The administration argues that suspected al Qaida terrorists – even U.S. citizens – can be targeted for assassination because they either (a) pose an imminent threat or (b) are part of an enemy army; and (c) other governments are unwilling or unable to act. Although the Fifth Amendment ensures that persons not be denied due process, it’s unclear what process is “due” – especially when the person is a citizen. For example, a U.S. citizen who threatens hostages with imminent loss of life can be killed by law enforcement authorities. Similarly, an American who serves in a foreign army against which the United States is at war is plainly a legitimate target.

Moreover, under the Nationality Act, a citizen can lose his citizenship if he intends to do so (although intent can be inferred by actions) and he either (a) declares allegiance to a foreign state, (b) serves in a post requiring such a declaration, (c) serves in armed forces in combat with the United States, or (d) serves as an officer or NCO in the armed forces of a foreign state.

Still, the killing of Awlaki is a close legal call. On balance, it’s probably unlawful. The imminent-threat contention isn’t credible. To my knowledge, no one has identified a threat that is imminent (meaning: about to happen). The part-of-an-enemy-army claim and the loss-of-citizenship argument raise several questions: First, is the Nationality Act itself constitutional? The Constitution establishes criteria for citizenship. Stripping someone of citizenship effectively changes those criteria, and Congress may not have that power. Second, even if the Nationality Act is constitutional, does al Qaida qualify as a foreign state for purposes of the Act? Are al Qaida agents equivalent to soldiers engaged in combat with the United States? Third, even if the Nationality Act might apply in Awlaki’s case, how do we know that he triggered the provisions of the Act? Can the administration simply assert that he met one of the tests for loss of citizenship, or must there be some threshold process to make that determination?

Finally, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force sanctioned force against those involved in the 9/11 tragedy. Awlaki, although not directly involved, probably qualified as part of an “associated force”; but actions that might self-evidently be lawful if Awlaki were actively fighting on a battlefield are less so when he’s allegedly plotting attacks from Yemen.

All told, when U.S. citizens are targeted, I’d be more comfortable with somewhat more process – not a trial before an Article III court, of course, but perhaps the equivalent of an assassination warrant that required a non-executive-branch body with relevant expertise to certify sufficient cause. Anything less risks disrespect for the Constitution, which could have regrettable implications in other areas. The separation of powers doctrine, if it means anything, stands for the proposition that citizens cannot be killed on command of the executive branch alone, without regard to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Naturally, exceptions are justified for truly imminent threats. If I were convinced that involvement of another branch might result in Awlaki-types escaping punishment, I’d be more willing to invoke “emergency” powers – similar to hot pursuit – but not in this case.

Today, October 1, is the first day of the 2012 fiscal year.

And if you’re wondering why America’s economy seems to have a hangover (this cartoon is a perfect illustration), it’s because politicians had a huge party with our money in FY2011.

We don’t have final numbers for the fiscal year that just ended, but let’s look at the CBO Monthly Budget Report, the CBO Economic and Budget Update, and the OMB Historical Tables, and see whether there’s anything worth celebrating.

• The federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in FY2011, more money than any government has ever spent in a 12-month period in the history of the world.
• The FY2011 budget is nearly double the burden of federal spending just 10 years earlier, when federal outlays consumed “only” $1.86 trillion.
• The federal budget in FY2011 consumed about 24 percent of national output, up sharply compared to a spending burden in FY2001 of “just” 18.2 percent of GDP.
• Defense spending is too high, and has increased by about $400 billion since 2001, but the vast majority of the additional spending is for domestic spending programs.
• Federal tax revenue in FY2011 will be about $2.25 trillion, an increase of 7–8 percent over FY2010 levels.
• Economic stagnation has affected tax revenues, which are lower than the $2.6 trillion level from FY2007.
• Federal receipts amount to about 15.3 percent of GDP, below the long-run average of 18 percent of GDP.
• The Congressional Budget Office does predict that revenues will rise above the 18-percent average — without any tax increases — by the end of the decade.
• Record levels of government spending, combined with low revenues caused by a weak economy, will result in a $1.3 trillion deficit.
• This is the third consecutive deficit of more than $1 trillion.
• The publicly-held national debt (the amount borrowed from the private sector) is now more than $10 trillion.

With budget numbers like these, no wonder America has a fiscal hangover.

And let’s be blunt about assigning blame. Yes, Obama has been a reckless big spender, but he is merely continuing the irresponsible statist policies of his predecessor.

Fortunately, there is a solution. All we need to do is restrain the growth of federal spending, as explained in this video.

But we also know that it is difficult to convince politicians to do what’s right for the nation. And if they don’t change the course of fiscal policy, and we leave the federal government on autopilot, then America is doomed to become another Greece.

The combination of poorly designed entitlement programs (mostly Medicare and Medicaid) and an aging population will lead to America’s fiscal collapse.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett held a conference the other day on the idea of international “competitiveness.” He invited me to comment on his new co-authored paper that tries to nail down the murky meaning of the word.

The paper suggests that for a solid definition of “competitiveness,” we should look to the literature on Tiebout competition, which is competition between local jurisdictions for inflows of labor and capital.

Kevin and co-authors suggest that as global labor and capital mobility have increased, countries are now competing with each other the same way that local jurisdictions do. In Global Tax Revolution, Dan Mitchell and I discuss why Tiebout competition is a positive force promoting fiscal reforms worldwide. This is competitiveness in a good way.

By contrast, Paul Krugman wrote an excellent article in 1994 criticizing the vacuous way that “competitiveness” was thrown around by pundits such as Robert Reich and Lester Thurow. Books by such authors suggest that the global economy is a giant wrestling match, and that other countries will slam Team America to the mat unless we have more government planning and subsidies.

At the AEI forum, I noted that America does have to adapt to the realities of globalization, but most of that adaptation can and should occur in the private sector. For example, America needs larger and more efficient seaports to handle rising volumes of international trade. But rather than shoveling more taxpayer money into our government seaports, we should privatize them so that they can expand in response to rising market demands.

The World Economic Forum publishes a well-known index of country competitiveness. Kevin and coauthors think the index is dubious, but the WEF report is packed with interesting data. One WEF indicator of competitiveness (page 391) is “quality of seaports.” Hong Kong is ranked #1, and its seaport is privately financed, owned, and operated. American seaports are ranked #22, and they are generally government-owned.

The upshot is that when thinking about America’s “competitiveness”—however it is defined—we should think about the proper roles of the public and private sectors. The public sector can pursue tax reform to make us more of a magnet for capital and skilled labor. But when it comes to such things as infrastructure, education, and investing in “industries of the future,” the government should get out of the way and let entrepreneurs and markets drive America’s prosperity in the global economy.

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Comparing the U.S. Postal Service and the federal government.
• We spend too much on our military because we ask our troops to do too much. To spend less, we must do less.
• The federal unemployment insurance system fosters unemployment.
• The Principal of the United States returns.
• Abolish the Department of Homeland Security.

Follow Downsizing the Federal Government on Twitter (@DownsizeTheFeds) and connect with us on Facebook.

Just reading the headlines of the Solyndra stories in major newspapers the past month tells a story that just keeps getting more discouraging:

Obama-backed green firm shuts down
The Washington Post, September 1, 2011

Solar firm to cease operations; Solyndra had received a $535-million loan guarantee. It plans to seek Chapter 11.
Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2011

A Third Solar Company Files for Bankruptcy
The New York Times, September 7, 2011

FBI raids offices of solar-panel firm
The Washington Post, September 9, 2011

E‑mails cite rush on loan to solar firm
The Washington Post, September 14, 2011

Treasury to probe loan to Solyndra; The Federal Financing Bank’s role in the failed firm’s borrowing will be the focus.
Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2011

White House official: Funding Solyndra further was risky
The Washington Post, September 16, 2011

Amid Solyndra probe, Energy Dept. moving billions in loans
The Washington Post, September 17, 2011

SOLAR FIRM’S OBAMA LINKS PROBED; A fundraiser’s role in a loan program that aided Solyndra stokes concern about the company’s influence.
Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2011

Questions Raised Over Letting Another Lender Help a Failing Solar Company
The New York Times, September 17, 2011

Justice Dept. urged to probe Solyndra
The Washington Post, September 20, 2011

Solyndra officials to invoke Fifth before House panel
The Washington Post, September 21, 2011

Solyndra’s ex-employees tell of high spending, factory woes
The Washington Post, September 22, 2011

In Rush To Assist A Solar Company, U.S. Missed Signs
The New York Times, September 23, 2011

Government OKs new green loans; Two execs of bankrupt solar firm Solyndra plead the 5th before a congressional panel.
Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2011

A solar pariah had Republican parents, too
The Washington Post, September 27, 2011

Where Solyndra said yes, others demurred
The Washington Post, September 27, 2011

Obama aides voiced doubts about loans like Solyndra’s; A top concern was that the vetting process wasn’t rigorous enough.
Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2011

Energy Dept. knew Solyndra had violated its loan terms
The Washington Post, September 29, 2011

U.S. Backs New Loans For Projects On Energy
The New York Times, September 29, 2011

Energy chief cleared Solyndra loan breaks
The Washington Post, September 30, 2011

I found these headlines on Nexis, but of course they can be found on the newspapers’ websites. I linked to two of the stories last week.

Some have tried to dismiss the Solyndra story. Private investors make plenty of mistakes, too. Companies fail, sometimes through no fault of their own. But this story has all the hallmarks of government decision making: officials spending other people’s money with little incentive to spend it prudently, political pressure to make decisions without proper vetting, the substitution of political judgment for the judgments of millions of investors, the enthusiastic embrace of fads like “green energy,” political officials ignoring warnings from civil servants, crony capitalism, close connections between politicians and the companies that benefit from government allocation of capital, the appearance — at least — of favors for political supporters, and the kind of promiscuous spending that has delivered us $14 trillion in national debt. It may end up being a case study in political economy.

We’re ten years past 9/11, and over the last decade we’ve shed a number of our liberties and spent wildly to counter a terrorist threat that, as the recent model airplane plot demonstrated, isn’t existential. The bureaucratic legacy of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security, has proven an unwieldy and pork-laden nightmare. It’s time to abolish it.

My recent policy analysis, Abolish the Department of Homeland Security, makes the case for doing so. To begin with, DHS is a management disaster by its very nature:

In creating Homeland Security, Congress lumped together 22 previously unconnected federal agencies under a new Cabinet secretary. That’s a problem, not a solution. And while members of Congress routinely clamor for consolidating Homeland Security oversight in one committee, that seems unlikely: 108 congressional committees and subcommittees oversee the department’s operations. If aggregating disparate fields of government made any sense in the first place, we long ago would have consolidated all Cabinet responsibilities under one person — the secretary of government.

Apart from the structural handicaps that DHS faces, the whole notion of “homeland security” is problematic. The “odiously Teutono/​Soviet” concept trends us ever closer to a police state and is particularly prone to pork-barrel spending. As I said in my recent op-ed on the topic:

It allows politicians to wrap pork in red, white and blue in a way not possible with defense spending. Not every town can host a military installation or build warships, but every town has a police force that can use counterterrorism funds to combat gangs or a fire department that needs recruits or a new fire station.

Congress must reform its grant programs and end this wasteful spending. While we’re at it, let’s end federal funding for fusion centers, local- and state-organized intelligence cells that duplicate FBI efforts in counterterrorism and end up labeling nearly anyone who expresses political dissent as a potential terrorist, a point I made at this Capitol Hill Briefing. I’ll be speaking at another Capitol Hill Briefing with Jim Harper today on abolishing the Transportation Security Administration. More information available here.

The good news for those craving harmony in Washington is that that mythical elixir called bipartisanship has been spotted in Congress. The bad news is that it is finding its expression in an outbreak of self-destructive China-bashing.

After 8 years of threatening punitive action to compel appreciation of the Chinese currency at a pace deemed acceptable by U.S. politicians (a period, by the way, in which the Yuan appreciated by 30% against the dollar in nominal terms—and by much more in real terms), lawmakers may just pull the trigger this time. If so, their action should be seen for what it is: a vote of no confidence in themselves as a body capable of producing solutions to the nation’s economic stagnation and monumental budget and debt woes.

China currency legislation is a diversion – a shell game. Despite the opinions of Harold Meyerson and Fred Bergsten, there simply isn’t any evidence that a stronger Yuan will produce a smaller bilateral trade deficit or that a smaller trade deficit will boost employment. Indeed, policymakers shouldn’t be targeting trade deficit reduction in the first place—let alone a bilateral trade deficit, which is meaningless in a world dominated by trade in intermediate goods.

As explained here and here, globalization with it transnational production sharing and cross-border investment has mitigated the impact of currency values on trade flows. Because the value of imported inputs accounts for about half of the value of Chinese exports, a stronger Yuan reduces the prices of imported inputs used to manufacture and assemble products in China for export to the United States and elsewhere. This dampens any expected impact of a rising currency. In fact, between July 2005 and July 2008 the renminbi rose 21% against the dollar, to $.1464 from $.1208, where it had been pegged since 1997. But the U.S. bilateral trade deficit increased from $202 billion to $268 billion over that period. Since June 2010, the Yuan has appreciated by 7 percent against the dollar, but the bilateral trade deficit is on target to be 34% larger in 2011 than it was last year. And (as described here and here) there is no discernible relationship between trade deficits and employment.

Broader support on Capitol Hill for currency legislation boils down to this: with public approval ratings hovering in the low-to-mid teens, an embattled Congress is looking for plausible scapegoats for the dismal state of U.S. economic affairs. Thanks to a lot of media-driven hype about China’s inexorable rise at U.S. expense, Americans fear China almost as much as they loathe Congress. A vote to reclaim American jobs stolen by China—as the currency legislation is so disingenuously characterized by some of its supporters—enables politicians to return to their states and districts with concrete evidence of the seriousness of their efforts.

Only it’s not serious. It’s deeply dismaying. Instead of working hard to change homegrown U.S. policies that inhibit investment, job creation, and growth, our elected officials would choose to lay the blame for our woes at China’s feet, then cross their fingers and hope that their provocative, unilateralist legislation doesn’t unleash a torrent of adverse consequences that would make economic matters even worse. Can there be a stronger admission of failure than to launch such a desperate Hail Mary?