Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
Phone (202) 842 0200
Fax (202) 842 3490
 Contact Us
Support Cato

Cato Daily Dispatch for September 9, 2005

Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email

(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

Big Easy Loses Right to Bear Arms
Bush Blasted Over Rebuilding
Rescue, Relief and Recriminations

Big Easy Loses Right to Bear Arms

"Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here," the New York Times reports.

"No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass, the superintendent of police. 'Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,' he said.

In "Restoring the Right to Bear Arms" from the Cato Handbook on Policy, Gene Healy, a Cato senior editor, and Robert Levy, a Cato senior fellow in constitutional studies, write: "Today, states' incompetence at defending citizens against criminals is a more palpable threat to our liberties than is tyranny by the state. But that incompetence coupled with a disarmed citizenry could well create the conditions that lead to tyranny. The demand for police to defend us increases in proportion to our inability to defend ourselves. That's why disarmed societies tend to become police states. Witness law-abiding inner city residents, many of whom have been disarmed by gun control, begging for police protection against drug gangs -- despite the terrible violations of civil liberties that such protection entails, such as curfews and antiloitering laws. The right to bear arms is thus preventive -- it reduces the demand for a police state. George Washington University law professor Robert Cottrol put it this way: 'A people incapable of protecting themselves will lose their rights as a free people, becoming either servile dependents of the state or of the criminal predators.'"

Bush Blasted Over Rebuilding

"The anti-Bush broadsides keep on coming from House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat, who repeatedly has criticized Republicans over the hurricane rescue and relief effort, now says the Bush administration is 'exploiting' workers when it comes to rebuilding areas devastated by the storm," CNS News.com reports.

"Pelosi and other friends of organized labor are furious that President Bush has issued an executive order rescinding the Davis-Bacon Act in hurricane-damaged areas."

In "The Davis-Bacon Act: Let's Bring Jim Crow to an End," David Bernstein writes for Cato: "The [Davis-Bacon Act] continues to have discriminatory effects today by favoring disproportionately white, skilled and unionized construction workers over disproportionately black, unskilled and non-unionized construction workers. Because Davis-Bacon was passed with discriminatory intent and continues to have discriminatory effects, its enforcement violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law."

Rescue, Relief and Recriminations

President Bush and Congress moved on multiple fronts yesterday to rush fresh relief to people afflicted by Hurricane Katrina, vowing to get cash directly into the hands of victims while enacting an unprecedented spending package to feed and house evacuees, rebuild schools and bridges, and begin clearing out the vast rubble," the Washington Post reports.

"As the authorities moved through flooded New Orleans to force out the remaining residents and collect an unknown number of bodies, the bipartisan consensus on dispensing federal dollars did little to obscure the growing political rift over how to investigate what both sides consider the bungled initial response to one of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history. Congressional Democrats rejected a Republican plan for a GOP-led joint House-Senate panel to look into the response."

In "Federal Failure in New Orleans," Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute writes: "The most important duty at the moment obviously is to respond to the human calamity, not engage in endless recriminations. But it is not clear that this President and this administration are capable of doing what is necessary. They must not be allowed to avoid responsibility for the catastrophe that has occurred on their watch."

Kristen Kestner, editor, kkestner@cato.org