Monday Links
- “Sadly, in Egypt’s case, a freely elected civilian government may prove powerless in the face of the deeply entrenched and well-organized military.”
- “Washington politicians from both parties, and bureaucrats, have for decades successfully decreased our freedom and liberties as they have regulated more and more of our lives, including our retirement.”
- “The Ryan proposal correctly focuses on achieving debt reduction through spending cuts, but this very gradual debt reduction schedule is a weakness that could lead to its downfall.”
- “Nearly two years ago Sen. McCain, along with Senators Graham and Lieberman, was supping with Qaddafi in Tripoli, discussing the possibility of Washington providing military aid.”
- Cato media fellow Radley Balko joined FOX Business Network’s Stossel recently to discuss your right to make video recordings of police, and why exercising that right frequently is vital to liberty:
REAL ID: An Afterthought, Tacked On
Yesterday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had a hearing entitled: “Ten Years After 9/11: A Report From the 9/11 Commission Chairmen,” part of what evidently will be a series commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this September.
At the end of his oral statement, former 9/11 Commission co-chairman Tom Keane made a half-hearted pitch for implementation of the REAL ID Act, the national ID law Congress passed attached to a military spending bill in early 2005. His written statement with fellow former co-chair Lee Hamilton dedicates three paragraphs (out of 23 pages) to the appeal for the national ID law.
The paltriness of Keane’s argument for a national ID parallels the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report. It dedicated three-quarters of a page (out of 400+ pages) to identity documents. The 9/11 Commission report did not detail how a national ID would have secured against 9/11 in any way that is remotely cost-effective. Indeed, nobody ever has, much less how having a national ID would secure against future attacks.
In his testimony, Governor Keane touted the expertise of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group, with which he is affiliated. Given all that expertise and the supposed urgency of implementing the national ID law, you would think that the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Web site would have a definitive articulation of how REAL ID would secure the country. It doesn’t.
At the time it was rammed through Congress, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) spoke out against REAL ID on the Senate floor:
I urge my colleagues to oppose the REAL ID Act. We must ask our Senate conferees not to allow such a controversial measure to be pushed through Congress on an emergency spending bill. The REAL ID Act contradicts our historic identity as a nation that provides haven for the oppressed. The REAL ID Act would not make us safer. It would make us less safe.
If the 9/11 Commission co-chairs, the Bipartisan Policy Center, or any other set of advocates want to go to battle over REAL ID, they should make their best case for having this national ID. Tell us how it would work, and how it would defeat the counterattacks and complications of national-scale identity systems. Anyone attempting to do so can expect a schooling from yours truly, of course. The alternative, which I recommend, is to drop the national ID advocacy and work on things that cost-effectively secure the country without sacrificing our freedom and privacy.
No to No-Fly Zones
My Washington Examiner column this week is on the growing drumbeat for military action in Libya. That allegedly serious people are proposing, as Defense Secretary Gates puts it, “the use of the US military in another country in the Middle East,” ought to be appalling. If the last ten years haven’t convinced you that a little prudence and caution might serve us well in foreign policy, what would?
Recently Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the Bobbsey Twins of knee-jerk interventionism, chastised Obama for dragging his feet on the path toward war. They called for arming the rebels and implementing a no-fly zone, for starters.
“I love the military,” Sen. McCain complained “but they always seem to find reasons why you can’t do something rather than why you can.” Alas, “can’t is the cancer of happen,” as Charlie Sheen reminded us recently.
Even so, I argue in the column, there are good reasons to resist the call for this supposedly “limited” measure.
But let’s stipulate that NATO warplanes (mainly U.S. fighters, of course) could deny pro-Gadhafi forces the ability to deploy air power. That would not impede their ability to murder on the ground. What then?
NATO flew more than 100,000 sorties in Operation Deny Flight, the no-fly zone imposed over Bosnia from 1993 to 1995, yet that wasn’t enough to prevent ethnic cleansing or the killing of thousands of Bosnians in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
It did, however, help pave the way for a wider war and a 12-year nation-building mission. In for a penny, in for a pound — intervention tends to have a logic of its own.
This is a good occasion, then, to reflect on a fundamental question: What is the U.S. military for? Humanitarian interventionists on the Left and the Right seem to view it as an all-purpose tool for spreading good throughout the world — something like the “Super Friends” who, in the Saturday morning cartoons of my youth, scanned the monitors at the Hall of Justice for “Trouble Alerts,” swooping off regularly to do battle with evil.
Our Constitution takes a narrower view. It empowers Congress to set up a military establishment for “the common defence … of the United States,” the better to achieve the Preamble’s goal of “secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Armed liberation of oppressed peoples the world over wasn’t part of the original mission.
Funny enough, when he first got to Washington, John McCain occasionally appreciated the virtues of foreign policy restraint. As Matt Welch recounts in his book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick: “In September 1983, as a freshman congressman and loyal foot soldier of the Reagan revolution, John McCain voted against a successful measure to extend the deployment of US Marines in war-torn Lebanon.” In a speech on the House floor, McCain argued that “The fundamental question is, what is the United States’ interest in Lebanon?…. The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave.”
Later, Welch writes that, in 1987, when President Reagan reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, offering them “US Navy protection against a threatening Iran, McCain was livid.” He took to the pages of the Arizona Republic to complain that the move was “a dangerous overreaction in perhaps the most violent and unpredictable region in the world…. American citizens are again be asked to place themselves between warring Middle East factions, with…. no real plan on how to respond if the situation escalates.”
It’s been a long time since Senator McCain made such good sense on foreign policy.
The Internet Kill-Switch Debate
Experienced debaters know that the framing of an issue often determines the outcome of the contest. Always watch the slant of the ground that debaters stand on.
The Internet kill-switch debate is instructive. Last week, Senators Lieberman (I-CT), Collins (R-ME) and Carper (D-DE) introduced a newly modified bill that seeks to give the government authority to seize power over the Internet or parts of it. The old version was widely panned.
In a statement about the new bill, they denied that it should be called a “kill switch,” of course–that language isn’t good for their cause after Egypt’s ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak illustrated what such power means. They also inserted a section called the “Internet Freedom Act.” It’s George Orwell with a clown nose, a comically ham-handed attempt to make it seem like the bill is not a government power-grab.
But they also said this: “The emergency measures in our bill apply in a precise and targeted way only to our most critical infrastructure.”
Accordingly, much of the reportage and commentary in this piece by Declan McCullagh explores whether the powers are indeed precisely targeted.
These are important and substantive points, right? Well, only if you’ve already conceded some more important ones, such as:
1) What authority does the government have to seize, or plan to seize, private assets? Such authority would be highly debatable under any of the constitutional powers kill-switchers might claim. Indeed, the constitution protects against, or at least severely limits, takings of private property in the Fifth Amendment.
and
2) Would it be a good idea to have the government seize control of the Internet, or parts of it, under some emergency situation? A government attack on our private communications infrastructure would almost certainly undercut the reliability and security of our networks, computers and data.
The proponents of the Internet kill-switch have not met their burden on either of these fundamental points. Thus, the question of tailoring is irrelevant.
I managed to get in a word to this effect in the story linked above. “How does this make cybersecurity better? They have no answer,” I said. They really don’t.
No amount of tailoring can make a bad idea a good one. The Internet kill-switch debate is not about the precision or care with which such a policy might be designed or implemented. It’s about the galling claim on the part of Senators Lieberman, Collins and Carper that the U.S. government can seize private assets at will or whim.
Is Wikileaks Libertarian?
In response to Wikileaks’ complaints that Amazon.com will no longer host the whisteblower site’s activities, Chris Moody, over at the Daily Caller, writes:
Unfortunately for WikiLeaks’ argument, Amazon is a private company that can legally sever ties with anyone it wants. If anything, the company is exercising its right to free speech and association by choosing not to work with another independent organization.
That’s correct, though I would add that it was Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, who bullied Amazon into cutting Wikileaks from its server. Thus, it was partially government coercion, not private consent, that severed a business relationship.
As an aside, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in a recent interview with Forbes that he is influenced by “American libertarianism, market libertarianism.” (Hat tip: Reason’s Matt Welch.) For more on Assange, check out his old website.
Kerry and Lieberman Unveil Their Climate Bill: Such a Deal!
I see that my colleague Sallie James has already blogged on the inherent protectionism in the Senate’s long-awaited cap-and-tax bill. A summary was leaked last night by The Hill.
Well, we now have the real “discussion draft” of “The American Power Act” [APA], sponsored by John Kerry (D-NH) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Lindsay Graham (R-SC) used to be on the earlier drafts, but excused himself to have a temper tantrum.
So, while Sallie talked about the trade aspects of the bill, I’d like to blather about the mechanics, costs, and climate effects. If you don’t want to read the excruciating details, stop here and note that it mandates the impossible, will not produce any meaningful reduction of planetary warming, and it will subsidize just about every form of power that is too inefficient to compete today.
The Lieberman-Brown Bill Merely Updates Expatriation Law for the 21st Century
Stripping the citizenship of those who take up arms against the United States is not a controversial proposition. Indeed, under existing law, American citizenship can be taken away from any adult who, among other actions, makes a formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state, serves in the armed forces of a foreign state if such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or commits any act of treason against the United States. The Lieberman-Brown bill, which adds to that list the provision of material support to State Department-recognized terrorist organizations (most notably Al Qaeda) or actively engaging in hostilities against the United States, is thus not problematic on its face. It merely clarifies, in an age where America’s enemies aren’t necessarily other countries, that a person need not ally himself with a hostile “foreign state” to risk expatriation.
Still, the Terrorist Expatriation Act does raise concerns about how the new citizenship-stripping provisions would be applied. Expatriation is a serious remedy that is warranted only in the most serious cases — such as, indeed, treason or taking up arms against your own country. If and when the act becomes law, courts will maintain a high bar for what constitutes “material support” of terrorist organizations (such that it constitutes relinquishing U.S. nationality), and the subject of the expatriation action will — under existing law that will remain unchanged — have notice and opportunity to challenge the decision.
In short, this is neither a radical threat to civil liberties nor an ineffectual political stunt. Assuming the above constitutional protections remain in place, the expansion of federal expatriation law should be seen as a prudent, necessary, and uncontroversial measure that deals with the realities of the modern world.
The ‘What Reasonable Doubt?’ Act of 2010
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA), joined on the House side by Reps. Jason Altmire (D-PA) and Charlie Dent (R-PA), today introduced a little publicity stunt in legislative form called the Terrorist Expatriation Act, making good on Lieberman’s pledge to find a way to strip the citizenship of Americans—whether naturalized or native born—who are suspected of aiding terrorist groups. It does so by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lays out the various conditions under which a person may renounce or be deprived of citizenship.
A couple things to note about this:
First, the act as it stands now contains a provision that could probably be used to revoke the citizenship of terrorists. One of the ways to trigger the loss of citizenship is by:
committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them…
So why isn’t this enough to satisfy them? Well, I left off the very end of the clause:
if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Needless to say, actually “bearing arms against the United States” is a rather more serious offense than providing “material support” for terrorist groups. Indeed, someone who knowingly provides funding or “expert assistance” (including legal or humanitarian aid) to a designated group may, under current law, be guilty of providing “material support.” Yet these more serious acts of betrayal still require that someone be convicted in court before the penalty of expatriation can be imposed. If they want to revoke Faisal Shahzad’s citizenship, they can do it already: just convict him of one of those offenses.
Citizen Shahzad
Two smart guys on opposite sides of the political spectrum have sound points about the treatment of suspected Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. First, Orin Kerr points out that investigators have some flexibility in determining when and whether to read Miranda rights. In this case, they refrained initially and questioned Shahzad for a while under the public safety exception. And despite the apparent belief of the perpetually terrorized that Miranda warnings are some kind of magical incantation that causes the cone of silence to descend upon blabbermouths, they determined that he would probably continue cooperating even after being Mirandized. But as Kerr points out, they could have proceeded sans Miranda had that seemed necessary—provided they were willing to waive the ability to introduce Shahzad’s confession at trial. Given that there appears to be plenty of other evidence against him, that might well have been a viable option.
Either way, this surely seems like the kind of judgment call best left to the investigators on the scene, not Monday morning quarterbacks in Congress like Rep. Peter King (R-NY) who gave us this priceless reaction:
“Did they Mirandize him? I know he’s an American citizen but still,” King said.
Putting aside that nauseating “but still,” does King really imagine that he possesses some deep insight into the pernicious effect of Miranda warnings that the agents on the ground lacked? Again, Shahzad is apparently still cooperating—maybe they knew what they were doing.
From Steve Benen, meanwhile, we have one of many posts around the blogosphere pointing out the incoherence of a cowardly proposal mooted by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that would revoke the citizenship of Americans who join foreign terror groups. The blindingly obvious question: By what process do we determine that a suspected member of a foreign terror group is really a member of a foreign terror group? As Glenn Greenwald writes, there’s not much point to having a Bill of Rights if the government gets to revoke those rights at its whim. But no, Lieberman wants to assure us that suspects would have a right to challenge the revocation of their citizenship in a court—a civilian court, one hopes. Except giving material support to a foreign terror groups is, in fact, a crime. If there’s enough evidence to persuade a court of law that someone is a member of such a group—congratulations, there’s enough evidence to convict them in the civilian system as well! It’s heartening that there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of support for this odious proposal, but depressing that a sitting senator would treat the rights of citizenship so lightly for the sake of a vapid, strutting display of “toughness.”
Ten Protectionist Senators Pay Lip-Service to International Trade Rules
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D, OH), along with eight other “usual suspects,” yesterday sent a letter to Senators John Kerry (D, MA), Joe Lieberman (I, CT) and Lindsey Graham (R, SC), outlining what’s necessary for their support of the latter’s climate green jobs bill (there seems to be some confusion about the precise purpose). The math, assuming that Republicans vote as a block to defeat the bill, requires that these senators’ demands be met if the Democrats are to overcome a filibuster and pass the bill.
So what exactly do they want? The main thrust of their demands seems to be for U.S. manufacturing’s competitiveness to be “addressed,” including by asking for the bill to “invest” (don’t you just love the way that word is used in the public policy context?) in retooling, R&D, and “support [for] American manufacturers of clean energy technology,” among other requirements.
Of course, no letter from these folks* would be complete without the obligatory calls for a “level playing field.” Their wish-list therefore also includes provisions to ”apply border measures to prevent carbon leakage”. That, my friends, is a clear reference to carbon tariffs. The senators explain their concerns as follows:
An automatically triggered border measure is necessary to promote comparable action from other countries and prevent carbon leakage. To avoid undermining the environmental objective of the climate legislation, a WTO-consistent border adjustment measure, which the WTO has recognized as a usable tool in combating climate change, should apply to imports from countries that do not have in place comparable greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements to those adopted by the United States. A border adjustment measure is critical to ensuring that climate change legislation will be trade neutral and environmentally effective.
Much of these sentiments are familiar. Indeed, I have combatted some of the myths implicit in the statement, including why “carbon leakage” might be a bit of a red herring, in my paper from September 2009, “A Harsh Climate for Trade,” and at a Hill brief I gave on this topic last year.
Playing Chicken Again
As I wrote in this post, Senators McCain and Lieberman proposed a broad piece of anti-terrorism legislation. The Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 would use military detention to incapacitate suspected domestic terrorists, including American citizens. This is a sea change in counterterrorism policy and a break from American principles that mandate a day in court.
This bill is a bad idea for several reasons. First, for the points that I made in my previous post, the civilian criminal justice system successfully incapacitates domestic terrorists. Our laws are built to do that — it’s the international nature of al Qaeda and the necessity of military force in the expeditionary conflicts we are fighting that make things different. Second, I doubt that this policy will be seen as a bonanza for domestic counterterrorism, and the agencies responsible tasked with using military detention won’t actually have much use for it. Third, and most importantly, detaining American citizens minus a suspension of habeas is unconstitutional and will be held so in court.
The policy prescribed under this bill is to direct anyone apprehended and suspected of terrorism into military custody for their initial interrogation. The bill bars them from being read Miranda rights, directs a high-value detainee interrogation group to determine whether or not they fit the bill as an unprivileged enemy belligerent (Military Commissions Act 2009 language for unlawful enemy combatant), and further directs authorities to submit this information to Congress. Anyone designated as an enemy belligerent can be detained until the cessation of hostilities, which amounts to whenever Congress says that the war on terrorism is over.
The kicker is that aliens detained domestically under this system must be tried by a military commission. Citizens cannot be tried by military commissions, and the jurisdictional language in the Military Commissions Act (MCA) reflects this. Basically, the government would collect a bunch of intelligence that is inadmissible in federal courts and then hold American citizens indefinitely. Also, detaining large numbers of Muslim aliens (who may have strong ties to local Muslim communities) and prosecuting them in military commissions threatens to radicalize citizens who are Muslims. The perceived double standard — commissions for Muslims in America, civilian trials for everyone else — is counterproductive when it comes to defeating terrorist recruiting.
I say that this won’t be a bonanza for the intelligence community because I see this scenario playing out in three ways:
Average vs. Marginal Effects of Health Insurance
I have to thank Ezra Klein. I have for some time been trying, without success, to spark a debate about whether expanding health insurance coverage would actually save any lives. Even my bet with Karen Davenport seemed to go nowhere. But when Klein accused Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) of being “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people” because Lieberman was jeopardizing passage of legislation that would expand health insurance to 30 million people, Klein made a debate possible.
Following on my first response to Klein that the evidence supporting his claim is remarkably thin, others have joined the discussion. Matt Yglesias of the Center for American Progress rose to Klein’s defense. Megan McArdle (in The Atlantic magazine and her blog) and Tyler Cowen (at Marginal Revolution) both argue that we don’t really know if Klein’s claim is true.
Today, Yglesias poses the following question on his Twitter page:
Do rightwingers really believe that US health insurance has no mortality-curbing impact?
I see two problems. First, there are no right-wingers in this debate. McArdle, Cowen, and I all support gay marriage, for example.
Second, Yglesias sets up a straw man. He asks whether health insurance on average has a positive impact on mortality, when the debate is actually over the effect of health insurance at the margin. In other words, would covering the uninsured save lives?
I don’t know anyone who thinks health insurance has zero effect on mortality overall. Yet it is entirely possible for the average effect to be positive and the marginal effect to be zero. One reason may be that the uninsured do benefit from the human and physical capital that health insurance makes possible. It may also be the case that when the uninsured do obtain health insurance, the additional medical care they receive is more likely to harm them than to help them. The researchers behind the RAND Health Insurance Experiment make essentially the same point.
If the marginal effect of health insurance on health is zero, it raises other interesting questions. Would it also have zero effect on health outcomes if we were to reduce the number of people with health insurance? What is the size of the margin over which health insurance has zero impact? (Robin Hanson suggests it may be very, very large.)
Klein recently declined an invitation to debate these issues at Cato. Too bad. This is worth pursuing.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
