Cory Booker introduces Marijuana Justice Act

Marijuana politics emerge as 2020 flash point - POLITICO - Carla Marinucci:

August 13, 2017 - "Between a sweeping new package of legislation introduced last week by one of the top Democratic presidential prospects and, on the other end of the spectrum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ vigorous opposition to recreational use of marijuana, the debate over legalization of cannabis is about to receive a full airing on the presidential campaign trail.

"Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, a bipartisan nonprofit advocacy group, said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s introduction of 'the farthest-reaching bill ever proposed' will have a catalytic effect on the politics of legalized marijuana and the myriad criminal justice issues related to it....

"Booker’s rollout of the Marijuana Justice Act — introduced to a wide audience via Facebook Live — was more than just a call for legalizing marijuana at the federal level. The measure also addresses withholding federal funds for the construction of jails and prisons from states whose pot laws are shown to disproportionately incarcerate minorities; expunging federal convictions for cannabis use; and mandating sentencing hearings for prisoners now serving time for pot offenses....

"With Republicans in control of the House and Senate, the ambitious legislation is viewed as unlikely to pass. But its attachment to a top prospective 2020 candidate — and the growing action on marijuana legalization at the state level — all but guarantees presidential contenders will need a fully formed position.

"Several possible Democratic presidential candidates — including Booker and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — have already signed on to a separate bipartisan medical marijuana bill. In Massachusetts, where voters approved a ballot measure last year legalizing recreational marijuana, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has addressed the issues of creating legal and secure banking for the cannabis industry.

"On the Republican side, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has called for a repeal on the pot prohibition — making him popular with young libertarians — and won some conservative backing with his strong stand for states’ rights on the issue.

"That’s the same stance that was endorsed repeatedly by President Donald Trump, who also enthusiastically backed medical marijuana legalization on the campaign trail — though many cannabis advocates now worry about Sessions’ hard-line opposition....

"A recent CBS News poll tracked 61 percent support for legal cannabis — a 5-percentage-point bump up from last year and the highest percentage ever recorded in the poll. And nearly three-quarters of Americans now support a states rights approach — that states should be allowed to make the decision on legal pot sales — and oppose government moves to crack down in states that have legalized cannabis, the poll showed."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/13/marijuana-legalization-2020-elections-241576
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Libertarians should support climate action, iff...

Should Natural Rights Libertarians Support Carbon Mitigation? The Answer May Surprise You - Niskanen Center - Kevin Vallier:

July 18,2017 - "Here are the conditions under which natural rights libertarians should support a carbon mitigation policy.

1. The actions of human beings generate carbon emissions significant enough to pose a non-trivial risk of violating property rights (in one’s body or external objects) of persons whom the state has a duty to protect.
2. A carbon mitigation policy (CMP) will provide an effective protection against the risk.
3. The CMP will not in itself violate property rights, or take an excessive risk of violating them, because it will generally be targeted at persons or groups that generate problematic carbon emissions (and persons don’t have rights against restraints upon their rights-violating actions), where: a. The CMP coerces the smallest number of people sufficient to deter the emissions;  b.  The CMP is the least coercive means of deterring the emissions.
4. No non-governmental, non-rights violating alternative to CMP is socially or politically feasible....

"A complication with condition 1 is that no one person or small group produces enough carbon emissions to pose a non-trivial risk to legitimate property holdings. But this did not prevent Murray Rothbard from arguing that ... these threats should be handled through class-action lawsuits. But appeals to Rothbard aside, it’s clear enough that libertarians should be prepared to hold large, diffuse collectives accountable for property damages....

"Condition 2 is critical because the coercion involved in imposing a CMP can only be justified if it actually protects property rights. Condition 3 is critical because natural rights libertarians are not consequentialists. You cannot justify violating John’s property rights in order to protect Reba’s property rights more effectively....  Condition 4 is critical because if there is a non-coercive, non-governmental solution to a negative externality, the natural rights libertarian will hold that this solution is morally superior to a CMP.... .

"But how can ... anarchist natural rights libertarians, support governmental action to do anything? Well, in lieu of abolishing the state, presumably libertarians ... will insist that states be as just as possible. So if justice requires protecting people from negative externalities, then states should act to protect people from negative externalities....

"I fully acknowledge that a CMP will be imperfect. But the mere fact that it will be imperfect doesn’t mean we should forgo our libertarian duty to support policies that protect property rights, a duty we have even if the costs of protection are large....

"[A] CMP has to impose no greater burden on people, and on no more people, than is required to prevent the rights violation. And it is a virtual certainty that the CMP will be either too stringent or too lax. But that again is not a reason to not have a CMP, any more than the fact that the police are usually too stringent or too lax is a reason not to have them stop thieves and killers....

"However, there is an alternative to a CMP: geo-engineering, such as cloud-seeding with sulfuric compounds, diamond dust, or calcium carbonate, which can prevent rising sea levels by reflecting more sunlight from the Earth. These solutions are in principle far less economically costly than any proposed CMP and are much easier to coordinate (the US could do enough cloud seeding for the whole world all by itself). Moreover, while many climate change activists don’t take geo-engineering seriously and few support it, it is not obviously infeasible that the way in which Rothbardian mass-class-action lawsuits are. Most importantly, geo-engineering solutions appear to violate property rights less in comparison with CMPs....

"Geo-engineering is seriously problematic for lots of reasons. But there is nonetheless still some case for qualifying support for a CMP by making it conditional on the infeasibility or excessive risk of geo-engineering solutions that violate property rights less (if there are any)."

Read more: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/natural-rights-libertarians-support-carbon-mitigation-answer-may-surprise/
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The idiocy behind the Paris Climate Accord

Global Village Idiots | Liberty Unbound - Steve Murphy:

August 8, 2017 - "Blunderdale, a fictitious village located on a river bank, decided to build a levee to save its people (and their homes and businesses) from the devastation of flooding.... [S]cientists informed the flood task force ... that a 4’ levee would be required for protection against most floods, but that an 8’ levee would be required to ensure village safety against all floods. Armed with this sobering advice, the village leaders ... decided that a 2’ levee would be their goal [and] hammered out a plan to construct one from costly and unreliable materials instead of much cheaper and much more available proven materials.... When completed, the exorbitantly expensive structure would be 0.17’ high. Having bamboozled the credulous villagers, they celebrated their victory.

"Most of us would call such leaders despicable morons; in Blunderdale, the village leaders are the village idiots. After all, they are almost as underhanded and scandalously stupid as the world leaders (from 195 of the world’s 196 countries) who concocted the Paris Climate Accord....

"Climate experts (particularly those who support the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) ... informed them that, on its present course, the earth’s temperature is expected to rise to something in the range of 4.0°C by the end of this century. Some authors insist that an increase of 8.0°C is possible. Even a 2.0°C rise, which many believe is already baked into the climate cake, will soon inundate low-lying population centers (cities such as Miami and nations such as Bangladesh) and create tens of millions of climate refugees....

"But let’s say that mankind implemented ... the Paris Accord. And let’s say that it was scrupulously executed — that is, the emissions reductions pledges of all 195 nations were fully met, annually, through the end of the century. What would be the cost? According to Bjorn Lomborg, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 trillion. This staggering amount includes lost GDP growth, increased taxes (e.g., $3 trillion to pay for subsidies over the next 25 years), and higher household electricity expenses. A Heritage Foundation study of the effects of the Paris agreement on only the US economy, and only through 2035, found that there would be an overall annual average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs (200,000 manufacturing jobs), a total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four, an aggregate GDP loss of over $2.5 trillion, and increases in household electricity expenditures of between 13% and 20%.

"What is the expected effectiveness of the plan?... An analysis by Lomborg found that fastidious adherence to the agreement, maintained throughout the century, would reduce the global temperature rise by 0.17°C. An MIT analysis found a similar result, 0.2°C. Thus, if the end-of-century temperature rise is the mass extinction-causing 4°C that the signatories believe will occur without the Paris accord , then, with the Paris accord, the end-of-century temperature rise will shrink to only, well, a mass extinction-causing 4°C.

 "With full knowledge that their plan would have absolutely no influence on diminishing catastrophic global warming, the leaders from 195 countries signed the Paris accord. Having surreptitiously united the world behind a $100 trillion scheme that would be of no help to Mother Earth, if she even notices, they celebrated their achievement."

Read more: http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1744
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DDoS attack crashes libertarian site after gender differences article posted

Site Suffers DDoS Attack After Supporting James Damore - Toni Airaksinen, PJ Media:

August 9, 2017 - "Quillette Magazine, a small but respected libertarian publication based in Australia, suffered a DDoS attack Tuesday after publishing an article supportive of James Damore, the fired Google memo writer.

"The attack, which crashed the site for a day, came after Quillette published the opinion of four scientists on the Google memo. The scientists found that the conservative Google employee’s views on gender differences were supported by substantial scientific evidence.

"The Google memo’s 'key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, culture,' wrote Geoffrey Miller, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, explaining that the memo 'is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences'....

"Deborah Soh, who has a PhD in sexual neuroscience and works as a Toronto-based science writer, concurred with Miller. 'Sex differences between women and men — when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences — are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong.'

"'This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at,' Soh said....

"Claire Lehmann, the founder of Quillette, told PJ Media that her website was especially susceptible to attack. While there are many programs that can be used to protect against DDoS attacks (which are when hackers flood websites with traffic to crash it), Claire said she didn’t have any....

"Her site, which has received endorsements from well-known figures such as Charles Murray and Richard Dawkins, ... has been dedicated to supporting alternative viewpoints since it launched in 2016.... [She] said her work is crucial to helping people see the truth behind things. 'It’s important to hear alternative viewpoints so that we can work out what is the truth, and not merely consensus,' Lehmann said."

Read more: https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/09/libertarian-site-suffers-ddos-attack-after-supporting-google-worker/
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U.S. Senate unanimously passes Right to Try bill

Senate passes ‘right to try’ bill to help terminally ill patients get experimental drugs - The Washington Post - Laurie McGinley:

August 2, 2017 - "The Senate on Thursday passed by unanimous consent a measure designed to make it easier for terminally ill patients to get access to experimental treatments without oversight from the Food and Drug Administration.

"The 'right-to-try' legislation has been championed by the libertarian Goldwater Institute, which has worked to pass similar legislation in 37 states. The federal version, now headed to the House, would bar the government from blocking patients from getting access to medications that have undergone only preliminary testing in humans. Patients first would have to try all other available treatments and be unable to participate in clinical trials.

"The bill would provide drug companies some legal protection if a treatment results in harm.

"'Patients with terminal diseases ought to have a right to access treatments that have demonstrated a level of safety and could potentially save their lives,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who wrote the bill, said in a statement after the vote....

"A previous version of the measure barred the FDA from considering any information on safety problems as part of its approval process for a drug used under right to try. The latest version was modified to allow the agency to consider such information if it is critical to determining whether the drug meets the agency's safety standards.

"The Senate's action on the right-to-try bill was part of a deal struck between Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Johnson, who had threatened to hold up a must-pass FDA funding reauthorization bill unless a vote on his legislation took place."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/08/03/senate-passes-right-to-try-bill-to-help-terminally-ill-patients-get-experimental-drugs/?utm_term=.d90cbd0fab84
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Don Boudreaux's challenge to Nancy MacLean

Don Boudreaux’s Open Letter to Nancy MacLean | The American Spectator - Wlady Pleszcynski:

August 1, 2017 - "Duke history professor Nancy MacLean ... in her widely noticed recent book lambastes the great free-market economist James Buchanan as the logical successor of slave-owning segregationist John C. Calhoun. We had first read about her book, Democracy in Chains, in Don Boudreaux’s indispensable blog, CafeHayek.com. Now Don has issued an open letter to Prof. MacLean, challenging her to offer a hint of proof to support the smearing she has done of the late Professor Buchanan....

Prof. MacLean:

"On page 151 of your book Democracy in Chains you write that my late Nobel laureate colleague James Buchanan (in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty) 'was outlining a world in which the chronic domination of the wealthiest and most powerful over all others appeared the ultimate desideratum, a state of affairs to be enabled by his understanding of the ideal constitution.' Yet you supply no quotation from Buchanan’s book to support this harsh accusation.

"So I challenge you to find in any of Buchanan’s writings a single passage that you are willing to offer to the public as evidence that Buchanan had as an ultimate desideratum a political system in which 'the wealthiest and most powerful” exercise “chronic domination … over all others.' If you find such a passage I will post it on my blog and offer to you a public apology for having accused you, on my blog, of falsely portraying Buchanan on this score....

"I am not asking for evidence that Buchanan proposed policies that you believe will lead to the domination of the many by the wealthy few. Buchanan certainly did endorse much greater freedom than you would accord to individuals to interact as they choose in markets. But being a scholar, surely you understand that even if you are correct that Buchanan was wrong not to see that the free markets and limits on government that he endorsed would lead to the domination of the many by the wealthy few, his different assessment of the likely consequences of free markets and limited government does not imply what you accuse him of desiring, namely, the domination of the many by the wealthy few. 

"If you fail to offer to me (or to post in some other public venue) – by, say, the end of September – evidence from Buchanan’s own writings that his goal was the domination of the many by the wealthy few, I will interpret this failure as proof that you in fact have no such evidence. And the conclusion that I, and others, will reasonably draw is that you simply fabricated this offensive charge."

Read more: https://spectator.org/don-boudreauxs-open-letter-to-nancy-maclean/
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Appeals court approves concealed-carry in DC

In Major Win for 2nd Amendment Advocates, Federal Court Blocks D.C. from Enforcing Conceal-Carry Restriction - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Damon Root:

July 25, 2017 - "Second Amendment advocates scored a significant legal victory today when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked Washington, D.C., from enforcing a law that effectively bars most D.C. residents from lawfully carrying handguns in public. 'The Second Amendment,' the court declared, 'erects some absolute barriers that no gun law may breach.'

"At issue was a District of Columbia regulation that limited conceal-carry licenses only to those individuals who can demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the chief of police, that they have a "good reason" to carry a handgun in public. According to the District, applicants for a conceal-carry license must show a 'special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks that demonstrate a special danger to the applicant's life.' Living or working 'in a high crime area shall not by itself establish a good reason'....

"'At the Second Amendment's core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions,' the D.C. Circuit held.... 'The Amendment's core at a minimum shields the typically situated citizen's ability to carry common arms generally. The District's good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents. That's enough to sink this law under' District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case that struck down D.C.'s total ban on handguns.

"Today's decision by the D.C. Circuit widens an already gaping split among the federal courts on this issue. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, 'the Second Amendment does not protect in any degree the right to carry concealed firearms in public.' By contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit says that 'one doesn't need to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms in the eighteenth century could not rationally have been limited to the home.'

"In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule definitively on the scope of the Second Amendment outside the home. In the nine years since that landmark ruling was issued, the Court has declined several ripe opportunities to settle the matter once and for all."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/25/in-major-win-for-2nd-amendment-advocates
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