"Big, exciting changes are afoot."

Enthuses David Brooks, sketching out some neuroscience that he seems to think will really intrigue and surprise us. 

It all sounds like stuff I read a quarter century ago in a completely popular, mainstream book — "Descartes' Error." So reason and emotion are not separate and distinct... oh, really?!

Enough sarcasm. Let me look at the comments to see how hard it was for readers to drag Trump into it. Because, you know, that always has to happen. Ah, the top-rated comment has Trump in it. And then there's Trump in this one:

This is the science that explains why we’re so polarized as a country, why it feels as if people are living in side-by-side realities. Fear is the emotional basis for many of our “rational” stances and decisions—for white Trump supporters, the fear of losing power and being “replaced.” This science is a mechanism by which we could admit when we’re wrong and start to come out of delusions—and that reconciliation is what has to happen for democracy to continue here....

Well, that would be a big, exciting change — if science would work as a mechanism to lead us out of our delusions. That itself is a delusion. The science seems to say delusion is who we are. And I love the way the commenter sees so clearly that the "white Trump supporters" are the deluded ones. But at least she thinks somehow those deplorables can find a way into the light of reason. I remember when they were in a basket and declared "irredeemable." 

"Late last month, [Rand] Paul wrote on Twitter that 'Brennan and other partisans' should be stripped of their security clearances."

"He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head. So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan's security clearance. 'I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan's nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information,' Paul said in a statement. 'He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure.' In an interview yesterday with WKU Public Radio, Paul said he wants other ex-Obama administration intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to lose their clearances as well...."

From "Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances/The Kentucky Republican is glad Trump stripped ex-CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But Trump shouldn’t stop there, Paul says" (Reason).

Volokh Conspiracy has moved from The Washington Post to Reason.com and it's not just about getting out from under the paywall.

It's also about wanting to be free of the censorship of "vulgarities."

And the Volokh bloggers don't even use vulgarities in the own writing. They just want to be able to quote things like "Fuck the Draft."

[I]t's hard for me to see what value... redaction adds. And the symbolism is important to me... More importantly, we want the decision whether or not to redact to be ours, not the Post's. This is so for the familiar vulgarities, but also as to similar decisions about what to do with quoting incidents that involve offensive epithets, allegedly offensive team names and band names, allegedly improper use of pronouns to refer to various people, and much more. Once we acknowledge that it's proper to constrain our accurate reporting about one kind of offensive word, how would we effectively be able to defend our right to judge how to report on incidents involving other words?

Reason.com presents LSD Microdosing as "The New Silicon Valley Productivity Hack."

That's mostly an interview with George Burke, who takes a tenth of a "typical dose" of LSD every day.

"I notice that my brain seems to be able to solve problems a little bit better than...before," says Burke, who runs a startup called Fuel that helps its clients custom tailor their diets to their unique genetic makeups.

I notice that his noticing is under the influence of LSD and that he's subtly acknowledging that by saying "my brain seems...." Why should we believe his perception? I'd like to see some scientific studies of how LSD affects problem solving ability.

Also, Burke talks about taking medication for ADHD and LSD working as a substitute for that drug. So he's struggling with something that is or has been diagnosed as a mental disorder. He's not beginning at normal/"normal" and edging away from that, but at disordered and attempting to replace whatever drug someone in the medical profession prescribed.

So the video isn't very convincing except as an appeal to freedom: We should be allowed to experiment with our own brains. We feel strongly entitled to affect our mind through reading, talking, and thinking about ideas, whether these ideas are at all likely to be useful or true and even if the ideas are shown to be plainly false and actively dangerous. If you can read, say, "Daily Inspirations for Creating a Life of Passion and Purpose," why can't you take a daily microdose of LSD? Whatever the actual value of either of these things to the human mind — even if it's nothing or less — it's a matter of freedom of thought, and it belongs in the realm of the individual.

"Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about the assertion of any sort of constitutional principle, or rule-of-law value."

"In fact, a respect for the rule of law would have required him to treat the chief executive’s legitimate powers with respect. But — and I want to be clear here — Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about principle. It was about putting himself publicly on the side of anti-Trump Democrats, no doubt in the expectation of future rewards, political or professional. It was not a brave act. It was, in fact, a species of corruption. A prosecutor so willing to disrespect the constitutional chain of command for petty personal reasons is one who’s not fit to wield the enormous power that federal prosecutors possess."

Writes Glenn Reynolds (who also criticizes Bharara for "subpoena[ing] Reason Magazine for the names of commenters who had made over-the-top (but not actionable) comments about a federal judge Bharara practiced before — and then bann[ing] Reason from publicizing the subpoena by subjecting them to a gag order").

"Dear Congress... We demand... Signed, The Majority."

#StandUpForUS from Art Not War on Vimeo.

Via Reason, "Just What the Country Needed: Yet Another Video of Smug Celebrities Whining About Trump/A boot stomping on a human face and muttering 'Dear members of Congress,' forever."

Smug liberalism is a problem: unfortunately, smug liberals will be the last identity group to admit it. In the meantime, Trump will be happy to continue profiting from the resentment said smugness inspires.

Stories that begin "Trump Won Because" and name some specific thing can't be right.

Here's an example, from Reason.com, which might make some good points, but it's just annoyingly overstated: "Trump Won Because Leftist Political Correctness Inspired a Terrifying Backlash/What every liberal who didn't see this coming needs to understand."

And over in the sidebar, I see: "Trump Didn't Win Because He's Trump. He Won Because Clinton Is Clinton/While many will call this a mandate for Donald Trump, it's better read as an anti-mandate for Hillary Clinton."

Other "Trump won because" headlines I'm seeing:

"Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook" — New York Magazine.

"Trump won because college-educated Americans are out of touch" — a professor published in The Washington Post.

"Trump Won Because Democratic Party Failed Working People" — according to Bernie Sanders.

"Trump Won Because Of An ‘Under-Educated Electorate’" — according to Wendy Davis.

"Dear America, This Is Important -- Trump Did Not Win Because of Racism" — David French at The National Review contradicting Van Jones on CNN.

"Donald Trump won because he listened to the people" — a columnist at MarketWatch.

"Trump won because voters believed the system was corrupt. They were right" — a columnist at the UK Telegraph.

"Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally/Democracy is supposed to enact the will of the people. But what if the people have no clue what they’re doing?" — Foreign Policy.

Scott Adams talks to Reason TV about the way Donald Trump is a "Master Wizard."

"Humans are essentially robots that are made of meat. In that world, emotion and influence and all the techniques that Trump uses are really the only things that explain what's happening in the world. Reason will never be a satisfying explanation of what you see," he says — funnily — to the journal that calls itself Reason.

Here's a Reason interview with Adams from last fall. And here's his book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

The argument that you have a right to buy and sell sex.

ReasonTV describes a lawsuit:



(This is very slow moving if you have some legal expertise.)

"Male Teen Has Consensual Sex with Female Teen. He Gets 25 Years as Sex Offender, Banned from Internet."

A headline at Reason.com which could just as accurately have read: A 19-Year-Old-Man Has Sex With a 14-Year-Old Girl And Gets Only 90 Days in Jail.

ADDED: Actually, my headline is more accurate. Reason is deliberately trying to create the impression that 2 teens, equal in other respects, were treated radically differently because one was male and the other female. But if this had been a case of a 19-year-old woman with a 14-year-old boy and she only got 90 days in jail for it, we'd be hearing about how easily we shrug off predation by females.

"Why Are Libertarians Mostly Dudes?"

That's a New Republic article by Jeet Heer.

[T]he typical libertarian is a white man. These firm demographic contours cry out for an explanation since, at first glance, there doesn’t seem much intrinsically white or male about libertarianism. Proclaiming itself a philosophy of individualism, with no overt celebrations of either patriarchy or racism, libertarianism still ends up being monochromatic and male....

Jesse Walker, an editor at Reason magazine, agrees that the libertarian gender gap is real... Aside from computer programming, libertarianism overlaps with other male-dominated subcultures as science-fiction fandom, the gaming community, Men’s Rights Activists, and organized humanism/atheism. But this account simply raises another question: Why do overwhelmingly male subcultures feel an affinity for libertarianism?...

While libertarianism is rarely explicitly sexist, it is hostile to collective efforts to challenge sexism: anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, paid leave, and the broader net of social services that are particularly necessary to those who have historically been tasked with care-giving jobs within the family. No wonder women as a whole find little in libertarianism that appeals to them....

 This [nostalgic] yearning for the America of the Robber Barons has little to offer most women (who might not want to return to a world where they couldn’t vote and had severely restricted social lives) or for that matter most non-whites (who might recall Jim Crow segregation)...

This is what I felt back in 2007 when I had my in-person interactions with a group of libertarians. From the archive:

"Where I was when I was out of my milieu."

"Responding to Jonah's response to that hot diavlog."

"Here's the post where I take on Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine."

"Adler, Drezner, and Levy try to close the glass window on debate, and I say, Aw, come on, you're not gonna say that now."

To put it very plainly and simply, to me, the libertarians lacked humanity and they were using their pride in their commitment to abstract ideas to resist examining the reasons why they liked the ideas they were wedded to. I think people like that would be very dangerous if they had political power. Intellectually, as people to converse with, I found them cold and rigid, not interested in talking about anything on the level that I am seeking, and creepily eager to insult me for being on the wrong level.

"Watch Each of the Last Four U.S. Presidents Announce That We're Bombing Iraq."

It's deja vu all over again.

"To be so afraid that — when you're pulled over, for, like, a tail light — you cringe. Because of: The Past."

"[L]ibertarianism is basically conservatism for people with social anxieties."

A good aphorism from Roy Edroso, in his Village Voice column which reviews what "rightbloggers" are saying, this time focusing on that NYT article "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?"

The moment for reading that article never arrived for me, but I'm seeing Edroso's piece because Instapundit linked to Matt Welch at Reason, who quarrels with Edroso about the relative extent of Reason magazine's advocacy of gay marriage and the religion-based rights of businessfolk to discriminate against gay people.

You guys can fight amongst yourselves. I liked the aphorism, but unlike the relative number of statements in Reason about gay marriage and religion-based rights, it's hard to figure out what to count to check its truth. My sense that it's true comes from the embodied intuition and empathy that I feel is relatively lacking in libertarians.

"Jury Nullification vs. The Drug War: NJ Weedman on His Unlikely Marijuana Acquittal."

"I should be 10 months into a 10-year prison sentence," says Ed Forchion aka NJ Weedman. 'The only reason I'm standing here is because I happened to know about jury nullification. And I used it.'"

"At Howard University, Rand Paul Falsely Claims He Never Opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act."

Writes Adam Serwer in Mother Jones, quoting a 2010 interview in which Rand Paul said:

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I'm all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the "but." I don't like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

Back in 2006, some of you may remember, I got into a very uncomfortable situation with some libertarians over precisely this issue. Rand Paul wasn't around, but I got a close-up view of some libertarians displaying an attitude about private race discrimination that literally made me cry:

"A French intelligence agency threatened a Wikipedia volunteer with jail unless he deleted an article with which he had no connection..."

"... but which the spooks found inconvenient. Not surprisingly, that article has been restored and is now really popular."

"I feel like I just won the Academy Award. If an artist can offend so many people that he has to go to prison..."

"... to protect society, that's really saying something. Most shock artists dream of this kind of attention, without the prison part."

Ira Isaacs, sentenced last month by a federal judge — this is in the United States— for 4 years, for violating obscenity law. The Huffington Post — considered a liberal website, and, again, this is in the United States — began its article about the sentencing with a joke: "Looks like someone's career went down the toilet." (The movies included the simulated consumption of feces.)

There is no shame anymore. And yet there still are obscenity trials. Absurd.

I'm finding this story now because I happened across an account to the trial in an article published last March at Reason.com: "Porn So Icky That It Can't Be Obscene" (by Jacob Sullum), describing the argument made at trial, which describes the argument made by Isaacs's lawyer:

"My intent is to be a shock artist in the movies I made," [Isaacs] testified, "to challenge the viewer in thinking about art differently... to think about things they'd never thought about before." Similarly, [his lawyer Roger] Diamond argued that the films have political value as a protest against the government's arbitrary limits on expression, illustrating the "reality that we may not have the total freedom the rest of the world thinks we have."

Sullum wrote:

I will be impressed if Isaacs, who faces a possible penalty of 20 years in prison, can pull off this feat of legal jujitsu, transforming the very qualities that make his movies objectionable into their redeeming value — especially since at least some of the jurors... found the evidence against him literally unwatchable. But if the jurors want to blame someone for making them sit through this assault on their sensibilities, they should not blame Isaacs. They should blame the Justice Department, which initiated the case during the Bush administration, and the Supreme Court, which established the absurdly subjective test they are now supposed to apply. Will they take seriously Isaacs' references to Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Kiki Smith, and Piero Manzoni, or will they dismiss his artistic name dropping as a desperate attempt to give his masturbation aids a high-minded purpose?

But here's some up-to-date news from 2 days ago: Minutes before Isaacs was to turn himself in to the  federal Bureau of Prisons, Isaacs go a call from his lawyer saying "don't go." The judge had approved his motion for bail pending appeal.

Isaacs told XBIZ that today's events were so surreal he had felt like he was in an episode of the "Twilight Zone" or a Quentin Tarantino movie....

"Last night, I was thinking it would be my last night of freedom," he said. "I really thought that this would be it; that I would be sleeping in prison the following night... and that would continue for a very long time."

We'll see what happens in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and — if we're lucky — the Supreme Court.

"Imagine playing with your toy soldiers in this: a 1/84th scale miniature model of Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan..."

"It features a wealth of tiny details, including a Hot Wheels–sized red moving van parked out front and true-to-life foliage in the compound’s inner courtyard."

"Juggalos are traditionally fans of the musical group the Insane Clown Posse."

Says the FBI in its 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment. Jesse Walker at Hit & Run comments: "I'd love to learn more about those non-traditional Juggalos who are not fans of Insane Clown Posse."