Table of contents for March 2016 in Reason

“ADMIT IT,” documentary filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted on January 4. “If the armed Oregon militia were black or Muslim, they’d all be dead by now.” That was a popular sentiment in the hours and days after armed ranchers in eastern Oregon took over an unused facility at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Faced with the spectacle of gun-toting rural whites trespassing on federal property, many left-of-center commentators posited that the protesters were receiving racially derived special treatment—as evidenced by the fact that they were not already dead or in jail. “Did I miss the call for the national guard in Oregon? I recall them in Ferguson and Baltimore,” tweeted former CNN host Roland Martin, deploying the not-quite-accurate hashtag #OregonUnderAttack (which was nonetheless more apropos than the similarly popular #YallQaeda and…

Officials at New Mexico’s Mora High School refused to allow Dennasia Cordova to go on a field trip with the rest of her class because she has diabetes and they would not be able to follow her medical plan. The school then marked it down as an unexcused absence. France’s highest court has upheld a judgment against a dozen people who tried to encourage supermarket shoppers to boycott Israeli products. The court found the activists guilty of inciting racial hatred or discrimination and ordered them to pay a $13,200 fine, plus court costs. The Saudi justice ministry plans to sue a Twitter user who called the death sentence handed down by a Saudi court for apostasy “ISISlike.” The ministry says it will not stand for any slander of the country’s…

THERE IS NOT much the government can do about the sort of terrorist threat that President Barack Obama described in his speech following the massacre in San Bernardino. It will always be difficult to stop self-radicalized jihadists, operating under no one’s instructions, from carrying out attacks on soft targets too scattered and numerous to secure. The only viable alternative, selfhelp, is one that Obama seems ideologically incapable of considering. His proposals for new restrictions on firearms move in the opposite direction, based on the assumption that the problem is too many guns in too many hands. Gun control supporters generally dismiss the notion that armed citizens can help stop terrorists and other mass shooters. They argue that unbadged amateurs will be frozen by fear, that they will accidentally shoot innocent…

ON DECEMBER 6, after delivering an address about Israeli-American relations at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton was asked how she would deal simultaneously with the bloody dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the terrorist menace of ISIS. After spending three minutes talking about Sunni insurgents and diplomacy with Russia, Clinton pivoted to a solution she has proposed for several disparate policy challenges across her decades in public life: censorship. “We’re going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space,” Clinton warned, citing the deadly terrorist attack in San Bernardino four days earlier by a U.S.-born Muslim and his Pakistani wife. “Just as we have to destroy their would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online…

The Hunger Games novels were always a tale of governmental authority gone evil. The fourth film to be based on the series, Mockingjay–Part 2, takes that theme to another level. The villain of the first three movies is Panem’s despotic ruler, Coriolanus Snow, who terrifies citizens into obedience by conscripting 24 children per year into a televised battle to the death. In this final installment, shadow president Alma Coin has rallied the population to throw off that tyrannical reign. As her rebel army storms the Capitol, a two-time Hunger Games survivor sets out to assassinate Snow. The story builds to the discomfiting realization that Coin is willing to take unthinkable steps to seize control of the country. By the time she declares herself interim leader, insisting the people are clearly…

The 100 is not sophisticated television. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi series in its third season on The CW, it rarely misses a chance to make a mountain out of minor plot twists. But it’s a lot of fun, especially for fans of dystopian futures. Humanity’s “last” postnuclear-war outpost has returned from space to discover Earth not only habitable but inhabited, by a motley crew of warriorlike Grounders, cannibalistic Reapers, and mysterious Mountain Men. With a group of young petty criminals sent to revisit the planet, season one has a Lord of the Flies feel, with interesting forays into how self-governing structures emerge. Season two culminates with a young leader causing the painful death of hundreds to save a few dozen of her people. The series is at its best when forcing…

Conservatives often claim that the total state was born in the ashes of 1789. That’s truer than they may imagine: While the Jacobins were certainly pioneers of political policing, the same was true of the Old Order regimes that responded to the threat of revolution by building up police states of their own. Adam Zamovski’s magnificent Phantom Terror (Basic Books) tells this tale, showing how governments across Europe reacted to revolutionary activity— and, much more often, to entirely imaginary revolutionary conspiracies—by erecting systems of surveillance, censorship, and control. Figures like Prince Metternich come across as reactionary fantasists jumping at shadows: They see the hand of the Illuminati or some other subversive secret society behind anything that might erode their power, yet are caught unprepared when real revolts finally break out.…

In “Barcelona’s Pot Boom and Bust,” Malia Politzer examines a creative workaround to laws making the sale of marijuana illegal in Catalonia (page 34). “I find drug policy, in general, both fascinating and problematic,” she says, “and have been following the U.S.’s stuttering steps toward decriminalization. So when I stumbled upon the cannabis social club model, I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to what’s going on in the U.S.” Politzer, 32, recently completed a fellowship with the Institute of Current World Affairs in India and Spain. Her writing for the Phoenix New Times earned her multiple awards from the Arizona Press Club in 2009 and 2010. New York University sociologist Harvey Molotch studies urban issues as well as product design and development. “I come from an objects family,” he…

“But I will go on record today and tell you this, Mika: I never hit my mother with a hammer and I never stabbed anybody.” —former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, taking a dig at fellow Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, November 9 “Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but…there’s absolutely no choice.” —Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on whether he would close American mosques in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, on Fox News’ Hannity, November 17 “Actually, as explained in an amicus curiae brief filed by the Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, and DKT Liberty Project…there are no reliable statistics on which Sheriff Dart could base a judgment that sex trafficking has been increasing in the United…

In 1990, then–President George H.W. Bush signed the Budget Enforcement Act, which allowed Congress to pass emergency appropriations bills that would not count against annual deficit projections. These bills were supposed to be responses to “sudden, unforeseen, temporary conditions posing a threat to life, property, or national security,” explained Veronique de Rugy in reason’s May 2008 cover story. The act also required Congress to offset that emergency spending with “rescissions” withholding already appropriated funds from other programs. But in 2002, when Congress let the law expire, all fiscal restraint around supplemental appropriations ended with it. “The floodgates are now open,” de Rugy wrote. Congress was now using the newly unrestricted emergency appropriations process to hide the true price tag of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. had by…

WE ALL INTUITIVELY understand that if your friend loses his house in a hurricane, the right thing to do is to invite him to stay with you. But what if 10 of your friends lose their houses? You might call on your other friends to help out with the cost of hotel rooms. And if you don’t actually know the unfortunate souls who lost it all? You might still lend a hand through the many private charities that assist those in distress. The same philosophy should apply today, as the American people decide whether to accept a portion of the estimated 4.2 million Syrian refugees currently trying to escape their civil war–torn nation. And yet popular resistance to the idea is strong. In 2015, the United States admitted 70,000 refugees…

The Adult Swim animated series Rick & Morty follows mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty as they travel through the multiverse to smuggle precious seeds, create love potions, sell weapons, and go to the arcade. The show’s comedic high points come when Rick deals with the unintended consequences of Morty’s, and the rest of his family’s, actions. The alcoholic, antisocial Rick offers lessons not just on stubborn individualism and the problems that arise from underestimating complexity, but on family and friends as a steering force in life. The Back to the Future knockoff, originally titled “Doc and Marty,” takes on some of the oldest, truest, and, yes, most tired sci-fi clichés in refreshingly new and funny ways, with stories that reveal a lot about human nature and the…

The conventions of Asaf Hanuka’s graphic memoir The Realist (Archaia) will be familiar to American indie comics fans: An arty urban creative type, in this case a self-torturing cartoonist, copes with marital unrest and rising real estate prices while fretting over Facebook communication strategies and watching his youth’s excitement and possibilities irretrievably pass. But the story, told in onepage installments, feels exotic—and portentous—to Americans. Hanuka is a Tel Aviv resident of Iraqi extraction. His self-absorbed fretting takes on an unnerving funhouse-mirror quality as Hanuka copes with being singled out at security checkpoints, debates his barber about the likelihood his family will be annihilated by Iranian nukes, sees his young son’s hands metaphorically bloodstained when playing with a soldier toy in a tub, solemnly watches many friends move out of the…

THREE YEARS AGO, tragedy struck Renee Bierbaum of Palmetto, Florida. Her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving her a widow with an 11-year-old son. Consumed by grief, she eventually found solace by practicing yoga—and decided to quit her job and become a full-time instructor. “When he died, I realized the brevity of my life,” she says. “I hated what I was doing.” Now Bierbaum is a certified yoga instructor and the proud owner of an expansive yoga pavilion in her backyard. Her business is on hold, however, because the county government won’t let her teach yoga—on her own property— unless she coughs up $7,000 for a permit. Even if she’s able to pay, there’s no guarantee the county government will actually let her proceed. According to zoning laws,…

In November, more than 6,000 federal prisoners were released following changes to drug sentencing guidelines by the United States Sentencing Commission. 6,000 Congress is now weighing broader federal sentencing reform legislation. Some law enforcement groups have come out against it, claiming reform would lead to a spike in violent crime. "These reforms are reversing 20 years of crime reductions and endanger the American public." The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys But several states have already enacted various types of sentencing reform legislation aimed at reducing the number of nonviolent inmates in prison. Over the past five years, the states that saw the largest reductions in prison populations also saw reductions in violent crime rates. While the relationship between incarceration and violent crime is not clear-cut, evidence suggests that…

Kevin Ring was an attorney, a Republican congressional staffer, and a lobbyist before his role in the Jack Abramoff Indian casino scandal landed him in prison. Today he serves as the director of strategic initiatives at Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a nonprofit that’s been fighting for sentencing reform since 1991. In October, Ring sat down with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie. To see a video version of this interview, visit reason.com. Q: The Justice Department has just released 6,000 criminals from the federal prisons. What’s going on with that? A: More than a year ago the U.S. Sentencing Commission made the decision to reduce the drug guidelines. As a result, 6,000 people—46,000 over the course of the next 10 years—will get relief. Q: Where did mandatory minimums come from? A:…

WHEN A UNIVERSAL agreement was adopted at the Paris climate change conference on December 12, 2015, President Barack Obama hailed the pact as “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.” But the approbation was not universal. The activist and climatologist James Hansen, often described as the “father of climate change awareness,” rebuked the Paris negotiators. “It’s just bullshit for them to say, ‘We’ll have a 2°C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years,’” he told The Guardian. “It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises.” Hansen dismissed the agreement because its cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are not mandatory. In fact, the key to getting 195 countries to approve the Paris Agreement was that—unlike earlier climate…

ON FEBRUARY 28, 1882, Sen. John F. Miller of California introduced a bill to exclude Chinese immigrant laborers from the country. For two hours, the former Union general presented his case. The Chinese, Miller said, posed an imminent danger, in part because they came from a “degraded and inferior race.” Other senators jumped in, calling them “rats,” “beasts,” and “swine.” Oriental civilization, they claimed, was incompatible with the United States and threatened to corrupt the nation. Chinese immigrants also posed an economic danger to white workers, Miller said, through their “machine-like” ways and “muscles of iron.” The U.S. laborer, whether on the farm, the shoe bench, or the factory floor, simply could not compete with these low-paid counterparts. A vote for Chinese exclusion was thus a vote for both American…

Foolproof: Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safe, by Greg Ip, Little, Brown, 326 pages, $28 SOMETIMES OUR efforts to be safe have the opposite effect. Bike helmets may seduce riders into taking chances they otherwise would not. So they die. Better to think riding a bike is really dangerous: That leads to more caution, and more lives saved. Same with snow tires—having them lessens anxiety, and presto, careless maneuvers are more likely. In Foolproof, reporter Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal takes up many examples of unintended effects. Seat belts, antibiotics, river dams, antilock car brakes, fire prevention, saving for a rainy day—all good things that, I fear to say, have at least the prospect of built-in danger. But some safety measures do work,…