Raw Story‘s headline is disturbing: “Florida goes full fascist,” quoting a tweet referenced in the story.  “Ron DeSantis sparks furious backlash with ‘authoritarian’ campus political surveys.”

“Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation requiring Florida students, faculty and staff to register their political views in surveys in an effort to promote ‘intellectual diversity’ at colleges and universities,” Travis Gettys reports.

OK, well, “reports” may be stretching it just a teensy weensy bit. In the Tampa Bay Times story Gettys cites, Ana Ceballos tells us the legislation “will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints,” not that those students, faculty and staff members will be required to respond to the surveys.

Looks like Mr. Gettys saw what he wanted to see instead of what was actually there. I empathize. It happens to the best of us.

What about Ms. Ceballos? Is her account accurate? Let’s consult the bill itself:

“The State Board of Education shall require each Florida College System institution to conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at that institution. The State Board of Education shall select or create an objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid survey to be used by each institution which considers the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.”

Nothing at all in there requiring students, faculty, or staff to “register their political views” (Gettys), or even requiring the schools to ask them about those views (Ceballos).

The surveys cover what’s being taught at the schools (a reasonable area of interest for the State Board of Education, and for the legislators who appropriate funding for those schools), and whether the people on campus feel free to speak their minds (a reasonable area of interest for anyone who supports freedom of speech).

When it comes to the main claims in the two stories, there’s just no “there” there. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s legislature aren’t requiring anyone to”register their political views” with this law. Ceballos’s story is, intentionally or not, fake news, and Gettys’s story is more fake news stacked on atop Ceballos’s.

I get it. Reading legislation is incredibly boring. But if you’re going to report on it, carefully reading it first seems like part of the job.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On March 14, Missouri governor Mike Parson signed HB 85, aka the Second Amendment Preservation Act, into law.

HB 85’s first two sections can reasonably be read as “nullification” of a sort, insofar as they point out the unconstitutionality of a number of federal laws that violate the Second Amendment.

Oddly, however, the US Department of Justice seems more concerned with its third and fourth sections of the bill, which prohibit Missouri’s courts and law enforcement agencies from enforcing, or assisting with the enforcement of, those unconstitutional federal laws, and allow Missourians to those who violate the prohibition to sue for damages of up to $50,000 per occurrence.

In a letter to Parson, which the Associated Press describes but which I haven’t been able to find a public full-text version of, Acting Assistant US Attorney General Brian Boynton cites the US Constitution’s “supremacy clause” against nullification. But his main apparent concern seems to be that the bill (AP’s words, not a direct Boynton quote) ” threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities … noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.”

Replying to Boynton, Parson and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt clarify the bill’s intent: “Missouri is not attempting to nullify federal law. Instead, Missouri is defending its people from federal government overreach by prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies from being used by the federal government to infringe Missourian’s rights to keep and bear arms.”

Under the Constitution, Missouri’s government has every power to do that. It neither requires state governments and state employees to enforce federal laws, nor empowers the federal government to compel them to do so.

In the normal course of things, local and state law enforcement agencies assist federal law enforcement agencies with great enthusiasm.

Why? Well, money — the “federal grants and technical assistance” that Boynton refers to in his letter. The feds spread around money (including a share of loot seized under “asset forfeiture” laws) and material (including suprlus military equipment), and that bulks up local law enforcement budgets. Cops, like everyone, enjoy better (or at least cooler) equipment and more opportunities for overtime pay.

That’s a bad thing, not a good thing. It at least partially explains why 21st century America seems to be literally crawling with militarized  cops. Cops wearing military utilities instead of plain vanilla police uniforms. Cops carrying M-16s instead of .38 Specials. Cops driving armored vehicles and SUVs with “Seized from Narcotics Traffickers” stickers on them instead of plain vanilla patrol cars.

Unconstitutional gun laws aren’t the half of it. The war on drugs is probably a much bigger component in what amounts to a federal bribery scheme to get local cops off the job of enforcing local law and on the job of “assisting” federal thuggery of various sorts.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act is a good start, but it’s just a start. If we ever want to get law enforcement back to its legitimate peacekeeping functions, state prohibitions on working with the feds should apply to everything.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 16, US president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a Joint Statement on Strategic Stability, in which they “reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and “seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”

With the extension of the New START treaty and joint statements like that, it might seem that things aren’t looking too terribly bad with respect to reducing the threat of nuclear war. But talk and action are two very different things. Let’s roll back the calendar to the day before the rose-colored glasses went on.

“Despite calls from some Democrats and arms control advocates to slash spending on strategic forces,” National Defense magazine reported on June 15, “the Biden administration appears committed to forging ahead with previous administrations’ nuclear modernization programs.”

The Congressional Budget Office expects the US government to spend $634 billion on operating and “modernizing” its nuclear arsenal over the next ten years, and the Biden administration has requested $43.2 billion for such activities in its budget proposal for next year.

That doesn’t sound much like “groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures” to me.

And what good are future arms control measures when the parties obviously haven’t bothered to fulfill their obligations under past such measures?

Per the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, both the US and Russian regimes have been committed for more than 50 years “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

But according to the Federation of American Scientists’ “Status of World Nuclear Forces” report, Russia and the US still maintain arsenals of, respectively, 6,257 and 5,550 nuclear warheads.

And, FAS says, “[t]he pace of reduction has slowed significantly compared with the 1990s and appears to continue only because of dismantlement of retired weapons; the military stockpiles (operational nuclear weapons) are increasing again.”

How many warheads constitute a “nuclear deterrent,” assuming such a thing is truly needed until we are clearly approaching the zero nuke mark?

Well, the US only has nine cities with populations in excess of one million. Russia only has 15. The ability to wipe out all those population centers, especially from platforms like submarines that aren’t likely to be taken out in a surprise first strike, seems like a heck of a deterrent to starting a nuclear fight (and an implicit terrorist threat, but one we’re already living with and then some).

Even adding in key military bases as targets, how could more than, say, 50 warheads each (less than one percent of current arsenals) be justified as a “deterrent?”

And what’s the holdup on getting down to that number?

No additional agreements are necessary. Either side can do it unilaterally, without agreement from the other, and  the other side would be left just wasting money on expensive, dangerous, and effectively useless  junk.

It’s time to grow up and end this silly nuclear penis size contest.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY