The Washington Post has an interesting article about what has happened in the city since the Supreme Court declared the city’s gun ban unconstitutional in the landmark Heller decision in 2008.  Basically, hundreds of residents have registered thousands of firearms. More than 2 years have passed and the predicted mayhem is not here. DC Mayor Fenty called the court ruling an “outrage” and said the ban was necessary to stop residents from intentionally or accidentally killing one another.  Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign says the debate over the ban is not over yet.  Several more years of data gathering will be necessary.  And so the debate rolls on!

For more on this subject, check out the Cato book on the Heller case,  Gun Control on Trial  by Brian Doherty.  Still more here, here, and here.

Gun Owners in the District of Columbia is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

From the Washington Post:

Nearly 400 people were convicted of driving while intoxicated in the District since fall 2008 based on inaccurate results from breath test machines, and half of them went to jail, city officials said Wednesday.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said the machines were improperly adjusted by city police. The jailed defendants generally served at least five days, he said…

The District’s badly calibrated equipment would show a driver’s blood-alcohol content to be about 20 percent higher than it actually was, Nickles said. All 10 of the breath test machines used by District police were wrong, he said. The problem occurred when the officer in charge of maintaining the machines improperly set the baseline alcohol concentration levels, Nickles said.

This is the same jurisdiction where a woman who had a single glass of wine with dinner and a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of .03 was arrested for being under the influence in 2005. The national standard for a DWI arrest is .08, and anyone testing below .05 is presumed not to be intoxicated. The District of Columbia’s standard for arrest was anything above .01 if the officer deemed the driver intoxicated. Public outcry over the strict policy, particularly in a town built on tourism, prompted the D.C. Council to temporarily amend the law. The D.C. Police website still says that police can charge DUI (Driving Under the Influence, not Driving While Intoxicated) for a BAC of .07 or lower.

There is good reason to question the foundation of DWI laws and enforcement. Radley Balko makes the case that the federal push for reducing the national DWI BAC standard from .10 to .08 achieved little for public safety in Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) founder Candy Lightner regrets the no-tolerance direction her organization has taken: “[MADD has] become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned… I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

DWI Convictions Due to Faulty Breathalyzer Calibration is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Opposition is building to the proposed D.C. Voting Rights Act because it also restricts D.C.’s draconian gun-control laws. Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, and Billie Day, president of the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia, said today that “asking citizens to sacrifice their safety in order to have representation in Congress is unacceptable.”

And on NPR’s Morning Edition today, we heard the thoughts of D.C. councilwoman Mary Cheh, my con law professor: “I would rather wait to eternity before I bow down to the gun lobby and say ‘The only way I’m gonna get this is if we give up the right to protect ourselves.’”

The District’s gun laws protect us? By keeping guns out of the hands of criminals?

Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Although public schools are usually the biggest item in state and local budgets, spending figures provided by public school officials and reported in the media often leave out major costs of education, and understate what is actually spent.

In a new study, Cato’s Adam B. Schaeffer reviews district budgets and state records for the nation’s five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. Schaeffer finds that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported.

In this new video, Schaeffer explains the whole thing in under three minutes:

They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The bag tax recently instituted in the District of Columbia is a daily annoyance for District residents and a burden on the poor. It was sold as a way to fill the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Fund, and it will move some money to that project, but what’s interesting about it is how exquisitely designed it is to ensure that the incidence of the tax falls on consumers, not on businesses. Indeed, the bag tax may add to businesses’ profits.

Below I’ve copied the language in the D.C. code that establishes the tax. (It’s referred to as a “fee.” Nobody’s buying that.)

It’s not a simple five-cent tax on bags. It requires the consumer to hand over the five cents, and makes it illegal for retailers to absorb the tax. If a sandwich shop wanted to cover the tax and just give you a bag, doing that would break the law.

For every five cents it collects from customers, businesses get to keep a penny straight away. The cost of bagging products goes down for them by a penny as it goes up for you five cents.

If a store wants to set up a refund system for returned bags (paying five cents or more), it can keep another penny. Your “green friendly” store can offer bag refunding at a little less cost than it otherwise would — but keep in mind that the savings to the store come out of the Anacostia River Fund. Not quite as green a program as you may think.

And here’s an interesting tidbit: Considering that bags cost about four cents a piece, letting retailers keep that second penny might be the difference between their bag refund effort causing them small losses and letting them make a small profit on it. So much for the good feeling you get from your green-conscious store.

Finally, the part of the tax that the retailer keeps is not treated as income and is tax-exempt. That’s another little bonus to sweeten the deal under which retailers collect taxes from you.

When you get a look under the hood, you can see the greasy fingerprints of the log-rolling that it took to get this tax program established. The D.C. government was able to open up another revenue stream by bringing D.C. retailers in, structuring the tax so it had to be passed onto consumers, and giving D.C. businesses a cut of the action.

Anacostia river clean-up could be funded any number of ways, including a direct tax on D.C. residents if it’s a true priority. Requiring consumers to pay the five-cent tax on bags will negatively impact the District’s poorer residents, for whom small savings still matter. It will drive some shoppers to Virginia. And the shoppers who switch to reusable bags may just use them to carry home trash bags and dog waste bags that they buy to fill the void left by their forgone grocery bags. But at least they’ll feel good about it.

Next time you cross over the Anacostia River, be sure to think about how its clean-up project is funded. Rather than a direct increase in your tax bill, or raising funds from the people who really care about the river, the D.C. government and business community got together to tax you in a way that  increases businesses’ revenues.

Sec. 4. Establishment of fee.
(a)(1) A consumer making a purchase from a retail establishment shall pay at the time of purchase a fee of $.05 for each disposable carryout bag.
(2) A retail establishment shall not advertise or hold out or state to the public or to a customer directly or indirectly that the reimbursement of the fee or any part thereof to be collected by the retail establishment will be assumed or absorbed by the retail establishment or otherwise refunded to the customer.
(3) All retail establishments shall indicate on the consumer transaction receipt the number of disposable carryout bags provided and the total amount of fee charged.
(b)(1) (A) Each retail establishment shall retain $.01 of each $.05 fee collected; provided, that an establishment that chooses to offer a carryout bag credit program to its customers, as set forth in subparagraph (B) of this paragraph, shall retain an additional $.01 from each fee collected, for a total of $.02 for each $.05 fee collected.
(B) A retail establishment shall retain an additional $.01 of each $.05 fee for a carryout program which:
(i) Credits the consumer no less than $.05 for each carryout bag provided by the consumer for packaging their purchases, regardless of whether that bag is paper, plastic, or reusable;
(ii) Is prominently advertised at each checkout register; and
(iii) Reflects the total credit amount on the consumer transaction receipt.
(C) The fees retained by the retail establishment under this paragraph shall not be classified as revenue and shall be tax-exempt for the purposes of Chapters 18, 20, and 27B of Title 47 of the District of Columbia Official Code.
(D) The fees retained by the retail establishment shall be excluded from the definition of retail sale under D.C. Official Code § 47-2001(n)(2) and from the definition of gross receipts under D.C. Official Code § 47-2761(5).
(E) The fees to be remitted to the District under subsection (b)(2) of this section shall be added to other tax payments in determining whether the electronic payment requirement under D.C. Official Code § 47-4402(c) applies.
(2) The remaining amount of each fee collected shall be paid to the Office of Tax and Revenue and shall be deposited in the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Fund established by section 6(a).
(c) The Office of Tax and Revenue shall develop rules for frequency and method for reporting and transmitting the fees, as set forth in subsection (a) of this section, to the District.
(d) Except to the extent of any inconsistency with this act, the same provisions to Title 47 of the District of Columbia Official Code that are applicable to the gross sales tax shall govern the administration, collection, and enforcement of the fee set forth in subsection (a) of this section.

The D.C. Bag Tax: Collusion against Consumers, Wrapped in Green is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Colbert King argues that DC should continue the opportunity scholarships private school choice program on its own dime, instead of complaining that Congress is killing it off. He starts off with a refreshing dose of realpolitik: “It should come as no surprise that Democratic congressional leaders are effectively killing the program. They, and their union allies, didn’t like it in the first place.” Too true. This is what disgusts many Americans about politics, but hey, that’s the reality.

But then he seems to descend into uncharacteristic naivete with this:

If the city likes vouchers so much, why shouldn’t the District bear the cost? The answer is as clear as it may be embarrassing to voucher proponents: D.C. lawmakers don’t want to ask their constituents to shoulder the program’s expense.

That is NOT the answer. DC lawmakers are familiar with DC’s budget. DC’s FY 2009 budget, as I show in this Excel spreadsheet file, allocated $28,170 per pupil for k-12 schooling. And the average voucher amount is not $7,500, as King claims. That’s the maximum. The average is $6,620 – one quarter of what the district is spending on k-12 schooling. So operating the voucher program entirely out of the District of Columbia’s own budget would not cost a dime. And if expanded, it would save DC tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars.

So DC lawmakers are most certainly NOT afraid of asking constituents to pay for it — it would more than pay for itself. What DC lawmakers must be afraid of is that DC schools have become a massive jobs program instead of an educational program. They must fear that if the voucher program were expanded it would put many non-teaching staff out of work — including perhaps some of their own supporters.

Well how about a realpolitik solution to that problem: offer displaced workers 18 months of severance pay at something like 75% of their current salary. That would give them plenty of time to find other work, and it could be paid for from the savings of students migrating from public schools to the voucher program. This would mean that taxpayers would not see savings in the first couple of years, but after that the District would be able to offer taxpayers generous tax cuts while also offering kids significantly better learning opportunities.

Surely the details of such a deal could be hammered out by experienced politicians and negotiators. Because, really, the status quo is insane. Why keep paying $28,000 for a worse education than the voucher program is providing for $6,600? That is sheer madness.

DC Vouchers Solved? Generous Severance for Displaced Workers is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

With its decision today to hear the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court should settle the question of whether states must recognize the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In June of 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court found, for the first time, that the federal government must recognize the Second Amendment right of individuals, quite apart from their belonging to a militia, to have an operational firearm in their home. But the decision left open the question whether states were similarly bound.

Thus, the so-called incorporation doctrine will be at issue in this case – the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporates” the guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the states. The Bill of Rights applied originally only against the federal government. But the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, left open the question of which rights states were bound to recognize. The modern Court has incorporated most of the rights found in the Bill of Rights, but the Second Amendment’s guarantees have yet to be incorporated.

Moreover, a question that will arise in this case is whether the Court, if it does decide that the states are bound by the Second Amendment, will reach that conclusion under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause or under its Privileges or Immunities Clause, which has been moribund since the infamous Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873. In its brief urging the Court to hear the McDonald petition, the Cato Institute urged the Court to revive the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Supremes Take Gun Rights Issue Nationwide is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In my IBD piece today I gave total per pupil spending in DC as $29,000 per pupil. That was based on an official k-12 audited enrollment count of 44,681, which I was told by a district official included the special needs students placed by the district in private schools. It turns out this was not the case, so we have to add in the special needs students to arrive at the total enrollment figure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that enrollment correction into the IBD in time for publication. Its impact on per pupil spending is not large, however.

The grand total audited enrollment was 48,353 students. From that we have to subtract 997 students in adult education programs and 1,498 students in preschool programs who are not covered by my k-12 budget calculations. That leaves us with a k-12 audited enrollment of 45,858. Dividing that in to the District of Columbia’s $1.3 billion k-12 education budget yields a per pupil spending figure of about $28,000.

Slight Correction to My DC Per Pupil Spending Figure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

One year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller. The decision affirmed the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms and invalidated the District of Columbia’s draconian gun control regime.

The case generated a storm of media attention. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief, one of nearly four dozen in the case.

The Cato Institute held a forum for Brian Doherty’s book chronicling this victory for liberty, Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment. The Heller case also figured prominently in Cato multimedia from Robert A. Levy and Clark Neily.

Heller did not settle all of the questions related to the right to keep and bear arms. The incorporation of the Second Amendment against state bans and regulations is currently being litigated across the country. A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states. The Seventh Circuit and Second Circuit disagreed. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit panel that declined to incorporate the Second Amendment, and Roger Pilon notes that this may play into her confirmation hearings. The circuit split on incorporation sets the stage for a further appeal to the Supreme Court, and Alan Gura and the National Rifle Association have both filed petitions for a writ of certiorari. Robert A. Levy discusses this in his recent Cato podcast.

It will be interesting to see what the next year brings for the Second Amendment.

One Year After Heller is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

First, the Democrats in Washington for all intents and purposes killed the District of Columbia’s proven voucher program, but did it with Ninja-like stealth. The weapons: Nearly impossible reauthorization requirements, late Friday announcements, and politically expedient promises to keep kids currently attending good schools from being very publicly booted.

Now it’s Milwaukee’s turn. The new Democratic majority in Madison is on its way to cutting the value of individual vouchers while raising public school per-pupil expenditures, and even worse, is larding new regulations on private schools participating in the choice program. Perhaps the most ridiculous proposed reg: Requiring all participating private schools with student bodies that are more than 10 percent limited English proficient to provide  a “bilingual-bicultural education program.” As if one of the major benefits of choice isn’t that parents can choose such programs if they think they are best for their kids, and can select something else if they don’t! But, of course, political decisions aren’t primarily about what parents want and kids need.

Thankfully, there is a resistance forming to the assault in Milwaukee, with choice advocates now refusing to remain quiet after naively doing so when they were told that fighting back would only make things worse. The choice-supporting national media is also speaking up. But one can’t help but fear that it may be too little, too late.

The Quiet War against School Choice is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The USA Today editorializes this morning in support of the DC voucher program and school choice in general. That’s a shift from last year when Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation had to respond to their dismissal of vouchers. From the enlightened board:

As an Education Department spokesman says, “The unions are not happy.” But 20 million low-income school kids need a chance to succeed. School choice is the most effective way to give it to them.

The shift of center-left elite opinion on school choice is a hugely important development, as I noted with the first wave of mainstream media attention to the DC voucher program’s death-sentence:

When elites unite on mainstream issues, the public’s response is relatively nonideological and lopsided. School choice is progressively mainstreaming, slowly but surely moving from a polarized elite debate to one where the intensity and support is weighted in favor of school choice.

When an issue that used to be considered free-market fringe is embraced as a moral litmus test for politicians by liberal editorial boards, the issue-argument has been won. That’s certainly not to say the policy war has been won, but an important battle toward realizing that goal has been.

The opposition’s intensity and moral certitude is bleeding out one program at a time. School choice is no longer an abstract proposition; faces and lives are attached to the 24 private school-choice programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia. In the past four years, four education tax-credit programs have passed that serve at least low-income children. . .

School-choice opponents might have won the battle over vouchers in the District, but they are losing the larger war. They have inadvertently revealed what’s truly at stake; not funding issues or public school ideology, but our promise to all children of a fair shot at success in life.

Choice opponents are on the wrong side of right and the wrong side of history.

Support for Private School Choice Officially “Mainstream” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The South Carolina legislature is currently considering a tax credit bill intended to give parents an easier choice between public and private schools. It would do this by cutting taxes on parents who pay for their own children’s education, and by cutting taxes on anyone who donates to a non-profit Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). The SGOs would subsidize tuition for low income families (who owe little in taxes and so couldn’t benefit substantially from the direct tax credit). Charleston minister Rev. Joseph Darby opposes such programs, and I support them. We’ve decided to have this dialogue to explain why. The next installment is here.

A Dialogue on School Choice is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Almost a year has passed since the Supreme Court’s decision to extend habeas rights to Guantanamo in Boumediene. Detention policy is currently under review by interagency task forces; it is worth looking at what the developing body of detention rulings say about the future of detention.

Taking prisoners is an unavoidable part of military action. Telling our troops that they can engage identified enemies with lethal force but cannot detain them puts them in an impossible position.

But who can we hold? The Taliban foot soldier is an easy case, but as we move away from the battlefield things get a little fuzzy. A chronological review of the decisions regarding detainee status gives some insight.

Salim Hamdan

The first case comes from the military commissions convened in Guantanamo. Though it predates Boumediene, it puts the question of who is an unlawful enemy combatant in front of a judge.

Salim Hamdan was the petitioner in the Supreme Court case that invalidated military commissions established by executive order. Congress responded to his victory at the Supreme Court with the Military Commissions Act (MCA) to establish legislatively-sanctioned commissions, but their jurisdiction is limited to “alien unlawful enemy combatants.”

Following the passage of the MCA, Hamdan’s defense counsel filed a motion for an additional hearing to determine whether he was a lawful or unlawful combatant. If he was a lawful combatant, then the commission would lack jurisdiction and he might then be prosecuted in a court-martial. Lawful combatants (i) have a commander, (ii) wear uniforms or a distinctive symbol, (iii) bear their arms openly, and (iv) follow the laws of land warfare.

Captain Allred, the officer presiding, granted the defense motion.

Allred found that Hamdan’s service to Al Qaeda as Osama Bin Laden’s driver and occasional bodyguard, pledge of bayat (allegiance) to Bin Laden, training in a terrorist camp, and transport of weapons for Al Qaeda and affiliated forces supported finding him an enemy combatant. Hamdan was captured at a roadblock with two surface-to-air missiles in the back of his vehicle. The Taliban had no air force; the only planes in the sky were American. Hamdan was driving toward Kandahar, where Taliban and American forces were engaged in a major battle. The officer that took Hamdan into custody took pictures of the missiles in Hamdan’s vehicle before destroying them.

Hamdan’s past association with the Ansars (supporters), a regularized fighting unit under the Taliban, did not make him a lawful combatant. Though the Ansars wore uniforms and bore their arms openly, Hamdan was taken into custody in civilian clothes and had no distinctive uniform or insignia.

Based on his “direct participation in hostilities” and lack of actions to make him a lawful combatant, Captain Allred found that Hamdan was an unlawful enemy combatant.

Decisions Under the Enemy Combatant Definition

Following Boumediene, detainees have had their cases heard by federal judges. The District Court for the District of Columbia adopted and applied the following definition, and the government need only prove it by a preponderance of the evidence:

An “enemy combatant” is an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.

District Judge Richard J. Leon moved through these cases quicker than his colleagues and gives us several decisions to look at.

Lakhdar Boumediene, et al.: Five ordered released, one detained. This is the set of six petitioners that won the right to habeas corpus hearings at the Supreme Court. They were picked up in Bosnia and allegedly planned to travel to Afghanistan to fight against American forces. Judge Leon ordered five of the six released because the word of an unnamed informant was simply not enough to justify their detention. Since the evidence was insufficient to determine that a plan to travel to Afghanistan existed, Judge Leon did not reach the question of whether such a plan would constitute “support.” Leon found that the sixth man, Belkalem Bansayah, was an enemy combatant based on corroborating sources and evidence that he was adept in using false passports in multiple fake names and was facilitating the travel of others to fight in Afghanistan. This constituted “support” necessary to find him an enemy combatant.

Hisham Sliti: One detained.  Sliti is a Tunisian who traveled from London to Afghanistan on a false passport. He was detained in 2000 by Pakistani authorities because of his false passport and had an address book with contact information for radical extremists. He escaped back into Afghanistan and was later re-captured fleeing the American military in 2001. Judge Leon found that he had traveled to Afghanistan with the financial support of extremists with well-established ties to Al Qaeda, spent time with Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals, stayed at a guesthouse associated with Al Qaeda that served as barracks for terrorist training camps, and that other guests at the house were instrumental in creating terrorist cells. By his own admission, he knew the location, appearance, and code words used by those attending the nearby training camp.

Moath Hamza Ahmed al Alwi: One detained. Al Alwi is a Yemeni who traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. Judge Leon found that al Alwi could remain in custody based on the evidence that he had trained at Al Qaeda camps, stayed at Al Qaeda guesthouses, fought on two fronts with the Taliban, and did not leave Afghanistan until his Taliban unit was bombed on two or three occasions by American aircraft.

Mohammed el Gharani: One ordered released.  El Gharani is a Saudi who went to Pakistan around 2001. The government alleged that he had been a member of an Al Qaeda cell in London, stayed at an Al Qaeda-affiliated guesthouse, and fought American forces at the battle of Tora Bora. Judge Leon did not find these claims credible, as all of them were based on the word of fellow detainees. The government also alleged that he had been a courier for Al Qaeda, but had insufficient evidence to back up this claim.

In the above cases, six detainees have been ordered released and three met the criteria to be classified as “enemy combatants.”

Transition From “Enemy Combatant” to “Substantial Support”

The Obama administration has since dropped the term “enemy combatant” and changed its claim of detention authority:

The President has the authority to detain persons that the President determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The President also has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in aid of such enemy armed forces.

The first decision under the new definition came down from District Judge Ellen Huvelle.

Yasin Muhammed Basardh: One ordered released. Basardh is a Yemeni who was arrested in early 2002 and transported to Guantanamo Bay. He cooperated with detention authorities, giving information about his fellow detainees. As a result, other detainees physically assaulted him and threatened to kill him. Judge Huvelle determined that widespread disclosure of Basardh’s cooperation with the government renders his prospects for rejoining terrorists “at best, a remote possibility.”

Judicial Review of the Authority to Detain

The definitions of “enemy combatant” and the power claimed by the Obama administration are very similar, and the addition of “substantially” is probably only going to affect marginal cases.

A recent review of the revised claim of detention power broadly approved the government’s power of detention. District Judge Reggie B. Walton accepted, in a slightly modified form, the general power of the government to detain those who have participated in hostilities. In doing so, he rejected a detainee’s claims that the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed after 9/11 did not allow military detention and that detainees must be tried in a civilian court or released.

Judge Walton adopted the following definition for detention decisions:

[I]n addition to the authority conferred upon him by the plain language of the AUMF, the President has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, the Taliban or al-Qaeda forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, provided that the terms “substantially supported” and “part of” are interpreted to encompass only individuals who were members of the enemy organization’s armed forces, as that term is intended under the laws of war, at the time of their capture.

Judge Walton did limit the government’s detention authority to those part of the “command structure” of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This precludes detaining “[s]ympathizers, propagandists, and financiers” that may be part of enemy organizations in an abstract sense but who are not part of the organizations’ command structure. Judge Walton also did not resolve the issue of organizations and individuals “associated” with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Though Judge Walton rejected the petitioners’ “direct participation in hostilities” standard for detention in favor of the government’s “substantial support” standard, he explicitly authorized detention of an Al Qaeda “member tasked with housing, feeding, or transporting” members of the organization. An Al Qaeda cook who trained at a terrorist camp can be detained just as “his comrade guarding the camp entrance.”

The competing definitions can often arrive at the same conclusion. Captain Allred determined that Salim Hamdan was an unlawful enemy combatant for a combination of the “substantial support” activities under the “direct participation in hostilities” standard.

Conclusion

The cases above illustrate that the general principles of detention have not changed significantly with adjusted definitions. The terms “enemy combatant,” “direct participation in hostilities,” and “substantial support” will be interpreted by judges on a case-by-case basis much like a finding of probable cause to issue a warrant or justify a search.

The Jurisprudence of Detention: Definitions and Cases is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There is a new review of Brian Doherty‘s book, Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle over the Second Amendment, over at The American Spectator.

The review captures the uphill battle that the Heller litigants faced in the District of Columbia:

When an employee on the Taxicab Commission once suggested that taxicab drivers be able to arm themselves for self- defense, a spokesman for then mayor Anthony Williams said, “The proposal is nutty, and obviously, it would not be entertained seriously by any thinking person.” After D.C. readjusted its laws in the wake of Heller so that guns were no longer prohibited but regulated to the point of making ownership exceedingly difficult, Mayor Adrian Fenty justified it thusly: “I don’t think [the people of D.C.] intended that anybody who had a vague notion of a threat should have access to a gun.” Apparently the mayor doesn’t know or doesn’t care that once a threat is real, it’s probably too late to go through all of the city’s regulatory hoops.

Cato held a book forum for the event, which is available here.  Also check out Reason TV’s videos of Brian discussing this historic legal battle, both before and after the decision came down.

New Doherty Book Review is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The front page of the tabloid Washington Examiner blares

Violence mars students’ days
Weapons, assaults common at area schools

Now I know that headlines have to be short to fit the space. But a more accurate headline would read

Weapons, assaults common at government-run schools

Fights, sexual assaults, and deadly weapons, described in the article as happening “almost once a day at some area high schools,” are almost nonexistent at private schools. Which is why it’s such a shame that the small number of District of Columbia students who have been granted a voucher to escape the D.C. public schools are going to lose that lifeline if the Democratic majority in Congress gets its way. I once proposed in the Washington Post:

The D.C. school board should declare an educational emergency and offer a voucher good in any private or public school in the District to every student who is assigned to a school that has had a shooting or stabbing or more than one weapon confiscation in the past year, whether on school property or on school buses.

I called it the “voucher trigger provision,” but the Post went with the more sober title “A Right to Safer Schools.”

But the policy shouldn’t be restricted to D.C. students. The Examiner article is in fact not about the D.C. schools; it’s about the suburban schools in Maryland and Virginia. Suburban kids would also benefit from more choice, including the choice to move from dangerous to safe schools.

Vouchers and Violence is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Tomorrow afternoon at 1pm, supporters of Washington DC Opportunity Scholarships will be rallying in Freedom Plaza to save the school voucher program. Why? That’s easy: Because a federal Department of Education study shows that parents are overwhelmingly more satisfied with it than they are with DC’s public schools. Because the same study shows that the program is raising student achievement above the level in the public schools. Because the children participating in it feel it is giving them a chance to realize their full potential in life — a chance that will disappear if the program is allowed to die, as they have attested in numerous YouTube videos.

The harder question is why Congress — particularly congressional Democrats led by Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) — want to kill the vouchers. Their stated reason is that it robs money from needy public schools and gives it to private schools that are already flush from lavish tuition fees.

But the voucher program not only does not take money away from DC public schools, the language of the law actually includes an extra $13 million annually for DC public schools, above their normal funding stream. As for lavish vs. needy schools, it’s true that there’s a huge gap between what is spent per pupil on public education in DC and the average tuition charged at the voucher-accepting private schools: a yawning $20,000 gap. The current year budget for the District of Columbia allocates $26,555 per pupil for k-12 education — up from $24,600 last year. Meanwhile, the Department of Education study linked to above puts the average tuition at voucher schools at $6,620. So vouchers are getting better results at one quarter the cost.

Clearly, Democrats have other reasons for opposing the voucher program, and this letter from the NEA might have a little something to do with it.

Rally to Save DC Vouchers Tomorrow. Why? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Former District of Columbia mayor and current councilman Marion Barry

told church leaders and other opponents of gay marriage Tuesday that he opposed the city council’s decision to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the District.

Calling himself “a politician who is moral,” Barry said he would have voted against the measure if he had been present at the April 6 session.

As a service to our beyond-the-Beltway readers, we should note that Barry is a career politician with 29 years on the public payroll (not counting six months in jail); four wives, one of whom went to jail for embezzling from the federally funded “jobs program” they co-founded;  countless extramarital relationships, many of them consensual; a federal conviction for crack use while mayor; eight years of unpaid taxes; and a virtually unbroken trail of graft and scandal in his four terms as mayor. 

You wonder what the politicians who are not moral are like.

Marion Barry, Defender of Marriage is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cleveland Park, an upscale neighborhood here in the District of Columbia, might be the last place you would expect appeals to the principles of the free market.  It is, after all, the home of what David Brooks once called ”Ward Three Morality,” an outlook that celebrates government control of the economy. But not always.

Recently an entrepreneur proposed opening a new wine store in Cleveland Park. He sought the support of the advisory neighborhood commission, a local government board, before making his case for a liquor license to DC’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board.  The most serious opposition to the entrepreneur’s plans seems to have come from an existing wine store nearby. According to its attorney, the existing wine store was “a beloved extension of the community.” More candidly he noted the new store would offer competition to the existing business. At this point, you might think: the Cleveland Park commission blocked opening of the new business while congratulating themselves on protecting the town from a ruthless “capitalist logic.”

Well, not quite. Peter Fonseca, the lawyer for the entrepreneur, reportedly “urged the commissioners to consider free-market principles when making their decision. ‘This is America.’” And they did: “Commissioner Richard Rothblum agreed, saying commissioners should not get in the way of free enterprise. ‘I don’t think we have any place telling people what their business plan should be.’” The commission then voted 8-0 to support the entrepreneur’s effort at the Alcohol Control Board. The appeal to “free market principles” seems to have carried the day in Cleveland Park!

Perhaps this is only the beginning. If the free market is desirable for fine wines, why not the auto industry and the banks?

Cleveland Park Embraces Free Markets is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday on Fox News’ Special Report, Juan Williams had this to say about Obama’s silence and Duncan’s hostility to the DC voucher program, recently put on the chopping block by Democrats in Congress:

This is an outrage to me. … This is so important that you give young people a chance to have an education in America and especially in a failing public school system like you have in the District of Columbia. This voucher system is a direct threat to the unions. And so I think everybody on Capitol Hill, that’s getting money from the NEA or AFT, they should be called on the table. They should ask them, ‘where do you send your kids to school? And are you willing to say these kids getting the vouchers…and doing better than the rest of the kids, that these kids aren’t deserving of an opportunity to succeed in America?’ You just want to scream. Why Duncan and Obama aren’t in the forefront of education reform is an outrage and an insult to the very base that voted for them.

But we don’t have to ask President Obama where he sends his kids to school, do we? We already know he sends them to the prestigious private Sidwell Friends school also attended by several of the poor DC voucher students. But those voucher students will only remain classmates of Sasha and Malia for another year or so. After that, they’re out… because Barack Obama lacks the courage, the wisdom, or both to get his own party behind this program — a program that his own education department has shown is a success. Better results at a quarter the cost, and the reaction of our unified Democratic government ranges from outright opposition to malign neglect.

Future generations will look back on these politicians and bureaucrats as the Oral Faubuses of the 21st century. Like Faubus, they will ultimately fail.

Like Faubus, their names will live in infamy.

Juan Williams Blasts Obama, Duncan on Vouchers is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

D.C. Vouchers: Better Results at a QUARTER the Cost is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog