Cops on Camera Event Video

Just posting the video to the Cato panel I was on yesterday. It was covered by C-SPAN so you can find it on their website, or you can watch it here, with footage taken from (and available on) the Cato website.



A most sincere thank you to all of my friends, family, and colleagues that have been supportive of me and this event.

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Come See Me at Cato on Thursday

As I've written recently, the advent of small, high quality cameras that can be put on dashboards, worn by police officers, or carried in your pocket as part of your phone is changing the very nature of police encounters and police accountability.

I know it's late notice--it was for me too!--but I'll be on a panel discussing cameras, technology, and policing this Thursday at Cato.

If you can't attend the event in person, you can watch it livestream here or catch it when it's later posted on the Cato Events archives page.

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Lessons from Ferguson

The quote that has been the subhed of this blog for years is Robert Nozick's "Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth." In a world in which people of color feel mistreated because of their race, supported by mounting evidence supporting those claims, ignoring or simply waving away those problems is just that sort of deliberate ignorance. Someone who comes to public policy from this perspective needlessly undermines their own message because their worldview doesn't comport with the realities faced by many people.

That is why I was so excited about a recent event at Cato, and was even more pleased with how the event went.  The event was called "Lessons from Ferguson," and it featured a number of voices across the spectrum dealing with race and American policing.

Moderated by my colleague Tim Lynch, the panelists included Professor Alice Goffman, author of On the Run, a sociological narrative about her observations in a black Philadelphia neighborhood; Ethan Brown, author of Snitch, a history of the infamous and widely misunderstood "Stop Snitchin'" movement; Neill Franklin, retired Baltimore police officer and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and Lauren Victoria Burke, journalist and creator of the blog Crewof42.

I highly recommend you watch the event in full. I enjoy many Cato events, but it is rare when we have a collection like this. I'm not sure anyone on the dais (besides Tim, of course) would self-ID as libertarian, but these are problems everyone should recognize regardless of party or ideology.


Of particular note, I found Neill's comment about his run-ins with the police as a black child in Baltimore, as well as his admission that, even as a black police officer, you just become accustomed to treating black kids differently. That is what institutional racism is all about. 

It's all worth watching as I thoroughly enjoyed each presentation. I cannot say enough about how glad I am that Cato hosted it.

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DISCLOSURE: As most people who read this know, I work at Cato, but this is my personal blog. I wasn't asked to promote this event, it's just a topic that is near and dear to me and I'm so happy we're bringing in people--scholars, practitioners, and writers, including people of color--who can talk about what is going on in America. Also, I make a brief cameo near the end.

What part of "unprecedented" was unclear?

I tried to comment on a Salon.com piece by Andrew Koppelman on the supposed lies by the opposition to Obamacare. I signed up, linked the account with facebook, but it says only social media-linked accounts can post comments. [shrug] Since it won't publish it there, I'll put it up here.

This is what I wrote, starting with the author's quote in italics:

I have not been able to find even a hint of the constitutional objection before Obama’s election, even though mandates have been proposed, mainly by Republicans, since the early 1990s.

"Such a mandate was, of course, a significant infringement on individual choice and liberty. As the Congressional Budget Office noted, the mandate was "unprecedented," and represented the first time that a state has required that an individual, simply because they live in a state and for no other reason, must purchase a specific government- designated product." Mike Tanner, Cato Institute, January 2008.

Now, this doesn't specifically mention "constitution," but that a federal government body called the mandate "unprecedented" in Romneycare might be a key reason literature challenging its legitimacy isn't bountiful. Indeed, states generally have wider berth in this area thanks to their general police power (as well as the Tenth Amendment.) That some Republicans used to back an unconstitutional measure on the federal level should be no surprise and is hardly an argument that it must have been constitutional then. An abstract concept that becomes policy that is immediately challenged seems the natural order of things. The dearth of law review articles that address a non-existent federal law shouldn't be at all surprising.

Granted, I work at Cato, but it took all of two minutes for me to find that quote. If this is the quality of his research, his book should have all the depth and nuance of a DNC press release.


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The Legal Left and PPACA: Politics über alles

There is a lot to the PPACA (aka ObamaCare), but the individual mandate is the sexy problem getting all the attention, and there is good reason for that. Forcing individuals into a private market to offset the cost associated with a given program is not within the purview of the federal government and it takes an almost limitless view of the Commerce Clause to make it fit. (see legal luminary Erwin Chemerinsky in this reason video at 8:10-9:50). No one disputes that providing for one's own medical care is "an issue of personal responsibility," but so is child care, maintenance of one's own day to day affairs, paying one's utility bills and any number of other countless duties society expects of each of its citizens. This does not mean that Congress has the granted or inherent authority to make mothers buy Enfamil (or whether they should breast feed) to feed their children. Just because something may be a good idea--even if it's nearly universally agreed to be a good idea--that does not mean that the Congress ipso facto has power to do it.

Ironically, a "socialist" scheme--say, in the mold of government run Social Security or Medicare, for example--would actually pass constitutional muster given the current interpretations of the law. This is a new power, however, is instead a forced transfer payment.

What's worse, this transfer payment doesn't rein in costs--a predictable consequence from jump street--the underlying rationale of PPACA. So, what you have is an increased power grab by Congress, in order to get the insurance companies to sign on to their scheme that can't actually do what it was billed to do--by guaranteeing income for those insurance companies. This is much more akin to quid pro quo than it is 'Necessary and Proper.'

(There are also problems with the way Medicare funds are being withheld for state non-compliance and the mutilation of the taxing power--which are also key to the legislation passing muster, but I just can't get into all of it here.)

Unsurprisingly, as argument day approaches, the Legal Left has mobilized against the challenge. Their arguments in favor of the constitutionality of PPACA's individual mandate, having been molded by arguments in the courts of law and public opinion, have culminated into three main points in the latter:

1) 'So many Americans don't have health insurance!' This has become a running theme of former Acting Solicitor General and now Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal. He argues that the act is a necessity, but it is a trumped up 'appeal to pity.' Just because it may be a good idea (lack of cost controlling measures supra notwithstanding) doesn't make it constitutional. [ Nor, might I add, did the fact that Republicans used to support the mandate, a la Neera Tanden, make it constitutional either.] The very best of these arguments are still policy arguments, not constitutional ones.

2) 'Judicial activism! Hypocrisy!' This would stick if the judges would actually take a policy position as opposed to a constitutional one. 'Judicial Activism,' a phrase initially made popular by Republicans, is now just a BS moniker assigned by any given speaker about cases he doesn't like. Properly understood, 'judicial activism' is the judiciary usurping legislative function--such as fundamentally altering and rewriting law.

The most recent example of activism that comes to mind is the Honest Services statute in the Skilling and related cases. In those cases, SCOTUS ruled that the law in its current form was 'void for vagueness'--taking unspecified legal activity and making it criminal without a clear explanation of how or why it was judged illegal. This part wasn't activism--it's very much their job to dispose of unconstitutional law. What was activist was allowing the statute to stand, though gutted of much of its scope and intent, and then redirecting it to other purposes that would pass muster. Given the lack of a severability clause, the statute should have been stricken in its entirety and sent back to Congress to do-over. Instead, the ruling re-formed the law with no legislative power granted to do so. For all the Left's harping about Chief Justice Roberts' contempt for Congress, he sure goes out of his way to leave terrible legislation standing--evidenced by challengers' fear of how Roberts may respond to PPACA. But if SCOTUS strikes down the mandate but leaves the rest of the law intact, that would be the appropriate time for everyone to jump up and down about 'activism.' (related: Excellent, and very fair piece on the severability argument by PPACA supporter Brian Buetler here.)

3) 'It's an easy constitutional call not worthy of much discussion.' This talking point irks me to no end. Most of these arguments rely on strawmen and cherry picking arguments. Both the Linda Greenhouse piece linked just above and the in-person presentation by the highly regarded Akhil Amar of Yale Law School drip with sarcasm and scorn. (Greenhouse specifically, when discussing the argument of the opposition, says it's "just words." Perhaps she was expecting interpretive dance?) The 26 states' brief by Paul Clement has become the whipping boy of an expanding group of Lefty writers and academics, and maybe it is a weak brief. But it's hardly the only brief in opposition, and it's not the only opposing party brief either. You're unlikely to see such a dismissive treatment of the NFIB's Individual Mandate brief (or Cato's*, for that matter), and I can tell you why: "judicially administerable limits." More accurately, the PPACA's complete lack thereof.

Professors Amar and Katyal, as well as DC Super Litigator Walter Dellinger have tried to explain that the democratic process is the limit upon the Congress's authority and that the "broccoli test" Sen. Coburn asked then-SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan is ad absurdum and thus not relevant. This ducks the question entirely: a) Elections aren't "judicially administerable" (save jurisdictions still covered by oversight of the Voting Rights Act, anyway)  b) The democratic process is essentially majority rule, from which there is plenty to fear. No one, for example, argues that First Amendment infringement is ultimately a matter of voting representatives in or out of office, and thus it is not a sufficient check against infringement.

Indeed, at a recent Federalist Society event , Dellinger argued that the Bill of Rights was the limit on Congress's authority, but this begs the question: surely if you stretch the text of one part of the Constitution, you can minimize any other part of the Constitution to fit your needs just as well. (The Ninth and Tenth Amendments come screaming to mind.) The Bill of Rights can't anthropomorphize and smite an overreaching Act of Congress: that's what we have SCOTUS for.

The reality is that such a broad, uncabined reading of the Commerce power grants Congress the power to do whatever to regulate the economy it sees fit, as pretty much everything you buy--and don't buy--affects interstate commerce when applied to 350 million people. There is simply no judicially administerable limit on Congress's power in the law, effectively removing the judiciary oversight over anything affecting interstate commerce as a matter of precedent. One of the few prominent left of center lawyers to take this argument seriously is UCLA law professor Adam Winkler:

United States v. Lopez is instructive. That case involved a Commerce Clause challenge to a federal law banning gun possession near schools. During oral argument, the Justices repeatedly asked Drew Days, the solicitor general at the time, what he saw as the limits of Congress’s power. If Congress could regulate the mere possession of a gun under the guise of regulating interstate commerce, what couldn’t it regulate? Days struggled for an answer. He insisted that, yes, Congress’s powers were limited, but, no, he couldn’t point to exactly what those limits were. The Supreme Court struck down the law, explaining that it had to do so to maintain the Founders’ vision of a federal government with only limited, enumerated powers.

Winkler (unfortunately) notwithstanding, the thrust of the Legal Left's three key arguments are political arguments to 1) elicit support for the bill  2) elicit contempt for the opposition and 3) set the political stage in November in case of a loss. There are better legal arguments in favor of this law, but that's not what most of the luminaries of the Legal Left are using in public. Simply put, they prefer politics über alles.

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PS: Just as I was about to hit "post," I noticed Peter Suderman also has a post (probably) inspired by Linda Greenhouse's NYT piece. You can read that here.

*Full disclosure: I had ancillary roles in the filing of Cato's briefs opposing all four questions before the Supreme Court next week. 

On the Koch/Cato fight

Most readers know that I am a Cato employee and have been since August 2007. Just prior to that, I was a Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow at reason magazine. As you have probably heard, the Koch brothers are attempting to gain control of the Cato Institute in order to turn the world's leading libertarian think tank into a right wing hack factory. This schism is sort of like a falling out between your dad and a rich uncle that paid for your senior trip.

Thanks for the great summer, Uncle Charlie, but you're way out of line here.

What always bothered me by the 'Koch-as-master-of-puppets' tripe was not just that it impugned my motivations and those of my colleagues, but that it couldn't be further from the truth. If Charles Koch had been calling the shots, none of this would be happening. Ed Crane would be gone, and maybe a few employees go with him, but Cato would look mostly the same. Yet, I don't think anyone believes today's Cato will have anything in common with a Koch-run Cato other than the renovated building that bears the same name.

I was deeply shaken when the story broke about the Kochs' actions. They are not only attempting to destroy the Cato brand by making it partisan and inherently less honest, but they are already sullying the reputations of all of the other policy shops and publications they support that don't carry the Koch name. While the Left and its allies kept harping that the Kochs were somehow calling the shots--boogeymen make great fundraising gimmicks--most DC people knew better, whether or not they would admit it publicly. Now that the Kochs have proven that they don't have the influence the Left assigned to them, they are trying their hardest to get it. Any organization that has a Koch closely associated with it has been tainted going forward, and that is unfortunate.

Despite their business acumen and strongly held beliefs, the Kochs don't know how to run a think tank. A think tank is jealous of its reputation, yet the Kochs' actions here have demonstrated they have no interest in maintaining it. Cato as a name will be irreparably damaged, the board of directors will disintegrate, and they'll have to start poaching Right-wing shops to fill the vacancies left by the resignations of people who refuse to associate themselves with this naked power grab.

Just because we support legalized prostitution doesn't mean we want to live it.

The Kochs would do themselves and everyone else a big favor if they just let this die. Cato was never theirs to control, and if they want to shift their support to Republican activist organizations, that is their prerogative. But attempting to take over Cato only harms the many organizations, causes, and individuals they have long supported, including many quite separate from Cato. But, I fear, they plan to see this through and will fight on even if they lose in court.

There are few places in DC I could work at in good conscience, and none hold the appeal of working for Ed Crane, David Boaz, and the rest of my colleagues at Cato. If the Kochs win, I'll have to figure out a new path for myself. If that should happen, though, I suggest a name change for the pretenders:

I suspect New Koch's appeal will be quite similar.


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NSLs and You

The lastest video from Cato's multimedia department deals with National Security Letters and the egregious lengths the FBI has gone through (and probably continues to) to exercise unprecedented administrative subpoena power. The subsequent gag orders to render them unchallengeable is maddening.




That these letters exist is problematic in itself; that the documented, widespread abuse of them went generally unnoticed outside of the Beltway (and the telecommunications industry) is scandalous.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Just for Fun Friday: Libertarian Cheat Sheet

There was much ado on the Twitters this week about what conservatism is, thanks to patently false comments by Jim DeMint, because people tend to lump all conservatives together as if they all believe the same thing.

Similarly, people often think of libertarians as having a monolithic way of thinking, but this could not be further from the truth. Indeed, to paraphrase Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism, if two libertarians agree on something, one invariably will accuse the other of selling out.

To clear this up, then, I've put together a short list of the many kinds of libertarians so you can tell us apart:

Catoites: Associated with the Cato Institute, typically urbane libertines. Work in a giant greenhouse. Often mistaken for Republicans, but indeed they are too principled.

Reasonoids: Associated with reason magazine, typically libertine urbanites with an aversion to professional attire and a penchant for Johnny Cash impersonators.

CEIers: Convinced that the polar bear floating down the Potomac was just a hallucination brought on by delerium tremens. Remedy: more drink.

Classical Liberals: aging ex-hippies familiar with Latin, Greek and/or the Western Canon.

Randians/Objectivists:Making the principled argument for selfishness since 1957. They believe in objective truth as told by Rand, so they are very much like fundamentalist Muslims though thankfully they're too self-absorbed to blow themselves up.

Paulistas: A cult of personality much like the Randians but lack any cognizable sense of humor. They are best known for driving flame-traffic on websites that criticize the great and powerful Ron.

Liberaltarians: The one group in America that can legitimately blame Obama for their unemployment.

Beckians: Nominal libertarians but de facto conservative populists whose manifesto pines for the day when America was collectively at the height of its irrationality and bloodlust as we entered the anger stage of the grief process. (No, really.) Also, they seem to believe Jesus wrote the Constitution.

Constitutionalists: Lawyers and legal types who take the Constitution much more seriously than the Founders ever did. They seem to believe that Madison was Jesus.

Austrian Economists: Economists who hate math.

Chicago Economists: Economists who hate English.

Anarchists: Statists who've never been mugged.

Minarchists: Anarchists with commitment issues.

Seasteaders: Anarchists (on a boat!) who've never been marauded by pirates.

There you go. So the next time you're navigating a room full of drunk libertarians, this little cheat sheet will give you a good idea of what kind of person you're dealing with.

Have a good weekend!

bellum medicamenti delenda est.

Cato's Botched-Raid Map

One of the most meaningful and inspiring works I've read since coming to DC was Radley Balko's Cato white paper, Overkill. It is an eye-opening work that helped inspire me to do the work and research on which I plan to make my career.

Subsequently, Radley and Cato developed an online map that chronicled the "isolated incidents" of raids-gone-wrong. While I and others have contributed to the project since Radley's move to reason (and happy subsequent return to Cato as an adjunct scholar), it is most certainly his baby--along with Cato web guru Lee Laslo--and all praise goes to them.

It is now embeddable on various websites. Please pass around.


View Original Map and Database

Reactionary Imbecility

One of the dangers of working at a place like Cato is living with a constant target on your back. Any time you do something that can possibly be construed the wrong way, chances are it will be -- and often very publicly. This just happened to a colleague last night after he tweeted something with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

Predictably, Think Progress went ape:

Michael Cannon, a health policy expert for Cato, the libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, took to Twitter today to trade jokes about the oil spill. Responding to a tragic story about a New Orleans area sheriff asking federal authorities to investigate reports that undocumented workers are involved in the oil spill clean up, Cannon tweeted that undocumented workers “are very absorbent.”...While Cannon might have gotten a good laugh out of his comment, pervasive anti-immigrant rhetoric leads to dehumanization and sometimes violence.

Never mind that Charles Koch is no longer associated with Cato. Never mind that Cannon has previously tweeted about the unfair and racist anti-immigrant law in Arizona. And never mind that the person he was responding to is herself a child of an immigrant and is a grandchild of Japanese internment camp victims--camps, of course, established by heroic lefty icon Franklin Roosevelt. No, we at Cato are racist shills for big oil because we believe in private property and free markets. We are fully incapable of holding views in line with the Left and joking at the expense of irrational sheriffs who make headlines with their idiocy. We are evil people whom deserve no benefit of the doubt--or even simple fact-checking our policy stances.(PDF)

Kudos to Dave Weigel for debunking this baseless nonsense over at his WaPo blog.

Small "L" Libertarianism, Corporations and Regulation

Part of my job requires answering questions about our policies, ideas, and articles that come from the general public. Earlier this week, a gentleman wrote to complain about a blog post a colleague wrote about SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan's jurisprudence in the abstract, and how that contrasts with the values Cato holds dear. I'm posting this to give those of you less familiar with my organization, our work, and our worldview a glimpse into how we think and why we think it. I was somewhat hesitant to print this because I didn't want it to seem as if I was beating up a straw man, but I think his questions are indicative of some common misconceptions about libertarianism generally. Further, I hope my response illustrates, if implicitly, the difference between libertarianism and what is commonly known as modern American conservatism.

Below is my (lightly edited) reply to his email, with his questions included verbatim.

Dear Mr. _____:

I’m replying to your email from May 10 [excerpted below].

First of all, thank you for reading Cato@Liberty and contacting us with your questions. I want to answer both of your questions fully, but would also like to unpack them a little bit so we’re on the same page.

1) How would you at Cato propose that a Libertarian Administration could make a transition from the present "system of government" in the United States to a Libertarian system without destroying millions of lives and organizations? I see that removing controls and regulations that were proven necessary over the centuries will [sic]

I noticed you used capital “L” libertarian to describe an administration of our liking. While it may be a semantic argument, as a 501(c)(3) organization, it must be said that Cato is a non-partisan organization and thus we do not align ourselves with the Libertarian or any other political party. “Libertarian” has become a sort of catch-all term for the general principles that we promote in our publications and other policy work. I know [the blog post author] prefers the term “classical liberal” to “libertarian,” but we all strongly believe in Cato’s mission of “individual liberty, free markets, and peace.”

To those ends, we support policy changes that remove legislative and administrative regulations that impinge upon the right of an individual to make a living for himself and those that unfairly redistribute wealth to the benefit of special interests. Indeed, the “libertarian system” that we propose is the quintessential American system: the system of government laid out in the U.S. Constitution. Today’s governmental leviathan is a far cry from the system of enumerated—and thus limited—powers that protect the freedom of every individual to live their life as they see fit. The transition could take a number of forms, but the wealth freed from wasteful governmental control would stimulate the economy to a much greater extent than any government “stimulus” plan could ever hope to achieve. It makes no sense to keep pouring money into agencies, however well-intended, that continue to do more damage than good to our country.

A fundamental concept of economics is that of “creative destruction”: those vocations and industries that no longer serve the economic interests of the community die away. If this essential process didn’t occur, we’d still be supporting candle makers and buggy manufacturers who were put out of business by the advent of light bulbs and automobiles. Unfortunately, our current system of government resists market forces and maintains inefficient and damaging agencies and enterprises—both public and private—ultimately to everyone’s loss. Bureaucrats who lose their jobs in any transition could be compensated for a time once their positions are eliminated—and even into retirement. It would still be cheaper and better in the long run than paying them to do what they do, which is often much more harmful to the economy and liberty than just paying their salary and benefits.

Beyond the jobs of bureaucrats, whom I would hope would join the private sector to do something useful for a living, I can’t think of too many people (certainly not “millions”) that would be adversely affected, let alone destroyed, by eliminating wasteful spending and onerous regulation. Those people—usually special interests with powerful lobbies—that rely too heavily on the government for protectionist policies (e.g., tariffs, regulatory barriers to entry, etc.) should become self-sufficient or suffer the consequences of maintaining unsustainable business models. So much of the regulation that is currently in place was written by, or for the benefit of, the corporations you address in your second question. That is what lobbyists do—they get government to bend the rules to their advantage. We, at Cato, don’t support legislation or regulations meant to benefit the few at the expense of the many. We are pro-market, not pro-business.

2) Do you all really believe that American Corporations, operating without controls, would treat their workers well when so many have proven otherwise?

Cato isn’t a large group of anarchists, so I can’t say you’d find scholars calling for an abrupt end to every regulatory regime in the country. However, there is a broad consensus that there is too much and we would like many of those regulations removed. I’m not sure what specific controls you are referring to, but I’ll take a stab at this, operating on some of the more common regulations that affect businesses.

The first thing that comes to mind is the minimum wage. The fact of the matter is that most people who are employed at minimum wage don’t stay on minimum wage for long because it is an entry level pay rate and, over time, they move off of that. It’s not as if a non-unionized manufacturer, for example, pays all their employees minimum wage from the time they are hired until the time they retire. The work-for-reward incentive works for most businesses, large and small, because even unskilled workers increase their own value over time. A raise in the minimum wage tends to exacerbate unemployment, as those workers at that wage are newer and/or marginal hires to begin with, so their positions are eliminated because they lose profitability. Businesses that compensate their employees better than their competitors attract workers and thus have a larger pool to hire from. This isn’t to say they are lavish with them, but if you’re an employee and you know you can get better compensation at another firm for the same amount of work, you would go to that other firm. Maximizing profits is about more than just making a product at the cheapest possible rate and selling it for the most you possibly can. (Think: Google.)

The second example I can think of is OSHA. Now, given recent events like the BP explosion and consequent spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the coal mining explosion in West Virginia, it would be entirely naïve of me to say that all American jobs are 100% safe. But, if you pay attention to both of those stories, there isn’t a lack of regulation involved in either of those instances. The same could be said for the banking, housing, and other financial disasters—it wasn’t for lack of regulation that these terrible things happened. It was lack of effective regulation. Yet, the politically popular move in the wake of each of these crises was to increase regulation, instead of implementing those that are already on the books. It doesn’t make much sense to increase the power of the people under whose noses all the ineptitude and malfeasance happened without holding them accountable. Yet, this is the typical reaction: increase the size and power of government instead of making the government work better. It’s insult to injury when the people for whom the regulations were intended to limit end up writing or otherwise heavily influencing the regulation to their own benefit to the exclusion of more responsible actors. This is what Public Choice economists call “Regulatory Capture.”

There are more examples, but I think this email is long enough and don’t want to bore you. It all boils down to this: we think the government is too big and, without adhering to the laws laid out in the Constitution, the government continues to grow, inefficiencies increase, and more money is wasted at the expense of individual liberty and the American taxpayer. I have also attached a PDF of a short pamphlet that Roger Pilon, Cato’s Vice President of Legal Affairs, wrote entitled “The Purpose and Limits of Government.” I think most of what we believe to be the correct way to reshape the government is outlined therein.

I hope this was helpful to you. Thank you again for reading our blog.

Regards,

JPB

CBS v. FCC

Just a programming note:

I was flipping through the channels late Saturday night/early Sunday morning and saw that C-SPAN was re-airing the oral argument in the free speech case in the 3rd Circuit case CBS v. FCC. If you want to hear how an otherwise intelligent government lawyer attempt to justify government sanction against the display of part of a human body--and the common sense argument against such absurdity--you can listen to the argument here.

CBS is represented by Robert Corn-Revere, whom I've had the pleasure to meet and work with in the past. He most recently wrote an excellent article for the Cato Supreme Court Review on FOX's battle with the FCC that you can read here.

Partnership for a Drug-Free America Subsidizes Pro-Drug Use Author

Imagine my surprise to see an ad from the Partnership for a Drug Free America next to a blogpost by my former colleague Jacob Sullum (Click to enlarge):

For those of you that may be unaware, several years ago, Jacob wrote an excellent book entitled "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use."

I'm all for reaching out to new audiences, but I'm doubt too many Hit and Run readers are going to flip their stance on drug prohibition because a banner ad told them that drugs are, like, ya know, bad.

But hey, if they want to give money to reason, more power to them! Maybe AHIP will start buying ads on Cato@Liberty next to Michael Cannon's posts on insurance company welfare "health care reform."

Cato's Pocket Constitutions in Korean?

A very Robert Byrd-esque pic of DPRK's Dear Leader:

The Agitator Returns To Cato

For those of you in the D.C. area who would like to hear more about the absurd and disturbing tactics of SWAT teams and the militarization of our police forces, you should attend this event on Thursday:

Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine?

POLICY FORUM
Thursday, September 11, 2008
4:00 PM (Reception To Follow)

Featuring Cheye Calvo, Mayor, Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Radley Balko, Senior Writer, Reason and author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Peter Christ, Co-founder, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.

The Prince George’s County police department is under fire for a recent drug raid on the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo. Unbeknownst to Calvo, a box containing marijuana was delivered to his home. Shortly thereafter, police officers kicked in the front door and shot both of Calvo’s pet Labrador retrievers. The police have subsequently cleared Calvo of any wrongdoing but are unapologetic about their raid tactics. Are no-knock, paramilitary raids an appropriate tactic for drug investigations? Or do sudden, unannounced entries bring unnecessary violence to police investigations? Join us for a discussion of the Prince George’s incident and, more broadly, the militarization of police work in America.

It seems odd to me that the people who live by the motto "to protect and serve" use tactics more useful to "seek and destroy."

Oh yeah, and FREE BEER.

You can register at the hot link above. Hope to see you there.

Pragmatic Foreign Policy vs. Supporting Autonomy

The following is excerpted from Ted Galen Carpenter's piece in the Middle East Times:

Major countries like Russia, India and China worry that their own restless ethnic or political minorities could seek to emulate Kosovo. Russia frets especially about Chechnya; India about Kashmir; and China about Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan. Beijing's uneasiness about the Kosovo precedent with respect to Taiwan was not eased when Taipei promptly congratulated the Kosovars and emphasized the United Nations' need to respect the principle of national self-determination, i.e., Taiwan's claim to sovereignty.

But there are potential secessionist arenas in Europe itself. Cyprus understandably opposes Kosovo's move, given the pretensions of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkey, which set up the TRNC, has its own problems to worry about given the ongoing insurgency of Kurdish secessionists. Spain may one day be less than thrilled about Pristina's action if its own Basque separatists are encouraged to rev up their violent campaign. And London, which vied with Washington in its enthusiasm for Kosovo's independence, may have reason to rue that stance if Scotland decides on independence.

These are all hairy problems, and legitimate ones. I'm curious to know how libertarians balance the goal of autonomous self-rule versus the political reality of bloody, crushing resistance. Peaceful independent nations are very often born out of violent conflict. And while conflict should be avoided when at all possible, is it really always to be avoided*?

Perhaps the US recognition of Kosovo will provoke conflict (although I still don't know how US recognition after the fact would increase the risk of Serbia retaliating) and that I can see as troubling, but are we for self-rule for all people or just us?

I'm all ears.

*CLARIFICATION: I'm not trying to put words in Dr. Carpenter's mouth with this statement. It just seems that his argument in this case rests on the underlying premise of stability at all costs. I should have reworded the sentence.

From the People Who Brought Us WWI and the Yugo...

The following is a letter I wrote to some foreign policy wonk friends of mine. It is in regard to a piece by Hitch in Slate about Kosovo and my personal feelings about U.S. recognition:

For a semester in undergrad, I studied (what was then still a crumbling) Yugoslavia and I also was a student and then TA in a class on Russian/Soviet Foreign policy -- so while I do not even pretend to know as much about FP or even Yugoslavia/Serbia et al., as either of you, I feel I have more than an average lay-person’s grasp on the situation there and the history.

I read [Cato vice president for foreign policy and defense studies Ted Galen Carpenter's] statement on the US recognizing Kosovo, and I must respectfully dissent. I don’t necessarily take the Hitchens line, and I understand the pragmatic problems with recognizing Kosovo in the face of Russian animosity, but it seems to me that if we are to be supportive of freedom, taking an unpopular position (from Serbia and Moscow’s vantage point) on Kosovo is not the worst thing in the world. Certainly, backing the righteous sovereignty of a nation is not a “colossal foreign policy blunder,” at least in this situation. (Taiwan notwithstanding) We can’t promote freedom simply when it is most convenient for us – and this recognition is certainly not coupled with any defense alliance. Thus, the act of recognition is simply an acknowledgement of a free people making a decision to be autonomous – which is the hallmark of our founding.

For all its authoritarian crackdowns and reaping of the financial benefits of oil revenue, Russia does not appear to be in any real position to back Serbia with anything but the obligatory saber-rattling they are so wont to do. Their recent dealings with Great Britain only support the idea that they really aren’t interested in good ties with the West, and that as the Siloviki continue to solidify a perpetual hold on power, the erosion of friendly relations is – in my opinion – nearly a foregone conclusion at this point. So let them rattle their sabers – Kosovo should be autonomous and we should formally back their play. I do not believe that we should turn our back on freedom just because the Kremlin would prefer it.

Now, if this becomes an armed conflict – which I think would have been more likely without the US recognition – I am not behind US military intervention. That said, airstrikes would probably come if Serbia got uppity about this. BUT…

If we had not recognized Kosovo, Serbia could more comfortably believe that any conflict would be viewed by the US as an internal matter for us to stay out of, as we did with Russia and Chechnya. As it stands now, the idea of sustained aerial bombardment from US forces would probably deter Serbia from earnestly seeking to reclaim Kosovo. Of course, we are not obligated to protect the Kosovars – but the Serbs’ memory isn’t so short as to forget what it feels like to be on the wrong end of the American military and are probably not anxious to relive the experience. And without guarantees of any real backing from Russia—which I don’t think is coming— the Serbs would have to be insane to try to forcibly take Kosovo. I’m not putting it past them, but I think it’s less likely after US recognition.

Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em

My friend Jamie Dettmer has an interesting post on Cato @ Liberty:

The study, undertaken by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Holland, found that ultimately healthy people, who live on average four years longer than obese people and seven years longer than smokers, cost the health system about $417,000 from the age of 20 compared to $371,000 for obese people and $326,000 for smokers.

Would you look at that? Strike two against the smoking-ban argument. (Strike one is the infringement on business owners allowing their customers to smoke on private property).

Race, Ron Paul, and Libertarianism

For the better part of the summer, I was surrounded by rabid libertarians of all stripes: anarcho-capitalists, minimal statists, reformed and not-so-reformed Republicans, lefties with reasonable economic policies, Goldwaterites, etc.

One thing many of them had in common, aside from a predilection for binge-drinking and political argument, was an almost unquestioning support of Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas running for president -- ostensibly as a libertarian Republican.

I had my doubts of the grandfatherly man a year ago when I first heard of him. I learned more about him, and liked him less the more I did.

Well, thanks to a story in The New Republic, much of America will know what I found out...and to a greater extent than I found out about him.

Just a small excerpt:

Paul's alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began," read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounced "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks." To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were "the only people to act like real Americans," it explained, "mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England."

This "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" was hardly the first time one of Paul's publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled "What To Expect for the 1990s," predicted that "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" Two months later, a newsletter warned of "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter's author--presumably Paul--wrote, "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which "blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot." The newsletter inveighed against liberals who "want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare," adding, "Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."

The article was somewhat excusing of "libertarianism" as a principle, saying:

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute--including Paul--may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine.

One sentence, however, does not remove the stigma which will undoubtedly be placed firmly in many minds of people who already think libertarians are a bunch of nut-jobs -- if they even know what libertarianism is to begin with.

Everything Ron Paul has fought for in the past year has been unalterably tainted now. In a GOP field entirely made up of rich white men, the only one with the pronounced race problem is the only "libertarian" amongst them.

For my entire adult life, and much of my late adolescence, I have argued tirelessly against the stereotypically racist image of fiscal conservatism. It was always an uphill battle because the GOP undoubtedly makes some foolish mistakes that old white men are prone to make.

But this is worse.

Ron Paul isn't the mainstream GOP -- he is a libertarian federalist who became the face of our way of thinking, rightly or no. And now he -- and therefore we -- will be linked with racist, homophobic, paranoid, ignorant tripe and he will take our ideas down with him as he sinks. This article, a long time coming, undoes any good that Ron Paul may have done over the past year.

This isn't the end for libertarians -- but it is the end for Ron Paul.

Good riddance.

Teen Intimidates Family...Via SWAT

While Justice Kennedy may not see botched SWAT raids as fitting a pattern of abuse, a kid in California tried to use SWAT to intimidate -- and possibly kill -- an innocent couple:

MUKILTEO — A teen is accused of using a computer in his Mukilteo home to report a fake homicide in California, which sent a SWAT team to the house of an innocent couple and their two sleeping toddlers.

Money quote from the Orange County DA's office:

“And the SWAT team saw a man armed with a weapon at the house where they believed a murder had occurred. We’re thankful no one was killed. It easily could have escalated to that point.”

If the D.A. knows that SWAT can go into a situation and "easily" kill innocent people, you would think the tactic would be used only sparingly.

Cato's 'botched raid map' here. Radley Balko's must-read white paper on paramilitary police tactics and abuse here.