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Recent Cato Op-eds

This list consists of Cato op-eds within the last 60 days.

• November 20, 2009, "Truly a Turkey," Michael D. Tanner, New York Post.

  Just in time for Thanksgiving, Sen. Harry Reid has given us a giant turkey of a health-care bill. At 2,074 pages and more than 370,000 words, it's officially "scored" as costing $849 billion over 10 years -- $400 million per page, or $2.3 million ...

• November 17, 2009, "The 'Stimulus' for Unemployment," Alan Reynolds, New York Post.

  Why did the unemployment rate rise so rapidly — from 7.2 per cent in January to 10.2 percent in October? It was clearly the administration's "stimulus" bill — which in February provided $40 billion to greatly extend jobless benefits at ...

• November 17, 2009, "Obama's Phony Federalism," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  Friends of federalism cheered last month when the Obama administration reversed the Bush policy of prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states that have legalized the practice. Welcome though that change was, let's hold the applause. Not yet a ...

• November 17, 2009, "Will Democrats Err in Immigration Reforms?," Daniel Griswold, Washington Times.

  Immigration reform has been moving up the to-do list for President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress. Our immigration system sorely needs an overhaul, and illegal immigration remains a perplexing problem, but the Democrats in Washington seem ...

• November 17, 2009, "Clueless or Despotic?," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Do you think people who refuse to (or cannot for whatever reason) purchase health insurance should be subject to a $250,000 fine and/or five years in jail? Well, a slim majority of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to think such a draconian ...

• November 17, 2009, "Europe as Weltmacht," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  European leaders are giddy like school children before Christmas. The European Union is about to install a president and foreign minister. Then, the European elite insist, the continent can act as a true counterweight to the U.S. The European ...

• November 16, 2009, "Guns & Butter," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  The president is on his first official trip to Asia. Unfortunately, his agenda appears focused on reinforcing the status quo—"strengthening" the usual ties with the usual allies and forging an "enduring" American presence. Worse, the ...

• November 15, 2009, "Health Care: A Trillion(s)-Dollar Bill," Michael D. Tanner, Richmond Times-Dispatch.

  A trillion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we're talking real money. The House of Representatives has now passed its version of health care reform — a gargantuan 2,000-page, 70-pound collection of mandates, regulations, and subsidies ...

• November 15, 2009, "Delayed Economic Reform Killed 14.5 Million Children," Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Economic Times (India).

  The 20th anniversary of Communism's fall is a good time to estimate the costs borne by countries like India that did not become Communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after Independence, India levied sky-high taxes, strove ...

• November 15, 2009, "In Era of Upheaval, Author Stood Against Storm," James A. Dorn, South China Morning Post.

  Nien Cheng, the author of Life and Death in Shanghai, died in Washington on November 2 at the age of 94. She was an incredibly courageous woman and the embodiment of ...

• November 14, 2009, "Smart-Growth Plans Are a Failure in Portland," Randal O'Toole, Houston Chronicle.

  Some people have suggested that Houston could have avoided the Ashby high-rise controversy if it had more planning and smart growth. In fact, the opposite is true: Smart-growth planning makes land-use debates even more contentious. Smart-growth ...

• November 14, 2009, "Obama Gets Inflated Grade on Education Reform," Neal McCluskey, Detroit News.

  Even as President Barack Obama's approval ratings continue to slide, folks of all political persuasions are singing his praises on education -- though he has done little of substance. In a speech last Wednesday, Obama lamented that "people have ...

• November 13, 2009, "Warning Label for Pelosicare," Michael F. Cannon, Orange County Register.

  It's too bad the health care overhaul that House Democrats narrowly approved last week isn't a medical product. If it were, it would have to come with a warning label, Which could read something like this: WARNINGS: •This ...

• November 13, 2009, "ObamaCare Is Not Pro-Choice -- for Anyone," Michael F. Cannon, TownHall.com.

  "This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill," says President Obama. Au contraire, mon frère. Whatever your views on abortion, the fight over abortion in the Obama health plan illustrates perfectly why government should stay out of ...

• November 12, 2009, "A Real Team of Rivals," Malou Innocent, Huffington Post.

  This morning the New York Times reported that U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country. His reason: the pervasive corruption and illegitimacy of ...

• November 11, 2009, "Passing Bill As Bad As PelosiCare Quite An Achievement For Dems," Michael F. Cannon, Investor's Business Daily.

  House Democrats rolled three impressive feats into one when that chamber approved their health care overhaul. First, Saturday's House vote was the first time that either chamber of Congress voted — albeit by a razor-thin, three-vote ...

• November 11, 2009, "Currency That Kills," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Can you imagine how many people have physically handled your money? Do you know who has previously touched it? Did they have a flu virus or some other communicable disease that is transmitted by physical contact with an infected object? Physical ...

• November 10, 2009, "Obama's Arrogance of Power," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  Last year's financial meltdown rightfully destroyed former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's reputation as an infallible "wise man," but he said something wise in his 2007 memoirs, describing a constitutional amendment he'd been ...

• November 9, 2009, "The War on Terrorism Ends; and the Winner Is... China," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  Lee Kwan Yew, the Founding Father of Singapore and that city-state's first Prime Minister (1959-90) and its current Minister Mentor (a cabinet position he assumed when his son eldest Lee Hsien Loong was elected as Prime Minister in 2004) is one the ...

• November 9, 2009, "America's Alliances Are Costly Relics," Justin Logan, DefenseNews.

  Over the past 60 years, the United States has accumulated a remarkable number of alliances. Today, nearly all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia and a range of other nations peer out at the world from behind America's skirts. America's ...

• November 9, 2009, "Celebrate Fall of Wall, Freedom Every Day," Doug Bandow, Detroit News.

  On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, the most dramatic symbol of the most grotesque human tyranny ever to plague the globe, was opened. Free, free at last, shouted residents of half a continent and beyond. So dramatic was the ensuing revolution ...

• November 8, 2009, "A Fed Takeover by Any Other Name...," Michael D. Tanner, New York Post.

  President Obama has gone to great pains to deny that his proposed health-care reform is a government takeover of the health-care system. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he has said. Yet it's hard to see the 1,994-page bill that ...

• November 8, 2009, "When Government Slippery Slope Goes Vertical," David Boaz, Philadelphia Inquirer.

  Libertarians often warn about the slippery slope of government intervention: Let the government run the schools, and it may end up teaching your children values that offend you. Let the government have new powers to fight terrorism, and it may ...

• November 8, 2009, "Why Would Congress Compel Young Adults to Buy Health Insurance They Don't Need?," Aaron Yelowitz, New York Daily News.

  Barack Obama won the presidency with 66% of the vote among adults ages 18 to 29 - a larger share than any presidential candidate in decades. So it's ironic that his health plan could impose its greatest hidden taxes on young adults. Young adults ...

• November 7, 2009, "The Cost of Health Care Reform," Michael D. Tanner, TownHall.com.

  The health care reform bill unveiled by House Democrats last week looks increasingly like one of the most expensive pieces of legislation in history. When Democrats announced the bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed the bill cost ...

• November 7, 2009, "The Road From Serfdom," Marian L. Tupy, The American.

  Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down and with it communist rule in Central Europe. Within little more than two years, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the transition from communist dictatorship to free market democracy began in much of ...

• November 6, 2009, "Che Guevara and the West," Marian L. Tupy, RealClearWorld.com.

  Twenty years ago, communism collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, it survives in North Korea and Cuba — countries where one can still see empty shops, long queues, dilapidated infrastructure, and the omnipresent fear of secret ...

• November 6, 2009, "The $1.5 Trillion Fraud," Michael F. Cannon, National Review (Online).

  If House Democrats hold a vote on their health-care overhaul this weekend, they might as well vote on abolishing the Congressional Budget Office too. It would be no more audacious — and much more honest — than their current strategy for ...

• November 6, 2009, "Health Care Solutions Already Here," Shirley Svorny, Orange County Register.

  Two of the biggest concerns of those who support a federal health care overhaul are expanding availability of health care for those in need and making sure that individuals with preexisting conditions have access to affordable insurance. It may come ...

• November 6, 2009, "The Spirit of 1989," Doug Bandow, American Spectator.

  Only yesterday, it seems, decades of oppression disappeared overnight. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, the most dramatic symbol of the most grotesque human tyranny ever to plague the globe, was opened. Free, free at last, shouted residents of ...

• November 5, 2009, "Choosing Fantasy or Facts," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Tax cuts keep industry here and humming Have you noticed that many politicians who have trouble dealing with reality also seem to prefer fantasyland when dealing with budgets? Those on the left never stop claiming that problems will ...

• November 5, 2009, "Re-Educating Americans about Our Identity," Nat Hentoff, Zanesville Times Recorder.

  My favorite magazine by far was Constitution, published by the Foundation for the U.S. Constitution. No longer in existence, it was full of riveting stories — for students and adults — with beautifully reproduced historic documents, ...

• November 5, 2009, "More 'Work' for the President," Patrick J. Michaels, National Review (Online).

  The Obama administration takes aim at climate scientists. In the blame game, the Obama administration isn't about to stop with Fox News. Instead, it's moving on to lowly scientists. Last month, President Obama gave a somewhat ...

• November 5, 2009, "Has Federal Involvement Improved America's Schools?," Andrew J. Coulson, Cato.org.

  The No Child Left Behind Act is up for renewal. It costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year but the Obama administration is giving its reauthorization less serious attention than most people pay to their phone bill. Families facing ...

• November 4, 2009, "The GOP Should Dump the Neocons," Edward H. Crane, Los Angeles Times.

  The founders envisioned a federal government constitutionally limited to defending our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For that to happen, we must have at least one political party that strongly advocates limiting the power of ...

• November 4, 2009, "Republicans Should Quit with 'Mediscare'," Michael D. Tanner, Orange County Register.

  What profiteth a political party if it gains congressional seats but loseth its soul? Among the many Republican complaints about Democratic health reform plans, one – chiefly heard of late from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – ...

• November 3, 2009, "Three Cheers for Divided Government," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  This election day, the punditocracy is closely watching the off-year contests, thinking they predict how the president's party will do in next year's congressional midterms. If so, things don't look so hot for President Obama. In New Jersey, ...

• November 3, 2009, "Only Pay for Health Care That Works," David A. Hyman and Charles Silver, Detroit News.

  Health care is expensive partly because governmental payers and insurers foot the bill for large quantities of medical services that are ineffective, unnecessary or unproven. According to a RAND report, studies of clinical efficiency "indicate that ...

• November 2, 2009, "Increasing Risk, Hurting Patients," Shirley Svorny, Forbes.

  The cost of capping medical malpractice damages. A new Congressional Budget Office report estimates that a set of tort reform measures — including caps on awards for non-economic and punitive damages — would have lowered total ...

• November 2, 2009, "Murderous Idealism," Paul Hollander, Washington Post.

  The Berlin Wall that came down 20 years ago this month was an apt symbol of communism. It represented a historically unprecedented effort to prevent people from "voting with their feet" and leaving a society they rejected. The wall was only the most ...

• November 1, 2009, "Bhutan's Happiness Is Large Dam, Fast GDP," Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Times of India.

  We should measure Gross National Happiness, not Gross National Product (GDP), said Bhutan in 1972. Ever since, it has been a poster child for happiness. Its pursuit of happiness has influenced many people including Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz ...

• November 1, 2009, "Did the Stimulus Work?," Jeffrey A. Miron, The New York Times.

  The Obama administration and many economists believe the fiscal stimulus package caused the positive G.D.P. growth, but this conclusion is not warranted. For starters, monetary policy has been highly expansionary over the past year, with short-term ...

• October 31, 2009, "Recognizing the Limits of American Power in Afghanistan," Doug Bandow, Huffington Post.

  Candidate Barack Obama was widely seen as running on a peace platform. More recently President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for supposedly offering a new international approach. Yet he is considering a major military escalation ...

• October 31, 2009, "Health Reform: Dems' Deep Divisions," Michael D. Tanner, New York Post.

  Weary of news stories that legislative support for health-care reform is all but dead, Democratic leaders have been seizing every handy podium to declare that "the votes are almost there," "there is 90 percent agreement" on a proposal, "we are now ...

• October 30, 2009, "Letter to the Editor: Equal rights? Not quite...," Nat Hentoff, Washington Post.

  The October 28 editorial "A civil rights advance," applauding President Obama's imminent signing of "hate crimes" legislation, ignored the legislation's ...

• October 30, 2009, "America's Brother Karzai Problem," Malou Innocent, RealClearWorld.com.

  The war in Afghanistan has taken a turn for the worse. According to the New York Times, Ahmed Wali Karzai--brother of Afghanistan's incumbent president, and a notorious drug baron--is also a long-time employee of the Central Intelligence ...

• October 29, 2009, "A Financial Super-Regulator," Jagadeesh Gokhale, Forbes.

  In light of the recent asset price implosions and failures of large investment banks, should the Fed try to pre-emptively prick asset price bubbles? Furthermore, should the Fed be vested with the responsibility of regulating all financial ...

• October 29, 2009, "Can the UK Avert a Smoking Irish Failure?," Patrick Basham and John Luik, politics.co.uk.

  This week, the Garda, along with HM Revenue and Customs, made the largest haul of contraband cigarettes in Irish history, with 120 million cigarettes worth over £45 million seized in Co. Louth. Shortly after the display ban took effect in the ...

• October 29, 2009, "Public Option: Treatment Worse Than the Disease," Jeffrey A. Miron, CNN.com.

  In the coming weeks, Congress will attempt to forge a health care bill from proposals developed by five House and Senate committees. The final bill will likely include a mandate that most Americans buy health insurance, subsidies for the purchase ...

• October 29, 2009, "Derailing Lisbon," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  So close yet so far. For five years Europe's elite has been attempting to consolidate the European Union's power in the face of popular opposition. Every EU member government has ratified the so-called Lisbon Treaty, yet the agreement remains in ...

• October 28, 2009, "Welcome to the Health Care Free Lunch Cafe," Michael D. Tanner, TownHall.com.

  It used to be said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But when it comes to health care reform, President Obama appears to be offering up a free breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime snack. At the core of the president's proposal is the ...

• October 28, 2009, "The Shape of Things to Come: War before Peace in the Mideast," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  Not unlike the local weatherman who was being accused by Larry David in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" of falsely forecasting rain in order to clear the golf course, political analysts and financial experts have been faulted for allegedly ...

• October 27, 2009, "Financial Market Reform," Jeffrey A. Miron, Reason (Online).

  In the coming weeks and months, Congress will be turning its attention to financial market reform, in hopes of avoiding future financial crises. According to perceived wisdom, the root cause of the 2008 financial crisis was excessive risk-taking, ...

• October 27, 2009, "Fannie, Freddie Mustn't Be Left Out Of Reform," Mark A. Calabria, Investor's Business Daily.

  All the debate of the last several weeks on changes to the financial regulatory system has omitted any discussion over reforming the entities at the center of the housing bubble and financial meltdown: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Total losses ...

• October 27, 2009, "Read the Bills? How about Reading the Constitution?," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  You can live in this town for years and still occasionally find yourself gobsmacked by what counts as "normal" by Washington standards. Take the ongoing debate over whether it's fair for us to expect our elected representatives to read the laws they ...

• October 27, 2009, "The Real Pay Scandal," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Assume your boss told you that the only pay raise you and your fellow workers would ever receive would be a "cost of living" increase to keep up with inflation — which is no real increase — no matter how productive you were. Would this ...

• October 27, 2009, "Obama Moves to Protect, Rather Than Fix, Patriot Act," Nat Hentoff, Metro West Daily News.

  While battling the FBI's expanded surveillance guidelines, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., also revealed (Daily Kos, Oct. 8) that in the Senate Judiciary Committee review of the Patriot Act (also Oct. 8), Republicans protecting the Act were joined, in a ...

• October 26, 2009, "NYC: The City That Never Smokes," Patrick Basham and John Luik, Spiked (Online).

  A proposal to ban lighting up in New York's parks has exposed the puritanical agenda behind the crusade against smoking. The truth about second-hand smoking is finally out. Thanks to some unusual candour on the part of the ...

• October 25, 2009, "Washington's Plans May Result in Even Higher Executive Pay," Jonathan R. Macey, The Wall Street Journal.

  In 1993, Congress intervened in corporate compensation and messed things up. Now it's the White House's turn. Executive pay has emerged, once again, as a major issue in Washington. This week Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced new ...

• October 25, 2009, "Twenty Years Later: Why the Berlin Wall Fell," Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Times of India.

  We are approaching the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism. This comprehensively refuted the Communist claim to represent the people. Yet, the claim continues, sometimes dazzling a new generation of youngsters with no inkling of why the Berlin ...

• October 25, 2009, "How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off," Tyler Cowen, The New York Times.

  Americans seem to like the idea of broadening health insurance coverage, but they may not want to be forced to buy it. With health care costs high and rising, such government mandates would make many people worse off. The proposals now before ...

• October 24, 2009, "The Patriot Act: Looking Back to 2001," Julian Sanchez, Los Angeles Times.

  Let's be honest: None of us were in much mood for cool deliberation in the weeks immediately following 9/11. Under the best of circumstances, it would have been a feat to get everything right in a 300-page bill that makes dramatic changes to dozens ...

• October 23, 2009, "Stoke China's Fears," Ted Galen Carpenter, National Interest (Online).

  During a visit to South Korea, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates inadvertently underscored a major flaw in Washington's policy regarding North Korea. Speaking in Seoul, Gates stated that North Korea posed a serious threat to America's allies in ...

• October 23, 2009, "Have Any Patriot Act Horror Stories Come True?," Julian Sanchez, Los Angeles Times.

  Spoiler alert: Yes, there have been a number of well-documented abuses of power under the Patriot Act, as well as subsequent surveillance legislation. I'll detail some of them in a moment, and the ACLU has a more thorough ...

• October 23, 2009, "Hu versus Sarkozy," Steve H. Hanke, Globe Asia.

  There is no more reliable rule than the 95% rule: 95% of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant. Just reflect for a moment on the most frequently repeated lessons drawn from the Great Depression (1929-33). According ...

• October 22, 2009, "Be a Good Victim," David Rittgers, National Review (Online).

  In August, a man shot two people to death on a bridge near San Francisco. At the moment of the killings, two on-duty Marin County sheriff's deputies were within 100 yards of the shooter. One was close enough to see the muzzle blast of the shotgun. ...

• October 22, 2009, "Obama as Bad as Bush-Cheney," Nat Hentoff, Courier-Express.

  While battling the FBI's expanded surveillance guidelines, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., also revealed (Daily Kos, Oct. 8) that in the Senate Judiciary Committee review of the Patriot Act (also Oct. 8), Republicans protecting the Act were joined, in a ...

• October 21, 2009, "The Patriot Act: Does It Actually Work?," Julian Sanchez, Los Angeles Times.

  Well, I'm convinced: Terrorists are bad, wiretapping them is good, and catching them is better still. The Patriot Act should not be "repealed," which I suppose makes it a good thing that nobody is seriously proposing to do so. But as I'd hate to ...

• October 21, 2009, "Market Power - The Mistake of Subsidizing Pet Energy Causes," Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren, National Review.

  The story most conservatives tell about energy policy is different from the stories they tell about other economic-policy matters. Rather than defend free markets, they bang the table about the need for national energy plans and government ...

• October 21, 2009, "Getting the Vietnam Analogy Right in Afghanistan," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  The ghosts of the Vietnam War seem to be hanging around the White House Situation Room as President Barack Obama and his national security aides are debating a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, and in particular whether to deploy more U.S. ...

• October 20, 2009, "Talking with the Tea Partiers," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  When tens of thousands of Americans marched on Washington last month to protest President Obama's ongoing power grab, many liberals dismissed them as a horde of partisan, crypto-racist cranks. But a new study from a prominent Democratic polling ...

• October 20, 2009, "Destructive 'Solutions'," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  For at least a century, the Washington political class has been correctly known for creating more problems than solving existing ones. This tendency to enact destructive, rather than constructive, solutions for problems (most often created by ...

• October 20, 2009, "Transforming Japan-US Alliance," Doug Bandow, Korea Times.

  American influence is facing another challenge in East Asia. The latest loss of U.S. power may occur in Japan. Last month, the Democratic Party of Japan ousted the Liberal Democratic Party, which had held power for most of the last 54 years. ...

• October 20, 2009, "Cognitive Dissonance on Health Care Reform," Michael D. Tanner, TownHall.com.

  Cognitive dissonance is defined as holding two completely contradictory ideas at the same time. That seems to be the case with the American public, with a new poll showing rising support for a so-called public option in health care, even as the ...

• October 20, 2009, "Do Education Tax Credits Save Money?," Andrew J. Coulson, Cato.org.

  The Arizona Republic recently offered a rough fiscal impact analysis of the state's k-12 education tax credit programs. While the story was clearly a good faith effort, there are problems with its data and assumptions, as well as its ...

• October 20, 2009, "Social Security's Coming Crash: The Certain End of Entitlement," Doug Bandow, Chronicles.

  The welfare state was born in Otto von Bismarck's Germany, a ploy of the famed Iron Chancellor designed to counter the electoral appeal of the rival Social Democrats. Thus, social security was created in 1889 and eventually spread, under several ...

• October 19, 2009, "The China Syndrome," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  When President Barack Obama visits the People's Republic of China (PRC) next month, he hopes to expand the military relationship between the two nations. The PRC recently celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, marking the amazing transformation of a ...

• October 19, 2009, "'War on Terror' II," Julian Sanchez, The Nation.

  We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting ...

• October 16, 2009, "Deafening Silence on Real Climate Change," Patrick J. Michaels, TownHall.com.

  Antarctic Ice Melt Lowest Ever Measured. Where's the headline? Where's the television camera? Anyone out there? It's right there in the September 24 issue of the refereed journal Geophysical Research Letters. The senior author is ...

• October 16, 2009, "Klaus Is Right," Marian L. Tupy, Foreign Policy.

  The Czech president's objections to the European Union's latest power grab deserve to be taken seriously. In recent weeks, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has received a great deal of criticism from both domestic and foreign opponents for his ...

• October 16, 2009, "See the World Like Elinor Ostrom," Will Wilkinson, Ottawa Citizen.

  When Elinor Ostrom's phone rang at 6:30 Monday morning, she thought it might be a telemarketer. Instead she discovered on the line a representative of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science bearing news that she and Oliver Williamson of the University ...

• October 14, 2009, "The Inevitable Medicare Cuts," Michael D. Tanner, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

  One should never expect an overabundance of honesty in political debates. But in the current debate on health care reform, both Democrats and Republicans may well be setting new records for obfuscation. Take Medicare, for example. The Democrats ...

• October 14, 2009, "The Worst Recession?," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Is the current recession the worst since the Great Depression? Even though the president, many members of Congress and many journalists keep saying we are in the worst recession since the 1930s, it is an assertion that is premature, to say the ...

• October 14, 2009, "Forfeiture Laws, the War on Drugs, and Alvarez v. Smith," Ilya Somin, FindLaw.

  Today, the Supreme Court hears Alvarez v. Smith, an important case that will affect the constitutional property rights of many people around the country but has failed to attract the attention as it deserves. In Alvarez, the federal Seventh ...

• October 13, 2009, "Regulatory Cat and Mouse," Jagadeesh Gokhale and Peter Van Doren, National Post.

  Many commentators have argued that if the U.S. Federal Reserve had followed a stricter monetary policy earlier this decade when the housing bubble was forming, and if Congress had not deregulated banking but had imposed tighter financial standards, ...

• October 13, 2009, "Time to Start Over," Michael D. Tanner, USA Today.

  Plans in Congress simply pile on new mandates, taxes and subsidies If you're going the wrong way down a road, the answer isn't to step on the gas, but to turn around. It is not that the U.S. doesn't need health care reform, but it ...

• October 13, 2009, "How to Save Democracy in Honduras," Doug Bandow, Korea Times.

  Honduras will be holding an election next month. Washington is threatening not to recognize the result. Would the Obama administration prefer a full-blown military dictatorship take power? The saga of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has entered ...

• October 13, 2009, "Max's Budget-Gimmick Magic," Michael F. Cannon, New York Post.

  The Senate Finance Committee will perpetrate a huge fraud on the US public today. Chairman Max Baucus promises to hold a final vote on his health-care overhaul — most of whose costs he has hidden with budgetary gimmicks. The widely reported ...

• October 13, 2009, "There's No Way to Enforce a Texting While Driving Ban," Radley Balko, U.S. News & World Report (Online).

  Forget flu season. Several times per year, America comes down with a national case of TOBAL-itis. TOBAL is short for "There Oughtta Be a Law." Here's the progression of symptoms: Wrenching anecdotes about the effects of some alleged new trend ...

• October 12, 2009, "Redistributing Health," Alan Reynolds, New York Post.

  Proponents of compulsory, government-designed health insurance can't seem to understand why others disagree. Perhaps the public is realizing that these proposals are fundamentally about redistributing health? Health-care "reform," that is, aims ...

• October 11, 2009, "Can the Republicans Grasp Opportunity for Revival?," David Boaz, Richmond Times-Dispatch.

  American voters have been demonstrating a lack of confidence in both parties lately. George W. Bush nearly destroyed the Republican Party, but Barack Obama is giving it a chance at resurrection. Karl Rove dreamed that he and Bush, like strategist ...

• October 11, 2009, "Federal Programs Suffer from Fraud, Cost Overruns," Chris Edwards, Philadelphia Inquirer.

  Americans are anxious about the expensive health-care bill being debated in Washington, and not just because it may affect their current health coverage. They know that soaring government spending is getting the nation hugely into debt and that many ...

• October 11, 2009, "A 10 Million-Person Exaggeration?," Alan Reynolds, Forbes.

  In Washington, the word "reform" is used (like the word "stimulus") to mean grandiose federal spending plans. The Congressional Budget Office has emerged as the key arbiter of the latest Congressional plans to increase and redistribute federal ...

• October 9, 2009, "CIA, GOP and Obama Versus 'the Real Facts'," Nat Hentoff, Orangeburg Times and Democrat.

  On the wall of CIA headquarters is this challenging message from the New Testament: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Veering sharply from this acknowledgment was the demand sent to the Obama administration by seven ...

• October 8, 2009, "Despite New Deficit-Cutting Claim, Baucus Bill Is Just Tax-and-Spend," Michael D. Tanner, Investor's Business Daily.

  The Senate Finance Committee's version of health care reform is being hailed as a model of bipartisan moderation. One Republican may even vote for it. And it's undeniably an improvement over the bill approved early by the Senate Health, ...

• October 8, 2009, "Stimulus Scam," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Has the economic stimulus program helped or hurt? Administration officials keep saying the stimulus program has been beneficial, but where is the evidence? There are several ways to see if it is working as advertised. First, what did the ...

• October 8, 2009, "Free Trade Is a Boon to the Environment," Sallie James, RealClearMarkets.com.

  If summitry was a sure predictor of activity, then climate change would be heading towards a golden era. The UN climate summit on Tuesday and the G-20 summit that just wrapped up in Pittsburgh both attempted to relight the dying embers of hope that ...

• October 8, 2009, "More Is Not the Answer," Malou Innocent, Guardian.

  House Minority Leader John Boehner has accused President Barack Obama of endangering the mission in Afghanistan by "delaying action" on sending more troops. But present policy would require more troops than America could ever send — as many as ...

• October 8, 2009, "Obama Cuts Sour Deal on Sugar," Daniel Griswold, Detroit News.

  President Barack Obama has kept a campaign promise to the sugar lobby at the expense of American families struggling to pay their grocery bills and U.S. manufacturing workers fighting to keep their jobs. With global sugar prices at record highs, ...

• October 7, 2009, "Let France, Israel, the Saudis Deter Iran," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  According to Washington's latest conventional wisdom, France under President Nicolas Sarkozy has been steadily embracing a tougher approach towards Iran and is sounding now more belligerent than the Obama Administration in demanding that Tehran end ...

• October 7, 2009, "How Cap-and-Trade Is Like Ritual Self-Flagellation," Will Wilkinson, The Week.

  Ultra-orthodox Jews in heavy beards and heavier black coats pray for hours each day at Jerusalem's Western Wall, even under a sweltering summer sun. Each year, Shiite Muslims whip their backs bloody with chains during the religious holiday of ...

• October 6, 2009, "Defining Victory to Win a War," David Axe and Malou Innocent and Jason Reich, Foreign Policy.

  After nearly a decade at war in Afghanistan, the United States still has not defined the terms of the conflict. Seven months after President Barack Obama's administration released its wide-ranging strategic review of the war, basic questions remain. ...

• October 6, 2009, "Obama Is Becoming the Omnipresident," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  "No-drama Obama"? The president's flight to Copenhagen last week to make a personal pitch for holding the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was an audacious move — and a dramatic failure. "Second City Absorbs Its Latest Defeat," read the (rather ...

• October 6, 2009, "Klaus Won't Sign the Lisbon Treaty," Marian L. Tupy, Wall Street Journal Europe.

  The Czech president will hold out until the Tories bury the EU's power grab. The Irish may have said Yes to the Lisbon Treaty, but the bureaucrats in Brussels have not yet won. If anything, the shameful browbeating of the Irish electorate into ...

• October 5, 2009, "Keeping Lone Wolves from the Door," Julian Sanchez, Reason.

  Why Congress should not renew the PATRIOT Act's "lone wolf" provision The USA PATRIOT Act, a vast expansion of the American intelligence community's search and surveillance powers, was passed in haste in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Now ...

• October 5, 2009, "Now That Ireland Has Caved," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  In a contest watched closely in Europe but largely ignored in America, the Irish voted on Friday to approve the Lisbon Treaty. The European establishment is celebrating what is supposed to become a stronger European Union. But the fat (Czech) ...

• October 5, 2009, "Sex and Security in Afghanistan," David Isenberg, Asia Times.

  A report by the Washington, DC, Project on Government Oversight recently released publicly tells of the wild naked antics of members of ArmorGroup (AG), which has a United States State Department contract to provide security for the US Embassy in ...

• October 4, 2009, "Brain-dead Conservatives," David Boaz, DC Examiner.

  "The heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism," Ronald Reagan said on many occasions, including a speech at Vanderbilt University when I was an undergraduate. I'm not so sure. But at least the conservatism of Sen. Robert Taft, Sen. Barry ...

• October 2, 2009, "Free Trade Has Enriched the World with More than Diverse Goods," Daniel Griswold, YaleGlobal Online.

  Tune in to cable TV, talk radio, or the blogosphere and you will soon be hit over the head with the message that free trade is destroying America. According to the economic populists on the left and right, the wages, jobs, and futures of Main Street ...

• October 2, 2009, "Obama Should Adopt the "Public Option" in Afghanistan," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  Political thinkers like Walter Lippmann have concluded that the American voters were largely ignorant about foreign policy and lacked the competence to make critical choices about war and peace, and required the guidance of experts, specialists and ...

• October 1, 2009, "War Crimes by Doctors and Psychologists," Nat Hentoff, Orangeburg Times and Democrat.

  After I reported on documented evidence by Physicians for Human Rights that doctors and psychologists "were involved in every stage in the development, implementation and legitimization" of the CIA's torture operations, I saw a Sept. 6 Washington ...

• October 1, 2009, "'Death Tax' Destroys Wealth," Daniel J. Mitchell, USA Today.

  Congress should repeal levy that robs graves, hurts competitiveness. The politicians in Washington impose double taxation on interest, dividends and capital gains, but the "death tax" wins the prize for being the most self-destructive part of ...

• October 1, 2009, "What If the Irish Pass Lisbon Treaty?," Doug Bandow, Korea Times.

  Ireland is holding a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on Friday. If the Irish say yes, the European Union will be stronger. But will anyone notice? The EU is two organizations. The first is a common market, the term by which the ...

• October 1, 2009, "Real Reform for the PATRIOT Act?," Julian Sanchez, American Prospect.com.

  The Senate is reviewing Bush-era surveillance powers set to expire at the end of the year. This could be the moment to revise the whole architecture of post-9/11 spying law. George W. Bush may have left D.C., but the vast surveillance machine ...

• September 30, 2009, "Government Role Will Leave Us with the Bill," Neal McCluskey, Minneapolis Star Tribune.

  America is teetering on the edge of a nearly $12 trillion abyss called the "national debt," a financial chasm that threatens to swallow our economic future whole. And what are our leaders doing about it? If a bill working its way through Congress is ...

• September 30, 2009, "How Congress Is Cooking the Books," Michael D. Tanner, New York Post.

  Last week, the Senate Finance Committee voted 12-11 not to wait for the Congressional Budget Office to "score" its health-care bill before the committee votes on it. Imagine that: Some senators actually wanted to know how much the bill costs before ...

• September 30, 2009, "DIY Defense," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  The Berlin Wall fell two decades ago, leading to a brief moment in which many people believed that history had ended. Europe's security no longer was an issue. However, history has begun again. Russia may have no interest in conquering its ...

• September 29, 2009, "Macaulay's Children Redux," Deepak Lal, Business Standard.

  At a recent Engelsberg seminar organised by the Ax:son Johnson foundation in Sweden, I gave a paper on "The view of America from India", revisiting a theme I had written about in the late 1980s, in a paper entitled "Manners, Morals and Materialism: ...

• September 29, 2009, "It's the Balance of Power, Stupid!," Leon T. Hadar, Huffington Post.

  Washington Needs to Adjust to the New Global Reality Historians agree that Britain's rise as a pre-eminent global power came as a response to changing circumstances and not as a part of a grand master plan; Britain, it has been said, stumbled ...

• September 29, 2009, "Get Serious about Decriminalizing Drugs; Others Are," Tim Lynch and Juan Carlos Hidalgo, San Jose Mercury News.

  The international war against the black market trade in narcotics seems to be at a tipping point, as a new approach is gaining traction globally: decriminalization. More and more policymakers are coming to the view that it is wrong to jail drug ...

• September 29, 2009, "Book Review: A Bubble in Time," Leon T. Hadar, American Conservative.

  A Bubble in Time: America During the Interwar Years, 1989-2001 by William O'Neill Dee, Ivan R. Publisher, 384 pages I expected a ...

• September 29, 2009, "The Imperial Presidency Comes in Green, Too," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  Asked recently when the Senate might vote on cap-and-trade, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, demurred, muttering about "a busy, busy time the rest of this year." And yet last week, the Obama administration quietly moved forward with a plan ...

• September 29, 2009, "Who's Afraid of Political Speech?," Jeffrey Milyo and Tim Groseclose, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

  The end of democracy is nigh! So say liberal pundits and progressive advocacy groups. The impetus is the Supreme Court's order for reargument in the Citizens United case. At issue, according to reform advocates like columnist E.J. Dionne, is whether ...

• September 29, 2009, "Obama's Protectionist Policies Hurting Low-Income Americans," Daniel Griswold, Washington Times.

  President Obama and the other Group of 20 leaders delivered their obligatory warning against protectionism at last week's summit in Pittsburgh. But at home the U.S. president continues to conduct his own trade war, not only against imports from ...

• September 28, 2009, "Commentary on the Commission on Wartime Contracting Hearings (Part 3)," David Isenberg, Private Military Herald.

  In the final installment of a 3-part series David Isenberg, columnist, analyst, researcher and author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq provides analysis and ...

• September 28, 2009, "You Mislead!," Michael F. Cannon and Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review (Online).

  It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson's lead. If they yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse. By our count, the president ...

• September 27, 2009, "Misunderstanding Modern War," Stanley Kober, Guardian.

  "Mission Accomplished." On 1 May 2003, George Bush stood under that banner and triumphantly announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Following the quick expulsion of the Taliban from Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union had failed after ...

• September 27, 2009, "Commentary on the Commission on Wartime Contracting Hearings (Part 2)," David Isenberg, Private Military Herald.

  In the second of a 3-part series David Isenberg, columnist, analyst, researcher and author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq provides analysis and ...

• September 26, 2009, "Storm Warning," Ted Galen Carpenter, South China Morning Post.

  Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, is under withering fire from domestic critics, and his eroding political fortunes could have an adverse impact on cross-strait relations. Ma's popularity, which stood at nearly 60 per cent when he took the oath of ...

• September 24, 2009, "Commentary on the Commission on Wartime Contracting Hearings (Part 1)," David Isenberg, Private Military Herald.

  In Part 1 of a 3-part series David Isenberg, columnist, analyst, researcher and author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq provides analysis and commentary on ...

• September 24, 2009, "Sorry, O: It Is a Tax," Michael D. Tanner, New York Post.

  "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty told Alice, "it means exactly what I want it to. No more and no less." President Obama has clearly been studying at the Lewis Carroll school of oratory. During his blitz of Sunday's morning news shows, the ...

• September 24, 2009, "Baucus Bill Fine Print a Health Hazard," Nat Hentoff, Orange County Register.

  In the influential Senate Finance Committee's health care bill there is a dangerous provision that could deny crucial health treatments for Medicare patients. This is the much-publicized and debated Baucus bill, named for Senate Finance Committee ...

• September 23, 2009, "The Dog Ate Global Warming," Patrick J. Michaels, National Review (Online).

  Interpreting climate data can be hard enough. What if some key data have been fiddled? Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore ...

• September 23, 2009, "Crash Course in Global Economics," Daniel J. Ikenson and Alec van Gelder, Sydney Morning Herald.

  G20 leaders are convening in Pittsburgh this week during a sticky time for global trade relations. Brazilians, Canadians, Mexicans and Chinese are angry with the Americans. The Indians and the Chinese are furious with each other, as are the ...