This success is fueled by Seymour’s insistence on making use of classically liberal rules to points past simply taxes, regulation and spending. He can do this as a result of, as he informed me, “there’s a deep underlying philosophical base to what we’re saying, so it is all coherent.” That theme—stick with your rules and calmly clarify their software to no matter challenge is at hand—repeatedly got here up in our dialogue.
Owner of ‘Marion County Register’ Dies Amid ‘Shock and Grief’ After Police Raid
Why did police raid the workplaces of a small-town Kansas newspaper? The Friday raid on the workplaces of the Marion County Report definitely appears like a significant incursion on freedom of the press—with disastrous outcomes for not simply the civil liberties but in addition the bodily well-being of newspaper employees.
The paper attributes the Saturday loss of life of 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer to emphasize from the raids on her residence and the paper’s workplace. “Careworn past her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after unlawful police raids…Meyer, in any other case in good well being for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at residence,” the paper reviews. It provides that she “had not been capable of eat” or sleep on Friday after the raids.
The basis of the raids seems to contain native entrepreneur Kari Newell, who reportedly runs a restaurant out of a lodge owned by the brother of the county legal professional.
A social media supply offered each the Report and Marion Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel with details about an alleged drunk driving incident involving Newell. The supply mentioned the knowledge had been obtained from a public web site. Unable to confirm this and suspecting the leak had occurred as a part of a authorized battle between Newell and her estranged husband, the paper determined that it should not publish the knowledge. (“We thought we have been being arrange,” Report co-owner Eric Meyer informed the Kansas Reflector within the wake of the raid.)
However “with out naming Newell,” Meyer finally “notified [Marion County] Sheriff Jeff Soyez and [Marion Police Chief Gideon] Cody that the newspaper had obtained the knowledge and that the supply who offered it alleged that regulation enforcement officers knew Newell didn’t have a sound driver’s license and ignored her violation of the regulation,” in line with the Report.
Police alerted Newell, who at an August 7 council assembly publicly accused the paper of illegally acquiring details about her and illegally disseminating it to the vice mayor, who allegedly shared the knowledge with a metropolis administrator contemplating Newell’s software for a catering liquor license.
“After the council assembly, Newell acknowledged” that “the state suspended her license due to a drunken-driving conviction in 2008 and a sequence of different driving convictions,” reviews the Report, which responded to Newell’s public accusations by publishing a narrative final Thursday concerning the scenario.
On Friday, metropolis and county police raided the Report‘s workplace, “forcing employees members to remain exterior the workplace for hours throughout a warmth advisory” and disallowing them from making any telephone calls, the paper reported. They seized the newspaper’s file server in addition to “private cell telephones and computer systems” and “different tools unrelated to the scope of their search.”
Herbel’s residence was additionally raided, as have been the properties of Joan and Eric Meyer.
In keeping with the paper, the search warrants “alleged there was possible trigger to consider that identification theft and illegal laptop acts had been dedicated involving Marion enterprise proprietor Kari Newell.” However when a Report reporter requested a replica of the possible trigger affidavit obligatory for such a warrant, the district court docket reportedly “issued a signed assertion saying no affidavit was on file.”
“Based mostly on the reporting up to now, the police raid of the Marion County Report on Friday seems to have violated federal regulation, the First Modification, and primary human decency. Everybody concerned needs to be ashamed of themselves,” Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Basis declared in an announcement.
It is unclear precisely what police have been searching for within the raid on the Report workplace or its house owners’ properties. But when the scenario laid out by the Report is correct, its employees did nothing improper and shouldn’t be being handled like criminals. They completely have a proper to research info leaked to them, regardless of the place that info initially got here from. And so they definitely have a proper to query or notify police about what they have been informed.
Neither is a raid on the newspaper workplace justified if police have been investigating legal wrongdoing by a 3rd occasion. If the goal was to acquire the identification of the supply who offered the details about Newell, police may have questioned the vice mayor, subpoenaed data from the social media firm, or subpoenaed data from the paper—all paths that do not contain actually raiding a press outlet, seizing its servers, and taking reporters’ computer systems and telephones.
At greatest, that may be an unlawful overreaction to allegations of legal wrongdoing by a 3rd occasion. However the truth that the Report‘s management got here to police with accusations about regulation enforcement corruption not lengthy earlier than the raid suggests one thing worse could have been afoot: retaliation, intimidation, or an tried cover-up.
Eric Meyer informed the Reflector the message was clear: “Thoughts your individual enterprise or we will step on you.”
Meyer “believes the newspaper’s aggressive protection of native politics and points performed a job,” reviews the Related Press. “He mentioned the newspaper was analyzing Cody’s previous work with the Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, police as effectively.”
The raid has obtained nationwide consideration—and additional cause to consider police have been concentrating on the paper or its employees.
“Cody, the police chief, defended the raid on Sunday, saying in an e mail to The Related Press that whereas federal regulation normally requires a subpoena—not only a search warrant—to raid a newsroom, there may be an exception ‘when there may be cause to consider the journalist is participating within the underlying wrongdoing,'” the AP reviews. “Cody didn’t give particulars about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.”
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Libertarianism, New Zealand–model. In “New Zealand, many conservatives are starting to embrace an previous ideology: libertarianism,” writes Washington Publish columnist Henry Olsen:
This shocking pattern is due to David Seymour, chief of New Zealand’s classically liberal ACT Social gathering. He has quickly remodeled his faction from an almost extinct establishment to a vibrant, rising motion, setting an instance for conservatives worldwide.
In 2014, Seymour turned the occasion’s solely member of Parliament. And within the nation’s 2017 election, the occasion received simply 1 p.c of the vote. However issues have been altering:
The occasion obtained its highest share of the vote ever within the 2020 election, successful 10 seats within the 120-seat Parliament. Newer polls present ACT may win 15 seats or extra within the upcoming October election. With the standard center-right occasion, the Nationwide Social gathering, tipped to win 46 seats, ACT may turn into a vital governing associate. That is a shocking reversal of fortune in only a few years.
That mentioned, not the entire wider points embraced by the New Zealand libertarians sound like American libertarianism. As an illustration, “ACT requires attempting 17-year-old violent offenders as adults and a bunch of different ‘regulation and order’ insurance policies,” writes Olsen.
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Barbie economics. “The common working lady in 2023 earns sufficient cash to purchase a Barbie doll each 33 minutes. In 1959, it took almost two hours,” writes Motive‘s Eric Boehm, citing figures from College of Central Arkansas economist Jeremy Horpedahl.
Working moms as we speak can purchase 3-4 instances as many Barbies for his or her daughters as their counterparts in 1959 may buyhttps://t.co/bX2NbS2XjK pic.twitter.com/vLxZ7mhupA
— Jeremy Horpedahl ????♂️ (@jmhorp) August 9, 2023
Name it Barbenomics. Name it the Barbie Value Index. No matter you name it, it reveals excellent news about American girls’s financial progress:
“One other mind-set about it: with the identical quantity of labor, a working mom as we speak may purchase her daughter 3-4 instances as many Barbies as her counterpart in 1959,” Horpedahl notes at Economists Writing Each Day, an economics weblog.
On one hand, the decline within the Barbie Value Index reveals how a lot girls’s wages have grown up to now six and a half many years. Whereas girls are nonetheless paid lower than males, on common, the hole has closed significantly—and successfully vanishes as soon as different way of life components are taken under consideration.
Nevertheless it additionally demonstrates one thing concerning the relative degree of prosperity that as we speak’s Barbie-loving children get to take pleasure in—and concerning the quantity of labor their dad and mom should do to ship it.
It has turn into modern on the populist proper to complain about stagnating male wages and a supposedly declining lifestyle. Oren Cass, government director of the right-wing assume tank American Compass, printed a “Value-of-Thriving Index” earlier this yr, claiming that the essential requirements for a middle-class way of life have been now not inside attain for households counting on a single breadwinner. It might take 62 weeks of earnings—greater than a full yr—to pay for a yr’s price of groceries, a house, medical health insurance for a household, a automotive, and to avoid wasting for a kid’s school schooling, he argues. That is up from simply 40 weeks’ price of earnings in 1985.
The research has some critical flaws, as Horpedahl and Scott Winship, a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute, have detailed at size. Chief amongst these issues is that Cass’ evaluation doesn’t bear in mind taxes and varied family-oriented subsidies delivered by way of the tax code. With these included, the so-called “price of thriving” for households with a single male breadwinner has truly fallen since 1985.
However Cass’ research additionally ignores the essential position that ladies now play within the work drive and in incomes revenue to help their households. Together with them within the general evaluation implies that the price of thriving has fallen by about 7 weeks since 1985, partly as a result of girls have seen greater features in earnings throughout current many years.
Extra right here.
QUICK HITS
• “A Georgia prosecutor seems on the verge of bringing legal expenses in her investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election in that state,” reviews Politico. “Two witnesses confirmed Saturday that they are going to seem earlier than a grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., early subsequent week—the clearest signal but that Fani Willis, the district legal professional there, quickly plans to ask the grand jury to approve legal indictments in opposition to Trump or his allies.”
• U.S. Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland has appointed a particular counsel to supervise investigations into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
• Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says fears about synthetic intelligence are overblown. “It takes snippets of what is on the internet created by a human, splices them collectively and passes it off as if it created these items. And persons are saying, ‘Oh my God, it is a human, it is humanlike,'” commented Kaku in a Sunday interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Instruments like ChatGPT are “glorified tape recorders,” he added.
• Why politics ought to keep out of banking.
• The New York Instances appears on the rising variety of U.S. prisoners with dementia.
