ONDCP’s Smoke and Mirrors

By
Radley Balko

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project sends along video of Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) chief John Walters openly boasting about using federal tax dollars to defeat Question 7, a Nevada ballot initiative that would effectively legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for personal use. 

Walter’s mere presence in the state to speak against the initiative seems to violate the Hatch Act,  not to mention his use of federal dollars to organize against it. Unfortunately, the Office of Special Counsel seems to have made a gaping “drug war exception” to the act, despite the fact that what Walters is doing seems to be in direct defiance of the plain language of the law.

Violation or no, Walters’ and ONDCP’s interference in a state election is yet another example of the Bush administration’s utter contempt for federalism. This administration’s definition of the term seems to be, “the states should be able to set their own policy, except when we disagree with them.”

Notice, too, that even if we were to accept that the social maladies Walters says “correlate” with marijuana use (a relationship that has zero scientific value, and thus oughtn’t even enter into policy discussions), most are caused by the drug’s prohibition, not its recreational use.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties

Enemy Combatants

By
Tim Lynch

Glenn Greenwald has a good post on the latest developments in the Jose Padilla case.

By way of background, President Bush has claimed the power to arrest any person in the world and to lock that person up indefinitely without a trial.  So long as Bush issues an “enemy combatant” order to his Secretary of Defense and not his Attorney General, the imprisonment is supposedly legal because Bush is acting as the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war. Most Americans are probably unaware that Bush believes that he can use the same powers here in the USA.  He has already done so.  That’s what the Jose Padilla case is all about and it is why the legal community follows it so closely.  A legal precedent is being set here.

Padilla is the American citizen who was apprehended at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.  The feds locked him up as an “enemy combatant” for some three years and just a few months ago they moved him to civilian court to face criminal charges in Florida.  Now that Padilla is out of the hole of solitary confinement, we are starting to learn for the first time what went on at the Naval brig during the years that he was held there incommmunicado.  The legal filings by Padilla’s lawyers are disturbing–stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc. (A word of caution: To my knowledge, Padilla’s lawyers are making allegations.  We do not yet know if the government disputes the allegations in whole or in part.  Greenwald is correct to point out that Congress recently approved such interrogation tactics against prisoners.)

Why does this matter?  Well, whatever one’s view on the propriety of our government’s policies concerning the wartime capture and treatment of non-citizens overseas, most everyone will agree that if we are serious about limited government, we must keep an eye on potential overreaching here at home.  Liberty in America rests upon a system of checks and balances.  The police can arrest us at any moment, but the judiciary can “check” lawless police actions fairly quickly.

Mr. Bush (and his successors) can now bypass the judiciary by simply issuing an “enemy combatant” order.  That means the liberty of every American rests upon nothing more than the grace of the White House (actually lower level bureaucrats).  Some may shrug and say “This is war.  Captured terrorists don’t belong in fancy hotels.  Heck, some harmless drug offenders might be raped or stabbed in a U.S. prison.” 

True enough, but isn’t that like saying “Yes, the casualties are mounting in Iraq, but so what.  Didn’t ya know the U.S. lost 6,821 Marines at Iwo Jima, a single battle?”  My point is that we ought to be careful about how we intend to assess the actions of the government.  Let’s strive to keep the government limited and to minimize casualties, mistakes, and injustices.

Topics: 
General, Law and Civil Liberties

Safer Than We Think

By
Gene Healy

The worst nightmare scenario anyone’s come up with in the War on Terror is the possibility of losing an American city to a loose Russian “suitcase nuke.”  Those of us who work within the blast radius of any such attack on the White House have even more reason for concern than most.  (For a morbidly fascinating diversion, go here and punch the zipcode of a target near you.  20500 for 1600 Pennsylvania.)

So I was happy to learn about this piece by Richard Miniter, shredding “the myth of the ‘suitcase nuke.’”  It’s a very convincing combination of analysis and original reporting showing that this particular nightmare is one that shouldn’t disturb our sleep.  Miniter’s bottom line:

For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable–and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed’s claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers–hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable–inside the heads of believers–while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.

Miniter is a dedicated hawk, and thus not someone likely to downplay terror threats unless he’s been convinced on the merits that particular threats, like this one, have been overblown. 

How else might Al Qaeda acquire nuclear weapons, the quintessential “Weapons of Mass Destruction”?  Transfer by rogue states is extremely unlikely.  Both Iraq (pre-Gulf War) and Iran have had chemical and biological weapons and longstanding ties to anti-Israel terror groups, yet neither proved willing to risk transferring those weapons to their terrorist proxies, for fear of an overwhelming response by Israel.  The same logic of deterrence applies in spades to nuclear transfers. 

What about Al Qaeda developing a nuclear weapon on its own?  Even less likely.  Even if their homegrown WMD efforts have progressed much past the dog-poisoning stage, making a nuclear bomb still seems to require a dedicated effort by a modern state.  Does Al Qaeda have the resources and the brainpower to make that happen?  I have my doubts.  According to one account, terrorist mastermind Jose Padilla “believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.”

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Dueling Censorships

By
Tom G. Palmer

ANKARA: The Turkish court system acquitted a Turkish author (who lives and teaches in America) of the crime of  “denigrating Turkish national identity,” a charge supported by some remarks about mass murder of Armenians.  The remarks were made by a fictional character in one of her novels.  The acquittal was hailed in Europe as a victory for free speech.

PARIS: The French parliament has passed a bill imposing criminal penalties of up to one year in jail and 45,000 euros on anyone who denies that genocide against the Armenians took place.

The most intelligent thing anyone had to say was uttered by Turkey’s chief negotiator in EU membership talks, Ali Babacan, who suggested, “Leave history to historians.”

In one country it is a crime to affirm a statement.  In another it is a crime to deny it.  In both it is a crime to discuss it, because to discuss it one has to entertain the possibility that either the affirmation or the denial might be true.

Legislators need regularly to be reminded of John Milton’s dictum from his defense of a free press, Areopagitica; a Speech for the liberty of unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England, published in 1664:

[H]ere the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

Topics: 
General, Political Philosophy

“An expensive, time-consuming indignity”

By
Andrew J. Coulson

Jefferds Huyck is not a “highly qualified” teacher according to the federal No Child Left Behind law. Sure, he’s got a doctorate in classics from Harvard, and his students bring home boatloads of awards for Latin proficiency, but being highly qualified in reality is not at all the same thing as being “highly qualified” under the NCLB. Under that law, “highly qualified” is almost universally interpreted to mean “possessing a four year degree from a state-approved teachers’ college.”

Mr. Huyck views this requirement, quite correctly, as “an expensive, time-consuming indignity.” The ubiquitous teachers’ college degree requirement means that Lance Armstrong cannot teach phys. ed., Bill Gates cannot teach business or computer science, and Johnny Depp can’t teach drama. That’s not to say that they would all make excellent teachers, but simply that they would never be given the chance.

As Cato Adjunct Scholar Marie Gryphon so ably explains in her recent Policy Analysis (and in the current issue of Business Week), public schooling’s hiring and personnel system is broken. There is, furthermore, no way to fix it within the confines of existing state school monopolies.

The way to ensure that the Huyckses of the world are not only allowed but encouraged to teach is to introduce market forces to the field of education. Anyone with Huycks’ abilities and results would be much sought after in a free education marketplace. Conversely, untalented, poor-performing teachers would be forced to improve or leave the profession, no matter how many ed. school degrees they had accumulated.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

Fukuyama on Secrecy: Read the Whole Thing

By
Jim Harper

A few days ago, the New York Times ran a piece by Francis Fukuyama called “The American Way of Secrecy” [registration required] in which he deftly interweaves the twin scourges of threat exaggeration and secrecy.  He also recites the damage they have done to U.S. foreign policy, national security, and domestic tranquility.  No one quote captures this rich, brief essay, so I will indulge in a blogger cop-out and encourage you to read the whole thing.

(HT: Bruce Schneier)

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

The Ohio “Values Voters” Myth, Again

By
David Boaz

The 2004 initiative to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio “helped cause a surge in turnout of ‘values voters,’ who helped deliver this pivotal state to President Bush’s successful reelection effort,” the Washington Post proclaims on the front page today. That’s been the story line since 2004: 11 state votes on banning gay marriage turned out religious and conservative voters, and that helped Bush win his narrow reelection, especially in Ohio, where a Kerry win would have given Kerry an electoral vote majority.

But is it right? There’s good evidence that it isn’t.

It’s true that states with such initiatives voted for Bush at higher rates than other states, but that’s mostly because the bans were proposed in conservative states. In fact, Bush’s share of the vote rose just slightly less in the marriage-ban states than in the other states: up 2.6 percent in the states with marriage bans on the ballot, up 2.9 percent in the other states.

Did Gay Marriage Boost Bush?

Political scientist Simon Jackman of Stanford has more here (pdf). He concludes that the marriage referenda tended to increase turnout but not to increase Bush’s share of the vote. And in a county-by-county analysis of Ohio, he found no clear relationship between increased turnout, support for the marriage ban, and increased support for Bush.

A broader claim grew out of the 2004 exit polls showing that more voters chose “moral values” than anything else as their most important issue. “Ethics and moral values were ascendant last night—on voters’ minds, in Americans’ hearts,” William J. Bennett wrote the next morning on National Review Online. But that claim also fails careful analysis. In the exit poll 22 percent of voters said that “moral values” were most important to them, larger than any other single choice. But if you combined Iraq and terrorism, and economy/jobs and taxes, then both foreign policy and economic policy were most important to more voters.

In addition, of course, it’s not clear what “moral values” means. The Los Angeles Times exit poll, which asks the question a different way, found that 40 percent of voters surveyed selected “moral/ethical values” as one of their two most important issues in 2004–the same percentage as in 1996, when they reelected Bill Clinton. Some voters may think that poverty, the environment, war, individual freedom, or any number of other things are “moral issues.”

Some people say the Republicans got more votes from regular church-goers. But in Ohio, the share of the electorate represented by frequent churchgoers actually declined from 45 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2004. I think the Republicans had already done a thorough job of getting regular churchgoers to the polls. Their great accomplishment in 2004 was combing the country to find un-organized voters who would vote Republican if you got them to the polls.

So then why did Bush win? It’s terrorism, stupid. The most important number in the exit polls was this: 58 percent of respondents said they trusted Bush to handle terrorism, while only 40 percent trusted Kerry. You can’t win a post-9/11 election if only 40 percent of voters trust you to protect them against terrorists; people may not be happy with the war in Iraq, but they thought terrorism was the bigger issue.

There were strong swings to Bush in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York, stronger than in all but one of the 11 marriage-ban states. Those are states that felt the threat of terrorism most directly after 9/11.

And then, of course, there was the freedom issue.

Bush told voters, “My opponent is against personal retirement accounts, against giving patients more control over their medical decisions through health savings accounts, against providing parents more choices over education for their children, against tax relief for all Americans. He seems to be against every idea that gives Americans more authority and more choices and more control over their own lives.”

If it hadn’t been for the war in Iraq – which tended to cut in a different direction from the war on terror – and the loss of libertarian voters who no longer believed his rhetoric about freedom, Bush might have actually won the big victory that economic models of the election predicted.

But it’s time to lay to rest the idea that Bush won Ohio and the presidency on the strength of anti-gay-marriage votes.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics

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