The latest round of American boycott/buycott enthusiasm centers on Nike’s new marketing campaign, which features former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick —  central figure of the “take a knee” protest movement in the National Football League and elsewhere.

Angry (and not very smart) anti-Kaepernick Nike customers are publicly burning their expensive Nike shoes and sharing the videos on social media as they vow to never buy the brand again.  But pro-Kaepernick customers (and the apathetic) have boosted boosted the brand’s sales and driven its stock to an all-time high.

All well and good. One nice thing about markets is that they’re hyper-democracies in which we all get to vote with our patronage, every day and with every purchase.

Unfortunately, some people think they’re entitled to vote with other people’s dollars.  Marshall Fisher, head of Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety, is one such.

Fisher recently announced that the state police he supervises will no longer buy Nike products, telling the Associated Press  that “I will not support vendors who do not support law enforcement and our military.”

The state’s governor, Phil Bryant, supports Fisher’s position on the matter, slamming Nike as “a company that pays an individual who has slandered our fine men and women in law enforcement.”

OK, so this may be something of an empty gesture as far as the market is concerned. Does the Mississippi Highway Patrol even purchase athletic shoes and apparel? If so, such purchases hopefully constitute a drop in the bucket of DPS’s $150-million-plus annual budget.

On the other hand, if Marshall Fisher and Phil Bryant want to make  political statements with their purchases, they should cover such costs out of their own pockets instead of sticking Mississippi’s taxpayers with the check.

Fisher and Bryant are virtue signaling. They’re chasing political support from “law and order” voters and  the law enforcement lobby. Maybe that’s good politics. I have a  couple of questions, though:

If the quality of a DPS-provided shoe makes a life-or-death difference to some situation a Mississippi Highway Patrol officer gets into, and if Nike’s offering was the best for that situation, what words of comfort will Fisher and Bryant offer the loved ones of a dead cop who went into that situation wearing inferior footwear?

And if the quality of DPS-provided shoes makes no such difference, why wasn’t DPS being fiscally responsible and doing its shoe-shopping at Walmart in the first place?

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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So much for gridlock. On September 12, the US House of Representatives proved that its members can in fact reach across the aisle to find common ground. On taxes? Spending? Foreign policy? Well, no. They agreed, on a voice vote, that they should get to decide what you can or cannot have for lunch.

“The Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act of 2018” is exactly what it sounds like: A bill “to prohibit the slaughter of dogs and cats for human consumption.”

What’s up? Is there some pressing public health concern at stake? Is America in the throes of an epidemic of stolen pets ending up in stew pots?

Well, no.  According to the bill’s sponsor, US Representative Vern Buchanan (R-FL), it’s all about “how beloved these animals are for most Americans.” They “provide love and companionship to millions of people.”

In other words, it’s all about making Buchanan, the bill’s co-sponsor, Alcee Hastings (D-FL), and a bunch of other politicians look warm, fuzzy, and caring to the vast majority of Americans whose dinner plans don’t include Manx Cordon Bleu and pulled Shih Tzu sandwiches.

I’m one of those people. I like dogs (I have two) and tolerate cats (my wife and kids have four). That makes it pretty simple for me. I don’t want to eat dog or cat … so I don’t.

As for those who DO want to eat cat and dog, well, in what universe is that any of my business — or, more to the point, the US House of Representatives’?

There are countries on Earth where the slaughter and consumption of certain animals is officially discouraged or even illegal. Two that come to mind are beef (India) and pork (Muslim countries and Israel). My guess is that most Americans think that’s pretty crazy. And yet we have a house of Congress trying to make America like that.

Under House rules, any member can force a counted vote, and one-fifth of the members can compel a recorded vote. That this bill passed on a voice vote means that not one, let alone 87, out of 435 US Representatives objected to passing the equivalent of Sharia or Kosher law right here in America. And it wasn’t even based on any kind of coherent religious/philosophical argument, just “oooh … they’re so cuuuuuuuute.”

And that’s it for this installment of “why we’re better off when Congress doesn’t get anything done than when it does.”

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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In a September 10 speech to the Federalist Society, National Security Advisor John Bolton offered “a major announcement on US policy toward the International Criminal Court.” The US government, per Bolton, considers the court “fundamentally illegitimate. … We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC.”

Bolton threatened sanctions against the court and those who resort to it or cooperate with it in investigations of war crimes involving the United States or Israel. He also announced the first such sanction, closure of a Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington in retaliation for the state of Palestine’s referral of charges against Israel for actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

What’s with this sudden interest in the court and its jurisdiction?

Why is Bolton suddenly so concerned with protecting notions of “sovereignty” (he uses the word nine times) that the US government itself routinely ignores at its convenience, claiming global jurisdiction over individuals and organizations outside its own borders in matters ranging from the 17-year “war on terror” to its financial regulation and sanctions schemes?

The answer, in a word: Afghanistan. The regime installed by the US after its 2001 invasion of that country, and maintained in power by the US since then, ratified the Rome Statute in 2003. Crimes committed in Afghanistan since then, regardless of the perpetrators’ nationalities, therefore fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction.

Bolton finds it unconscionable that an American — in particular an American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or politician — accused of crimes committed in Afghanistan might be tried in a court Afghanistan’s government has duly accepted the authority of. So much for “sovereignty.”

Bolton wants it both ways. On one hand, the long arm of US law must reach everywhere, be it to a bank in Switzerland, to a hacker’s keyboard in the United Kingdom, or to a battlefield in the Middle East. On the other hand, no foreign arm of law must ever reach a US citizen, regardless of the alleged crime or where it was committed.

Pretty messed up, but there’s a simple solution. All the US government has to do is close its embassies and consulates in, withdraw its troops from, and advise its citizens not to travel to, any of the 120-odd countries which recognize the International Criminal Court as their judicial authority for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Starting with Afghanistan.

Problem solved.

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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