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Cato Daily Dispatch for December 20, 2005

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(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

Big Brother May Be Listening

"President Bush made an unapologetic defense Monday of a controversial program to spy on some Americans' international phone calls without court warrants, vowing to continue it as long as the nation faces 'an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.' Bush said during a news conference that the program 'has been effective in disrupting the enemy,' and is limited to people with 'known al-Qaeda ties and/or affiliates,'" USA Today reports.

Cato senior fellow in Constitutional studies Robert A. Levy says, "President Bush's executive order sanctions warrant-less wiretaps by the National Security Agency of communications from the United States to foreign countries by U.S. persons. Reportedly, the executive order is based on classified legal opinions stating that the president's authority derives from his Commander-in-Chief power and the post-911 congressional authorization for the use of military force against Al Qaeda. That pernicious rationale, carried to its logical extreme, renders the PATRIOT Act unnecessary and trumps any dispute over its reauthorization. Indeed, such a policy makes a mockery of the principle of separation of powers.

"Perhaps the government is justified in taking measures that in less troubled times could be seen as infringements of individual liberties. But if so, the Congress, not the president, is charged with establishing the rules that apply in exigent circumstances. The executive branch cannot unilaterally set the rules and enforce the rules, then eliminate court review of possible civil liberties violations."

In "Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism," Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, writes: "Like the power to arrest and search, the primary 'check' on the power to wiretap is the warrant application process. By requiring the police to seek advance approval from a judicial officer, the process allows wiretap applications to be vetted by an impartial judge. In this way, meritorious applications can be separated from fishing expeditions. Under the president's initiative, however, the attorney general retains exclusive decision-making authority to conduct monitoring without being subject to judicial approval, review, or oversight."

ANWR Battle Rages in Senate

"The last-minute push by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to insert oil drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a must-pass defense bill threw the Senate into turmoil yesterday. Some senators questioned whether to hold up the legislation in retaliation, while a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans are trying to strip out the ANWR provision before the bill passes the Senate," reports The Washington Post.

In "ANWR's Private Potential," Jerry Taylor, Cato's director of natural resource studies, argues that if we want the reserve's maximum benefits for the American people, we should let market agents, not politicians, decide how best to use the reserve. Taylor writes: "Economists tell us it doesn't matter how we privatize the reserve or to whom we initially give it to: So long as we put the reserve in the marketplace, its resources will sooner or later end up with those who value them most, and economic efficiency will be served."

Any privatization schemes would be better then leaving decisions about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the political class, Taylor argues. "Better to let rival claimants work out their differences freely and privately through market bargaining than publicly through all-or-nothing political warfare where only the best-connected have a chance to win," he concludes.

No "Intelligent Design"

"A federal judge has ruled 'intelligent design' cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district," according to the Associated Press. "The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include 'intelligent design,' the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled Tuesday. The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation."

In a statement released today by the Cato Institute, Andrew J. Coulson, Cato's director of the Center for Educational Freedom, and Neal McCluskey, a Cato education policy analyst, write: "Today's intelligent design ruling by the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg will be perceived as a victory for supporters of evolutionary theory and a defeat for I.D. advocates and creationists. Such perceptions are shortsighted. The Pennsylvania ruling will do nothing to end the battle over the teaching of human origins that has plagued public schools since the Scopes trial of 1925. It, and all the other cultural and religious 'school wars' that divide our nation, will rage on unless we do something about their root cause: our one-size-fits-all government school system.

"As long as every taxpayer is compelled to fund a single official education system, conflicts over its curricula and methods will persist. But there is an alternative: provide tax relief and scholarships that will put independent schooling within reach of every family in America. By allowing parents to obtain the sort of education they value for their own children, without obliging them to foist it on their neighbors, we can eliminate the root cause of the problem -- and bring peace across the entire education front of our nation's culture war."

In "Why Fight Over Intelligent Design?," Coulson writes, "This manufactured conflict serves no public good. After all, does it really matter if some Americans believe intelligent design is a valid scientific theory while others see it as a Lamb of God in sheep's clothing? Surely not. While there are certainly issues on which consensus is key -- respect for the rule of law and the rights of fellow citizens, tolerance of differing viewpoints, etc. -- the origin of species is not one of them.

"The sad truth is that state-run schooling has created a multitude of similarly pointless battles. Nothing is gained, for instance, by compelling conformity on school prayer, random drug testing, the set of religious holidays that are worth observing, or the most appropriate forms of sex education. Not only are these conflicts unnecessary, they are socially corrosive. Every time we fight over the official government curriculum, it breeds more resentment and animosity within our communities. ... Fortunately, there is a way to end the cycle of educational violence: parental choice. Why not reorganize our schools so that parents can easily get the sort of education they value for their own children without having to force it on their neighbors?"

Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org