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Mandy Patinkin may be a well-known, award-winning actor and singer on the big screen and stage, but these days he's trying out a new medium: social media. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mandy has been uploading videos ranging from heartfelt moments with his wife, writer and actress Kathryn Grody, to political messages encouraging people to vote for Joe Biden. He joined David to talk about growing up enmeshed in the Chicago Jewish community, his love for acting even as he wrestled with being a perfectionist, and what his role in Homeland taught him about the patriotism of the US intelligence community
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It's nice to see Louisiana out in front of state
policy for once, courtesy of a legislator who has served less time than just about
anybody else in Baton Rouge.

Fashionable, with good reason, is the listing of
ways in which the state is behind the curve of many of its brethren. While its
neighbors cut
taxes in significant ways, put
some brakes on spending growth prior to this year, and slap
restraints on unaccountable bureaucracy in education and other areas,
Louisiana made no progress in these areas, mainly because of an obstinate leftist
throwback governor in Democrat John Bel Edwards and
also weak-kneed so-called conservative leadership in the Legislature.

But the state has pioneered policy in restricting
minors' access to overly sexualized material. Act 436 by
Republican state Sen. Heather
Cloud, which received much attention and a begrudging assent from Edwards, has
libraries create cataloguing and patron borrowing systems that give parents
greater control over their children's media consumption. While measures
in several other states address operating funds for libraries as tools to
gain compliance with procedures such as these, Louisiana's is unique in as it
leaves operating funds alone and instead would impair the borrowing ability of
parish authorities if they don't comply.

Yet preceding this, last year, GOP new Rep. Laurie Schlegel
introduced and had passed into law with
little dissent a potentially more far-reaching measure, simple in concept but devastatingly
effective: have users of web sites with enough sexually explicit material provide
positive proof of age, typically government-issued, in order to access material.
Her rationale cited research conclusions, although some disputed, about psychological
ills and deviant behavior that childhood pornography consumption could trigger.

This certainly has had an effect on minors in
Louisiana having access to such sites, although perhaps creating another
customer base for purveyors of fake IDs. However, it also had a substantial impact
on overall consumption from Louisiana. Pornhub, a popular site for explicit
material that ranks in the
top dozen in the world, reported
an 80 percent drop over the year in state-based consumers.

That because many users, who don't bat an eye with
age verification in other contexts, suddenly became skittish at uploading a
copy of the driver's license to a porn site. With that experience, as other states
began to copy Louisiana – six so far this year and likely many more next year –
Pornhub simply stopped allowing access to users originating in those states (although
this can be defeated if a user utilizes a virtual private network).

This year, another Schlegel enacted bill
built upon that success by giving increased investigatory powers to the
attorney general that could bring civil penalties as allowed in last year's
law. That it went through adds to a remarkable record she is building: of the
13 bills designed to become laws that she has had go onto the legislative calendar,
11 have made it to the finish line.

Naturally, the porn industry isn't a fan of her
efforts and has sued to try to stop such laws going into effect, with a
specious argument that they imperil the First Amendment. But the judiciary has
given wide latitude for states to limit expression when it comes to minors, and
asking for proof of age isn't a burdensome request to access material. As an
indicator of the infirmity of that argument, earlier this month a court
in Utah tossed the complaint against its law as the state doesn't enforce
criminal penalties on the miscreant but allows citizens to file civil suits.
Louisiana's allows the state to impose civil penalties, and is being sued
on the basis of vagueness, despite rather exacting criteria built into the
law.

At this point, such suits seem long shots to
succeed, and their failure would cement a legacy for the state, contrary to its
current one endorsed by Edwards of clinging to a past defined by policies
promoting a failed worldview that have led to its depopulation, retarded
economic growth, and overzealous government trying too hard to aid preferred
special interests.