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In April, the government indicted pornographer John Stagliano in a federal court in Washington, D.C. on multiple charges of obscenity for producing and distributing two fetish movies, Milk Nymphos and Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice, and a trailer for another porn collection. All appeared on his company's adult-only website, evilangel.com.
If convicted and sentenced to maximum jail time on each charge, Stagliano, one of the most popular, innovative, and award-winning XXX-rated movie kings in history, effectively faces a lifetime sentence. His next court date is scheduled for November, shortly after Election Day.
In April, reason.tv's Nick Gillespie talked with Stagliano in a candid, wide-ranging 20-minute conversation about the government's case against him and his defense strategy, the role that porn plays in the average viewer's life, how he came to his libertarian beliefs, how contracting HIV was the best thing that ever happened to him, his record of innovation in the adult-film world, and much, much more.
To read a partial transcript of the interview, go here.
To watch the video of this interview, go here.
Norm Stamper is a cop who saw it all during his 34 years on active duty. As police of Seattle from 1994 through 2000, he was in charge during violent World Trade Organization protests in the Emerald City.
Stamper, who holds a Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior from United States International University, has emerged as one of the most thoughtful and outspoken critics of the war on drugs, which he believes causes untold misery, undermines effective law enforcement, and doesn't begin to pass any sort of cost-benefit analysis. As important, the libertarian Stamper believes that the drug war-and other wars on the behaviors on consenting adults-does great violence to the idea that we own our bodies.
Stamper is the author of the Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (2005) and now works with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a nonprofit created by former cops to "reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition."
Ethanol advocates claim that the biofuel is a cheap, renewable energy source that reduces pollution and our dependence on foreign oil. It sounds too good to be true—and it is.
Ethanol, especially the corn-based variety, is bad for taxpayers, bad for consumers, bad for the environment, and horrible for the world's poor. In fact, even environmentalists are critical of ethanol subsidies these days. The ethanol craze has distorted markets and increased the price of food worldwide. The only people who still support ethanol subsidies are the ethanol producers—and politicians from both sides of the aisle. Together, they make sure the subsidies keep coming.
In a recent interview about the current food crisis, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said, "If part of our problem is that the Chinese are going to eat meat and you've got to have corn and soybeans to feed the Chinese their meat, then why isn't it just as legitimate for the Chinese to go back and eat rice as it is for us to change our policy on corn to ethanol?"
Let them eat rice? So that American taxpayers can continue to pay people to turn corn into fuel?
Silly senator, corn is for food.
This seven-and-a-half-minute video explores the case against ethanol subsidies. Hosted by reason's Nick Gillespie and featuring Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey, it was produced by Paul Feine and PF Bentley.
Taxpayers are shelling out over $17 billion for more than 11,000 Congressional earmarks in FY 2008. One such project is a $1.6 million earmark in this year’s defense spending bill. The money is going to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a program that searches for evidence of life elsewhere in the universe.
That alien pork project is just one example of how elected officials use earmarks to funnel federal tax dollars back to powerful interests in their districts. While politicians and a few of their most well-connected constituents benefit from earmarks, the costs fall on individual taxpayers. Since 1991, Americans have paid over $271 billion for pork projects.
In this new Reason.tv video, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) - who is known as the Senate's "Dr. No" for his aggressive opposition to earmarks - explains how taxpayers are being fleeced by Washington's insatiable appetite for pork.
The title of Jason L. Riley's new book helps explain why it has proven so controversial: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.
Let Them In is as exhaustively researched as it is eminently readable. Riley, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board runs through the six biggest anti-immigration arguments at play in today's heated political world—and finds them wanting.
Riley sat down earlier this summer with reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss the leading myths about the causes and effects of immigration.Chemotherapy treatments and an amputated leg left 17-year-old Owen Beck in constant pain and nausea. Nothing gave him relief until he tried the medical marijuana his parents purchased for him at Charlie Lynch’s dispensary in Morro Bay, California.
After armed federal agents raided his dispensary in 2007, Lynch now finds himself in the midst of a trial that could land him in prison for the rest of his life. On Tuesday Owen Beck was called to the stand to speak on Lynch’s behalf—and then promptly silenced.
In this video update, reason.tv continues its coverage of the saga first told in the documentary short, Raiding California: Medical Marijuana and Minors.
To learn why Owen's testimony was cut short, read Seth Goldin's courtroom dispatch.
It's a great time to be a sports fan: The NBA playoffs are shaping up, the NHL playoffs are underway, and the baseball season is young enough that followers of every team can still dream about making it to the World Series.
But as Major League Baseball's Washington Nationals—a team that surely is not going to the October Classic any time soon—eases into its brand-spanking-new-and-massively-expensive stadium, reason.tv asks the question: Are publicly financed stadiums and other sports subsidies really worth the cost to taxpayers?