Happy Monday Law Streeters! Start your week of right with Law Street’s top stories from last week, which include everything you need to know going into tonight’s first presidential debate, Instagram censoring medical marijuana posts, and a Tulsa officer charged in Terence Crutcher’s Death. ICYMI–check out the top stories below!

1. What You Need to Know About the First Presidential Debate

On Monday September 26, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go head-to-head in the first presidential debate. The debate starts at 9 p.m. EST and will air on all major news networks and stream live on Twitter. Make sure you’re following Law Street on Twitter and Facebook for live debate coverage and commentary. For everything you need to know heading into round one, read the full article here.

2. Instagram is Censoring Accounts With Pictures of Legal Weed

Instagram has been deleting accounts that contain pictures of marijuana, even if the location where the account is based has legalized the drug in some form. Two companies in Canada, where medical marijuana is legal, recently had their accounts shut down by the social media giant after featuring pictures of legal weed. Read the full article here.

3. Tulsa Officer Charged With Manslaughter in Terence Crutcher’s Death

Betty Shelby, the police officer who shot Terence Crutcher on a highway in Tulsa, Oklahoma last week, was formally charged with manslaughter. Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler announced on Thursday that he had charged officer Shelby with first-degree manslaughter, which would amount to a minimum of four years in prison if convicted. Read the full article here.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Lawrence Lessig, a famous Harvard Law School professor and presidential candidate, announced that he is no longer pursuing the Democratic Party’s nomination because the Party recently changed the requirements to participate in the November 14 debate.

Lawrence Lessig announced his candidacy for president in early September, meeting a self-set goal of raising over $1 million in small donations. A well-known campaign finance advocate, Lessig sought to run for president in order to enact electoral reform, which he thought would increase political responsiveness and ensure everyone’s “equal right to vote.” His campaign was unique from the outset, but the support that he did have was vocal and polls suggest that campaign finance is an important issue to many. However, aside from being a longshot in the presidential race, his campaign encountered several additional obstacles.

“It is now clear that the Party won’t let me be a candidate,” Lessig said in a video (below) released on Monday. According to Lessig and his advisors, a subtle change in the debate criteria has made it impossible for him to participate in the upcoming debate. When the Democratic National Committee (DNC) initially announced the debate schedule back in August, the rules stated that participating candidates must receive, “at least 1 percent in three national polls, conducted by credible news organizations and polling organizations, in the six weeks prior to the debate.”

But recently, according to Lessig, the DNC tweaked these requirements ever so slightly in a way that precludes Lessig from participating. A memo from the DNC changed the wording from “in the six weeks prior to the debate” to “at least six weeks prior to the event,” meaning that participating candidates need to have met the threshold six weeks ahead of time, rather than in the period leading up to the debate. According to Lessig, “Under the new rule, unless we can time travel, there is no way that I can qualify.”

If what Lessig says is true, this change would exclude him from a debate that he would otherwise be participating in. One of the most significant challenges faced by the Lessig campaign is the fact that his name is not included in many national polls, but recently, he has hit the 1 percent threshold several times–meaning that he would likely qualify under the initial rules. Under the rule change, he would have already needed to qualify at the beginning of October.

Outside of polling, but also related, are Lessig’s challenges with the Democratic Party. Last month, he wrote an article for Politico Magazine titled, “I’m Trying to Run for President, But Democrats Won’t Let Me.” In the article, he outlined the challenges facing his campaign, and the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to accept him as a candidate. He argues that Party leaders don’t really view him as a legitimate candidate–noting that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had not yet taken the time to even speak with him.

It’s worth noting that even if Lessig was openly welcomed by the Democratic Party, his chances of receiving the Democratic nomination were extremely slim. While he would likely qualify for the upcoming debate if the rules did not change, polling at 1 percent isn’t necessarily impressive. Granted, if he was listed as an option in every poll he might rank a little higher, but it still wouldn’t materially change much.

The fact is, his candidacy is pretty peculiar–he even started out saying that, if elected, he would only serve as president until he could implement electoral reform, after which point he would resign. While he has since dropped the idea of being a “referendum president,” his nearly exclusive focus on a narrow reform agenda can limit the extent of his support. But that perspective might also miss Lessig’s point.

Sure, the best way for him to enact electoral reform would probably be to actually get elected, but it also seems like he simply wants to elevate the issue to a much higher level in the United States, particularly among policymakers. Were he able to attend the upcoming Democratic debate, he may have been able to do just that by demanding that the other candidates address the issue. Instead, he has been excluded from the debate and, as a result, the Democratic Party.

So what’s next for Lessig? He hasn’t announced whether he will pursue the presidency as an independent candidate, but in an email to the Washington Post he noted, “nothing (legal) is ruled out.” Lessig has made some unorthodox attempts to address the issue of campaign finance in the past, so we may want to keep an eye out for his next move.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Democrats Squeeze Lawrence Lessig Out of Presidential Race appeared first on Law Street.

If you watched CNBC’s Republican Debate last night, you probably noticed the candidates’ general disdain for the media. It started off early and persisted throughout the night, as the candidates criticized the moderators’ questions and the mainstream media’s coverage of the campaign so far.

The first candidate to criticize the media was Marco Rubio. When moderator Carl Quintanilla asked him about an editorial in the Sun-Sentinal that called for Rubio’s resignation due to his attendance record at Senate votes during the campaign, Rubio responded saying, “I read that editorial today with a great amusement. It’s actually evidence of the bias that exists in the American media today.”

Rubio went on to criticize the editorial and the double standard that he believes people have been using to evaluate him. He noted that several past presidential candidates actually had worse attendance records while campaigning, yet the Sun-Sentinel endorsed them. He expanded his criticism to argue that the mainstream media is generally inhospitable to the modern conservative movement.

While Rubio has a point when it comes to peoples’ criticism of his voting record, it is extremely important to note that the article that he referenced as an example of media bias was an editorial, which typically contain opinions from the editorial board and are not the same as a general news article. In fact, there is very little evidence of partisan media bias in news coverage. As the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog pointed out on Twitter, a meta-analysis of media bias in presidential elections found virtually no evidence of partisan bias, particularly in newspapers and news magazines. While the media does have its biases, they generally do not fall along partisan or political lines, rather they are often a product of the economic constraints faced by news organizations.

Arguably the most notable example of a candidate attacking the media came from Ted Cruz, who went on a rant against the moderators and election coverage more generally. He said:

The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media…

This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?

Most of the criticism focused on the moderators and what critics argued were hostile questions. Cruz’s point captured the sentiment behind that criticism; he claimed that the debate focused more on personal disagreements and politics than substance.

In fairness to the moderators, Cruz made that comment in response to a question on his opposition to the recent Congressional compromise, which led Congress to raise the debt ceiling. By most standards, the debt ceiling is a substantive issue, and it is particularly relevant for Cruz as it allowed him to get at his tendency to use important votes–like the 2013 budget vote that led to a government shutdown–to talk about his agenda. Now, to Cruz’ credit, and regardless of how you feel about his positions, he did try to touch on important issues during Wednesday’s debate. His comments focused on his plan for a 10 percent flat tax, addressing the national debt, criticizing of the Federal Reserve, and a brief call to reinstate the gold standard. But regardless of his attempts to focus on real issues, the one quote that everyone seems to be focusing on his call-out of the moderators.

The media criticism wasn’t confined to Rubio and Cruz, though they did their fair share to bring it into the spotlight. Other candidates, notably Donald Trump and Chris Christie, spoke out against the moderators’ questions at several points during the debate. Afterward, the Republican National Committee (RNC) also expressed its displeasure with CNBC. Reince Priebus, the RNC Chairman, said that the network “should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.” He tweeted his criticism saying:

I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. #GOPDebate

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) October 29, 2015

In spite of the moderators, I’m proud of our team for standing up against the improper and unprofessional display put on by CNBC. — Reince Priebus (@Reince) October 29, 2015

In a review of the debate’s transcript, Bloomberg noted that in contrast to September’s debate, the candidates were more willing to criticize the moderators than each other. The analysis also found that there was a total of 14 points during which the candidates attacked the “mainstream” media. In response to the rush of criticism, CNBC’s Vice President of Communications, Brian Steel, issued a brief but direct statement. He said, “People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions.” Although many agree with the candidates and the RNC, not everyone has criticized the moderators’ performance. While both sides have their points, it’s also important to ask why exactly the candidates are so vocal in their opposition to the mainstream media. 

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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