On October 7, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from X — formerly Twitter — concerning, among other issues, the use of  “nondisclosure orders” when prosecutors serve search warrants. In this specific case, the prosecutor was special counsel Jack Smith, the target was former president Donald Trump, and the warrant was for Trump’s Twitter account.

Smith received the warrant on January 17, 2023, but even now, more than two years later, the public has only seen redacted versions of the court proceedings around Twitter’s initial refusal to comply with it (the company was fined $350,000) and the nondisclosure order.

Secret court hearings, secret warrants, nondisclosure orders, and continuing secrecy around all those things are evil.

Yes, even if the target is a political figure you may dislike.

Yes, even if making warrants available to the public upon their issuance might make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs.

If I considered the US Constitution a workable blueprint for a just society, rather than a paper wall that government actors punch through or set on fire whenever its provisions prove inconvenient, I’d support the following change to the Fourth Amendment (my addition in brackets):

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [All such warrants shall be posted to a public-facing website prior to execution, where they shall remain publicly available in perpetuity, and published to the Federal Register within one working day of execution.]”

If the purpose of the “justice system” is indeed justice, the operation of that system must be transparent to the public its agents claim to represent and protect.

Even a fully transparent system wouldn’t necessarily be secure against incompetence, abuse, and corruption.

But power to conduct work allegedly “for the public” in secret guarantees not just more incompetence, abuse, and corruption, but the ability to hide that incompetence, abuse, and corruption.

Nondisclosure orders in particular are unconstitutional on their face: They violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on abridging their targets’ freedom of speech.

That fact Trumps (pun intended) prosecutorial convenience and even investigative efficacy. Neither those targeted by the state, nor the general public, should tolerate the state acting with forcible secrecy against anyone.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Another natural disaster, another round of complaints about “price-gouging.” Per Business Insider, South Carolina’s attorney general reported 142 “price-gouging” complaints in the early aftermath of Hurricane Helene, while North Carolina’s AG claimed 64. Those numbers will  multiply as electricity and phone service gets restored in the hardest-hit areas.

One South Carolina example from the Business Insider story:  “[S]tores that have been putting out cases of bottled water for sale, but ringing up customers for each bottle individually.”

That is, charging the same price per bottle as previously — hardly “price gouging” — but without the usual discount for bulk “by the case” purchasing.

Or: Using normal, non-discounted, pricing to ration water so everybody can get at least some water, instead of a few customers taking home cases and other customers going without.

Even in cases of actual price increases (instead of temporarily ending bulk discounts), that’s the main effect so-called “price-gouging” has. Yes, you pay more for what you need … but you actually GET what you need for $2, instead of NOT getting what you need for $1.

Not, mind you, that sellers are “price-gouging” solely out of the goodness of their hearts. As Adam Smith pointed out centuries ago, “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”

What serves the self-interest of long-term, reputable merchants? Customer satisfaction.

Your grocer was glad to sell you food last week. He wants to sell you food next week. He’ll do his best to sell you food this week.

If the roads are blocked and the supply is limited, he’d rather charge more and have more customers get at least some what they’re looking for than charge less and have more customers see a “closed, everything’s gone” sign when they show up hungry and thirsty after difficult treks over storm-ravaged roads.

“Price-gouging” isn’t, as some people pretend, a case of market failure. It’s markets doing their job, in the face of dire circumstances, getting goods to the people who need them.

If the circumstances weren’t dire, “price-gouging” would be a terrible idea … and an impossible one, since competition from down the street would clean the “price-gouger’s” clock.

Yes, non-profit “mutual aid” is a beautiful thing. But when supplies are short, “price-gouging” is the next best thing, offering you an option other than praying to FEMA and hoping for the best.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

If there’s such a thing as rolling in one’s grave, the seismographs around Santa Ana, California’s Fairhaven Memorial Park must be going nuts.  A Tesla motor couldn’t possibly top Raymond C. Hoiles’s revolutions per minute — at least if readership of the Orange County Register, the newspaper he bought in 1935 and gifted one of America’s most libertarian-leaning editorial bents, extends into the afterlife.

“There’s nothing wrong with requiring prisoners to work,” the Register‘s editorial board wrote on September 24, endorsing a “no” vote on Proposition 6.

Proposition 6, per California’s official voter guide, “Amends the California Constitution to remove current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime (i.e., forcing incarcerated persons to work).”

“[W]hat the proponents of Prop. 6 are calling involuntary servitude,” the board writes, “is really far more a matter of this: Not allowing prisoners who have been convicted of felonies that were injurious to real people, say, in effect, that they can’t be bothered to hold down a job while they are behind bars for their crimes.”

The question is not whether a prisoner should be “bothered to hold down a job.”

The question is not whether, as the Register notes, prison work benefits prisoners by equipping them with occupational skills, a work ethic, and some pocket change to buy snacks at the commissary.

The questions are:

First, is involuntary servitude — requiring someone to work on threat of punishment, and denying their right to quit — slavery?

The answer to that question is “yes.”

Second, should slavery be legal in cases where the plantation is a prison and the state is (at least temporarily) the slave owner?

The answer to that question is “no.”

Those answers do not seem like they’d be negotiable to Hoiles, who stood nearly alone among American newspapermen in opposing the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, and who late in life told the New York Times “government should exist only to try to protect the rights of every individual, not to redistribute the property, manipulate the economy, or establish a pattern of society.”

Mandatory prison work is redistribution, to the state, of the prisoner-slaves’ property rights in their labor. It is economically manipulative insofar as wages, if paid, are set by the state rather than by the market. And it’s an attempt to establish a pattern of society which treats people as property of the state.

If the government of California incarcerates people, it is the affirmative responsibility of the government of California to see to their basic material needs, not treat them as chattel.

Unfortunately, it can only do that through its partial enslavement, through taxation, of everyone else in California.

With mercy and charity in our hearts, we should pardon the Register‘s lapse of morality in this instance. But instead of buying into the editorial board’s odious and repugnant endorsement, we should encourage them to do better, and to get to work on the problem of ending the taxpayers’ partial enslavement, rather than supporting prisoners’ total enslavement.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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