The Reason Roundtable

Running "someone sane and honest is different," says Nicholas Sarwark, the national chair of the Libertarian Party in explaining the "unique selling proposition" of the "party of principle" in the 2016 presidential election.

Bolstered by a presidential ticket led Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, two former two-term governors, the LP has received an unprecedented amount of news coverage and popular interest, says Sarwark, who talks about how the systems is indeed rigged against third-party candidates. Between ever-changing ballot-access rules and patently ridiculous exclusions from presidential debates, he says, the one thing Republicans and Democrats agree on is keeping other parties at arm's length. And yet, Sarwark notes, the duopoly is faltering because it no longer is fielding "authentic" and "honest" candidates.

Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Sarwark about what the "party of principle" is up to in the final weeks of the 2016 race and the LP's bold new strategy of running electable, pragmatic candidates who are also committed to maximum freedom and minimal government.

Produced by Jim Epstein with Ian Keyes.

"Every rule that gets written has a cost," explains Abby Schachter, author of the new book No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting. "I don't know if parents [understand] that under the headline 'we're going to keep your children safe' [or] 'we're going to protect the kids' that that is really code for 'we're taking your rights away.'"

Schachter credits a personal experience with Pennsylvania's restrictive regulations over swaddling in daycare to her interest in documenting how the government is getting more involved in raising children and restricting parents' choices. "I had to go find the people who made up this rule about swaddling and they weren't in my state and they weren't even accountable," Schachter says.

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Schachter to talk about her book, her fight to have her youngest child swaddled (0:57), how government officials take obese children from their parents (2:52), the loss of unsupervised play among kids (4:01), warning labels (8:06), and the connection between her work and college students' demand for safe spaces (11:03).

Edited by Joshua Swain and Ian Keyser. Music by Podington Bear.

Nick Gillespie talks with Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward and Bloomberg View's Eli Lake about Donald Trump's bragging about groping women, Hillary Clinton and Wikileaks, and Gary Johnson's shortcomings as a presidential contender. Also: Does the United States need to bust Russia's lip and are we living in a fully post-fact world?

LP presidential nominee Gary Johnson says the second debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton set a new low for incivility. The former New Mexico governor also says disgruntled Republicans are ready to endorse him over their own party's candidate - and argues that Bernie Sanders' supporters turned off by Clinton's hypocrisy should give him a look.

The architects of Obamacare could have foreseen today's crisis, says NYU Law Professor Richard Epstein, except they were intellectual "super jocks" with a "superior Ivy-League sneer," who knew so much better than anyone else "how to run this Rube Goldberg contraption" designed to "defeat the law of gravity."

Epstein speaks as an insider to elite circles. A graduate of Columbia, Oxford, and Yale Law School, he's the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. A towering figure in his field, Epstein has had a profound impact on libertarian legal theory, especially with his 1985 book, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain.

Throughout his career, Epstein says, he's been surrounded by "people cleverer than myself putting up schemes that are dumber than you can imagine."

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Epstein for an extended discussion about the collapse of the Obamacare exchanges (0:43); why cigarette companies don't owe smokers a dime (15:49); the recent legal campaign against Exxon Mobile related to global warming (27:00); Obama's dismal record (35:23); where the U.S. went wrong in Iraq (45:00); why he thinks Gary Johnson is a weak candidate (57:00); Hillary Clinton's criminal offenses (58:26); whether he favors Hillary or Trump (1:04:51); and why he's planning to sit out this election (1:05:34).

Interview by Nick Gillespie.

Edward Snowden is possibly "the most influential whistle-blower of our generation," says Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Earlier this week, Timm joined with representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch to formally ask President Obama to pardon the former NSA contractor who brought to light bombshell revelations about mass surveillance in the U.S. The campaign to request a presidential pardon was timed with the release of the new Oliver Stone biopic, Snowden.

"It's certainly an outside chance that he is going to get pardoned, but I think it's something Obama can and will consider," Timm said during an interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie. He continued: "As he's winding down his presidency, [Obama] is probably looking at his legacy. And one of the most disappointing aspects of his presidency has been his treatment of whistle-blowers and the fact that they have prosecuted more leakers in history than any other administration. He himself has said that this debate that Snowden sparked has made the country stronger."

Timm sat down with Gillespie to discuss the case for pardoning Snowden, the impact the Oliver Stone film will have on the cause, and whether a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration would be more likely to consider Snowden's case.

Approximately 8 minutes.

"[The Trans-Pacific Partnership] is a mixed bag," says Daniel Ikenson, director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. Ikenson's latest analysis, Should Free Traders Support the Trans-Pacific Partnership? An Assessment of America's Largest Preferential Trade Agreement, offers an in-depth look at the most important trade agreement in decades.

He sat down with Reason's Todd Krainin to discuss the report.

"Our conclusion is that it's got some baked-in protectionism. There's a lot of liberalization. On par, it's net liberalizing. It will expand our economic freedoms. And my colleagues and I, my co-authors and I, support it."

Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with Judge Andrew Napolitano at this year's FreedomFest, the annual gathering of libertarians in Las Vegas, to discuss how his traditional Catholicism intersects with his libertarian politics, why electing Trump or Clinton will likely lead to the "demise of the Constitution as we understand it," why he thinks Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson won't win in November, his commitment to open borders, and the philosophical underpinnings to his pro-life stance on abortion.

Reason's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Penn Jillette backstage at Vegas' Rio casino, where Penn & Teller have been in residence for years. The conversation ranged from the 2016 election to what it's like to eat only potatoes for two weeks straight to why Bob Dylan—"he's a freak, not a cheerleader"—is Penn's artistic hero.

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Johnson and Weld at FreedomFest in Las Vegas. In a wide-ranging discussion, the nominees clarified how they would handle balancing the budget, scaling back the war on drugs, reforming entitlement programs, selecting Supreme Court justices, addressing immigration and national security policy, and more.