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Cato Daily Dispatch for November 9, 2001

Postal Service Wants $5 Billion One Way Or Another
DeLay Nixes International Criminal Court Proposal
Terrorists At Gun Shows?

Postal Service Wants $5 Billion One Way Or Another

The U.S. Postal Service, hammered by steep drops in revenue and mail volume, asked Congress yesterday for a $5 billion bailout, according to The Washington Post. But lawmakers, mindful of a presidential threat to veto additional emergency spending, signaled reluctance to give the ailing agency more than it can prove it needs now.

Saying a $900 billion mailing industry and universal service are at stake, Postmaster General John E. Potter told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the agency needs $3 billion to buy anthrax-fighting technology and other security equipment. The Postal Service projects a revenue loss of $2 billion this fiscal year.

Postal officials threatened possible postage rate hikes of 15 to 20 percent without the federal bailout. "Users of the mail should not be burdened with these extra costs through the price of postage," Potter said.

But money for a bailout would have to come from somewhere. Both users and non-users would be burdened by the higher taxes that would ultimately be necessary to pay for it.

In "The Infected Postal Service," Edward L. Hudgins, author of "Mail @ the Millennium: Will the Postal Service Go Private?" examines the post-Sept. 11 post office and writes that what it needs is not a bailout, "but to be transformed into a privately owned, non-monopoly enterprise, following the lead of postal services in other countries."

DeLay Nixes International Criminal Court Proposal

After last-minute intervention yesterday by House GOP Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), House and Senate negotiators agreed to prohibit any U.S. cooperation in the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which is being established in the Netherlands to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity, according to The Washington Post.

DeLay and other members of Congress fear that the court's broad reach could be extended to the prosecution of U.S. servicemen abroad.

In "Reasonable Doubt: The Case Against the Proposed International Criminal Court," Foreign Policy Analyst Gary T. Dempsey explains that "the court threatens to diminish America's sovereignty, produce arbitrary and highly politicized 'justice,' and grow into a jurisdictional leviathan."

Terrorists At Gun Shows?

Citing the threat of terrorism, a pair of gun-control organizations is asking Arizona Governor Jane Hull (R) and the governors of 36 other states to push legislation that would require background checks on firearms sold privately at gun shows, according to The Arizona Republic.

Arizona has about 40 major gun shows each year at convention halls, swap meets and fairgrounds. Commercial vendors are licensed and required to conduct background checks on purchasers, but private citizens are allowed to sell their weapons at shows or anywhere else without those restrictions.

In a letter to Hull, presidents of Americans for Gun Safety and HALT Gun Violence list at least two instances in which terrorists used that "loophole" to buy guns at unregulated shows in other states.

In "The Facts About Gun Shows," Associate Policy Analyst David B. Kopel demonstrates that there is no "gun show loophole." "Despite what some media commentators have claimed," he writes, "existing gun laws apply just as much to gun shows as they do to any other place where guns are sold." Attempts to shut down gun shows are simply further attacks on the First and Second Amendments.