In 2008 Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch hailed a “libertarian moment,” encompassing everything from the Internet to the collapse of “legacy” industries and legacy entitlement programs. I’ve used the same term here, when NPR talked about Ron Paul and when polls showed rising support for smaller government, gay marriage, and drug legalization.

But suddenly, today, everyone seems to see a libertarian moment. Driving in to work, I got so tired of the smug self-satisfaction on public radio’s pledge drive, I switched to the vigorously right-wing Chris Plante Show just in time to hear Plante say, “This is a great day for libertarianism” in regard to the abuse-of-power stories dominating the mainstream media.

And then, mirabile dictu, I got to the office, opened the Washington Post, and found today’s column by Michael Gerson. Now, as he says in today’s column, Gerson is “conspicuously not a libertarian.” Indeed, he is the most vociferously anti-libertarian columnist in contemporary punditry. And yet his column today is titled (in the print paper):

Making libertarians of us all

Man, you’ve got to abuse power something awful to make Michael Gerson start thinking libertarian. So thanks, IRS and Justice Department!

And now that the Obama administration’s abuse of power has got our attention, can we broaden our focus to take in health care mandates, recess appointments, campus speech regulations, the anti-constitutional Independent Payment Advisory Board, similar extra-legislative bodies in Dodd-Frank, the expropriation of Chrysler creditors, and illegal wars? 

The First Amendment broadly protects political speech and the use of resources (printing presses, the internet, money) to facilitate that speech. Yet when someone wants to engage in the most obvious kind of political speech — supporting election campaigns — the government is allowed to restrict this important constitutional right. In a new case coming to the Supreme Court, Shaun McCutcheon, a wealthy political donor, and the Republican National Committee contend that the limits on political donations are unconstitutionally low and not supported by a sufficient governmental interest.

Currently, an individual may contribute up to $2,500 per election to federal candidates, up to $30,800 per year to a national party committee, and up to $5,000 per year to any non-party political committee. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended most recently by McCain-Feingold in 2002, also imposes an overall limit on the aggregate amount one may contribute in a two-year period. For 2011–2012, an individual could contribute up to $46,200 to all federal candidates combined, and $70,800 to political action committees and political party committees—a total of $117,000.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the Supreme Court has dealt with contribution limits. In the seminal 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Court held that while contribution limits implicate fundamental First Amendment rights, such limits are justified if they’re closely tied to an important governmental interest, such as preventing quid pro quo corruption or the appearance thereof.

But the Court also decided that restrictions on campaign spending put a heavier burden on political expression, one which the government couldn’t justify. One of the plaintiffs’ arguments here is that the biennial contribution limits are simultaneously a limit on expenditures—a position which Cato elaborated in a new amicus brief.

We argue that Buckley’s distinction between contributions and expenditures, with limits on the former but not the latter being constitutional, is problematic. Not only does it allow infringements on the freedom of speech, but it has led to an unbalanced and unworkable campaign finance system.

Various justices over the years, some even in Buckley itself, have questioned the Court’s logic on this point. Justice Thomas in particular has assailed the distinction, pointing out that both contributions and expenditures implicate First Amendment values because they both support political debate. Moreover, candidates must spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising instead of legislating because they face an unlimited demand for campaign funds but a tapered supply. At the same time, money has been pushed away from politically accountable parties and candidates and towards unelected advocacy groups, leading to a warping of and decrease in political competition.

The special three-judge district court that first heard this case was legally bound to the framework the Supreme Court laid out in Buckley and restated that contribution limits are constitutional as such, dismissing the lawsuit. Still, Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote that “the constitutional line between political speech and political contributions grows increasingly difficult to discern.”

In a truly free society, people should be able to give whatever they want to whomever they choose, including candidates for public office. We urge the Supreme Court to strike down the biennial contribution limits and give those who contribute money to candidates and parties as much freedom as those who spend money independently to promote campaigns and causes.

The Supreme Court will hear argument in McCutcheon v. FEC this fall.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has recently reached a “milestone” of 400 parts per million (ppm). In some circles, this announcement has been met with consternation and gnashing of teeth. The proper reaction is celebration.

The growth in the atmospheric CO2 concentration over the past several centuries is primarily the result of mankind’s thirst for energy—largely in the form of fossil fuels. According to the World Bank, fossil fuel energy supplies about 80% of the world’s energy production—a value which has been pretty much constant for the past 40 years. During that time, the global population increased by 75%, and global energy use doubled. Global per capita energy use increased, while global energy use per $1000 GDP declined. We are using more energy, but we are using it more efficiently. In the developed world, life expectancy has doubled since the dawn of the fossil fuel era.

Of course, burning fossil fuels to produce energy results in the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, tipping the natural balance of annual CO2 flux and leading to a gradual build-up.

There are two primary externalities that result from our emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—1) an enhancement of the greenhouse effect, which results in an alteration of the energy flow in the earth’s climate and a general tendency to warm the global average surface temperature, and 2) an enhancement of the rate of photosynthesis in plants and a general tendency to result in more efficient growth and an overall healthier condition of vegetation (including crops). There’s incontrovertible evidence that the planet is both warmer and greener than it was 100 years ago.

As we continually document (see here for our latest post), more and more science is suggesting that the rate (and thus magnitude at any point in time) of CO2-induced climate change is not as great as commonly portrayed. The lower the rate of change, the lower the resulting impact. If the rate is low enough, carbon dioxide emissions confer a net benefit. We’d like to remind readers that “it’s not the heat, it’s the sensitivity,” when it comes to carbon dioxide, and the sensitivity appears to have been overestimated.

As new science erodes the foundation of climate worry, new technologies are expanding recoverable fossil fuel resources. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have opened up vast expanses of fossil fuel resources—mainly natural gas—that were untouchable just a few years ago. The discovery that the world is awash in hundreds of years of recoverable fuels is a game-changer, given the strong correlation between energy use per capita and life expectancy.

400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should remind us of our continuing success at expanding the global supply of energy to meet a growing demand. That success which ultimately leads to an improvement of the global standard of living and a reduction in vulnerability to the vagaries of weather and climate.

400pm is cause for celebration. “A world lit only by fire” is not. 

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how the U.S. government uses the idea of helping malnourished people abroad as a way to promote domestic agricultural interests. As I explained there, “Instead of simply giving money to people to buy food from the cheapest source, the U.S. government buys food from U.S. producers and requires that it be sent overseas on U.S. ships.” It turns what some might see as a noble cause into a means of industrial policy.

The Washington Post has been all over the issue, and has another good editorial today. They note the argument of one politician that “political realities are such that foreign aid cannot get funding unless domestic U.S. constituencies also benefit.” But then they have a great response:

Perhaps it’s true that funding for foreign aid, always politically tenuous, has depended on greasing interest groups. But it’s also true that foreign aid depends on persuading taxpayers in general that their funds are being well spent. And there are more taxpayers than special interests.

The Obama administration is pushing in the right direction on this. Let’s hope they can successfully fight off the special interest groups who are resisting.

My colleague Andrew Coulson has already briefly noted this story, but its constitutional and policy implications — which go well beyond the higher education context — merit a more detailed look.

For more than two years civil rights enforcers at the federal Department of Education and Department of Justice have been readying a crackdown on colleges and universities that they view as excessively lax, lenient, or observant of due process toward the accused in charges of unwelcome sexual conduct. Now, in a letter and resolution agreement sent to administrators at the University of Montana, the enforcers finally seem to have tipped their hand as to how far they’re prepared to go. And the answer is: really, really far.

• The “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” that colleges and universities must discipline is to include “verbal conduct,” better known as “speech.”
• To be subject to discipline, speech or conduct won’t have to be objectively offensive to a reasonable person, merely subjectively so to the particular complainant.
• Disciplinable speech or conduct also won’t have to be severe or pervasive enough to do actual damage to a complainant’s environment for learning or employment or research, a departure from the standard that courts have developed for liability in areas like workplace hostile-environment law. This ensures there will be more and tougher discipline handed out for offenses such as, say, posting desk photos of beach-clad spouses or playing a “shock jock” show on a dorm radio.
• The feds say universities are not just free, but affirmatively obliged, to take “protective” action against future harassment — kicking an accused student out of a class might be one such step — before affording a hearing at which that person might defend himself or herself.

Among those outraged: FIRE, or the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which calls the development a “shocking affront” to the Constitution’s First Amendment; CEI’s Hans Bader (Washington is now demanding that colleges institute speech codes much broader than many already struck down as overbroad by federal courts), and prominent education blogger Joanne Jacobs (rule could stifle education about sexuality as well as both sides of campus debates on related issues).

FIRE president Greg Lukianoff says the new speech prohibitions are “so broad that virtually every student will regularly violate them… it is time for colleges and the public to push back.”

Here’s something you don’t see every day: A discussion of Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism in the New Yorker, in a broader review of books on “anarchism” emerging from the Occupy movement. Author Kelefa Sanneh writes:

In fact, there is one anarchist who could be considered influential in Washington, but he wasn’t among the activists who participated in the Occupy movement—he died nearly twenty years ago. His name is Murray Rothbard, and, among small-government Republicans, he is something of a cult hero. He was Ron Paul’s intellectual mentor, which makes him the godfather of the godfather of the Tea Party. Justin Amash, a young Republican congressman from Michigan and a rising star in the Party, hangs a framed portrait of him on his office wall.

Rothbard was an anarchist, but also a capitalist. “True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism,” he once said, and he sometimes referred to himself by means of a seven-syllable honorific: “anarcho-capitalist.” Graeber thinks that governments treat their citizens “like children,” and that, when governments disappear, people will behave differently. Anarcho-capitalists, on the contrary, believe that, without government, people will behave more or less the same: we will be just as creative or greedy or competent as we are now, only freer. Instead of imagining a world without drastic inequality, anarcho-capitalists imagine a world where people and their property are secured by private defense agencies, which are paid to keep the peace. Graeber doesn’t consider anarcho-capitalists to be true anarchists; no doubt the feeling is mutual.

“Cult hero … among small-government Republicans” seems a real stretch. But maybe among Ron Paul and Justin Amash, which is more congressional fans than most economist-philosophers have. Author Sanneh no doubt learned about Rothbard when he wrote a long and fairly sympathetic profile of Ron Paul on the campaign trail.

At Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org Aaron Powell examines the New Yorker’s examination of anarchism, both capitalist and anti-capitalist. Also at Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org find out more about Murray Rothbard, including some exclusive videos.

Last Friday, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted the agency had targeted various Tea Party and related groups during the 2010 election cycle. Later in the week, an Inspector General’s report will offer an initial look at the facts of this matter. At least two congressional committees also plan investigations. 

Many people recall that the Nixon administration used the IRS to harass political opponents. Surely the IG’s report and subsequent investigations will show whether the IRS has gotten back into the business of protecting an incumbent administration from its critics. 

It is not too soon, however, to recall the the campaign finance reform lobby has been calling for a crackdown on political groups since the Citizens United decision. One possibility would be that the IRS gave in pressure from the reform lobby and went after the Tea Party groups. 

Was there an intention to chill speech? The timing provokes doubts: the targeting began in the spring of 2010 just as the mid-term campaign season started and ended after the election when the harassment no longer has any rationale. The long delays of approving tax status certainly slowed down the wave coming toward Congress in 2010. 66 House members lost their seats in that election. Do any sitting members owe their offices to the IRS? 

Even now, leading reform groups are calling for renewed crackdown on these groups. We are also told by more sober reformers that this whole matter shows the need for more disclosure and greater clarity in the rules. But the major argument against such disclosure has been that government officials will use the information to punish political opponents. Given what we know about this case, does it make sense to give the IRS more information about, and more power over groups that oppose the administration? 

Some will note the irony here. Most of campaign finance law was enacted in 1974 just after the end of the Watergate scandal. The campaign finance reform lobby dates its life to that scandal which, as noted, included using the IRS for political ends. Now the reformers are defending the IRS and its apparent political harassment. Things do seem to have come full circle.