A federal judge just threw out three fake passports discovered by a Transportation Security Agency (TSA) screener, holding that the search exceeded the TSA’s aviation security mission. (H/T Bruce Schneier)

This is long overdue; the TSA has moved beyond its original mandate and is now conducting searches for “contraband.” The search for anything that seems suspicious can quickly turn into an inquisition at the security checkpoint. Campaign for Liberty staffer Steven Bierfeldt experienced this at the St. Louis airport, and is now suing to prevent future searches beyond what is necessary for aviation security.

The invasive searches don’t add much to airline security anyway. Just as GAO investigators consistently defeat security at federal buildings, TSA screeners often fail to find fake explosives on security test teams.

As Bruce Schneier points out in his excellent book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, the two effective changes in airline security since September 11, 2001 have been (1) hardening of cockpit doors; and (2) airline passengers will resist because they know that their hijackers are playing for keeps.

Schneier spoke at Cato’s two-day conference on counterterrorism in January. Video at the link.

At The Quick and the Ed, Chad Aldeman disputes my assertion that Duncan’s impact on Chicago public school achievement was near zero. To make his case, Aldeman cites the fact that scores rose during Duncan’s tenure on 3 out of the 4 available NAEP tests. While true, this evidence actually supports my assertion rather than either Aldeman’s or Duncan’s.

Chicago’s gains on the NAEP tests ranged from 0.3 to 7.2 points on the 500 point scale, averaging out to a 1% increase in scale scores. I think 1% is pretty darn close to zero, and that’s what I said.

What’s more, as I wrote yesterday, the minuscule 1% improvement in Chicago NAEP scores was statistically identical to the improvement made by students in large central cities all over the country during the same period, so “The Duncan Effect” — his value-added over other large city superintendents — was precisely zero.

If there are other relevant data that I’m unaware of that paint a different picture, I’ll be happy to look at them. But the NAEP results flatly contradict Duncan’s own claims — routinely repeated in the media — that students made dramatic academic gains under his leadership.

In a recent post, I noted how Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano was “taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.” Now the administration seems to be similarly embracing the E‑Verify government background check system.

Starting September 8th, it will go forward with a Bush administration plan to require federal contractors to check their employees against federal databases. The E‑Verify program is riddled with problems, and it will send many American workers and legal immigrants into Kafkaesque ordeals when they find they aren’t approved by the federal government to earn a living. Ultimately, “internal enforcement” of immigration law, which is what E‑Verify is about, requires a biometric national identity system.

Wasn’t a Democratic administration going to be the antidote to the aggressive security-statism of the Bush administration? Well, no. Once in power, either political party will see merit in national ID systems. After all, a national ID gives the government direct regulatory control over individuals — and that’s a sweet sound to the powerful, regardless of political affiliation. This is why it was so interesting to see the left begin to embrace a national ID as it anticipated an Obama victory in November.

Parties in power like national ID systems.

Education policy is far too rarely driven by facts or logic — they’re just too inconvenient, mucking up both uber-hyped “crises” and warm-and-fuzzy myths.

Recently, the big scare has been that the United States is on its way to a desperate shortage of scientists and engineers, a message that has, of course, been heartily embraced by politicians determined to push more kids into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Well, it seems that once again the crisis du jour has been well overstated. USA Today has a great new story demonstrating that we actually have more than enough scientists and engineers. (Not that this hasn’t been pointed out before.) Most telling is the content in the article’s sidebar, which includes some real crisis-deflating stuff:

Detailed findings issued last year by the federally funded RAND National Defense Research Institute found “no evidence of a current shortage” of science and engineering workers. It said National Science Foundation predictions of shortages so far have proved “inaccurate.”

RAND… recommended a permanent commitment to monitoring the USA’s science and technology performance, but said the slow growth of U.S.-born technical workers “will change when the earnings and attractiveness of S&E (science and engineering) careers improve.”

So we actually have plenty of scientists and engineers, and the market appears to be working just as it should? I hope someone tells our leaders! Otherwise, they’ll almost certainly push even more kids into jobs that, it turns out, will probably only exist in the land of imaginary crises.

Switzerland has better tax policy than America and a far stronger human-rights policy regarding personal privacy. This makes the IRS unhappy, since the tax police would like to find out if some Americans have overseas bank accounts.

In an odious display of fiscal imperialism, the Department of Justice is demanding that one of the Swiss banks divulge any information about American clients — even though this would mean imposing America’s bad law on a foreign institution operating on foreign soil.

Thankfully, the Swiss government has stepped in to ensure that the bank cannot be extorted.

Bloomberg reports:

Switzerland said it would seize UBS AG data to prevent the U.S. Justice Department from pursuing a U.S. court order seeking the identities of 52,000 American account holders in a crackdown on tax evaders. The assertion came in court papers yesterday in federal court in Miami, where the Justice Department sued UBS on Feb. 19, a day after the bank avoided U.S. prosecution for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. The U.S. effort to enforce a summons seeking the names would force UBS to violate Swiss laws barring disclosure of such data, the filing said.

The Swiss government “will use its legal authority to ensure that the bank cannot be pressured to transmit the information illegally, including if necessary by issuing an order taking effective control of the data at UBS that is the subject of the summons,” according to the filing.

…“It is hoped that it will be unnecessary for the Government of Switzerland to take the extraordinary action of issuing an order to seize the information at issue, but such an action should be expected if the IRS continues to pressure UBS to violate Swiss law,” according to the filing.

CBS News reports that if you choose Obama’s government-run health plan, you may be able to keep your doctor, but your doctor might not want to keep you.

CBS sat down with Cato health care expert Michael C. Cannon to discuss why doctors might be reluctant to accept patients who are insured under the government plan.

In their desperate bid to find half a trillion dollars or so to fund a health care expansion, Democrats have no shortage of bad ideas. Indeed, their new idea is even worse than last month’s dastardly plan to hike taxes on beer and wine.

The Democrat’s new idea is to slap a special “surtax” on high earners. A surtax is simply a flat additional charge based on adjusted gross income. The model for the new scheme seems to be a four percent surtax proposed by House tax writer Charlie Rangel in 2007.

Elsewhere I’ve explained why tax hikes on high earners is poor economic policy. But politically, what’s striking is how far American economic policy is moving to the left of policies in other major nations.

The chart shows that the current top U.S. personal income tax rate (including the average state rate) is 42 percent, which is the same as the average in the 30 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

President Obama already plans to increase the top federal rate from 35 percent to 40 percent at the end of 2010. That would push the combined federal-state rate to 47 percent, substantially above the average of other major industrial nations. Imposing a 4‑percent surtax on top would push the top rate to 51 percent, which would be higher than many nations that were traditionally more socialist than America, including France (46%), Germany (48%), and Italy (45%).

Obama and the Democrats chafe at being labeled “socialists”, and it’s true that Republicans are just as socialist when it comes to spending policies. But tax rates higher than France? Tax rates over 50%? Come on Democrats, you’ve got to be kidding!