Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used…
Another Columbine
Longer Life Spans = Lower Social Security
Round Two
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used…
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will take up a challenge to the Miranda rule. After the Miranda rules were promulgated, Congress passed a law that replaced them and extended self-incriminating evidence that could be used against a suspect. That law is now challenged and the Court must decide whether the Miranda rules were an interpretation of the Constitution, in which case Congress can’t just pass a law without it being a Constitutional amendment.
Miranda was the topic of the Cato Briefing Paper "Individual Rights and Majoritarianism: The Supreme Court in Transition." "In New York v. Quarles, the Court, departing from prior precedent, used cost-benefit analyses to create a 'public safety' exception to Miranda. The Court held in Quarles that the government could introduce into evidence a defendant's statement disclosing the location of a gun, even though the statement was elicited in a custodial interrogation without Miranda warnings, in cases of immediate need to find the gun to protect the 'public safety.'"
Another Columbine
Another school shooting took place yesterday, this time in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, where a 13-year-old honor student began firing a handgun shortly before classes started, four were hit. The shooter is in custody and a court will decide to charge him as an adult or a minor.
Over the years, Cato Institute scholars have produced a wide range of policy analyses, commentaries, and studies on some of the issues evoked by the recent wave of school violence, including the failure of government-run schools, and proposals for strict federal gun control measures. The Cato Policy Analysis "Homeschooling: Back to the Future" addresses one alternative, while in a Cato Policy Report piece, David Boaz calls on the government to "Let the Children Go". The Cato Policy Analysis "Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control" makes the case against poorly reasoned quick fixes. Selected Cato Readings on the Littleton School Shootings contain these essays and more.
Longer Life Spans = Lower Social Security
A panel of experts said yesterday that the Social Security system is underestimating workers’ lifespans, and therefore also underestimating how much it will cost to continue to pay their retirement benefits, according to the Washington Post. In a report to the Social Security Advisory Board, the panel said that mortality rates are likely to continue to decline in the future as fast as they have during this century, rather than falling more slowly, as Social Security has assumed.
Increasing longevity and declining birth rates are at the crux of the Social Security crisis. Social Security privatization is discussed in depth at the Cato Institute website www.socialsecurity.org, including a calculator that will let you see what your returns would be in a privatized system. In "A Plan For Privatizing Social Security," Peter Ferrara lays out the problems with growing longevity and how a privatized system would solve these.
Round Two
The Justice Department Monday filed its conclusions of law -- the latest step in the ongoing antitrust suit filed against Microsoft by the DOJ and 19 state attorneys general. In the filing, the DOJ said Microsoft illegally maintained a barrier to entry in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market, illegally tied the browser to the OS, struck illegal exclusionary agreements with Internet Service Providers and PC makers, and tried to cut-off consumer access to Netscape's rival browser.
In "Microsoft Redux: Anatomy of a Baseless Lawsuit," Robert Levy demonstrates why these claims are completely bogus. He writes that the computer market is too narrowly defined by the DOJ, and how Microsoft has no real monopoly.
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