“The Occupy movement, if it weren’t so dangerous to the American ideal, would be comical,” says John Thompson, a Rick Santorum supporter who attended The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which kicked off in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 9th, 2012.

CPAC is the premier annual gathering of the conservative movement, but this year not all the action was inside the convention center. Occupy D.C. was joined by the AFL-CIO, SEIU, National Nurses United, Metro Labor Council, and OurDC for a demonstration right outside. The group says it was protesting a “gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters.”

Reason’s Lucy Steigerwald was on hand to see what all the fuss was about. (more…)

“The new debate in the Republican party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians,” says Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). “A lot of the libertarian ideas that Ron Paul is talking about…should not be alien to any Republican.”

Yet right after the 2010 midterm elections, the influential Tea Party favorite proclaimed that “you can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative,” a comment that was widely viewed as a slap at libertarians. And South Carolina’s junior senator is also a staunch pro-lifer, has favored a constitutional ban on flag burning, and is on the record saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to teach at public schools.

More recently, DeMint has been leaning libertarian. His new book, Now or Never: Saving America from Economic Collapse, is a warning to the nation that we need radical spending cuts (including putting defense spending on the table) or else face economic oblivion. And he was instrumental in getting Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010, including the most libertarian member of the caucus, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who also wrote the foreword to DeMint’s book.

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Chicago tried banning it. Now California wants to do the same. But what’s so controversial about foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose that many diners consider a delicacy?

“Foie gras is universally cruel,” says animal rights activist and founder of the Animal Protection and Rescue League Bryan Pease.

Pease led the fight against foie gras in California, which often got ugly and scary , but he feels that it was all worth it now that the ban on the production of the food product will go into effect this summer.

“This isn’t a product that anyone thinks should be consumed, really,” says Pease, “except for a small group of chefs and promoters.”

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“When you look at government policies, there’s a massive transfer of wealth from the young and relatively poor members of society toward the old and relatively members of society,” says Veronique de Rugy, a Reason magazine columnist and economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In 1970, de Rugy notes, transfers from the young to the old took up about 20 percent of the federal budget. In a few years, that figure will break the 50 percent barrier as the population ages and Social Security and Medicare ramp up. Those programs are paid for by payroll taxes that suck up around 15 percent of every dollar most workers will ever make.

Yet the #Occupy movement spends most of its energy railing against “the 1 Percent” richest Americans, whose wealth is not gained at the expense of the “99 Percent.” Rather, it comes from providing goods and services that people want to consume.

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The Supreme Court is back in session with major decisions coming on the legality of Obamacare, Arizona’s anti-immigration law, and the right of property owners to due process.

How’s the court expected rule in these cases and what are the likely implications of its decisions?

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“I think we ought to give our children the best we possibly can and I think we’re moving in that direction,” says renowned political operative James Carville. ”Yes, I’m very excited about it.”

Reason caught up with the Louisiana native at the New Orleans kickoff event for National School Choice Week (NSCW), which runs from January 22-28 and features hundreds of events around the country designed to increase support for allowing parents to pick what schools their children attend. The Big Easy was the ideal location for the event as all children attend schools of choice in New Orleans, a radical – and so far incredibly sucessful – response to decades of failed approaches and the devasation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Carville emceed an event that also featured performers such as The Temptations, Trombone Shorty, and Ellis Marsalis along with speakers such as MSNBC’s Michelle Bernard, former Arizona education head Lisa Graham Keegan, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

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“If you wanted to destroy a city’s housing – short of bombing – the best way to do it is rent control,” says Cato legal associate Trevor Burrus.

While most cities in America long ago got rid of rent control, New York remains a bastion of government-mandated limits on what landlords can charge renters. About 50 percent of New York’s rental market is affected by rent control or rent stabilization, policies that keep rents artificially low and produce housing shortages, higher overall housing costs, and all sorts of corruption.

The court case Harmon v. Kimmel may finally bring an end to rent control laws that have been on the books in one form or another since the 1940s. James D. Harmon owns a building in Manhattan where the tenants are paying rents that are about 60 percent below the going market rate. After losing various legal battles at lower levels, Harmon has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his argument that rent stabilization is a form of takings that should be prohibited under the Constitution. The Court has not yet announced whether it will hear the case but has asked the state and city of New York to respond to Harmon’s argument.

Cato’s Burrus wrote a friend of the court brief on the case and explains why rent control and rent stabilization are bad at promoting affordable housing and abridgments of economic freedom. (more…)

On May 10, 2011, 43-year old Allen Kephart died after having a Taser applied to him multiple times by three San Bernardino, California, sheriff’s deputies during a routine traffic stop in Lake Arrowhead.

“I feel that my son was murdered, I feel that something has to be done about law enforcement,” says Alfred Kephart, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit in San Bernardino Superior Court, August 30, 2011.

High profile police related deaths like Allen Kepharts’ are pushing activists, families and courts to question whether Tasers or officers are to blame, but the answer to that question is a tricky one.

Numerous studies and reviews from the National Institute of Justice, Amnesty International and the Police Executive Research Forum have come to different conclusions on Tasers and how officers use them. A study in the American Heart Journal even revealed that studies funded by Taser International were “substantially more likely to conclude Tasers are safe.”

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“The essential issue in this race is freedom,” said Senator Rick Santorum in a triumphant speech on the eve of his strong second-place showing in the Iowa caucus.

But what kind of freedom is Santorum talking about? Reason.tv caught up with Santorum at a campaign stop at Des Moines Christian Assembly in Urbandale, Iowa, where he spoke to schoolchildren and their parents about the importance of electing a leader who will promote good social values to the citizens.

“Why wouldn’t leaders in this country stand up and promote marriage?” asked Santorum. “Stop, in any way they could, the sexual promiscuity that goes on that leads to out-of-wedlock births.”

Santorum picked up the endorsement of Jim Bob Duggar, patriarch of the Duggar family (of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting”), who sung the national anthem to kick off the festivities. Also in attendance was social conservative activist and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Ralph Reed. Reed has not endorsed a candidate in the race yet, but he stresses that social conservatism remains a core value to GOP voters.

“You’re not going to do well, either in Iowa or beyond, if you’re not pro-marriage, pro-family, and pro-life,” said Reed. “Whether you’re coming from a libertarian perspective or a more traditional conservative perspective.” (more…)

With the new year just around the corner, Reason.tv is looking back at some of our favorite videos of 2011.

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They touch our lives in so many ways, and Reason.tv kicks off awards season by acknowledging those who have devoted their lives to minding other people’s business.

Live (to tape) from the fourth floor of the Sepulveda Center in Los Angeles, it’s the third annual 2011 Nanny of the Year Awards!

These United States have produced many worthy nominees in 2011. Who could forget the city planner who threatened a woman with 93 days behind bars for growing vegetables or the state senator who did his best to outlaw crossing the street while listening to an iPod (shortly before pleading guilty to federal corruption charges).

But this year the golden Nanny goes to the Wolverine state pol who’s bent on making most any kind of teacher-student sex–not just a fireable offense, but a felony, even if the student is older than age 18 or even if teacher and student are middle-aged. (And, in an apparent attempt to secure nanny gold, our winner is also fighting to force school kids to recite the pledge in front of genuine made-in-America flags.)

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It was supposed to be a “slice of Americana and of childhood dreams,” says U.S. Army Specialist Mark Grapin, who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia. He’s talking about the treehouse he built for his two sons after returning from his latest tour of duty in Iraq.

What Grapin didn’t expect was that Fairfax County’s zoning board would demand he tear down the treehouse after an anonymous complaint, thus launching the family into an eight-month legal battle.

Grapin went to the local media for help and public outcry turned into an online petition. A neighbor donated trees to cover the treehouse, and the family even received a pro bono lawyer to help win over board members.

Just days before the treehouse was to be torn down, Grapin was able to convince the board to let him keep it on the condition it be removed after five years. Plenty of time, he says, for his sons to enjoy it.

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In seasons past, Grandma only had to worry about getting run over by a reindeer. With “Grandma Got Run Over by TSA,” web sensation Remy gets us in the holiday mood with a song about Christmas, Homeland Security, and the joys of civil rights abuses.

“Grandma Got Run Over by TSA” is one of a series of collaborations between Remy and Reason.tv. To watch Remy’s other videos, go here.

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“Lakewood is not really a suburb anymore, it’s a particular kind of urban place that looks suburban superficially but which is netted fully in an urban fabric,” says author D.J. Waldie who is most famous for writing Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, set in 1950s Lakewood, California.

Waldie sat down with Reason Magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch, who also grew up in Lakewood, to talk about city planning and the unique issues affecting suburbia in 2011. For 34 years, Waldie served as the Public Information Officer for the city of Lakewood and still lives in the house he grew up in.

The film rights to Holy Land were bought in late 2010 by actor James Franco for a possible movie.

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Christopher Hitchens died yesterday.

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens headlined Reason’s “Very Secular Christmas Party” in Washington, D.C. by providing a dramatic reading of Tom Lehrer’s “Christmas Song.” Click above to watch.

Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie has written an obituary:

I’m saddened to write that the great essayist and writer Christopher Hitchens is dead at the age of 62. He had been weakened by the cancer of the esophagus that he disclosed publicly in 2010 and the treatments he had undertaken to fight his illness. Reason extends its condolences to his wife, family, and friends.

As is clear to anyone who has read even a sentence of his staggeringly prolific output, Hitchens was the sort of stylist who could turn even a casual digression into a tutorial on all aspects of history, literature, and art. As a writer, you gaze upon his words and despair because there’s just no way you’re going to touch that. But far more important than the wit and panache and erudition with which he expressed himself was the method through which he engaged the world.

Throughout his life, he remained a man of the left, but he had no patience for orthodoxy and groupthink (the first night I met him in person, we ended up bonding over a softness for the early Oliver Cromwell, of all people). Not surprisingly, his biggest rows came among his political and ideological compatriots. A devout atheist, he abjured abortion and was no fan of Martin Luther King, Jr. He made a huge break with the supporters of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the book-length indictment No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. In the years leading up to but especially in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he had nothing but righteous contempt for those he perceived as soft on religious terrorism and ended up leaving his longtime perch at The Nation partly as a result.

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“Ever since the War on Drugs, everything has hit the fan,” says Romesh Bhattacharji, former Narcotics Commissioner of India. Rather than continue the unnecessary and costly drug war, Bhattacharji advises the United States to simply “Relax, take it easy, [and] tolerate.”

Last month, at the Cato Institute’s “Ending the Global War on Drugs” conference, Bhattacharji’s sentiments were echoed by ex-drug czars, cops, politicians, intellectuals, liberal and conservative journalists, and even the former President of Brazil.

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High, persistent unemployment and a sluggish economy underscore what all but the most-dedicated supporters of Barack Obama know to be true: The president’s 2009 stimulus program was a massively expensive bust.

Understanding why the stimulus failed is an important step in understanding how the government can—and cannot—goose economic recovery. To get a better sense of how and where the stimulus went wrong, Reason.tv focused on Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., that’s home to a large number of government contractors and other recipients of money earmarked for the sorts of “shovel ready” projects that were going to bring the economy back to life.

President Obama’s top economic advisor Larry Summers laid out ground rules for how stimulus dollars should be spent: The funds must be ”targeted” at resources idled by the recession, the interventions must be ”temporary,” and they needed to “timely,” or injected quickly into the economy.

None of that turned out to be true. “Even if you were to believe that government spending can trigger economic growth,” says Veronique de Rugy, Reason columnist and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, “the money is never spent in a way that’s consistent with the conditions laid out by the Keynesians for it to be efficient.”

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Remy mourns the impending loss of his beloved incandescent light bulbs with a song set to familiar music.

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