Cato Daily Dispatch for December 7, 2004
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Senator Inserts Education Policy in Spending BillSuper Coca 'Tree' Growing in Colombia
Two High Court Cases Challenge Sentencing Guidelines
Senator Inserts Education Policy in Spending Bill
"U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, promoting his life-long passion for the U.S. Constitution, has inserted into a massive federal spending bill a requirement that schools devote at least part of a day each year to teaching about the document," according to the Los Angeles Times.
"The provision applies to all schools, elementary through college, that receive federal aid. Education groups worry the provision could be the opening wedge in a campaign by Washington to influence what schools teach."
In the Cato Handbook for Congress, David Salisbury, director of Cato's Center for Educational Freedom, writes: "The U.S. Constitution gives Congress no authority whatsoever to collect taxes for, fund, or operate schools. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment, education should be entirely a state and local matter. ... Without question, the Framers intended that most aspects of American life would be outside the purview of the federal government. They never envisioned that Congress or the president would become involved in funding schools or mandating policy for classrooms.
"... James Madison, who proclaimed that the powers of the federal government should be few and enumerated, would be shocked at what the president and Congress are doing today in relation to an aspect of family life that was never intended to come under the control of Congress, the White House, or any federal agency. Congress should take the enlightened view, consistent with that of the nation's Founders, and draw a line in the sand that won't be crossed. Education is a matter reserved to the states, period."
Super Coca 'Tree' Growing in Colombia
"Colombian police have identified a genetically modified and super-hardy coca 'tree' that yields up to eight times more cocaine than a traditional shrub," the Financial Times reports.
"The discovery, detailed in a counter-narcotics police intelligence dossier obtained by the FT, underscores the lengths to which Colombian producers are going to outsmart U.S. efforts to curb the drugs trade."
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, details the failure of U.S. anti-drug policy in Latin America in Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America. In the book, Carpenter takes a broad view of the fiasco that is Washington's drug war and provides a candid portrait of the situation in Latin America.
Two High Court Cases Challenge Sentencing Guidelines
"When the new Congress convenes next month, it might face a revolutionary change in the criminal justice system," according to a column in today's Washington Post. "There are signs that the Supreme Court will invalidate, in some fashion, the federal sentencing guidelines. The pending cases are United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan, and it is likely that the court will hold the guidelines unconstitutional because they permit judges, instead of juries, to embellish sentences."
In "Misguided Guidelines: A Critique of Federal Sentencing," Erik Luna, an associate professor of law at the University of Utah, outlines how the congressionally mandated Federal Sentencing Guidelines undermine constitutional principles and produce unjust results.
"The guidelines have proven to be unfair and unworkable in practice," Luna writes. "Ultimately, Congress must end the Guidelines era and begin anew, guaranteeing that the next 15 years of federal punishment will not be like the last. It is time to scrap the [U.S. Sentencing Commission] and its Guidelines, and to embark on a new age of moral judgment in sentencing."
The book Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, edited by Cato senior editor Gene Healy, describes how the ordinary citizen is increasingly vulnerable to being handcuffed and hauled off to jail for behavior that no sensible person would recognize as a crime.
Wyatt DuBois, editor, wdubois@cato.org