Cato Daily Dispatch for October 4, 2002
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GOP Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in N.J. Senate RaceHouse Tries to Impede Internet Gambling
U.S. Envoy Meets with High-Level North Korean Official
GOP Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in N.J. Senate Race
GOP lawyers urged the Supreme Court yesterday to stop New Jersey officials from removing Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli from the Nov. 5 ballot, intensifying the partisan fight over a crucial Senate seat, reports USA Today.
The outcome of the new dispute could eventually help determine whether the Democrats retain control of the Senate, where they now hold a one-vote majority. The New Jersey race is one of several tight contests across the nation.
Republicans have asked the justices to block a state court order that allows Democratic former senator Frank Lautenberg to be placed on the ballot. He would be substituted for Torricelli, who Monday withdrew from the race, just 36 days before the Nov. 5 general election.
Cato scholars Robert Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies, and Roger Pilon, director, Center for Constitutional Studies, write that Wednesday's New Jersey Supreme Court decision allowing Lautenberg to run ignores the rule of law. "In short, by assuming legislative functions, the New Jersey court has made a mockery of the doctrine of separation of powers - a centerpiece of federal and state constitutions and a bulwark against governments that might otherwise abuse their citizens."
House Tries to Impede Internet Gambling
The House tried to strike a blow against Internet gambling Wednesday with passage of a bill to make it illegal to use credit cards or any form of electronic payment for the illegal offshore activity, according to the Associated Press.
The bill, championed by Rep. James Leach (R-Iowa) would make it a crime for a gambling business to accept credit cards, checks or fund transfers in connection with unlawful Internet gambling. "Internet gambling serves no legitimate purpose in our society--it is a danger to the family, it is a danger to society at large," Leach said.
Since Internet gambling sites are overseas and beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcers, American officials can seek injunctions against American banks and credit card companies to stop them from processing any credit card transaction or other financial instrument with a specified illegal Internet gambling site.
In "Should Washington Ban Internet Gambling?" Director of Technology Policy Wayne Crews writes, "Once we travel down the road of regulating behavior on the Internet, there's basically no limit to government's ability to regulate voluntary speech and interaction and to substitute its moral vision for those of individuals. Washington should mind the federal budget casino instead."
In "Don't Give Up the Right to Gamble," mathematician Guy Calvert shows that gambling is a natural human endeavor, entrenched in American history and that "any coercive effort by the government to eliminate or reduce gambling must compete against that most formidable opponent, human nature." Calvert is also the author of "Gambling America: Balancing the Risks of Gambling and Its Regulation."
U.S. Envoy Meets with High-Level North Korean Official
U.S. special envoy James Kelly met communist North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's No. 2, Kim Yong-nam, today in a move underscoring the importance Pyongyang puts on restarting dialogue with Washington after a two-year hiatus, reports Reuters.
Kelly held a second day of talks in Pyongyang as the most senior U.S. official to visit North Korea since President Bush said in January the country was part of an "axis of evil."
Kelly's team is set to return to Seoul tomorrow after the highest-level dialogue between the arch-rivals in two years and the first such encounter under the Bush administration, apart from a brief meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun in Brunei in July.
In June, Cato hosted a book forum, "Reducing Tensions in the Korean Peninsula," with Selig S. Harrison, author of Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement (Princeton, 2002), and commentary by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies. Video of the event is available on Cato's Web site.
In "Korean Détente: A Threat to Washington's Anachronistic Military Presence?" Senior Fellow Doug Bandow examines the rationale for the continued U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula, and finds it wanting. "The U.S. troop deployment has been unnecessary for years," he writes. "South Korea has twice the population of North Korea and an economy at least 30 times as large. South Korea is fully capable of building whatever military force is needed to defend itself against the North if détente should fail."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
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