Cato Daily Dispatch for October 7, 2005
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Miers on AbortionSubway Riders Beware
Iraq Death Toll Hits 1,900
Miers on Abortion
"Amid uproar among conservatives over the candidacy of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, one of the most ardent abortion opponents in the Senate said Thursday that Ms. Miers had not persuaded him to vote to confirm her," The New York Times reports.
The article continues: "The senator said he had tried to initiate a discussion of abortion law by raising the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that established a married couple's right to use contraception and later served as a basis for Roe. Mr. [Sam] Brownback [(R-KS)] said Ms. Miers did not use the term 'settled law' to describe Roe -- a phrase that, he said, would have been 'a red flag' indicating she would not overturn the decision. But neither would she discuss it, saying related cases could come before the court."
In "The Key Issue for the Court Isn't Abortion," Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, writes: "For too long conservatives who understand the Enumerated Powers doctrine and the role the Constitution plays in limiting the power of government have allowed the religious right and Planned Parenthood to control the debate over the future of the judiciary in America. The litmus test for any judge must always be his or her view on Roe v. Wade, as though abortion and abortion alone should determine who sits on the federal bench.
"Now, abortion is a serious issue -- one in which I've always believed neither side gave due credit to the valid arguments of the other. ...But the fact that the abortion debate so controls the debate over judicial philosophy is unfortunate. There are more important issues out there, such as federalism and private property rights, the cornerstones of our liberty."
Subway Riders Beware
"Authorities closed part of Penn Station on Friday and commuters headed to work under the watchful eyes of police after a newly disclosed terror threat against the New York subway system," according to The Associated Press.
"Workers in hazardous material suits inspected what appeared to be a red suitcase, and National Guardsmen and police with dogs were at the transportation hub beneath Madison Square Garden by late morning. There was no immediate word on what it may have contained."
In "A Useless, Intrusive P.R. Display," Charles V. Peña, former director of defense policy studies at Cato, and Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, explain why random searches of subway riders in response to terrorist threats is a flawed solution.
"The odds of catching a would-be subway bomber are not very good," they write. "New York's subways carry about 4.5 million passengers on the average weekday, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. If on any given day there were a single terrorist riding the subway, and half the passengers were carrying some sort of bag, the probability of finding him or her during any particular search using a truly random search pattern would be about one in 2.25 million or about four ten-millionths of one percent. Such odds are only slightly better than winning New York's Mega Millions lottery (about one in 175 million). Even multiplied by thousands of intrusive searches that's a poor bet -- and that assumes terrorists are too dim to adapt by, say, strapping bombs to their bodies."
Iraq Death Toll Hits 1,900
"Bomb blasts killed six Marines in western Iraq, and U.S. forces killed 29 militants in U.S. offensives aimed at uprooting al-Qaida insurgents ahead of the country's vote on a new constitution, the military said Friday," reports The Associated Press. "The American deaths brought to 1,950 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
"In southern Iraq, British troops detained 12 militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in the city of Basra, accusing them of carrying out recent attacks on British and U.S. troops, officials said Friday, amid charges Iran is helping fighters carry out deadlier bombings."
In Exiting Iraq, a special task force of scholars and policy experts directed by Cato's director of foreign policy studies Christopher Preble argue that the military occupation of Iraq must end. They assert that the presence of troops in Iraq distracts attention from fighting al-Qaeda and emboldens a new class of terrorists to take up arms against the United States. Moreover, the occupation is enormously costly for American taxpayers, exposes our men and women in uniform to unnecessary risks, and undermines attempts to foster political and economic reform in the region.
Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org
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