The Reason Roundtable

Reason editors discuss what anti-immigration fantasy looks like when translated into policy, and how education diversity goals lead to discrimination.

Eric Lundgren, an e-waste entrepreneur who built the first electronic hybrid recycling center in the U.S., will begin a 15-month prison sentence this month after a six-year legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 2012, Lundgren plead guilty to conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and criminal copyright infringement for copying and selling CDs for restoring the Windows operating system on broken PCs—CDs that Microsoft gives away for free.

So why did Lundgren's crime result in a jail sentence? The answer cuts to the heart of a major battle going on in the tech industry today: Companies are trying to preserve aspects of U.S. copyright law that give them enormous power over the products we own. Repair advocates say that in their quest to protect their intellectual property, manufacturers are trampling on our First Amendment rights.

Produced by Paul Detrick and Alexis Garcia. Narration by Garcia. Cameras by Detrick, Garcia, and Jim Epstein.

Powerful forces—including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R), the Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn, and President Donald Trump—have aligned, to turn more than 1,000 acres of Wisconsin farmland and family homes into an LCD screen manufacturing facility.

Reason visited the village of Mt. Pleasant to speak with homeowners facing the threat of eminent domain, and the local government officials responsible for acquiring the land on behalf of Foxconn, which is receiving $4.5 billion in subsidies and tax breaks. The project was sold to the public with a promise of 13,000 jobs and billions in additional tax revenue.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Justin Monticello and Weissmueller. Additional graphics by Meredith Bragg.

The New York governor's race this fall has garnered outsized national attention partly because a well-known actress is mounting a left-wing challenge to the two-term Democratic incumbent, who just happens to be the son of a past governor, a one-time Kennedy family in-law, and a cabinet secretary during the Bill Clinton administration.

Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda on the long-running show Sex and the City, is an unrepentant progressive who has been attacking Andrew Cuomo hard from the left.But there's another candidate running for governor who's worth a longer look than either Nixon or Cuomo. Libertarian Party candidate Larry Sharpe is a New York City native, former Marine, and an entrepreneur who came within 32 votes of being Gary Johnson's vice-presidential candidate for the 2016 election. When Reason asked his rival Bill Weld how the LP could become more successful, Weld replied, "You want to get out more candidates like Larry Sharpe."

Introductory segment produced by Austin Bragg. Edited by Ian Keyser.

'Covert Affair' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Trump disrupts the status quo on trade, diplomacy, North Korea, and pot.

With medical and recreational marijuana legalization spreading across the country, Reason attended the Cannabis World Congress and Business Exposition in New York City to get a sense of where things are headed with commercialized weed and weed-related products.

But by far the most vision-inducing part of the conference was keynote speaker Billy Tauzin. He's a former conservative congressman from Louisiana, who went on to head up PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's massive lobbying group. Now he works for LenitivLabs, a medical cannabis company founded by TV host, multiple sclerosis sufferer, and longtime legalization advocate Montel Williams. Tauzin himself survived a life-threatening bout with cancer, and now says he wishes he could have smoked weed to ease his pain.

Established in 2003, Theranos promised to save people from pain and disease through early detection and lead the way into an era of cheaper, more consumer-driven health care. Holmes' big idea was to replace traditional venous blood draws in a doctor's office, hospital, or lab with simple finger pricks. One day, she said, patients would be able to do the tests at home and upload the results for their doctors.

Holmes stacked her board of directors with heavyweights such as former and future cabinet members George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, and Gen. James Mattis. She held fundraisers for Hillary Clinton and cadged hundreds of millions of dollars from investors such as the Walmart heirs, Rupert Murdoch, and Betsy DeVos. For a time, her company was worth more than Spotify or Uber.

Today, Theranos is on the verge of liquidation and its backers have seen their investments wiped out. Holmes may face charges.

An apartment developer paid millions for prime real estate in Edgewater, New Jersey, with a beautiful view of Manhattan. Nearly 2,000 apartments would be built. The developer also offered to build public parks, parking, a ferry terminal, and a pier, all at no cost to taxpayers.

But Edgewater's mayor, Michael McPartland, and city council said: No, you may not build!

That's not that unusual. Local officials often keep new developments out.

But in this case, they also voted to seize the developer's land using eminent domain. John Stossel asks: Why would they do that?

After oral arguments last year, Stephanie Slade correctly observed that "justices might have found a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card." Also on the Reason Podcast: Bill Clinton, Roseanne, Samantha Bee, Kim Kardashian, and maybe the worst celebrity of the week, Larry Kudlow.

Politicians and journalists often tell a story about greedy pharmaceutical companies that turned doctors into dealers and patients into addicts. And now, we're told, tens of thousands of Americans are dying of overdoses every year because of government inaction.

If this is truly an epidemic, the diagnosis is wrong in a few major ways. And the cure prescribed by the government is making the disease worse.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Alex Manning, Jim Epstein, Lexy Garcia, and Weissmueller. Additional graphics by Brett Raney. Additional color correction by Todd Krainin.