Do you know that your local city bus might be listening to your conversations? Depending on where you live, the sidewalks could be recording your every step. And your lampposts and subway cars may be watching you, too. Once a paranoid notion of science fiction, perpetual state surveillance is fast becoming the new normal. In some cases, the technology is being activated without the consent of the public. H/T Reason TV
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US Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, outlines his ideas for streamlining federal government and reigning in the bureaucracy in a far-ranging interview with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie. Massie, who voted against the fiscal cliff compromise, likens it to “one big turd sandwich without the bread.” He also says the problems with the IRS don’t necessarily stem form its existing personnel so much as with the nature of the beast — as the agency is bloated beyond control.
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As star Tim Duncan enters yet another NBA finals, he aims to do what New York City Michael Bloomberg has just done: Earn the ultimate recognition in his field one more time before the end of a storied career. Bloomberg has cemented his legendary status by securing yet another Nanny of the Month award from Reason TV, making him the only three-time “winner” in history. (The mayor also took home a Nanny of the Year award in 2009.)
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You may have the right to control your own life, but what about your own death? This is a question facing several states across the United States, including, most recently, Vermont and Montana. While physician aid-in-dying, or assisted suicide, has been legal in Oregon for almost two decades and legal in Washington for almost five years, other states have proved resistant to the idea. Reason.TV was on the scene as this legal and moral battle played out in a somewhat surprising place: Montana, where conservative Republicans dominate local politics.
“We have a certain tradition here, going back to frontier days, of saying there are certain areas the government ought to stay out of,” says Robert Connell, a Montana attorney who argued in the state’s landmark Supreme Court case, Baxter v. Montana. Connell’s client, U.S. Marine veteran and retired trucker Robert Baxter, suffered from a terminal illness called lymphocytic leukemia and wanted the ability to take medication that would hasten his death and end his suffering. He died before Montana’s Supreme Court could even issue the Baxter decision, which recognized a constitutional right to assisted suicide for all Montanans.
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Fifty-four percent of Americans say Congress should cut spending from current levels and 62 percent say Congress should forget about gun control and move on to other issues.
Social Security is widely popular, with 65 percent having a favorable view of the retirement portions of the program. But it’s also widely misunderstood as an individual retirement account rather than a transfer payment financed by current tax dollars.
A plurality – 45 percent of respondents – still dislike Obamacare and one in five Americans qualifies as libertarian based on responses to questions about the role of the government in social and economic affairs. The results come from the latest The Reason-Rupe Poll, a quarterly, national survey of 1,003 people via cell phones and landlines. More from Reason.TV.
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“The beauty of our country is that we can disagree,” says Jenny Beth Martin, who is the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “And you can’t use the IRS to silent citizens.”
Martin was one of about 40 protestors who gathered today outside the Internal Revenue Service’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to protest the agency for discriminating against tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status. Protestors came with signs bearing slogans such as “Don’t Target Me Bro” and “Suspend IRS Audits.” Similar rallies were held outside IRS offices across the country. Kennedy of Reason.TV reports.
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So the IRS has admitted to sitting on applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party groups for political reasons. According to the government’s own investigation, applications containing terms such as Tea Party and Patriot were singled out for delays and holds even as groups with liberal-sounding names like “Bus for Progress” and “Progress Florida” sailed through the process.
President Obama said “the report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable” and even fired the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service. Regardless of how this particular scandal shakes out, there’s still going to be at least three good reasons to be scared as hell of the IRS. H/T Reason.TV
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The Obama White House has released the latest installment of its ongoing and self-congratulatory video series, West Wing Week. But despite touting itself as “your guide to all things 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” the new episode seems to be missing some of the key stories that have hit the headlines over the past few days. There’s no mention, for instance, of Benghazi or the AP phone tapping – and the IRS scandal is barely mentioned in passing.
Perhaps the White House is just too busy completely redacting documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act to fully document its recent highlights. In a surge of civic pride, Reason TV is happy to offer “West Wing Weak,” our look back at the administration’s past seven days.
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“It is so broad that it turns every single student and every single faculty member on campus, at least arguably, into harassers,” warns Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He’s talking about sweeping speech codes just imposed by the Departments of Justice and Education on virtually every college campus in the United States.
The new mandate was revealed in a letter from the DOJ and DOE to the University of Montana that states “sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as ‘any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct.” The new rules apply to all colleges and universities receiving any sort of federal money, including Pell grants, federally backed student loans, and more. The letter contends the conduct in question need not be offensive to an “objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation.” That means that there is effectively no check on what might count as harassment. Course materials, overheard comments, stupid jokes – it’s all potentially actionable.
Lukianoff, the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, hopes that “this is the last straw that causes the universities themselves to start pushing back against this ridiculous over-regulation.” H/T Reason.TV
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You have already seen the private security footage that sparked the manhunt of the two Boston terrorism suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The footage shows the value of cameras in fighting terrorism.
After the images were released by the FBI, representative Peter King of New York praised surveillance cameras, calling them, “a great law enforcement method and device,” and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, “The more cameras the better and I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table.”
But civil liberties advocates like Peter Bibring of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California say that there is a big difference between obtaining private security footage and government-run cameras like those praised by Rep. King and Commissioner Kelly. H/T Reason.TV
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