STEPHEN L. CARTER: Hungry Harvey Victims Have Committed No Crime: Peacefully taking what you need from a supermarket isn’t the same as looting.

Were the reporter’s critics right? Should we conclude that people taking food from an empty store during an emergency are not committing a crime? That’s exactly what we should conclude — they are not lawbreakers — but it’s important that we understand exactly why.

Let’s start by considering our own instincts. If I were trapped and my family was starving, I would grab the food; I suspect most readers would too. Already our instincts tell us, then, that the moral situation in which we find ourselves is different when a disaster has struck. I believe, very deeply, in the importance of strong property rules. In an emergency, however, we should interpret the rules differently.

The problem is familiar to law students. It arises in courses on torts, contracts and (of course) criminal law. A well-known example in the Model Penal Code posits a hiker who, trapped by a blizzard, breaks into a cabin and eats the food to survive. The hiker has taken both food and shelter without the permission of the owner. By choosing to violate a property rule rather than starve to death or die of exposure, the hiker has selected the lesser of two evils. This is one form of the defense known as “necessity,” and is generally considered to mean that there is no crime.

But let’s be clear about why this is so. In the Model Penal Code example, there’s a life-threatening emergency but there’s also something else. When the hiker stumbles upon the cabin, it’s empty. Thus we might say formally that high transaction costs make it impossible for the hiker to negotiate with the owner for the food and shelter that he needs. The same then would be true of the people left hungry in Harvey’s flooding. Key to our conclusion that they’re not looters is that the stores from which they are taking food are unattended — empty.

So now imagine a different case: When the hungry people arrive at the flooded supermarket looking for food, the owner is standing in their path. He is an ornery sort. He listens to their pleas but says no. They demand food anyway. He brandishes a shotgun and says that he will defend his property. If they overpower him and take the food anyway, is the case the same?

Plainly it isn’t. For one thing, they have added assault to the crimes with which they might be charged. Pilfering food when you’re hungry is one thing; injuring someone to get it is another. In other words, the defense of necessity weakens as the crime becomes more serious.

More at the link.

WELL, SOMEBODY NEEDS TO: State Rep reminds students that ‘speech is not violence.’

NARRATOR VOICE: IT WON’T: The world may run out of food in a decade.

But when it comes to Chicken Little headlines, everything old is new again!

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IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM: My latest NY Observer essay: After North Korea’s latest missile test, Trump puts “all options on the table.”

VERY MUCH RELATED: South Korea seeks extended range missiles.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN AFGHANISTAN: The place is a mess. But what the Trump team proposes to do makes a lot more sense than the feckless policies of the feckless Obama. (Another recent Observer essay.)

VERY MUCH RELATED: What Glenn said about Bill Roggio’s Anatomy of a Taliban Ambush: “This is no way to win a war.” Understand that Bill is analyzing a Taliban propaganda film’s portrayal of an ambush. That said, it does illustrate how the enemy could exploit Obama-era Rules of Engagement (ROE) restrictions.

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BILL ROGGIO: Anatomy of a Taliban ambush.

Before the ambush begins, the Taliban fighter who was recording the attack captures two US Blackhawk helicopters on video as they are flying over the convoy. The Taliban fighters, who are gathering in the open, are undeterred by the Blackhawks, and launch their ambush shortly afterward. At one point during the fighting, what appears to be a military attack aircraft is captured on film, but it does not open fire on the ambush team.

The Taliban ambush, while not very sophisticated, was effective. The fighters open fire on the convoy with machine guns and assault rifles from multiple positions. It does not appear that IEDs, RPGs, recoilless rifles or other heavy weapons were used to target the convoy. Although the Taliban was firing from locations that included buildings, the fighters did not appear to take advantage of rooftops and instead fired from ground level.

Yet the Taliban was able to successfully destroy multiple vehicles in the attack. First, the fighters hit a fuel tanker, then several military vehicles were hit. As the segment ends, multiple vehicles are ablaze along the a stretch of the road. At the end of the scene, the Taliban fighters casually walk away.

The video highlights a major problem that Afghan and Coalition forces face throughout the country: the Taliban has demonstrated that it can take the fight to Afghan forces with little fear of being targeted by air assets. The Taliban is often able to overrun military bases and district centers, and loiter in the area for nearly a day without taking fire.

This is no way to win a war.

WEIRD WHAT NONSTOP OPEN CONTEMPT FOR HALF YOUR CUSTOMERS CAN DO: Hollywood is suffering its worst-attended summer movie season in 25 years.

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DON’T BE EVIL, UNLESS THERE’S MONEY AND POWER IN IT: A Serf on Google’s Farm. “An unintended effect of Google’s heavy-handed attempt to silence Barry Lynn and his Open Markets program at New America has been to shine a really bright light both on Google’s monopoly power and the unrestrained and unlovely ways they use it. . . . But what is more interesting to me than the instances of bullying are the more workaday and seemingly benign mechanisms of Google’s power. If you have extreme power, when things get dicey, you will tend to abuse that power. It’s not surprising. It’s human nature. What’s interesting and important is the nature of the power itself and what undergirds it. Don’t get me wrong. The abuses are very important. But extreme concentrations of power will almost always be abused. The temptations are too great. But what is the nature of the power itself? . . . What I’ve known for some time – but which became even more clear to me in my talk with Barry Lynn on Monday – is that few publishers really want to talk about the depths or mechanics of Google’s role in news publishing. Some of this is secrecy about proprietary information; most of it is that Google could destroy or profoundly damage most publications if it wanted to. So why rock the boat?”

Plus: “Google’s monopoly control is almost comically great. It’s a monopoly at every conceivable turn and consistently uses that market power to deepen its hold and increase its profits. Just the interplay between DoubleClick and Adexchange is textbook anti-competitive practices.”

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ALL THEY HAVE IS MEDIA LIES AND DISTORTIONS. YOU MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO DOUBT THE MEDIA: Collective Insanity.   And, this is the beautiful part…  they’re losing that battle.