HIT & RUN BLOG

Famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is joining forces with the American Prairie Reserve, a group with a plan to build the largest nature reserve in the continental United States through private funding. The Ken Burns American Heritage Prize will honor "artists, authors, conservationists, educators, filmmakers, historians and scientists whose body of work has advanced our collective understanding of the indomitable American spirit." The news comes just as PBS is set to re-air Burns' documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

Reason TV producer Zach Weismueller recently travelled to Montana to talk with those behind the American Prairie Reserve and find out how their economic model is changing the normally tense relationship between ranchers and conservationists. You can watch the video, which was originally released on March 24 of this year, above.

For more on Ken Burns, watch Reason TV's in-depth interview with American's best-known documentarian below.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week about the legality and constitutionality of DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of American Children) — President Obama’s controversial executive order that hands temporary legal status to some four million undocumented aliens. Not to be outdone, Reason Foundation arranged its own oral arguments between two pre-eminent libertarian legal scholars, both Russian emigres named Ilya.

Cato Institute’s Ilya Shaprio opposed DAPA noting that the kind of en masse relief that the president was offering was unprecedented and tantamount to writing a new law by executive fiat, especially since his order didn’t simply offer relief from deportation but also triggered benefits such as work authorization.

Volokh Conspiracy blogger Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, defended the president, making the case that he has both the constitutional and statutory authority to set enforcement priorities on immigration law just as he does on criminal law, especially since there are never enough resources to prosecute all the violations. This is not because there are more violators, but because the government has criminalized too many things.

The Federalist Society kindly taped the epic showdown between the two Ilyas that you can watch here:

Credit: micadew / photo on flickrThe federal government is deeply involved in promoting GMO crops and foods. Farm subsidies send billions of dollars to farmers who plant—overwhelmingly—GMO crops. The USDA National School Lunch Program and other USDA commodity programs then buy up those GMO crops and animals that were fed those GMO crops.  

In Congress, the Safe & Accurate Food Labeling Act (the so-called "Dark Act") has threatened to create a vast new USDA bureaucracy that would undermine important and successful private labeling certification bodies like the Non-GMO Project, while the Farmer Assurance Provision (the so-called "Monsanto Protection Act") provided GMO farmers with insidious (and unconstitutional) protections.

While the federal government sides with GMO, states, counties, and cities around the country have largely taken the opposite tack. Baylen Linnekin argues that the right policy for the government is to just stay out of the fray entirely.

According to some New Hampshire media, the state has suddenly made it illegal for teenagers to have sex with one another as part of an effort to prevent sex trafficking. It turns out the measure isn't quite as bad as bad reporters claim, but it's still an entirely unnecessary and harmful piece of legislation.

The basic premise of the bill, according to text filed with the state House of Representatives, is to make it a class B felony "for a person to pay to engage in sexual contact with a person under the age of 18" and require "registration on the sex offender registry" for such individuals. It passed the House earlier this month, and cleared the state Senate on April 21. 

As it stands, adults having sex with minors is already criminalized in New Hampshire (as statutory rape or sexual assault, depending on age and circumstances), like it is everywhere in America. Sex trafficking is also a crime already in New Hampshire, as is prostitution between consenting parties. So why the need for the new law?

Because duh: under the old rules, an adult who solicits paid sex from a teenager could only be charged as a rapist and a prostitution offender. Under the new law, they can also be charged as a sex trafficker, thereby triggering more check-marks when tallying up annual human trafficking arrests. Got to keep feeding that moral panic somehow, don't we? I can't wait to see the spurious news reports next year about the "drastic increase" in "child sex trafficking" in the Granite State. 

The bill would also add paying to watch a sexually-explicit performance by someone under 18 as a form of human trafficking. This way, if a 17-year-old uses a fake ID to get a job at a strip club, anyone who patronizes that club can also be charged as a sex trafficker.

Then there's the fact that under current New Hampshire law, a) the age of sexual consent is 16, and b) it's only a misdemeanor charge if someone not more than four years older than the alleged victim is accused of statutory rape. Soliciting prostitution is also a misdemeanor offense. So under the old rules, an 18-year-old who paid a 15-year-old for sex could be charged with just two misdemeanors; under the new rule, two misdemeanors and a felony. Under the old rules, a 25-year-old who solicited a 17-year-old for sex would simply be guilty of misdemeanor prostitution. Under the new rules, a felony, plus a mandate to register as a sex offender.  

What good does creating more felons and sex offenders do the state of New Hampshire? Plenty, from a pro-carceral and a pocket-lining perspective. Under the new scheme, the state can impose more severe punishments on offenders, including greater fines and more post-release requirements. And, perhaps most importantly, it can use asset forfeiture powers more liberally. The state has no power to seize the assets of misdemeanor prostitution offenders or statutory rapists, but it has ample leeway to seize the aspects of suspected human traffickers. 

dbking/flickrRepublicans like to talk about freedom and limited government a lot but, as with many things in politics, they don't really mean it.

Steven Greenhut reports:

On two of the clearest liberty issues to come before the Legislature in recent years, most Republicans have sided with big-government secrecy. Those issues are back this year in the form of Senate Bill 1286, which calls for transparency by California's law enforcement agencies, and SB443, which reins in some of the government's most corrupt property-taking tactics.

Because of a 2006 state Supreme Court decision, Californians have had virtually no access to information about police officers who may have engaged in pattern of misbehaviors or who have been involved in multiple shootings. In Copley Press v. Superior Court, the San Diego Union-Tribune sought access to the disciplinary hearing of a San Diego deputy sheriff who appealed his termination.

Credit: Neil Kremer / photo on flickrLos Angeles writer Joseph Mailander reviews David Ulin’s Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles in the May issue of Reason magazine, and notes the progressive distaste for the freedom of auto travel:

Urban progressives are not fans of the automobile. In L.A., as in many other cities, a phalanx of lobbyists and operatives ride herd with density-augmenting developers and the young city planners who curtsy to them. Together, they try to sell millennials on the illusion that walking and bicycling and public transit are not merely ordinary but noble and enriching activities, and that cars are violent mechanical obstacles to a sweeter, more meaningful civic life. At the same time, they throw their enthusiasm into boxy developments that are careful to allow for two parking spaces per unit because, of course, anyone who can afford such a home can also afford a car or two. Nonetheless, in order to sell the idea of transit-hub bliss to the aspiring renter, this odd marriage of social-justice revolutionary and development huckster must maintain, with a nod and a wink, that cars are the reason we don't live more deeply, more richly, with more complete knowledge; that bikes and ped power are the surest paths not only to environmental but to intellectual fulfillment.

This all registers as counterfeit to me, especially in Los Angeles. Sidewalking's idea of heightened engagement with life through walking seems false to me too. It does so not just because Ulin is even more confused about his relationship to L.A. than the lobbyists and the operatives, but because I know that in L.A.—where millions already know how to walk—the poorest, the most beleaguered, the most humble among us, who tend to be carless pedestrians, covet the purported albatross of disconnection and dissolution that is travel by automobile. Whenever I ride a bus that passes a used car lot, I see passengers giving the autos wistful glances that approximate the melancholy with which they might regard lost loves.

I am admittedly disadvantaged by my native status, unable to see my home of 58 years the way New York developers and Berkeley editors would like me to see it. But scratching the barest bit of history from the city, I know Los Angeles would be merely another Duluth but for the personal and intimate and sexy and violent and controllable and fetishized and all-consuming spaces afforded by automobiles, which L.A. has successfully and indefatigably adapted to its civic identity the same way New Orleans adapted jazz and revelry to its.

Screenshot via Ashe Schow / YoutubeAn American University faculty member attempted to make life difficult for journalists covering a campus protest last night, but her plan went awry after she called the police. 

The Washington Examiner's Ashe Schow was at AU last night reporting on Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopolous' visit to campus. (Schow tells me she was there on behalf of a forthcoming documentary, Thought Police, and was not representing The Examiner.) Yiannopoulos is a deliberately controversial figure, and his presence on campus prompted a student protest. 

A female faculty member—now dubbed Melissa Click 2.0--tried to interfere, telling Schow and her camera crew that they were required to accompany her inside. They had to follow "certain regulations that the university is guided by" because AU is providing "a safe space for everybody who works or studies on this campus," she claimed. 

After the faculty member realized Schow's group was recording her, she became hostile. "Are you kidding me?" she asked. "Seriously, I'm calling the police." 

The police didn't immediately respond to her call. Later, when the cops did appear, the faculty member expected them to escort the journalists off campus. Instead, they wanted to have a chat with the faculty member, according to Breitbart News. 

"The police came over and she thought they were going to save her but actually they escorted HER away," Schow wrote on Twitter. 

University professors and administrators making life difficult for students and journalists is nothing new, though one might have expected the widespread public condemnation of Click—as well as her termination and arrest—to deter imitators.

White HouseIn London for a three day trip coinciding with the Queen's birthday and a heated campaign over a referendum on European Union membership set for June, President Obama urged Brits to remain in the European Union.

"As citizens of the United Kingdom take stock of their relationship with the EU, you should be proud that the EU has helped spread British values and practices–democracy, the rule of law, open markets–across the continent and to its periphery," the president wrote in an op-ed in The Telegraph. "The European Union doesn't moderate British influence–it magnifies it."

The president defended the post-World War 2 order, lumping the European Union in with the United Nations, NATO, Bretton Woods (meaning the IMF, World Bank, and WTO), and the Marshall Plan.

"Their efforts provided a foundation for democracy, open markets, and the rule of law, while underwriting more than seven decades of relative peace and prosperity in Europe," the president said. "Today, we face tests to this order–terrorism and aggression; migration and economic headwinds–challenges that can only be met if the United States and the United Kingdom can rely on one another, on our special relationship, and on the partnerships that lead to progress."

The "special relationship," the president noted in a later press conference, wouldn't stop the United Kingdom from being "at the back of the queue" on trade deals if it weren't part of the European Union. "No man is an island," the president said while in the island nation.

• Screenshot via HBOEarth Day: a day to remember the failed predictions of environmentalist fearmongers.
• Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe restores voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons.
• #NeverTrump is still at it.
• It's unclear what killed Prince.
• Milo Yiannopoulos visit to American University prompts much-expected protest.
• A Georgia lawmaker is suing the Education Department directly for Title IX overreach.
• Game of Thrones returns this weekend.

MSNBCIt's fascinating to see anybody supportive of Hillary Clinton complaining about aggressive "Bernie Bros" when hatchet man David Brock is standing around as a very obvious counterpoint.

And those Bernie Bros are finding out right now how aggressive an effort forces connected to Brock may use to push back against them. "Correct the Record," a PAC that was spun off of Brock's American Bridge SuperPAC, has started a project called "Barrier Breakers" to go after anybody who says anything they don't like about their candidate on social media like Reddit and Facebook. They're going to spend $1 million and have put out a press release congratulating themselves for what they've done so far:

The task force currently combats online political harassment, having already addressed more than 5,000 individuals who have personally attacked Secretary Clinton on Twitter. The task force will provide a presence and space online where Clinton supporters can organize and engage with one another and are able to obtain graphics, videos, gifs, and messaging to use in their own social spaces. Additionally, the Barrier Breakers 2016 task force hopes to embrace the creativity of Hillary Clinton's supporters by sharing their efforts and content with other groups.

Ben Collins over at The Daily Beast asks if this counts as coordinating with the Clinton campaign and whether she's, hilariously, violating the spirit of the Citizens United decision that she hates but in a way where these people are actually abusing the limited freedoms of the decision even further than intended:

Due to FEC loopholes, the Sunlight Foundation's Libby Watson found this year that Correct the Record can openly coordinate with Clinton's campaign, despite rules that typically disallow political campaigns from working directly with PACs.

"SuperPACs aren't supposed to coordinate with candidates. The whole reasoning behind (Supreme Court decision) Citizens United rests on (PACs) being independent, but Correct the Record claims it can coordinate," Watson told The Daily Beast. "It's not totally clear what their reasoning is, but it seems to be that material posted on the Internet for free—like, blogs—doesn't count as an 'independent expenditure.'"

I'm not sure how that makes any sense since they're bragging about spending $1 million. It obviously isn't free to do all this. Advertisements posted on the Internet that are "free" to look at still count as expenditures. Collins notes that Correct the Record was accused last fall of undermining campaign regulations in a Time magazine piece.

There shouldn't actually be anything wrong with what Correct the Record is doing here. It's kind of gross and will probably backfire and maybe even push some people even further away from voting for her. But these folks should be perfectly free to participate in the same petty Reddit thread wars as everybody else.

The reason this is worth noting and worth mocking is how much it implicates Clinton's attacks on Citizens United as hypocritical and self-serving. Sanders has attacked Clinton for all the money her campaign has received from corporate donors and her corporate speeches, and she has insisted that this money has not corrupted her positions—which is actually a defense of the Citizens United decision.

She's attacking this Supreme Court decision while she and her supporters take full advantage of it, pushing even what few boundaries it offers as far as they can. Because the Citizens United case was about a documentary that was unflattering to Clinton, the ultimate impression this all leaves is that she doesn't actually have any objection to independent political activities for any principled reasons. Rather, it really, really ends up looking like she only objects to independent expenditures to the extent that they are used to criticize her.

Foter / Gage SkidmoreOne of the recurring questions about Donald Trump over the last year is whether he has been essentially playing a carefully and intentionally crafted role, or whether he really is as abrasive as he often appears in his campaign.

On Thursday, Trump’s new campaign manager, Paul Manafort, insisted to GOP officials that the former is true, and that Trump’s demeanor so far has largely been an act. In a leaked recording obtained by The New York Times, Manafort said that Trump has been playing a part: “That’s what’s important for you to understand: That he gets it, and that the part he’s been playing is evolving.” 

Manafort was attempting to reassure members of the Republican National Committee that the Trump we’ve seen so far won’t be the Trump we see in the general election. “The negatives are going to come down,” he said, “the image is going to change, but Clinton is still going to be crooked Hillary.” 

Let’s take Manafort at his word for a moment, and suppose his characterization is accurate in saying that Trump “gets it” and that the candidate has been playing a part all along. Essentially, Manafort is saying that his candidate has been pretending to be awful for strategic purposes. It’s an attempt to excuse Trump’s behavior by insisting that it is just a put-on, and in some ways it is worse than the alternative, because it implies that Trump knew better than to behave as he has but did it anyway. 

Manafort’s position, basically, is that the candidate isn’t actually an obnoxious, offensive, know-nothing jerk who excuses violence at his rallies—he’s just cynically choosing to play an obnoxious, offensive, know-nothing jerk who excuses violence at his rallies in order to win the support of Republican party voters.

DreamstimeAnother culture thief has been punished for daring to appropriate some foreign component: Brown University alum Carrie Grossman was interrupted by liberal student protesters while performing Hindu chanting Thursday night. 

Grossman, a white a woman, was accused of using "disturbing and appropriative language," according to The Brown Daily Herald. A group of about 15 students—self-appointed enforcers of rigid cultural boundaries—interrupted her performance and peppered her with accusatory questions. They're refrain was a tired one: leave the Hindu chanting to the real Hindus. 

Other students, who had come to actually hear the performance, asked the protesters to leave. According to The Herald, the protesters decided to hold their own chanting session nearby. (I can't help but wonder whether all of these protesters were ethnically Indian—the photo accompanying the story suggests otherwise.) 

Later, Grossman apologized for not understanding the consequences of her action or the offense that they would cause. Saraf responded, “You saying that it wasn’t intended to be harmful doesn’t make it an apology.” Both Saraf and Chokshi led the discussion with Grossman and highlighted the different ways that Grossman has the ability to give performances at the expense of minorities. 

Toward the end of the question-and-answer session, the conversation turned toward the actions that Grossman could take in the future to create systemic change. “Use your privilege to make structural change,” Saraf said. “You as a white person are protected.” Saraf closed the discussion by saying that she wanted Grossman to leave with that message because “that’s what radical love looks like.” 

It's one thing for a non-member of a certain ethnic group to appropriate culture in a way that's offensive or derogatory. It's quite another to pay respectful homage to a foreign custom one finds inspiring. As one person noted in a comment on the article: 

"When a Chinese student (by which I mean a student at Brown from the People's Republic of China) presents a violin performance of classical (white) European music, is that also an example of "cultural appropriation," and should that student's presentation be subject to protest as well? I think the answer is obvious." 

Obvious to most of us, at least. 

Hat tip: The College Fix 

ReasonOur new issue is out, featuring a great essay, "Tattoos vs. the State," by our very own Damon Root, who writes: 

"Over the past half century, tattoo artists have been subjected to all manner of overreaching, ill-fitting, and just plain nonsensical government controls. They’ve been hassled by clueless health departments, shut down by moralizing zoning boards, and outlawed entirely by busybody city councils and state legislatures. But tattoo artists can be a prickly bunch, and increasingly they’re opting to fight back."

That link above won't work for everyone, by the way, but if you were a digital subscriber, you could read the whole thing right now!

In celebration, we're announcing the winners of our first (and likely last) libertarian tattoo contest. Thanks to everyone who entered and voted.

First up, the Readers' Choice winner, a piece that Gabe Graves desribes simply as "Muh Gadsden tattoo." (The thoughtful nipple censorship was Gabe's choice, not ours. We're pro-nipple here at Reason.)

Gabe Graves

The Editors' Choice winner is Aaron Moyer who tells is that his submission is "Liberty, as written on the Declaration of Independence. I got this in July of 2009, 2 days before July 4th, and watched the fireworks on park grass in Philadelphia—surrounded by some amazing friends—as the scabs healed. One of the best decisions I've ever made, and one of the most cherished moments of my life. #triggerwarningfortoomuchfreedom #libertyishalfmyupperbody #livefreeordie"

Aaron Moyer

Honorable mentions go to the insouciant entry from Caleb Watney, who says: "I drew on myself in Sharpie. It's not a tattoo, but if we always played by the rules we wouldn't be libertarians now would we..."

Caleb Watney

...and to ErikaGrace Davies, who submitted a "stick-and-poke [that] says "liberty" in Morse code. It was done by my neighbor when I lived in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. What's more libertarian than that?"

ErikaGrace Davies

Thanks again for sharing your ink. Winners should drop me a line to claim your swag. 

Vanmalleghem/InstagramAt Belgium's Beveren Prison, a new system called PrisonCloud allows inmates to access the internet and rent movies, including adult films. "This system is a world-first and is a radical move," writes BBC reporter Siobhann Tighe. "So much so it has caught the eye of criminal justice experts across the world, keen to know whether the benefits will outweigh the risks." 

Each cell is equipped with a TV monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a headset. Using an individualized USB stick, username, and password, inmates can connect to the prison's server and access a range of websites—though some, including Facebook, are blocked—as well as see their court records, communicate with prison staff, request library books, order extra items such as food and cigarettes from the prison canteen, play computer games, and make telephone calls.  

From the BBC: 

Wim Adriaenssen, deputy director of the prison, has no regrets about the system despite objections from Belgian society which compared it to a hotel. He explained: "Inmates can go to a website where they can see what jobs are offered and they can say to themselves, 'When I go out, I can work in construction or whatever.'

"If they have a legal problem, they can get help from PrisonCloud and they can see the books they want to read. It's a connection with the outside world. PrisonCloud has more positive sides than downsides."

It's a program that allows inmates to download films, including adult films, that has stoked the most public outrage, despite the fact that inmates are charged for each download—around €3 euros per regular movie and €6 to €7 per porn film. Some feel that the very fact of allowing inmates these entertainment options is too much. Yet Beveren Prison officials aren't deterred, saying that it's both a humane position to allow prisoners' these options and helps keep them from acting out. 

In the U.K., officials have been considering providing some prisoners with iPads. Sir Martin Narey, who is pushing the idea, told the Telegraph last December: "When I joined the prison service in 1982 people were terrified of allowing prisoners to have FM radios. They worried about having telephones on wings." the point: New tech always freaks people out. But giving prisoners iPads would allow them to keep in touch with family members and spend time in their cells more constructively, says Narey. U.K. Justice Minister Michael Gove said his department was looking into whether such changes could improve outcomes in prisons and jails.

MOFFITT RecordsOne day in the middle of the 1980s, a musician named Richard Lyons came across an album called If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? It had been recorded in 1968 by Estus W. Pirkle, a Baptist minister from Mississippi, and it seemed almost ordinary at first, with Pirkle discussing the Book of Jeremiah. But a little more than eight minutes in, things took a turn for the strange.

"When the American boys were captured in the Korean conflict, one out of every three American boys turned into a Communist!" Pirkle exclaimed. "But not one person captured from the country of Turkey turned into a Communist. What's happened that caused one out of every three boys to become a Communist, and not one out of the Turkish soldier to become a Communist? Something's happened to our children in America! Something's happened! You know what it is, ladies and gentlemen? There have been turned loose, in the past 15 and 20 and 30 years in America, some footmen that are dead set on destroying your children! Footmen that were not alive—or not active—in my daddy's day!"

At that point, Lyons was treated to a litany of the sinful forces that were leading kids astray. Children's schoolbooks used to be filled with Bible stories and moral instruction, Pirkle recalled. Now those had been replaced by "some 'Jack and the Beanstalk' stuff, something of the men of Mars going to invade this country, some Frankenstein monsters to terrorize your children in the night." Meanwhile, TV was teaching kids to idolize characters like Tarzan—and "Tarzan is five-sixths undressed! He doesn't have much clothes on! And every boy and girl feels, to be a hero, they gotta pull their clothes off!" Then there was "the liquor crowd," and "the miniskirt crowd," and by the way, "Do you realize that in many schools today...a girl cannot be a cheerleader or a majorette unless she's willing to have sexual relations with the boys?"