Cato Daily Dispatch for October 28, 2002
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via PDA (AvantGo)
(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.)
Professor Resigns Over Investigation into Gun BookAppeals Court to Hear Hamdi Case
Lula Elected as Brazil's President
Professor Resigns Over Investigation into Gun Book
Michael Bellesiles, the history professor who wrote that firearms were rare in early America, has resigned from Atlanta's Emory University after an investigation found he "willingly misrepresented the evidence" in his award-winning book, according to The Washington Times.
Robert A. Paul, interim dean of Emory College, announced that Mr. Bellesiles would resign effective Dec. 31 after 14 years at Emory, and said the university considers "authoritative" an investigative committee's report about charges of research misconduct against Mr. Bellesiles.
The three-person committee - composed of scholars from Princeton University, Harvard University and the University of Chicago - found that Mr. Bellesiles's work showed "evidence of falsification," "egregious misrepresentation" and "exaggeration of data."
"[H]is scholarly integrity is seriously in question," the committee concluded in its 40-page report.
Published two years ago, Mr. Bellesiles's book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture," garnered praise from gun-control advocates, won the prestigious Bancroft Award, and was fiercely criticized by scholars who accused Mr. Bellesiles of misrepresenting or even fabricating evidence.
Associate Policy Analyst David Kopel today had the following comments: "As historians Clayton Cramer and James Lindgren have detailed . . . the book is also pervaded with fraud -- with fabricated facts, and with text that is directly contradicted by the sources cited in endnotes. Despite mean-spirited personal attacks from the academic establishment, Clayton Cramer produced a booklength refutation of Bellesiles, and made it available for free on the Internet (pdf)."
Adjunct Scholar Randy Barnett, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said: "Emory's investigation is an indictment, not only of Michael Bellesiles, but of the many academic historians who closed ranks around him since the problems with his research were first made apparent. It is a vindication of the academic and nonacademic researchers who did the hard work to establish the falsity of Bellesiles's claims, and who for their trouble have had to withstand insult and ridicule from 'professional' historians."
Appeals Court to Hear Hamdi Case
Today, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear arguments over the legality of the detention of Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi Arabian who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and has been in solitary confinement in Virginia for more than six months, reports The New York Times.
Hamdi's case appears to be the first in modern American jurisprudence in which an American citizen has been indefinitely detained without charges and without access to a lawyer. As such, it is emerging as the test case for whether the courts, and possibly the United States Supreme Court, will allow such detentions.
The answer could well determine whether the United States detains others under similar circumstances, and it could influence how the country fights terrorism.
Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies, wrote in "Citizen Padilla: Dangerous Precedent" that "the Constitution does not distinguish between the protections extended to ordinary citizens on one hand and unlawful-combatant citizens on the other . . . . The administration has decided that it will set the rules, prosecute infractions, determine guilt or innocence, then review the results of its own actions. That's too much unchecked power in the hands of the executive branch."
Lula Elected as Brazil's President
Brazil celebrated a new political era today after electing its first left-wing government, while President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a staunch socialist, began the huge challenge of delivering the economic stability and better life he promised, according to Reuters.
Lula, as he is known in Brazil, realized a 22-year dream yesterday by winning the presidency for his Workers' Party and promising to start work at once to improve the lives of the 170 million people in Latin America's largest country.
Brazilians celebrated the former metal worker's win from the Amazon jungle in the north to the industrial south as Lula prepared to put his transition team into action to start working with outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Ian Vasquez, director of Cato's Project on Global Economic Liberty, made the following comments today on Lula's victory: "Lula's anti-market rhetoric, including his rejection of a hemisphere-wide free trade zone that he refers to as an 'annexation,' makes the Free Trade Area of the Americas difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Economic reality will quickly impose itself on the new president, however, likely disciplining other of his populist instincts. He must make a credible commitment to disciplined fiscal and monetary policy. If he does not, Brazil will not avoid financial turmoil; if he does, Lula might distinguish himself as more orthodox than his predecessors."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
/div>