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Cato Dispatch for April 24, 2009

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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.)

An Inconvenient Truth Behind Earth Day

Americans across the country celebrated Earth Day on Wednesday, reports The New York Times, and President Obama used the occasion to launch "another all-out effort to sell the American public and key lawmakers on 'green jobs' as the solution for the United States' environmental and economic woes."

According to Cato scholar Jerry Taylor, it is the market that has driven progress toward green alternatives:

"It is businessmen -- not bureaucrats or environmental activists -- who deserve most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century and who represent the best hope for a Greener tomorrow."

Cato's energy and environment research promotes policies that would help protect the environment without sacrificing economic liberty, goals that are mutually supporting, not mutually exclusive.

In the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, Taylor provides an in-depth plan for how the government should act in regard to the environment.

Writing in National Review online, climate expert Patrick J. Michaels laments the disparity between the Washington elites and the public when it comes to attitudes toward climate change.

Obama Reveals 'Torture Memos' from Bush Era

In The Washington Examiner, Cato Vice President Gene Healy reports,"The Obama administration released previously classified memos detailing interrogation techniques used against enemy prisoners. In the memos, Bush administration lawyers assured the CIA that waterboarding detainees and keeping them awake for a week or more was perfectly legal." Healy explains how the memos destroyed U.S. credibility, and yes, "of course it was torture":

"The point here isn't to make you shed a tear for Al Qaeda prisoners; mass murderers (actual or aspiring) are pretty hard to feel sorry for. But anyone who understands the issue ought to feel some remorse over the damage our policy did to the rule of law and American interests abroad. Obama has announced that he won't prosecute CIA line officers, and it's unlikely that anyone else will face criminal sanctions for their role in the program. Even so, it's clear that the policy was, at the very least, criminally stupid."

 Legal Policy Analyst David Rittgers, who served in the United States Army as an Infantry and Special Forces officer, appeared on The O'Reilly Factor this week to debate the effectiveness and consequences of torture.

Cato scholar Jim Harper explains why Obama made the right decision in releasing the memos, and the problem with policies that allow torture:

"Torture or credible accounts of torture provide confirmation of a suspicion among relatively unsophisticated observers in the Middle East (once known as the "street") that the United States is a colonist and an oppressor of Muslims and Arabs. Secrecy is a way in which such stories grow and multiply. The results of torture and secrecy are millions of people who believe, suspect, or worry that they and their culture are on the losing end of a battle for supremacy in the world.

From these millions emerge individuals and groups -- eventually perhaps networks -- who devote their creativity to developing and eventually mounting attacks on the United States and the West."

Debate Over Gun Laws Erupts

The anniversaries of the tragic shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University this week, combined with reports of increasing violence over the drug war in Mexico, re-ignited the debate over the state of gun rights in the United States.

Appearing on PBS News Hour, Cato Chairman Robert A. Levy discussed how the government should react to gun violence.

The Obama Administration has tried to use the now-debunked statistic that 90 percent of guns used in Mexico for the drug war have come from the United States. David Rittgers revealed the truth behind the source of the weapons:

"The claim that that 90 percent of the guns involved in Mexico's drug war come from the United States has already been debunked. The reality is that out of 29,000 firearms picked up in Mexico, 5,114 of the 6,000 guns successfully traced came from the United States. While that is 90 percent of traced guns, it means that only 17 percent of recovered guns come from the U.S. civilian market.

Where did the rest come from? A number of places. To begin with, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted in the last six years for the better pay and benefits of cartel life, some taking their issued M-16 rifles with them."

Attorney General Eric Holder said recently that in order to quell the violence spilling over from the drug war in Mexico he will push to reinstate the ban on 'assault weapons' in the United States. But, said Rittgers in a Cato Daily Podcast, a policy like that won't do much to quell violence.

"The [drug] cartels have access to lots and lots of money because of our prohibitionist policies in the US. And because of this money they can get these weapons whether we have them legal or illegal

... and they'll have access to the black market to get fully automatic machine guns if they want them. ... If you like the war on drugs, you're going to love the war on guns."

Chris Moody, editor, cmoody@cato.org