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Cato Daily Dispatch for September 27, 2005

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(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.)

Federalizing Private Charities
An Intelligent Solution to "Intelligent Design"
Senate Confirmation of Roberts on Track

Federalizing Private Charities

"After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Monday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita," reports the Washington Post.

"FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster. 'I believe it's appropriate for the federal government to assist the faith community because of the scale and scope of the effort and how long it's lasting," said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response with the Red Cross."

In the Briefing Paper "Corrupting Charity: Why Government Should Not Fund Faith-based Charities," Michael Tanner, Cato's director of health and welfare studies, warns that mixing charity and government "could undermine the very things that have made private charity so effective."

Tanner continues, "Government dollars come with strings attached and raise serious questions about the separation of church and state. Charities that accept government funds could find themselves overwhelmed with paperwork and subject to a host of federal regulations. The potential for government meddling is tremendous. Officials of faith-based charities may end up spending more time reading the Federal Register than the Bible."

An Intelligent Solution to "Intelligent Design"

"New barrages sounded in the evolution war Monday as lawyers for a group of parents challenged the teaching of 'intelligent design' as nothing more than an old argument for God's hand wrapped in fancy new cloth," the Washington Post reports. "Eleven parents from Dover, in central Pennsylvania, are seeking to block their school board from requiring that high school biology teachers read a four-paragraph statement to students that casts doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution."

In "Unnatural Selection," David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, writes: "In 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed a law forbidding teaching in public school 'any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible.' A young teacher, John T. Scopes, taught the theory of evolution in a high school biology class and was arrested for violating the new state law. [This] illustrates the problem with a one-size-fits-all monopoly school system. Lots of Tennesseans wanted their children taught the Biblical story of creation. But there were others, probably a minority, who wanted their children to learn the scientific consensus in biology class. Because the school system was a state monopoly, they couldn't both get what they wanted.

"In [this] case and others across the country, school officials and parents disagree about what's best. Who decides? Under our current system, the school board or the legislature makes a decision for the whole district or state. Under a system of school choice, parents could choose the school that best fits their child's needs -- with or without school uniforms, with or without school prayer, teaching evolution or creation, and so on. We'd have no more trials of teachers, and fewer dissatisfied parents."

Senate Confirmation of Roberts on Track

"Supreme Court nominee John Roberts may be on his way to easy Senate confirmation as the next chief justice, yet senators are focusing just as much if not more on President Bush's next nominee for the nation's top court," according to the Associated Press. "Roberts' confirmation as the 17th chief justice of the United States and the successor to the late William H. Rehnquist is preordained, with more than two-thirds of the 100-member Senate already indicating plans to vote for him."

In "How Constitutional Corruption Has Led to Ideological Litmus Tests for Judicial Nominees," Roger Pilon, Cato's vice president for legal affairs, writes: "The battle between politics and law takes place at many points in the American system of government, but in recent years it has become especially intense over judicial nominations. That is because judges today set national policy far more than they used to -- and far more than the Constitution contemplates. Because the original constitutional design has been corrupted, especially as it relates to the constraints the Constitution places on politics, we have come to ideological litmus tests for judges.

"[This] will not change until we come to grips with the first principles of the matter -- with the true foundations of our constitutional system. Yet neither party today seems willing to do that. Democrats have an activist agenda that a politicized Constitution well serves. Republicans have their own agenda and their own reasons for avoiding the basic issues. Thus, it may fall to the nominees themselves to take a stand for law over politics, the better to restore the Constitution and the rule of law it was meant to secure."

Greg Garner, editor, ggarner@cato.org