FCC recommending changes to the rules in the interest of protecting user freedom and wireless innovation. If you're interested in sending comments to the FCC, the deadline has been extended to October 9, and the link is here. (Note: The FCC's website is undergoing maintenance over Labor Day weekend, so accessibility may vary.)

Americans everywhere learned this week just how hard it is to hold accountable an elected official who flagrantly violates the law.

Kim Davis, the duly elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, has been held in contempt of court by a judge and sent to jail for continuing to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Many onlookers, including Reason's Scott Shackford (who, needless to say, supports gay marriage), are discomfited by this. Not only does it seem needlessly heavy-handed to bring the carceral state to bear, but it has transformed Davis into a martyr in the eyes of many same-sex marriage opponents. (And if you doubt, as I did, the extent to which that's true, take a look at this screed from Christian blogger Matt Walsh and be enlightened.)

Consider that the reason the federal judge in question felt compelled to have Davis jailed is that so few other remedies were available. Davis disobeyed two court orders and a (non-binding, apparently) command from the governor to hand out marriage licenses to all eligible couples. She explicitly refused to carry out one of the key functions of her job. But elected officeholders are not employees and cannot, therefore, be fired. Kentucky makes no provision for a recall election, so the people would have to wait until her term expired to punish her at the ballot box, and no other official has the authority to remove her from office, even for breaking the law. Impeachment proceedings, while theoretically possible, turn out to be vanishingly rare in that state and, in any case, do nothing to resolve the issue in the short term.

The whole foofaraw should serve as a reminder that putting government in the marriage business was probably a bad idea to begin with.

It's exceedingly easy to hold private organizations and individuals accountable for their actions. Business owners can (or ought to be able to, anyway) terminate employees. Workers can walk out on employers. Donors are free to alter their giving patterns, and consumers are free to organize boycotts and public relations campaigns to punish or reward businesses and other civic organizations. If you don't like a particular church's definition of marriage, you can go to another one. If a service provider won't accept your definition of marriage, you can take your money elsewhere.

The more of the business of life we can place in the sphere of voluntary relations, the less likely will be messy situations like the one unfolding now in Rowan County.

I won't go so far as to say that getting rid of government marriage licenses is the libertarian position—there are dissenters, including Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia, and skeptics including Shackford—but it's a pretty common one that Reason has written some about over the years. Maybe it's time to start seriously thinking about how to make it happen.

• Kim Davis says she won't resign and any marriage licenses her staff give out today are void.
• Los Angeles is launching a task force on electronic dance music. 
• Hillary Clinton is sorry her repeated lies havve "been confusing to people." 
• President Obama today met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who's still not on board with the Iran nuclear deal. 
• CNN has already sold all but one commercial slot for its scheduled September GOP debate despite significantly higher-than-average ad rates. 

New at Reason: 

• A Quiet Hero of the 9/11 Attacks Speaks Out: Documentary recounts tale of Marine who braved rubble to rescue cops. —Glenn Garvin
• The Alternative Medicine Racket: How the Feds Fund Quacks: The NIH has spent $5.5 billion on bringing quackery—from faith healing to homeopathy—right into the heart of the American medical establishment. —Todd Krainin

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to sign up for Reason’s daily updates for more content.

FortuneGoogle has just released its latest report on its self-driving car project. The company is now operating small fleets of autonomous vehicles in Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas. Over the past six years the company's vehicles have traveled over 2 million miles and have been involved in 16 accidents, in none of which were its vehicles the cause. The most recent incident occurred when one of its vehicles was rear-ended as it stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

Google's self-driving cars have been traveling the byways of Austin for two months where suicidal deer are a particular roadway menace. So far they have avoided producing road kill venison.

More importantly than avoiding errant fawns, does, bucks, the company's self-driving cars have managed to escape the clammy clutches of state and federal regulators so far. The Washington Post reported last week that tests of autonomous vehicles will begin on highways in Virginia. The good news is that the state's legislators and regulators do not believe any new rules are necessary to sanction the tests. As the Post noted:

When self-driving cars begin zipping through Northern Virginia this year, they won’t need any special registration, and the testers sitting behind the wheel won’t need a special license. In the eyes of the law, they’ll be regular cars.

Virginia is one of a handful of states seeking to attract the potentially lucrative business of developing self-driving cars. And along with a few other states, its lawmakers and regulators are inclined to welcome the industry — and get out of the way.  ...

In states such as Virginia and Texas, however, self-driving cars can hit the roadways thanks to a simple argument: Doing so is legal because the law doesn’t say otherwise.

“Automated vehicles are probably legal,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor whose research helped advance that interpretation. “That is the default assumption.”

That’s the view Google took this summer when it put driverless, retrofitted Lexus SUVs on the road in Austin, the first time the tech giant has run tests outside of California. Texas transportation officials say they are not involved with the project.

This is exactly the sort of permissionless innovation that enables rapid technological progress. Google's report says that the company has not devised a specific timeline for rolling out the technology, but does note that project head Chris Urmson's goal is to make sure his 11 year old son doesn't need to get a driver's license.

For more background, see my article, The Moral Case for Self-Driving Cars.

Tony Fischer Photography/FlickrEvery summer, police and prosecutors from around the country come together under the helpful tutelage of Cook County, Illinois, Sheriff Tom Dart to saddle men with criminal records for attempted sex. This year, the good Sheriff's "National Johns Suppression Initiative" netted 961 "sex buyers" across 18 states. Dart described it as a blow against human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and children. 

Granted, the months-long effort of 39 law-enforcement units turned up fewer than 75 individuals suspected of anything tangentially related to sex trafficking (including "pimping, pandering or "promoting prostitution"). But police were able to arrest nearly 1,000 men who indicated they might like to pay adult women for sex, along with an untold number of sex workers themselves. Tomato, tomahto...

"This broad national movement should send a strong message to prospective johns that sex trafficking simply is not a victimless crime," said Dart, who has also been leading a crusade against the web-advertising site Backpage.com.

NBC Las Vegas described the stings as highlighting "the role of sex solicitors as perpetrators to this violent and exploitative industry." Newport News Police Detective Travis Gault described the strategy as "basically the prostitutes will disappear because you've gotten rid of anybody that wants it."

This summer's Johns Initiative will net law enforcement a minimum of $189,170 in fines for the solicitation arrests alone. Cook County arrested the most sex solicitors—150—but Houston and Harris County, Texas, were close, with 143 and 107 "john" arrests respectively. 

Dart's initiative, formerly known as the "National Day of John Arrests," has been gaining ground since its 2011 launch—last summer, only 500 prostitution clients were arrested. It's basically a vice-squad operation writ large over the entire nation and imbued with overstated moral urgency.

Over the four-year period, police stings—assisted by various federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI—have led to more than 4,000 arrests, mainly for crimes such as (consensual) prostitution or solicitation. Sometimes you see drug, loitering, or other charges thrown in there. Every so often, someone might even get arrested for sex trafficking. 

"Twice as many johns were rounded up as last year in the 12-day effort," Pittsburgh police bragged this week. The department arrested 61 men for solicitation, two men for drug charges, and nine women for prostitution as part of the 2015 Johns Suppression Initiative. "God only knows how many children we save,” Detective Joseph Ryczaj told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  

There haven't been a lot of details released yet about this year's stings. Dart claims they uncovered 308 sex-trafficking victims, including 258 adults and 50 minors. But it's hard to say what this really means, since all minors engaged in sex work are labeled de facto victims by police, even when they're working 100 percent alone and of their own free will. And many police departments have started classifying sex workers of any age as trafficking victims—at least for public-relations purposes. After the press releases come out, however, these adult and teen sex workers are all-too-often arrested if they refuse to cooperate with cops, and sometimes even if they do.  

Pittsburgh's Detective Ryczaj said arresting sex workers is "the kindest thing you can do for them," because he thinks they're mostly homeless, drug addicts, or mentally ill. A criminal conviction "brings them into the system and provides them with services they may not have had access to," said Ryczaj. Chris Fischer, retired Dayton, Ohio, police sergeant, concurred: "When the johns pay for money for the sex act, all that’s doing is going to our drug dealers." Dayton's efforts to thwart human trafficking involved the arrest of myriad "hookers," as local news described them, along with men soliciting sex. Two of the arrested individuals had their children taken into state custody. Others were arrested during the stings for "drug paraphernalia."

That's not to say that no real victims were found. Las Vegas police mention two women from California who were beaten and forced into prostitution, and one 16-year-old from Arizona who was threatened into selling sex. It's great they were able to find and hopefully help these victims. But the first incident was uncovered by a 911 call and another by patrol officers in a "known prostitution area." A third "potential human trafficking" incident was uncovered when neighbors saw a man smashing in the windows of a woman's car. None of these arrests had anything to do with the department's simultaneous john stings and prostitution busts.

GryllsPresident Barack Obama toured Alaska this week to highlight his concerns about man-made global warming. "Arctic temperatures are rising about twice as fast as the global average," he declared in Anchorage. On that much, he's right. Satellite temperature measurements of the lower troposphere show that the global atmosphere has been warming at a rate of about +0.12 degrees Celsius per decade since 1980. The Arctic, meanwhile, has been warming at rate of about +0.32 degrees Celsius per decade.

When it came to how best to address those rising temperatures, the president was less persuasive.

Obama has pledged that the United States will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 26 to 28 percent by 2025. In 2005, the U.S. emitted about 7,386 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. By 2013, that had dropped to 6,472 million metric tons, largely as a result of the economic contraction and of switching from coal to cheaper natural gas for electricity generation. Even as greenhouse gas emissions were falling, real U.S. gross domestic product rose from $14.4 trillion in 2005 to $16.3 trillion now, an increase of more than 13 percent.

In his Alaska speech, President Obama also argued: "Few things can have as negative an impact on our economy as climate change. On the other hand, technology has now advanced to the point where any economic disruption from transitioning to a cleaner, more efficient economy is shrinking by the day. Clean energy and energy efficiency aren't just proving cost-effective, but also cost-saving." But is switching to clean energy available now really cost-effective and cost-saving?

The cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that the president has promised are supposed to stem from various initiatives adopted by his administration. These policies include new higher corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, tighter appliance energy efficiency standards, and the Clean Power Plan.

Since 2010, the Obama administration has raised CAFE standards for passenger vehicles from 27.5 to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency calculated that the new regulations would increase the average price of an automobile by $2,000 to $3,000 in 2025. The average vehicle burns 524 gallons per year now. Let's assume that the new fuel-efficient vehicles will use only half as much gasoline, about 262 gallons. At the current price of $2.48 per gallon, that would yield a fuel saving of around $650 per year. In other words, it would take four to five years for a driver to offset the costs of the new standards. The EPA estimates that new passenger car standards would result in annual carbon dioxide emissions reductions of 307 million metric tons by 2030.

What are the costs and benefits of Obama's new energy efficiency standards for home appliances? Sherzod Abdukadirov, a research fellow at the free-market Mercatus Center, recently noted that the Department of Energy estimated that purchasers of new dishwashers would pay an additional $44 and save $3 in energy costs over the 15-year lifetime of the appliance. For new clothes dryers, consumers would pay an extra $12 in order to save $14 over the dryer's lifetime and would hand over an extra $42 for a new small air conditioner that save consumers just $7 over 10 years. The total cumulative reductions in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the new regulations for dishwashers, clothes dryers, and air conditioners amount to just over 40 million tons. Operating them for 15 years suggests that the annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions amounts to 2.67 million tons annually, accounting for about 0.05 percent of the reduced emissions Obama promises for 2025.

Earlier this summer the EPA unveiled its new Clean Power Plan (CPP) regulations, which aim to cut U.S. electric power generation plants' carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 by 32 percent of the level they emitted in 2005. As I have earlier reported, the EPA's regulatory impact analysis of the new rule found that electric power generators emitted 2,433 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2005. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that U.S. electric power plants emitted 2,043 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014. In other words, the U.S. power sector has already cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 390 million tons, about 16 percent below its 2005 emissions. This means that the agency aims to reduce power plant carbon dioxide emissions by an additional 390 million metric tons.

So how much will implementing the CPP cost? The EPA itself estimates that its new regulations will raise retail electricity prices by around 1 percent by 2030 and decrease employment by only 30,000 job-years. The agency also claims, however, that these costs will be outweighed by annual global climate benefits ($6.4 billion) and health benefits from cleaner air (between $13 and $34 billion). Most of the health benefits result from the fact that burning less carbon-dioxide-emitting coal for power production cuts the emissions of other pollutants, such as fine particulates and ozone. In any case, it bears noting that these offsets are based on highly questionable social cost of carbon and health benefit calculations.

More alarming economic outcomes are reported from a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It says the CPP will suppress our average annual gross domestic product by $51 billion and lead to an average of 224,000 fewer jobs every year through 2030. The Chamber analysts also believe that the CPP will boost consumer electricity bills by nearly $17 billion more per year. Meanwhile, an EIA study estimated that the CPP would lead to electricity prices that are 3 to 7 percent higher on average from 2020 to 2025. Yet another study, this one commissioned by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, found that a 10 percent increase in electricity prices would result in 1.2 million jobs lost in 2021.

The basic assumption in that study, derived from research done by the University of California, Santa Barbara, economist Olivier Deschênes, is that every 1 percent increase in the real price of electricity results in the loss of about 120,000 jobs. So if the moderate EIA estimates are correct, that suggests that implementing the CPP will reduce the number of jobs in the U.S. by between 360,000 and 840,000 from what they would otherwise have been.

So are the new energy efficiency regulations being imposed by the Obama administration really cost-effective and cost-saving? A 2014 study in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management analyzed the effects of energy efficiency standards compared to pricing policies for reducing gasoline, electricity, and nationwide carbon emissions. By pricing policies, they essentially mean putting a tax on carbon dioxide emissions sufficient to equal the cuts mandated by the standards. They report that the "combination of energy efficiency and emissions standards is more than three times as costly as carbon pricing."

In other words, whatever benefits the administration's convoluted energy and emissions regulations may provide, they are costing American consumers and industry three times more than would a comparable carbon tax. Talk about negative impacts!

The key question always to consider is: Will government solutions to global warming be worse than global warming itself?

Patrick SavalleYesterday the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted, unanimously, to relaunch a task force on electronic dance music—first put together in 2010 when a 15-year-old girl died at a rave—after an 18-year-old and 19-year-old girl died last month of suspected ecstasy overdoses at a 65,000-person music festival in Ponoma. 

Authorities are eyeing a ban. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports: 

"Ultimately, in the interest of public safety, a ban of electronic music festivals at county-owned properties remains a possibility that will continue to be evaluated," the joint motion by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Michael Antonovich reads. 

The task force will include representatives from county counsel, the sheriff's department, public health, health services and the fire department, according to Solis. 

"I want to emphasize that our efforts around this motion, above all, are about the health and safety of those attending these events," she said in a statement. "No lives should be lost while attending any music event." 

Antonovich called for strong prohibitions on the festivals known for ecstasy-use. 

"They should be alcohol free, no drugs allowed," he said of the festivals. 

The newspaper found that while festival organizers appeared to implement medical and security recommendations made by the 2010 task force, "educational" initiatives hadn't done as well. It reports "at least" four deaths since 2011, including the two last month. Any given electronic dance music festival may have thousands of attendees. More people die on the way to raves, or to work or to school for that matter. 

Were ecstasy and other "party drugs" legalized and sold openly, of course, it would be easier to prevent use by minors and contamination by some dealers. Politicians mulling bans on alcohol at dance music festivals, and even of the music festivals themselves, won't consider how the prohibitions they've put in place might be affecting the health and safety of electronic dance music fans. 

It's nothing new. Joe Biden, whose still mulling a presidential run, is proud to have been there for the federal anti-rave push in the 1990s, after which ecstasy deaths increased. Bans on non-violent activities don't make them safer, and not just because it means the government is introducing violence into a non-violent thing—there are costs to not being able to acquire and do what you want openly because of prohibition. But maybe Joe Biden can meet the desire of progressives looking for a candidate to keep people safe from getting too turned up to dance music. As long as they're not banning the dance music for religious reasons.

Related: Ravers vs. The Man: CA Bans LED Gloves and Pacifiers

Credit: Museum of Hartlepool / photo on flickrThe feds and law enforcement agencies across the country have been using devices called StingRays to track down mobile phone users. More importantly, not only have they not gotten warrants for their use, they’ve been concealing this information from the courts (and obviously therefore from defendants and their counsel).  

In May, the Department of Justice announced it was mulling over some possible changes to make StingRay use more transparent. They’ve finally pulled the trigger this week. Federal agents will have to obtain a search warrant (and therefore make its use a matter of public record) in order to use StingRays to track location data. From Wired:

Civil liberties groups have long asserted that stingrays are too invasive because they can sweep up data about every phone in their vicinity, not just targeted phones, and can interfere with their calls.

Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies have refused to confirm that the devices can interrupt cell service for anyone in their vicinity. But earlier this year, this issue was confirmed in a warrant application requesting approval to use a stingray, in which FBI Special Agent Michael A. Scimeca disclosed the disruptive capability of the devices to a judge. …

The new Justice Department policy around the use of stingrays allows for exigent circumstances or exceptional circumstances, whereby law enforcement agents can use the devices without a search warrant in emergency situations when obtaining a warrant is not practical. But the DoJ will be required to track and report the number of times the technology is deployed under these exceptions.

The new policy states that these devices also may not be used to collect the contents of any communications or any data saved on smartphones and requires the deletion of any extraneous data gathered by the devices daily.

While this new policy covers only federal law enforcement, it’s also been established that the FBI was partly responsible for pushing municipal law enforcement agencies to keep use of StingRay devices a secret, complete with non-disclosure agreements. Will those go away now, too?

Below, ReasonTV on the secretive use of StingRay surveillance by law enforcement:

double-helixThe Precision Medicine Initiative aims to sequence the genomes of one million Americans who will share their genetic data, biological samples, and diet/lifestyle information, all linked to their electronic health records if they choose. Launched earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health explains that the research will:

• Advance pharmacogenomics, the right drug for the right patient at the right dose

• Identify new targets for treatment and prevention

• Test whether mobile devices can encourage healthy behaviors

• Lay scientific foundation for precision medicine for many diseases

In addition, the NIH promises that the initiative is pioneering a new model for doing science that emphasizes engaged participants, responsible data sharing, and privacy protection. Not at all surprisingly, some bioethcists have succumbed to their customary knee-jerk paternalism and are arguing for a "model" that denies participants access to their own genetic information.

The journal Nature is reporting this week some are pushing back and arguing ...

... that participants should at least have the option to see all their personal data so that they can investigate their own health.... But some specialists in the field say that showing participants their data is irresponsible, because the information is challenging for people to interpret and its significance is often uncertain.

Most genetic variants linked to disease increase risk only slightly, yet people who discover that their genome holds such a variant might worry excessively or seek unnecessary medical tests. Or they might do nothing: the limited research on how people react suggests that, far from causing panic, information about common variants of small-to-moderate effect does not seem to motivate people to make recommended long-term behavioural changes to lessen risk. “Unless you give people the tools and the skills to deal with the raw data, I don’t see how you could give them the raw data,” says Brian Van Ness, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Others counter that letting researchers choose what information to share with participants is paternalistic. “I don’t know why we’re so afraid of the genome that we say it’s dangerous for people to have this information,” says Sharon Terry, director of the Genetic Alliance in Washington DC. “All of us live with all kinds of uncertainty all the time.”

JAMATrey is entirely correct. In all my years of reporting on medical biotechnology, I have never come across any research suggesting that any substantial number of people given access to their genetic or genomic information ever freak out over what they are told. And even if a few do, that's no reason for the medical research establishment to treat the rest of us like dim-witted children.

In its 2013 letter banning the genotype screening company 23andMe from sharing genetic data with new customers, the bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration had to make up dire scenarios since they could identify none in the real world.

In my article, Warning: Bioethics May Be Hazardous to Your Health, I opened by reporting how bioethics mandarins tried to abuse breast cancer survivor Joy Simha:

DreamstimeWelcome back to the Reason Weekly Contest! This week’s question is:

An analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency says the US Central Command is altering its ISIS reports to make them sound more optimistic. Please send us a sentence from one such report that includes an optimistic spin on a decidedly grim ISIS update.

How to enter: Submissions should be e-mailed to contest@reason.com. Please include your name, city, and state. This week, kindly type “ISIS" in the subject line. Entries are due by 11 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday, Aug. 7. Winners will appear Friday, Sept. 11, right here at Reason.com.

In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. First prize is a one-year digital subscription to Reason magazine, plus bragging rights. While we appreciate kibbitzing in the comments below, you must email your answer to enter the contest. Feel free to enter more than once, and good luck!

And now for the results of last week’s contest: As the school year gets underway, we asked you for a tip for parents, or note that they could send in their kids’ lunchbox that assumes the children simply cannot function without constant parental input.

THE WINNER:

“I'm in the school office in case you need me, love Mom.”— Chris Pfeifle, Oviedo, FL

SECOND PLACE:

“Your answers are correct. The teacher is asking the wrong questions.” — Richard Bradley, Fredericksburg, VA

THIRD PLACE

Using glitter paint, pipe cleaners and googly eyes, create a "mom-ster" out of a large rock. Place it in your middle schoolers back pack. The weight of the rock will remind them of you all day and the face will make them laugh every time they show their friends. — Jennifer Griffin, Parker, CO

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

“Remember X is for Xanax.” — Rob Weisskirch, Marina, CA

“Remember- don't eat anything that isn't sealed and from someone you trust.” — Paula Jackson

"Great job opening your lunchbox!  You get an A+.  Here's a little ribbon for my expert lunchbox opener.  Mommy and daddy are very proud of you!"

"This lunchbox contains not only sprouts and granola, but also mother's love-energy.  Every time you open it, mother's love-energy will burst forth, wrap itself around you, and make all of your troubles disappear."

"We're not really apart because you and I are both made of stardust.  Mommy's stardust energy will be hugging you all day!"

"Son, enjoy your lunch and remember what is best in life:  To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.  Love, dad."

All from: Ed Cox, Austin, TX

TIPS:

Tattoo "Mommy Loves You" on their hands.

Add a padlock to their helmets so they can't take them off at school.

Install an app on their cell phone that loudly plays a parental affirmation every 15 minutes.

Have a matching set of t-shirts made of an image of their participation trophy.

Insist that instead of recess, the kids get to watch videos of their parents telling them how wonderful they are.

Call your child every few minutes during the school day just to let them know you care.

Replace the pages of your child's text books with notes about how special they are.

All from: Ed Grether, Prescott, AZ

“Don't worry honey, your therapist will be picking you up after school, you tell her everything that happened.” — Jeff Ford, Newhall, CA

TXT ME. LUV U — BigT, Solon, OH

“Don't forget to stop three times a minute and take a breath honey!” — Bill Whitaker, Austin, TX

“Dear Unicorn Princess, remember, you’re the best, a winner, and never wrong. Love, Mommy” — Tim Matta, Barrington, IL

“I don’t know why I wrote this.  I’ve spent the entire school day holding your hand. Love, Dad” — Charles Jenkins, Baltimore, MD

 "Did I mention how much I love you when I tucked you in last night?  No? Think about that while you're at school today.  Dad" — Joel Kimball, Howell, MI

Mustafa Khayat/flickrNaguib Sawiris, an Egyptian telecom mogul, the country's third richest man, and one of the founding members of the Free Egyptians Party, says he wants to buy an island from Italy or Greece to house refugees fleeing war-torn Syria and other countries in the region. He made the announcement on Twitter, asking one of the two countries to sell him an island so that he could declare its independence and help refugees build a "new city"  there.  

In an interview with Agence-France Press, Sawiris suggested an island could cost up to $100 million and that it would require investment in infrastructure, saying there would be "temporary shelters to house the people, then you start employing the people to build housing, schools, universities, hospitals." He also envisions the refugees having the right of return to their home countries when things settle down. 

More than four million Syrians have fled the country, which has been in the throes of civil war for four years. Government camps along the Turkish-Syrian border house nearly two million of the four million Syrians registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). More than a million Syrians fled to Lebanon, where they have access to basic public services. More than 600,000 more Syrians are in Jordan, with another 400,000 in Iraq, Egypt, and Libya.  

Even at the population density of a refugee camp, the largest Greek islands for sale to the public probably couldn't hold more than a few thousand people—they're advertised as resort development opportunities.  

More than 348,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in Europe since 2011, with more than 138,000 applications coming in 2014. Migrant traffic across the Mediterranean, from Syria, Libya, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa, increased by 80 percent this year so far, with the UNHCR reporting 137,000 migrants crossing the Mediterranean according to data from European authorities. The prime minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, announced today the United Kingdom would accept "thousands" of new refugees after previously saying that wasn't the simple solution. Cameron also pledged $150 million dollars to relief efforts. By 2014, Germany had already pledged to accept 20,000 refugees. Most of the refugees not in the countries neighboring Syria (except Israel, which is not accepting Syrian refugees into the countries) are in Europe. Very few have been accepted in North America, and virtually none anywhere else in the world. 

The United States, which has given more than $4 billion to international relief efforts, has accepted just 1,500 Syrian asylum-seekers since 2011. It approved just 36 applications in 2013 due to counterterrorism rules. Earlier this year, a group of 14 Democratic senators called on the U.S. to accept more Syrian refugees, while the president of the International Rescue Committee wants the U.S. to accept and settle 65,000 refugees by the end of 2016. The refugee situation has been called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. 

Meanwhile, the White House says its monitoring reports of Russian troops in Syria. Russia has backed Bashar Assad and his government in their effort to maintain control of the country, while Western countries, led by the United States, insist any solution to the Syrian civil war requires Assad to step down.

Credit: Gage Skidmore / photo on flickrIn response to the arrest and imprisonment of Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis for refusing to grant marriage licenses due to her religious objections to including gay couples, we've seen everything from culture warrior glee over her predicament to culture warrior outrage, and everything in between (including complete culture war exhaustion).

Perhaps nothing tops this remarkable bit of historical revisionism coming from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in his call for all lovers of religious liberty to "stand with Kim":

Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.

For the first time ever, folks! Forget the Quakers! Forget the Mormons! Forget religiously motivated abolitionists and the religious components of various civil rights movements! Davis is a pioneer of victimization.

Cruz wears his faith on his sleeve and has made religion an integral part of his presidential campaign. As such, it's difficult, if not impossible, to dismiss such an outrageous quote as a mistake borne of ignorance. He defends Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, for heaven's sake! Where did he think they came from?

No, this was a deliberate, calculated choice to elevate the detention of Davis above and beyond what it is and obliterate history for purposes of political populism. It's a deliberate decision to ignore the difference between personal (and public) practice of religion and the duties of government officials. He, like many others, are deliberately ignoring that Davis didn't just refuse to give out licenses herself—she also forbid her deputy clerks to do so. She refused religious accommodations that were presented to her.

But this morning, as Davis sits in prison, her deputies have decided to comply with a judge's order and issue licenses. Gay marriage recognition has come to Rowan County, Kentucky.

In 1988, Chile held a plebiscite on whether to extend the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The dictatorship lost. Pinochet reportedly didn't take that very well: According to Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall's book A Force More Powerful, he reacted by ordering his armed forces to impose martial law. But they refused to obey him, and he then agreed to step down.

The "no" campaign—that is, the campaign to vote against the dictatorship—was the subject of a feature film a few years ago, Pablo Larraín's No. I haven't seen that, so I can't speak to how good it is. (For an interesting critique of it, go here.) But I've seen some of the no team's TV ads, thanks to the fact that I was taking Spanish as an undergrad at the University of Michigan when the plebiscite took place. And they're probably not the sort of things that come to mind when you hear the phrase "protesting a right-wing Latin American dictatorship."

There were, to be sure, overtly political spots that highlighted the human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime. But the most iconic ads looked like this:

If you told your friends that was a Chilean coffee commercial, they'd probably believe you. Compare it to other short films of the late '80s and early '90s, and you might get the impression there was some sort of global House Style that everyone felt the need to follow, whether they were promoting Soviet nostalgia or an American steakhouse. But there's a more direct reason why the spot looks like that: Some consultants from the U.S. helped with the campaign.

Twenty-seven years later, that ad doesn't evoke We're about to oust a brutal dictator so much as it says This is a transmission from the year 1-9-8-8. But it did help oust the dictator, so I'm not gonna knock it. Even though I've got that goddamn jingle stuck in my head now.

(For past installments of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)

Credit: C-SPANIn the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, libertarian law professors Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman have a piece titled "The Next Justices: A guide for GOP candidates on how to fill Court vacancies." In brief, Barnett and Blackman advise the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls on how to avoid repeating the judicial disappointments of the past by nominating genuine "constitutional conservatives" to the bench. It's a very interesting article and well worth your attention. Here's a snippet:

Reject clichéd calls for 'judicial restraint'

...In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Chief Justice Roberts found that Obamacare's individual mandate exceeded Congress’s powers under the commerce clause. But he didn’t stop there. After finding the law Congress wrote was unconstitutional, the chief justice then employed a "saving construction" to rewrite the mandate so he could uphold it as a tax. This he did in the name of judicial restraint and deference to Congress....

"Judicial restraint" and "deference to the legislature" are easily manipulable concepts that distract attention from what really should matter to any constitutionally conservative voter or president: Who has the fortitude to follow the Constitution wherever it may lead and let the chips fall where they may? Any judicial nominee can claim he or she will be "restrained" or "deferential" but what exactly do they think "restrains" them? The popularly elected Congress, or the popularly enacted Constitution? Invocations of "restraint" and "deference" are designed to avoid this crucial issue. The same goes for deference to the executive and its administrative agencies.

Presidential candidates should reject the vapid labels of "restraint" and "legislating from the bench" and focus instead on what a prospective nominee's proven track record and paper trail (see above) say about his or her constitutional philosophy. The heart of the inquiry should be whether the nominee is willing to engage and enforce the Constitution against the other branches, not whether they can parrot clichés about "strict constructionism" or "calling balls and strikes" during a confirmation hearing.

Read the whole thing here.

Related: John Roberts' Judicial Abdication