Tag: Nat Hentoff

Free Speech Trumps First Amendment

By
Caleb O. Brown

If you watch HBO’s “Newsroom,” you may have seen Cato, IJ and others get a quick namedrop in relation to the Citizens United Supreme Court case. Actor Jeff Daniels misstates the holding of the case, claiming that Citizens United “allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to any political candidate without anyone knowing where the money was coming from.”

But, you see, this just shows Aaron Sorkin’s unwavering commitment to realism in his shows. Reporters regularly get the holding of Citizens United wrong. After all, if reporters were crystal clear that Citizens United cleared the way for all manner of groups to use “corporate treasury funds” to fund broad and overtly political statements about candidates, they would inevitably conclude that their own right to make those kinds of statements would be jeopardized by much of the campaign finance regulation on the books prior to Citizens United. And it’s hard to demonize libertarians when they’re fighting for the rights of everyone, including reporters and entertainers who work for subsidiaries of Time Warner (CNN, HBO), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), Comcast (NBC, MSNBC), General Electric (NBC, MSNBC), News Corp. (FOX, Fox News), etc.

If you’d like to know more about the facts of Citizens United, watch this:

As to the claims about secrecy in political speech, Cato Institute senior fellow Nat Hentoff has a few thoughts on disclosure and the jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas.

Topics: 
General, Law and Civil Liberties, Political Philosophy

Happy Birthday Nat Hentoff!

By
Tim Lynch

Happy Birthday to my friend and Cato senior fellow Nat Hentoff.  He turns 87 today, but he’s busier than ever with book and article deadlines.

Let’s take a quick look at his work.  This week New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a measure to rein in marijuana stops, arrests, and convictions in New York City.  Nat Hentoff was sounding the alarm on that problem years ago!

Here he relates his encounter with Che Guevara:

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties

Nat Hentoff among Century’s Outstanding Journalists

By
Caleb O. Brown

… but you already knew that. The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, together with an Honorary Committee of alumni, selected “the 100 Outstanding Journalists in the United States in the Last 100 Years.” On that list is Cato Institute senior fellow Nat Hentoff. His range of expertise and experience is difficult to overstate and the award is well deserved. I always look forward to the opportunities I have to learn from him about topics ranging from civil liberties to American music.

You can read Nat’s recent columns or watch a few wide-ranging videos we shot with Nat just last year. Here’s my favorite:

Topics: 
General, Law and Civil Liberties

Targeted Killing of U.S. Citizen a State Secret?

By
David Rittgers

That’s the claim the Obama administration made in court. As Glenn Greenwald puts it:

[W]hat’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

Italics in the original. My colleagues Gene Healy and Nat Hentoff have expressed concerns about targeted killings. Charlie Savage wrote a good piece on this that highlights how even the most ardent defenders of executive power may blush at this broad claim of power.

The government’s increasing use of the state secrets doctrine to shield its actions from judicial review has been contentious. Some officials have argued that invoking it in the Awlaki matter, about which so much is already public, would risk a backlash. David Rivkin, a lawyer in the White House of President George H. W. Bush, echoed that concern.

“I’m a huge fan of executive power, but if someone came up to you and said the government wants to target you and you can’t even talk about it in court to try to stop it, that’s too harsh even for me,” he said.

In fairness, Rivkin would defend the administration’s claim of power on other grounds – that targeting is a “political question” for the elected branches of government – but this approach seems to have lost out because it invites the judiciary to determine whether the U.S. is at war in Yemen.

Amending the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress after 9/11 is long overdue. What groups are we truly at war with, where does the line between war and peace sit, who can we detain and kill, and what process is owed before a citizen may be targeted with lethal force? Questions of war are political in nature, and if we don’t know the answers, it is Congress’ role to step in and provide them.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Law and Civil Liberties

Nat Hentoff on ‘Stop & Frisk’ Police Tactics

By
Tim Lynch

Nat Hentoff  has a terrific column in the Village Voice on the stop and frisk tactics of the New York City Police Department.  Here’s an excerpt:

Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, your stop-and-frisk approach trashes the Fourteenth Amendment. So while Governor Paterson merits our cheers for not being at all intimidated by you, a lot more has to be done to bring the Constitution back into New York City.

A co-sponsor of the bill, Assemblyman Jeffries, reminded all of us (The New York Times, July 16) that the signing of the bill was “the beginning point, not the end point, of a larger evaluation of the effectiveness and legitimacy” of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk electronic dragnet.

Since there will continue to be stops, questions, frisks—and some arrests—I would be grateful, Commissioner Kelly, for your reaction to this tiny but very inflammatory story buried at the very bottom of page 14 in the July 10 Daily News, “Cuffed Brooklyn Woman Hit Back at Cops.”

The story describes that, in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, two Brooklyn women, Taneisha Chapman and Markeena Williams, “claim they were wrongfully arrested by the NYPD after following the advice of a flyer (by the American Civil Liberties Union) entitled: ‘What should you do if stopped by the police?’ ”

When stopped by cops last August outside the Marcy Houses and asked to produce identification, they showed the flyer (commendably issued by the office of Assemblyman Nick Perry, Democrat, East Flatbush) that says—and James Madison would have fully approved—“It’s not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You can’t be arrested for merely refusing to identify yourself on the street.”

Daily News reporter John Marzulli wrote: “The cops were apparently in no mood for a legal debate and hauled off both women to Brooklyn Central Booking. The unspecified criminal charges were later dismissed, according to the suit.”

Read the whole thing.

For related Cato work, go here and here.

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties

Our Fellows in the News

By
David Boaz

Cato fellows Nat Hentoff and Penn Jillette have just been profiled in major publications – Hentoff in the New York Times and Penn in Vanity Fair. Warning: the Hentoff profile is mostly about jazz, and the Penn interview contains lots of four-letter words, obscene imagery, and harsh language about religion. So if you have a low tolerance for jazz or for obscenity and blasphemy, be forewarned. But it’s no surprise that both of them talk a lot about the importance of free speech.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties

John Whitehead on Nat Hentoff

By
Tim Lynch

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute has a nice post about Cato Senior Fellow Nat Hentoff.

Here’s an excerpt:

At the age of 85, Hentoff is a radical in the best sense of the word – a true freedom fighter and warrior journalist with a deep-seated intolerance of injustice. His integrity and willingness to buck the trends have earned him the well-deserved reputation of being one of our nation’s most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers.

Well said.  At age 85, Nat Hentoff continues to write books and a weekly column.  His new book is At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene.

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties, Political Philosophy

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