Monday Podcast: ‘Challenging Domestic Military Detentions’
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the exchange student from Qatar who was detained by the FBI with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, sat for years in a military brig in South Carolina as the only domestically detained enemy combatant.
The Bush Administration used al-Marri to test a legal theory aimed at keeping suspected terrorists in military prisons indefinitely.
President Obama has reversed that ruling, and has moved al-Marri into civilian courts. The Supreme Court is no longer hearing al-Marri’s appeal.
In Monday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Legal Policy Analyst David Rittgers says that there’s nothing that will stop future administrations from again reversing the policy.
This is creating this legal cul-de-sac where we can have military detention domestically…and the reason that they picked Al-Marri is, just as you would pick a sympathetic plaintiff to sue to overturn a law, if you want to keep a law…you would look for an unsympathetic defendant, and Al-Marri is as unsympathetic as you can get.
…He is the test case to keep this policy open.
The Cato Institute co-authored an amicus brief (PDF) at the Supreme Court supporting al-Marri’s challenge to the military detention.
Friday Podcast: ‘Drinking Ages and Highway Fatalities’
Does the policy of setting a national drinking age reduce highway fatalities?
In Friday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University, talks about the research he and student Elina Tetelbaum (now a Yale Law student) carried out on that question:
What we find is that the only area where there is any evidence for efficacy of the law are states that adopted a higher drinking on their own without any compulsion. For the states that the feds forced … to raise [their] drinking age, there is no evidence of a beneficial reduction in traffic fatalities… We conclude quite strongly that it’s only when a state chooses a higher drinking age on its own, it’s only when it decides its going to devote enforcement resources and when there’s public sentiment to support that, that you see those sorts of beneficial effects.
Miron and Tetelbaum offer a more detailed look at their findings in the Spring issue of Cato’s magazine Regulation, which will be released March 26.
Thursday Podcast: ‘It’s Not High Speed Rail’
President Obama’s stimulus plan included about $8 billion for “high-speed rail” projects throughout the country.
But what Obama has in mind isn’t anything like the Japanese trains that have been clocked at over 300 miles per hour, says Cato Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole in Thursday’s Cato Daily Podcast. At best, it’s “moderate-speed rail,” and won’t include an interconnected network that will allow passenger transportation from coast to coast.
For more on American rail projects, check out O’Toole’s Policy Analysis, High-Speed Rail: The Wrong Road for America.
New Podcast: ‘A More Transparent Federal Government’
Online technology offers President Obama more opportunities to increase government transparency than any president before him, says Jerry Brito, creator of StimulusWatch.org and senior fellow at the Mercatus Center.
In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Brito says that although Obama has taken positive steps toward increasing transparency, there are hurdles in place that are restricting open access to government data.
President Obama has been very clear about making sure that Americans know where every dollar goes…the problem though so far, is that we have a Web site called Recovery.gov, but there isn’t much there yet.
What Did the New Deal Do?
There has been much recent debate about whether or not President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies increased the nation’s economic pain during the Great Depression or led to its end. In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Regulation Magazine managing editor Thomas A. Firey reveals why erroneous stories about the effects of the New Deal survive despite decades of economic research that tell a different, more nuanced story:
Listening to the fight today among commentators on the left and the right talking about the New Deal and making various claims about it, as far as a stimulus—they’re almost all wrong, and what’s most disturbing to me as an economic historian is this is actually pretty well-plowed ground, so I don’t know how they can be wrong and how no one’s calling them out on it….
…The two stylized stories, the one that nothing got better and the other that the New Deal miraculously fixed everything—both are very clearly wrong when you look at the numbers. But no one wants to tell the real story, because, first of all, it doesn’t fall nicely in an ideological story on either side, and, second of all, it requires work. You have to read stuff and do research and care about the facts, and, let’s be honest, in this political environment, very few people do those things or care about the facts.
How Will Barack Obama Reform Social Security?
Barack Obama says he will make entitlement reform a central part of his attempt to control government spending. Just how serious is President Obama about entitlement reform? Are private accounts for Social Security on the table? In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, senior fellow Michael D. Tanner weighs in on Obama’s plan for the future of entitlement programs.
“The fact is, of course, private investment would still be a better deal than Social Security, but you have to face the fact that people are scared of the market right now,” Tanner says. “But I think you’ve got to give Barack Obama points for political courage. In addressing the need for entitlement reform he is taking on one of the mainstays of his party.”
Cuba: 50 Years Later
January marks 50 years since the Cuban Revolution. In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Project Coordinator for Latin America Juan Carlos Hidalgo discusses Fidel Castro’s takeover, the result of the revolution and offers advice to the Obama administration on reengaging with the small island nation.
“Cuba went from being one of the richest countries in Latin America to one of the poorest,” Hidalgo says. “After 50 years, the revolution has failed the Cubans.”
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