A remarkable photo gallery from Der Spiegel and photographer Stefan Koppelkamm of crumbling urban scenes in the former East Germany and their revival after the fall of communism.
Cato at Liberty
Cato at Liberty
Email Signup
Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!
Topics
Bombing Iran Risks Mission Creep
In an op-ed in today’s New York Daily News, my co-author Jonathan Owen and I argue that damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities from limited strikes would be modest, and likely require further strikes every few years or a long-term occupation on the ground. The better option at present is for the Obama administration to show restraint and continue to explore diplomatic options:
Unless Americans are willing to fight Iranians to the death — possibly every few years — Washington must stop polarizing the situation. Aggressive policies and rhetoric do not benefit our security.
Without demanding that Iran surrender on the issue of uranium enrichment, the U.S. — which accounts for almost half of the world’s military spending, wields one of the planet’s largest nuclear arsenals and can project its power around the globe — should lift sanctions, stop its belligerence and open a direct line of communication with Tehran.
The President has said repeatedly that “all options are on the table.” But contrary to popular belief, diplomacy with Iran is an option that has yet to be fully exhausted.
Left out in the final cut was the important point that if the United States was to go to war with Iran, U.S. soldiers will once again be asked to risk their lives by prosecuting a reckless war of choice against an enemy willing to accept high casualties. Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught policymakers that mission creep often drives seemingly easy and limited interventions toward prolonged wars of occupation and nation-building. Attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would risk a similar, unacceptable mission creep.
Related Tags
Viral Video Strips Down Strip-Search Machines
The TSA’s response yesterday to a video challenging strip-search machines was so weak that it acts as a virtual confession to the fact that objects can be snuck through them.
In the video, TSA strip-search objector Jonathan Corbett demonstrates how he put containers in his clothes along his sides where they would appear the same as the background in TSA’s displays. TSA doesn’t refute that it can be done or that Corbett did it in his demonstration. More at Wired’s Threat Level blog.
More than six months ago, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals required the Transportation Security Administration to commence a rulemaking to justify its strip-search machine/prison-style pat-down policy. TSA has not done so. The result is that the agency still does not have a sturdy security system in place at airports. It’s expensive, inconvenient, error-prone, and privacy-invasive.
Making airline security once again the responsibility of airlines and airports would vastly improve the situation, because these actors are naturally inclined to blend security, cost-control, and convenience with customer service and comforts, including privacy.
I have a slight difference with Corbett’s characterization of the problem. The weakness of body scanners does not put the public at great danger. The chance of anyone exploiting this vulnerability and smuggling a bomb on board a domestic U.S. flight is very low. The problem is that these machines impose huge costs in dollars and privacy that do not foreclose a significant risk any better than the traditional magnetometer.
Corbett is right when he urges people to “demand of your legislators and presidential candidates that they get rid of this eight billion-dollar-a-year waste known as the TSA and privatize airport security.”
Related Tags
Not Everything Can Be a Federal Crime
Cato legal associate Carl DeNigris co-authored this blogpost.
Over the last few decades, the number of federal crimes has exploded. The U.S. criminal code has grown so large and so expansive that no one is exactly sure how many federal crimes are actually on the books, with estimates ranging from 4,000 to 300,000. As Justice Scalia has noted, “It should be no surprise that as the volume increases, so do the number of imprecise laws.”
Many individuals and organizations from across the ideological spectrum have voiced concern over this growing trend, recognizing that broadly defined crimes lack the clarity traditionally required before depriving citizens of their liberty.
The expansion of 18 U.S.C § 1001, which criminalizes the knowing and willful making of materially false statements in “any matter within the jurisdiction of” the United States, exemplifies this broadening scope. Cory King was prosecuted under this statute for making a false statement to a state official wholly unconnected to any federal agency or investigation. Yet, the Ninth Circuit held that Mr. King violated § 1001 because the subject matter of his statement was one over which a federal government agency possessed regulatory authority.
King has now asked the Supreme Court to hear his case. Cato has joined the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Texas Public Policy Foundation on a brief supporting him and arguing that the Ninth Circuit stretched § 1001 beyond its proper jurisdictional reach. Such an unbounded interpretation risks greater over criminalization and further misuse of the federal criminal code.
Moreover, since § 1001 is a “process crime” that focuses on offenses “not against the particular person or property, but against the machinery of justice itself,” an excessively broad construction would undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system. Wider application of such crimes facilitates pretextual prosecutions, in which “the operating philosophy seems to be that, if the government cannot prosecute what it wished to penalize, it will penalize what it can prosecute.”
Such an arbitrary and far-reaching application of the criminal code — the federal criminal code, at that — has no place in a free society.
The Court will decide whether to take up King v. United States sometime this spring.
Obama Fixes the Housing Market Again (and Helps the Troops)
Yesterday President Obama announced yet another set of programs intended to help the housing market. The majority of these are aimed at helping active service members of the military. For instance the proposal would compensate service members who were wrongly foreclosed upon and help re-finance into lower rates service members wrongly denied that opportunity. Assistance would also be provided to service members who suffered losses because they had to sell their homes due to a change in station (that is the military ordered them to move).
While some of these changes are likely to benefit service members, the impact on the overall housing market is likely to be very small. From what little details we have, it appears most benefits will be limited to currently active service members. Let’s start with the re-finance piece. There are just over 1 million active military living in the U.S. (another quarter million stationed overseas, who we lack data on), of those just over 300,000 both own their home and have a mortgage (about 80,000 own free and clear). Interestingly just over 2/3rds purchased their home since the housing bubble burst. During this time mortgage rates have been fairly low, so its probably reasonable to assume that these borrowers already have low rates and won’t benefit from a re-finance. I haven’t been able to find data on how many longer-term borrowers have already re-financed, but its sure to be a significant amount. So our upper-bound is that about 100,000 service members might be able to benefit from a re-finance, I suspect the actual number is much lower. And of course, who knows what “wrongly denied” means.
The “wrongly foreclosed” piece is a lot harder to estimate, so take this with a huge margin of error. First we don’t know how many active duty borrowers have even been foreclosed upon. If we assume foreclosure rates similar to the VA loan program (good reasons to think it could be higher or lower), then about 12,000 service members are likely to have been foreclosured upon since the bubble burst. The “wrongly” is even harder to figure out. If interpreted narrowly, then say 1%, gets us to just over 100 loans. Even 10% gets us to about 1,000 loans. Under any reasonable estimate a pretty small number compared to the overall housing market.
The permanent change of station piece is the other big piece. Setting aside that service members taking a loss on their home has long been an issue and just why it has become important now we will leave to the imagination (an election year perhaps?). Of those active duty service members who moved in the last year, about 100,000 had a mortgage, and so could have taken a loss. If they were underwater to the same extent as the general population (probably an under-estimate), then this program will help somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 borrowers.
While it is important that anyone actually wronged be compensated (that’s what we have courts for), the impact of Obama’s latest plan, like his previous plans, is likely to be extremely small and do almost nothing to help the overall housing market.
Note: data are my estimates from Census’ American Community Survey. If you have better, please share.
The GOP of the Future?
Ross Douthat wonders whether Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign might be not “the last glimpse of the Republican past, but as a plausible sketch of the Republican future.” Douthat sees Santorum as what I would call a “Big Government conservative,” that is, a person who identifies as a conservative and supports a larger role for government in both the economy and culture.
Let’s try to put some numbers on Douthat’s speculation. A recent essay by James Stimson and Christopher Ellis provides useful data and analysis for this task. To use the Stimson-Ellis summary, we need to make the reasonable assumption that 20 percent of the nation identifies as “liberal” and 35 percent as “conservative.”
Stimson and Ellis find that about 10 percent of the nation identifies as conservative, affirms cultural conservatism, and rejects free market policies. Another 4 percent identify as “liberal”, support cultural conservatism, and reject free market policies. So the Santorum base, as it were, is about 14 percent of the population. However, this estimate assumes that people who identify as a liberal would vote for Rick Santorum. The actual Santorum base, in other words, is much closer to 10 percent than to 14 percent of the population.
Compare this range to other numbers indicated by Stimson and Ellis. About 13 percent of the nation identify as conservative and support free market policies. A little over 1 percent also identify as liberals and support less government control of the economy. Another 13 percent are consistent liberals in supporting both economic interventions and cultural liberty.
The Santorum base is certainly not a majority among conservatives; it is also not the largest group among those identifiers. Stimson and Ellis find that 29 percent of conservative identifiers support Big Government in the economy and the culture. That means 71 percent of conservatives do not support Santorum’s outlook. That hardly seems to be a foundation for a future GOP.
Perhaps Douthat believes that Santorum’s anti-free market policies will attract enough people in the nation as a whole to convince GOP voters that he (or someone like him) can win a general election. But about 50 percent of those who say they are conservative do not support cultural conservatism. Is it likely that the 45 percent of the nation that does not identify as liberal or conservative will be drawn to a party and candidates espousing cultural conservatism?
Related Tags
Attorney General Holder and Executive Power
AG Eric Holder gave an address on Monday where he offered a legal rationale for the power of the president to kill American citizens who are outside of the United States and who are suspected of terrorist activity. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley responds:
On Monday, March 5, Northwestern University School of Law was the location of an extraordinary scene … U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presented President Barack Obama’s claim that he has the authority to kill any U.S. citizen he considers a threat. It served as a retroactive justification for the slaying of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki last September by a drone strike in northeastern Yemen, as well as the targeted killings of at least two other Americans during Obama’s term.
What’s even more extraordinary is that this claim, which would be viewed by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution as the very definition of authoritarian power, was met not with outcry but muted applause. Where due process once resided, Holder offered only an assurance that the president would kill citizens with care. While that certainly relieved any concern that Obama, or his successor, would hunt citizens for sport, Holder offered no assurances on how this power would be used in the future beyond the now all-too-familiar “trust us” approach to civil liberties of this administration.
Read the whole thing.
Previous coverage here. And Colbert’s segment, “Due or Die,” is here.