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Election 2016: Wherever You Go, There You Are

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English: ‘Down Goes McGinty’, This cartoon par...
English: ‘Down Goes McGinty’, This cartoon parodies a popular comic song about a foolish Irishman who undergoes a series of mishaps culminating in a fall into the sea, where he dies. McGinty here is Democratic presidential nominee of 1900, William Jennings Bryan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Six months ago, who would have bet on Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, even given juicy odds? But here we are.

Who would have predicted the last two Republican presidents, the immediate past GOP presidential nominee, and the Republican Speaker of the House declining even lukewarm endorsements for their party’s horse? Yet that’s what’s happening.

Over on the Democratic side, who expected Bernie Sanders to erase Hillary Clinton’s 50-point leads and go toe to toe with her — or for that matter to win a single primary other than perhaps his home state of Vermont’s? Well, guess what?

And then there’s Clinton herself, not just continuing to run but continuing to win. This, even as she faces possible compelled deposition relating to her use of, and an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into mishandling of classified information via, a non-secure, privately owned mail server — a server allegedly hacked by, probably among others, now-incarcerated Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka “Guccifer.” A confidential source that I just invented tells me Clinton shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I’m skeptical. But not as skeptical as I would have been a year ago.

Over in third party territory where I live, some activists are convinced that all this  #NeverTrump #FeelTheBern #WhichHillary stuff portends a breakout year for the Libertarians or the Greens. Again, I’m skeptical. Again, not as skeptical now as last Christmas.

There’s a major crackup/realignment going on in American politics, from the parties’ rank-and-file all the way up to leadership. The nation’s transpartisan ruling class is in the throes of something approaching civil war. Maybe, hopefully not,  one as dangerous as the crackup preceding the REAL Civil War.

The pundits, myself included, have been churning out novel theories to make sense of all this for as long as it’s been going on. Each theory enjoys a half-life of a week or so as it decays into the next. Those of us who arrogate to ourselves the job of explaining stuff to the rest of you are at least as lost at sea as you are. Not, as you’re no doubt noticing, that it shuts any of us up.

It’s going to be a long six months between now and the election. Maybe at the end of it we’ll have some kind of epiphany or valuable takeaway to show for it. But I wouldn’t bet on that either.

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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The End of the Bill of Rights is at Our Fingertips

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English: Fingerprint detail on male finger. Če...
Fingerprint detail on male finger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently got my first “smart phone” (I’ve been a late adopter in that particular area of technology). One of the first things I noticed about it was that I could use my fingerprint, rather than a pesky pass code, to unlock it. Much more convenient, isn’t it? A password can be forgotten, but it takes pretty severe physical trauma to lose one’s fingerprint. If your hand gets cut off, your phone is the least of your worries, right?

Unfortunately, the convenience of “biometric” identification comes with a cost. When you take that route, at least two judges (first a Virginia circuit court judge and now a federal judge in California) have ruled, you can be forced to put your finger on the phone to unlock it.

This has serious and unfortunate implications for rights protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution.

Fourth Amendment: Even when there’s a valid search warrant for a premises — or a phone — actually executing the warrant is law enforcement’s job, not yours. If the door is locked, they can break it down, but you don’t have to unlock it for them. If they find your hidden compartment full of evidence, they find it. But you don’t have to show them where it is, or even tell them that it exists. And that’s how it should be.

Fifth Amendment: Giving the police access to your phone is no different than telling them about every call you made, every text you sent, every note you wrote, etc. It is testifying against yourself, which you cannot constitutionally be required to do.

The usual response from proponents of unlimited state power  to such arguments is that the framers of the US Constitution couldn’t possibly have imagined a future of “smart phones,” unbreakable encryption, and so forth.

Maybe they’re right. But what the framers COULD imagine was the possibility that the Constitution would require occasional amendments to keep up with changing times. Those who want to repeal the Fourth and Fifth Amendments have clear instructions for doing so. All they need is the support of two thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three quarters of the states’ legislatures. A high bar, but not at all unclear.

Until and unless that happens — and it won’t — resist much, obey little. And secure your phone with a long and complex pass code, not with your fingerprint.

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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Want to Save the Elephants and Rhinos? Privatize Ivory and Horns

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Ivory trade, East Africa, 1880s/1890s Some sli...
Ivory trade, East Africa, 1880s/1890s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Kenyan park rangers piled up thousands of elephant tusks and rhino horns to burn on Saturday (April 30),” reports Reuters, “sending a message to poachers and smugglers that their trade will be stopped.”

Well, no. The message this operation sends to poachers and smugglers is “we’re driving the price up for you —  make hay while the sun shines.”

It’s simple economics: When rangers burn 105 tons of ivory and a ton of rhino horns, they reduce supply versus demand.

Sure, the poachers and smugglers who got CAUGHT take a hit to the wallet, but the others can now jack up their prices. The near-term opportunity for increased profit means they’ll send out more hunting teams and smuggle more product until the demand differential the government action created dissipates, supply and demand come back into equilibrium, and prices settle down.

If governments are serious about reducing poaching and smuggling,  and saving shrinking populations of elephants and rhinos, there’s a simple and nearly foolproof way to go about it: Instead of fattening the bank accounts of poachers and smugglers, auction off  harvesting rights to ivory from elephants and horns from rhinos who have died natural deaths.

The buyers of those harvesting rights will, in their own self-interest, get very good, very quickly, at protecting their investments. They’ll hire their own rangers to keep poachers and smugglers at bay. And they’ll do so at their own expense instead of milking taxpayers.

Does this ersatz “privatization” get the job done? Yes. As CBS News’s 60 Minutes reported in 2012, some African species which are endangered or extinct in their original habitats are thriving under private ownership in the United States. The owners profit by selling limited hunting privileges in numbers that don’t stop the herds from growing. Animal rights activists dislike the practice, but there’s no doubt it’s successful if the lone goal is increasing an endangered species’ numbers.

As a libertarian, I support real privatization of, well, everything — no government involvement; preferably, no government. In a free society, wild animals would constitute a source of profit to the owners of the lands they roam, and would therefore be deemed worthy of protection by those owners (which might be cooperatives or communities rather than individuals or corporations).

We can let markets work, or we can make ourselves feel good by letting governments burn ivory and horns while the world’s elephant and rhino populations continue to dwindle toward zero.

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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