buy windows 7

Resize: A A A

Bruce Thornton

Nature Fakery

| February 22, 2012 | 11:44 am

At the turn of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt became embroiled in a public controversy over how some writers and naturalists described the natural world in overly anthropomorphic and sentimental terms. In a 1907 article attacking Jack London, among other writers, Roosevelt popularized the moniker “nature fakers,” those writers whom Roosevelt called “an object of derision to every scientist worthy of the name, to every real lover of the wilderness, to every faunal naturalist, to every true hunter or nature lover. But it is evident that [the nature faker] completely deceives many good people who are wholly ignorant of wild life.”

The “nature” the sentimentalists described was not the real nature, but one conjured from old myths and imaginative projections of human ideals onto an inhuman natural world. Unfortunately, a century later “nature fakers” are still promoting their sentimental myths about nature, only now with serious repercussions for our national interests and security.

These days “nature fakery” lives on in school curricula and popular culture, from Earth Day celebrations to Disney cartoons like Pocahontas. Only now this myth is renamed “environmentalism” and disguised with a patina of scientific authority. Worse yet, this allegedly scientific information provides the basis for government policies that impact our economic productivity and national security. The furor over global warming illustrates this unholy alliance of ancient myth and misleading science. For years we have heard claims that the evidence for global warming caused by human-generated “greenhouse gas” is “incontrovertible,” as the American Physical Society claimed last year in a policy statement, and that “if no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur.”

Continue reading Bruce Thornton…

Resize: A A A

Richard Epstein

The Oil Market Panic

| February 21, 2012 | 11:09 am

The high price of oil is once again a front page story in The New York Times. Part one of its story asks why the prices are high now. Part two of that story asks what, if anything, should be done in response to those price increases. The short answer to the first question is that the increase in prices is due to contractions in the supply of oil driven by the instability in the Middle East. The short answer to the second question is that we should do nothing at all.

The greatest casualty of the current debate over the price of oil is to turn sensible market responses to its scarcity into grist for a political mill in an election year. The blame game between the political parties is likely to lead to flawed reform proposals that offer no short-term relief, but do impair the long-term efficiency of oil markets.

Without question, the problem can be traced back to a renegade Iran. For good and sufficient political reasons, the West has come to see that the Iranian nuclear threat is not just bluster. Indeed, it poses far greater risks to world peace and the political order than even a major disruption in oil supplies.

Hence an anxious West has now put into place a reasonably effective concerted effort to cut off Iran from the world’s banking system, and to block the use of Iranian oil internationally, which has been made easier by the Saudis’ willingness to expand their own shipments into the world markets. Nor have the Iranians sat back idly. They have cut off exports to the United Kingdom and France, a move that is largely symbolic. But the Iranian threat to close theStrait of Hormuz, through which about one-third the world’s oil supplies travel, is not symbolic. Nor is the movement of the U.S. aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, into the Strait of Hormuz, merely symbolic.

Continue reading Richard Epstein…

Resize: A A A

Paul Gregory

There Is Still No Greek Solution

| February 21, 2012 | 10:05 am

The press is again full of reports that the troika (IMF, EU, and ECB) have reached an agreement on Greece. Markets will again rise, until they see that little has happened.

The troika has agreed to release a new tranche of rescue funds to stave off a March Greek default. Private lenders have agreed to their haircut (but that had really been decided a long time ago). The rescue funds will probably be doled out slowly to make sure that Greece meets its end of the bargain and cuts wages and public sector employment.

With an election coming up (and the public vehemently against outside intervention and austerity), Greece cannot meet its end of the bargain. Greece can only do so by agreeing to be governed by external bodies, such as the troika, which spells the end (temporarily perhaps) of Greece independence.

This is one of a hundred of steps that remain to be taken before we can say that Greece has been rescued.

Resize: A A A

Jack Goldsmith

Wikileaks, Government Prosecutions, Secrecy

| February 21, 2012 | 9:02 am

In his NYT column today, Bill Keller argues that Wikileaks “was a hell of a story and a wild collaboration, but it did not herald, as the documentarians yearn to believe, some new digital age of transparency. In fact, if there is a larger point, it is quite the contrary.”  After bemoaning the Obama administration’s clampdown on digital information and its relatively aggressive pursuit of government leakers, he states the larger point: “The most palpable legacy of the WikiLeaks campaign for transparency is that the U.S. government is more secretive than ever.”

Keller is right that the Wikileaks phenomenon was overblown.  Bradley’s Manning’s leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified documents and related information were the result of the government’s unbelievably lax digital security system.  Assange’s enterprise for receiving and distributing the information depended on this “push” model of leaking that the government has moved aggressively to prevent.

But it does not follow that the government is more secretive than ever.   Yes, the government is bigger than ever.  Yes, it classifies more information than ever.  And yes, it is pursuing leakers more aggressively than ever.  But the government by many other measures is losing the war against leaks.  The size of the secrecy bureaucracy makes secrets harder than ever to keep.  So too do modern information technologies, which enables journalists and non-journalists around the globe to watch, collaborate, and report on “secret” USG activity like never before.  They can also use massive databases and search capabilities to uncover government action, as they did, for example, in uncovering the CIA’s “secret” prisons.  We read about intimate details of covert actions and other classified programs on the front pages of newspapers so often that we have become inured to the fact that this information is not supposed to be in the public realm.

Continue reading Jack Goldsmith…

Resize: A A A

Gary Becker

Illegal Immigration

| February 21, 2012 | 8:00 am

I agree with Posner that illegal immigrants are generally productive members of the labor force, and make relatively little use of taxpayer-funded programs, such as Medicaid and other welfare programs. On the other hand, they pay little in taxes since they are frequently paid in cash and often do not pay either social security taxes or income taxes. In effect, they largely receive as take home pay what they add to the output of the country.

It is also abundantly clear that, despite the rhetoric in the Republican campaign debates, the US will never try to ship 11 million illegal immigrants back to Mexico or the other countries they came from. Some form of de facto amnesty may be inevitable for the vast majority of these immigrants. Still, I find it difficult to simply accept wholesale violation of US immigration laws, especially since, as Posner indicates, illegal immigration will pick up again as the American economy continues to recover from the Great Recession. Further immigration from Mexico is surely to be expected as long as typical young Mexican workers can increase their earnings several fold by migrating illegally to the United States.

Beyond amnesty, what can be done to discourage further illegal immigration to America, and reduce the number of illegal immigrants who are already here?  Perhaps extending the wall on the Mexican-US border would help a lot, although I anticipate that would-be illegal immigrants and their “mules” would create additional crossing points into the United States where there is no wall.

A more promising approach is to tighten the enforcement of laws against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Continue reading Gary Becker…

Resize: A A A

Bill Whalen

If It Ain’t Brokered, Don’t Fix It?

| February 20, 2012 | 3:04 pm

Every four years, political scribes dream of a “brokered” national convention (i.e., no one with enough delegates to secure a first-ballot nomination) much the same way football junkies want the Super Bowl to go into overtime.

The latter’s never happened in its 46 installments.

And the former? Non-predetermined political conventions are as about a rare occurrence – the most recent being 1976 and the Republican gathering in Kansas City, where Gerald Ford ultimately trumped Ronald Reagan.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the speculation that 2012 could produce something different – the GOP undecided on its nominee heading into the Aug. 27-30 Republican National Conventionin Tampa, Fla.

The thinking goes like this:

  1. Mitt Romney loses the Feb. 28 vote in Michigan (his boyhood home) and perhaps the other state up for grabs next Tuesday, Arizona. Panic ensues within GOP moneyed circles; they go shopping for someone new to keep the nomination from going to Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul.
  2. That certain “someone” indeed takes the plunge (former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell are two names being bandied about, along with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as examples of noncontroversial consensus-builders). Circle this date on the calendar: March 23, the filing deadline for the June 5 primary in California. New Jersey (April 2 filing deadline) also votes on the first Tuesday in June – combined, that’s 222 delegates (about half the number of delegates at stake on March 6 “Super Tuesday”).
  3. The Republican caucuses and primaries run their course (21 states voting after March), with the vote splitting four and five ways (assuming the current four hopefuls stay in the race). With no candidate in reach of the goal line, the insiders gather in Tampa and start flexing muscle/cutting deals to secure the nomination for the late entrant. Maybe no smoke-filled rooms in our politically correct times, but lots of political intrigue.

As entertaining as all of that sounds, here are a three reasons why a “brokered” convention once again may elude us.

  1. If Someone Takes the Plunge? Think back to Chicago and the summer in 1968. Our scenario begins with a big-name Republican having a change of mind and jumping into the race – what Bobby Kennedy did in 1968 (RFK announcing on March 16 of that year, just four days after LBJ’s narrow win in New Hampshire). Here’s the reality of RFK’s bid to “rescue” the Democratic Party: he won but four states (only 13 holding primaries that year) and less than 400 delegates (1,312 needed for the nomination). Had he have lived to see the national convention, let’s assume RFK would have needed to cut a deal with the other “peace” candidate, Eugene McCarthy, to overcome Hubert Humphrey’s advantage with the party establishment. In 2012, a late entrant likewise will be delegate-challenged – that California-New Jersey sum of 222 delegates just one-fifth of the 1,114 needed to win. Btw, 1968 and that other troubled convention year, 1976, have this in common: the warring party lost that fall’s election.
  2. What Defines “Consensus Candidate”? It’s not like the Republicans have an elder statesman/eligible former President waiting in the wings. There’s no audience for the last GOP nominee, John McCain. His running mate, Sarah Palin, would meet with the same electability concerns dogging Santorum and Gingrich (just ask Donald Trump). Chris Christie? He brings two qualities conservatives deem lacking in Romney: pugnacity and a gubernatorial record he can tout. On the other hand, the right won’t like his views on global warming. A similar problem would exist for Mitch Daniels, a budget samurai who in the past displeased the right by voicing concerns about the culture wars. Bottom line: a white knight is a noble concept – and a royal headache for those seeking the holy grail of party unity.
  3. And What of Voters? Here’s one way to look at the Republican field: a series of moments defined by a series of rejections. Romney surged in New Hampshire and was rejected by South Carolinians. Gingrich, the beneficiary of that vote, was then rejected by Floridians in favor or Romney . . . who, after winning in Nevada, was promptly rejected by the good people of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri in favor of Santorum. Let’s see if the pattern holds next week and fickle voters shift back to Romney, or Santorum manages to add to his momentum. However, should a clear winner emerge on the morning after Super Tuesday – let’s arbitrarily define that as half of that day’s 10 states – there’s a chance that voters could fall in line. Consider this survey, which shows that GOP voters want one of the current contenders to start pulling ahead – and they don’t want an unsettled convention come summertime. So, on some subconscious level, GOP primary voters are rooting against a “brokered” convention. A majority of those respondents also think the rollercoaster campaign isn’t hurting their party’s cause. The message, perhaps: it ain’t brokered; don’t fix it.

Resize: A A A

Paul Gregory

Widow Martha Pays More than Warren Buffett and His Secretary Combined

| February 19, 2012 | 12:05 pm

Scene: Senate Committee on Finance Hearing Room. Date: Sometime in 2012. Martha, a stylish attractive woman in her 70s, raises a shaking right hand as she is sworn in. The network cameras are notably absent. They have been told by their management to stay away.  CSpan is covering another hearing and Fox News has been delayed.

Senator John Coburn (R Oklahoma) begins the questioning:

Coburn: We are meeting here to discuss the President’s proposal to raise the rate of taxation on capital gains from 15 to 23.8 percent. We understand that you have particular views on this subject.

Martha: Yes sir. I am a widow. I live in a nice retirement community inHouston, Texas. My social security check pays for most of my living expenses, and I do some part time work. But I have to cover the rest by selling off the stock I own.

Coburn: So you are one of the millions of ordinary Americans who own stock?

Martha: Yes, my late husband Sam was pretty good when it came to investments. Before he died ten years ago, he told me to hold on to my stocks as long as I could. He was particularly high on Massachusetts Investors Trust. Barron’s lists it in its “Best Mutual Fund Family,” I am told. All I can say is that Sam trusted this company. He had a big share of his assets in Massachusetts Investor’s Trust.

Coburn: How have these stocks been doing? We all know the market has been down.

Martha: My stocks have not done well since Sam died, especially the last five years. But I need more money to pay my bills, so I finally sold my Massachusetts Investor Trusts. In December, I sold $20,000 worth of shares and my broker told me that my capital gain was $2,600, and that I would have to pay a tax of $390.

Continue reading Paul Gregory…

Resize: A A A

Paul Gregory

Obama at Boeing to Praise the Dreamliner He Almost Killed

| February 19, 2012 | 8:23 am

I am surprised President Obama showed his face at Boeing Corporation last Friday in Washington state to cheering union crowds to praise Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, declaring eloquently: “I am here to sell stuff.”

As the Times account reported:

“the White House also carefully calibrated the optics of the trip, choosing to visit a unionized Boeing plant in Washington State just a few months after the NLRB dropped a lawsuit against Boeing over complaints it built a nonunion plant in South Carolina to retaliate against the union in Washington State for strikes.”

Indeed, the Obama administration’s NLRB held Boeing’s multi-billion Boeing 787 hostage by ruling it could not build an extra production facility for the  Dreamliner in right-to-work South Carolina (after Boeing had already completed construction of its new plant there). The Obama administration blackmailed Boeing just as it was to begin mass production of its 787 aircraft – a project already four years behind schedule and facing stiff competition from Europe’s Airbus 380. 

The Obama administration was telling the nation’s premier manufacturing exporter where it must do business or else.

Had Boeing not caved to its Washington State unions on a new contract, the Dreamliner would have still be in limbo today.

And Obama, the President who threatened to ruin the project on which Boeing’s fate depends, stood before cheering crowds in Washington state to praise Boeing and its new 787, as "the perfect example of American ingenuity."

What nerve! What chutzpah! I imagine the Republicans will wish to revisit this mugging on behalf of organized labor during the election campaign.

Resize: A A A

Kori Schake

Good News From Afghanistan

| February 18, 2012 | 4:16 pm

So much bad news emanates from Afghanistan — terrorism, drug trafficking, corruption, incapacity of the government, public support for the Taliban, attacks on coalition forces by the Afghan police and military we are training, the damage done our strategy by the President’s politically-driven withdrawal timelines — that the good news is often overlooked or deemed unimportant.  This is a mistake generally, wrongly coloring attitudes about the war and our progress in it.

This week something small but hugely important occurred in Afghanistan: their military leadership concluded an investigation into the attacks on U.S. and other coalition forces, and has made policy recommendations to their government to reduce the incidence of attacks.  Principal among their recommendations is requiring the families of Afghan security forces to reside in Afghanistan. 

If adopted by the Karzai government, the policy would require tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and potentially police (if the policy is applied to all security forces) to either leave their employment or relocate their families from Pakistan back to the country in whose armed forces they are ostensibly serving.  The restriction will predominantly affect Pashtun Afghans, who now comprise 40% of the military, roughly equivalent to their proportion of the population.  But Pashtun comprise a far higher percentage of the Taliban: it is essentially a Pashtun movement. 

Infiltrators are a major problem in the Afghan military and police.  Coalition forces have been attacked by their Afghan counterparts 45 times since May 2007.  Al Qaeda and the Taliban are losing the military campaign and so are adapting their approach toward creating fear and distrust between coalition forces and Afghan security.  And it’s working: the French accelerated their withdrawal timeline after Afghan security forces being trained by France killed four French soldiers.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy said “the French army isn’t in Afghanistan to be shot at by Afghan soldiers." 

Give the bad guys credit, it’s a smart and sophisticated approach, probing for the politico-military vulnerability of our strategy, which relies fundamentally on building the capacity of Afghan security forces to take over the work we are currently doing.  We have recruited 350,000 Afghans for the security forces, and are budgeted to spend $11.2 billion next year to recruit, train, and equip them.  To the extent that President Obama will allow the advice of our military commanders to affect his timeline, the pace of our withdrawal will be dictated by the success of that Afghan training program.

Several things are important about the Afghan military recommendation to require residency in Afghanistan for its security forces.  First, that the Afghan military even conducted the review means they understand how debilitating to our support these attacks are.   Our review concluded the attacks are often motivated by personal disrespect or grievance; the Afghans chose a more systematic and plausible explanation.  Their review identifies a strong correlation between Pakistani residence and attacks.  Soldiers with families in Pakistan have greater exposure to Taliban living there, have families that can be made hostages, and have less allegiance to Afghanistan.  Their review documents the connection and claims a broad consensus within the military to act against it.

Second, not only have the Afghan military understood the threat infiltration attacks pose, they are taking responsibility for their occurrence.  It sounds like a small thing, but getting Afghans to take responsibility for what is occurring in Afghanistan is a major shift.  The cultural tendency among Afghans is to try and shift responsibility rather than confront their own failings. The military leaders are not considering themselves pawns in our strategy, but active participants in it.  We should understand as a measure of the success of our military training program that the Afghan military is the first part of the government to make this cultural shift. 

Third, the Afghan Army recognizes the safe haven problem and did not shy away from a politically uncomfortable conclusion that has the potential to aggravate sectarian tensions in Afghanistan, and political friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan.  They want to limit their vulnerability to infiltration by forcing Pashtun to show more commitment to the government of Afghanistan.  Nearly two million Afghans have fled to Pakistan and the border remains porous.  But the military have compiled lists of soldiers that travel frequently across the border and are confronting them.  Which means they are improving at military intelligence, border control, and the coordination of their activities.  The policy is a smart response, addressing their vulnerability and showing they can adapt to confront changing Taliban tactics.

The assessment and policy prescriptions announced this week by the Afghan army illustrate that they are becoming a responsible partner.  That is one necessary condition for our success in Afghanistan.  It is not sufficient — much remains discouragingly needed in improving the capacity for governance, reducing corruption, structuring transparent elections, in addition to continuing to fight the insurgency.  Our civilian efforts need to bring the same kind of focus and resourcing that we are bringing to the military elements of our strategy.  But news from Afghanistan this week does show that our military effort is succeeding, and not only in the fight itself where the Taliban are no match for our forces, but in creating an independent and capable Afghan military with the skills to carry on this fight when we leave. 

Resize: A A A

Russ Roberts

Inequality and Stagnation

| February 17, 2012 | 2:15 pm

There is now a widely held view that the last 10 or 20 or even 40 years have been a time of great stagnation for the average American. Yes, the overall economy has grown, but all or most or nearly all of the gains have gone to the top 1% or top 10% or top 20%.

These claims are accompanied by various data that seem to confirm the claim.

These claims conflict with casual evidence available to people over a certain age who remember the 1970′s or 1980s. We are an immensely more prosperous nation than we were back then. Our cars are nicer. Our homes are bigger. Our toys are more clever. And more people have more of them. Some things are more expensive but that is because more people have access to those things–such as health and education–they are labor intensive and we’ve driven up their price. But these kind of claims are not totally convincing, nor should they be. The fact that the world looks dramatically more prosperous may be due to cloudy vision, or bias. But they do cause you to wonder if the data that are being used to measure stagnation are not completely accurate or perhaps the data are distorted by the way they’re collected.

Don and I have both written about these issues and the data problems with the claims many times.

Continue reading Russ Roberts…

Resize: A A A

Bill Whalen

Addressing Candidates’ Speech Defects

| February 17, 2012 | 2:04 pm

With another debate not until next Wednesday (maybe the last of the primary season) and votes not scheduled until the Tuesday after that (Feb. 28 – Michigan and Arizona), let’s take a moment to examine the big-picture needs of the four Republicans remaining in the presidential hunt.

In three cases, there’s an argument to be made for a big speech to help change the contender’s current trajectory.

The fourth candidate doesn’t need much in the way of an adjustment (ironically, that would be Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the contender with the longest odds against him).

As for those three speeches, let’s begin with . . .

Mitt Romney. These aren’t pleasant times to be in the camp of the GOP frontrunner. Michigan could go to Rick Santorum in what would be considered a major upset (it’s Romney’s native state; he won the Wolverine primary back in 2008). As for Arizona, presumably it’s Romney’s to lose. Again, Santorum threatens. The suggestion here: Romney needs a speech to define what exactly he believes. That should have been achieved at the recent CPAC conference; it wasn’t (that includes the unfortunate adjectival choice of “severely” to describe his self-proclaimed conservative stewardship of Massachusetts – “severely” being a word typically reserved for migraines and thunderstorms, not ideology. Romney’s problem throughout this campaign has been trying to convince skeptical movement conservatives that he is indeed a genuine convert to their cause after nearly decades in the political wilderness (a run apiece for senator (1994), governor (2002) and president). Interestingly, that’s roughly the same timespan as Ronald Reagan stumping for Harry Truman in 1948 and, 16 years later, delivering the “A Time for Choosing” address on Barry Goldwater’s behalf. But with an important distinction: Reagan’s conversion was based on real-life experiences: Screen Actors Guild president; touring GE plants; the feeling that the Democratic Party left him, not the other way around. Romney needs to explain not only his guiding philosophy, but also what prompted his ideological evolution – like Reagan, real-life experiences, not campaign stratagems that conservatives suspect.

Rick Santorum. Let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, that Santorum pulls off the improbable and becomes the Republican nominee (worst stretch of the week, btw: comparing the underdog Santorum to underdog pro-basketball sensation Jeremy Lin). With Santorum as the standard-bearer, that beeping noise you’ll hear is the Democratic National Committee backing up a big truck to dump a ton of hurt on the nominee – all under the same banner: Santorum thinks women are second-class citizens. Among the stories to make their way into the news-cycle in the past couple of weeks: then-Sen. Santorum saying back in 2006 that contraception was “harmful to women”; presidential candidate Santorum suggesting women might be emotionally challenged to engage in combat; Santorum, in his 2005 book It Takes a Family, lamenting that too many women work outside the home. This is how a Santorum-Obama general election would look: daily attacks from the President’s surrogates suggesting the Republican is more Neanderthal than neocon. The suggestion here: while some think Santorum needs to address his views on separation of church and state, the more pressing need is the generation gap that Democrats are certain to exploit come the fall.

Newt Gingrich. I’m cheating here, because Gingrich visited the Hoover Institution earlier this week and discussed how he plans to come back from the dead a third time – staying positive, and staying on message while Romney and Santorum make it ugly-personal in Arizona and Michigan. The fuel for Gingrich’s hoped-for comeback: rising gasoline prices. Gingrich wants to lower gas to $2.50 a gallon via a national strategy that includes immediate implementation of the Keystone Pipeline, domestic offshore oil exploration and drilling, and opening up federal lands for development. Seeing as he’s not competing in Arizona and Michigan, there’s an easy way to judge whether this “wait and see” approach is smart politics: Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia (Gingrich’s home turf) all vote during the first two Tuesdays of March. If Gingrich is to stay in the race, at a minimum he has to rack up delegates in his backyard. And that begins with tough populist talk on gasoline – and rising consumer prices that hit the working class in the wallet.

Ron Paul. The late Vince Lombardi supposedly said that “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing”. That was until 2012 and the Paul campaign, whose purpose in life isn’t to win most primaries and caucuses (still-in-doubt Maine being an exception) but instead to amass delegates. To the extent that the Texas congressman has an end game, it’s having a say in the party’s platform and a voice when it comes to getting a quality speaking slot at the national convention. Otherwise, the Paul to watch might not be the father but the son – Rand, the freshman senator from Kentucky. Assuming the father passes the torch to the son as the leader of this GOP faction, does the younger Paul begin to stake out positions that would enable him to expand that base should he follow his father’s example in 2016 (this foreign policy clash with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio – Georgia’s admission for NATO membership – looking very much like a trailer for a future presidential debate).

Resize: A A A

Benjamin Wittes

A Bewildered Reply to Mary Dudziak

| February 17, 2012 | 11:28 am

Ritika linked yesterday to this New York Times oped by USC law professor Mary Dudziak, which opens:

THE defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, recently announced that America hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 as it did in Iraq last year.  Yet at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, the United States continues to hold enemy detainees “for the duration of hostilities.”

Indeed, the “ending” of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have no consequences for the ending of detention. Because the end of a war is traditionally thought to be the moment when a president’s war powers begin to ebb, bringing combat to a close in Afghanistan and Iraq should lead to a reduction in executive power — including the legitimate basis for detaining the enemy.

Dudziak concludes:

Mr. Obama is trying to have it both ways. Ending major conflicts in two countries helps him deliver on campaign promises. But his expansive definition of war leaves in place the executive power to detain without charges, and to exercise war powers in any region where Al Qaeda has a presence.

I confess myself baffled by this argument, but to the extent I understand it, it warrants a brief response. It is simply not true that the Obama administration contends–or is acting like–the end of hostilities has no consequences for detention authority. In Iraq, the United States once held tens of thousands of detainees. Now it holds, and claims the authority to hold, none. With respect to the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the United States still has troops deployed in Afghanistan who are actively fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces on a daily basis. Whatever the point at which hostilities can reasonably be said to be over for purposes of conveying detention authority, we are nowhere near that point yet. And critically, I don’t know anyone in the Obama administration who would argue that detention authority will persist after hostilities really are over–any more than we took our prisoners with us when we left Iraq. Indeed, if the negotiations with the Taliban that are now getting started were to produce a peace deal, it’s hard for me to imagine that detention authority would persist vis a vis Taliban detainees.

Continue reading Benjamin Wittes…

Resize: A A A

Edward Lazear

Lazear on CNBC

| February 16, 2012 | 4:41 pm

Resize: A A A

Victor Davis Hanson

Greek Tragedies

| February 16, 2012 | 4:41 pm

There are a lot of new twists to the old story of massive demonstrations in Greece. This is the first time in my life (I first went to Greece in 1973) that I can remember Greek rioting and demonstrations that were not anti-American. Oh, there have been a few contorted efforts to blame the Wall Street “Jews” for the 2008 meltdown that in turn supposedly called in Greek credit, but it is a half-hearted attempt, and for the most part the Greeks seem bewildered that they cannot properly fault the U.S. for much of anything in their present disaster — so unlike the old days of the 1967 coup, the colonels, the Cold War, the American support for Israel, the oil boycotts of 1973, the 1974 Cyprus disaster, the bombing of a kindred Orthodox Milosevic, etc. But it has been a generation since the Greeks have had much to do with the U.S. The Greek lobby is long retired from the Congress. The Obama administration is enthralled with Turkey. Former prime minister and U.S. citizen Andreas Papandreou long ago cut any remaining close ties with the U.S. in a flurry of anti-American and pro-Soviet rhetoric designed to appeal to popular anti-Americanism. The Greek diaspora in the U.S. is mostly third-generation, intermarried, and assimilated, and the net result is that we are now spectators, not players, in the present tragedy.

The end of utopianism is certainly causing far more furor than had the utopian dream never materialized, so the anger against Germany in the popular press (“Gautleiters,” “The Fourth Reich”, “Dachau!”, etc) is far greater now than had the Germans and their friends never loaned the Greeks nearly $400 billion in the first place. What is strange to watch is the nature of the Greek furor: that the Germans are probably eventually willing to forgive hundreds of billions almost seems to enrage Greeks all the more — for their debtors’ unwillingness to go all the way by forgiving the entire huge sum. The thinking is almost, “Well, if they have that much money to forgive, why not forgive it all?”

Continue reading Victor Davis Hanson…

Resize: A A A

Stewart Baker

Testifying about Cybersecurity legislation

| February 16, 2012 | 9:03 am

The Senate’s big cybersecurity bill has finally surfaced officially, and the hearing will be tomorrow at 2:30 DC time in front of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.  After Sen. Rockefeller and Sec. Napolitano, I’ll be part of a panel that includes Gov. Tom Ridge, Scott Charney of Microsoft, and Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Here’s my prepared testimony.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Collins, members of the committee, it is an honor to testify before you on such a vitally important topic. I have been concerned with cybersecurity for two decades, both in my private practice and in my public service career, as general counsel to the National Security Agency and, later, to the Robb-Silberman commission that assessed U.S. intelligence capabilities on weapons of mass destruction, and, more recently, as assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. In those two decades, security holes in computer networks have evolved from occasionally interesting intelligence opportunities into a full-fledged counterintelligence crisis. Today, network insecurity is not just an intelligence concern. It could easily cause the United States to lose its next serious military confrontation.

Moore’s Outlaws: The Exponential Growth of the Cybersecurity Threat

Our vulnerabilities, and their consequences, are growing at an exponential rate. We’ve all heard of Moore’s Law. What we face today, though, are Moore’s outlaws: criminals and spies whose ability to penetrate networks and to cause damage is increasing exponentially thanks to the growing complexity, vulnerability, and ubiquity of insecure networks. If we don’t do something, and soon, we will suffer network failures that dramatically change our lives and futures, both as individuals and as a nation.

It doesn’t take a high security clearance or great technical expertise to understand this threat. It follows from two or three simple facts.

Continue reading Stewart Baker…

Resize: A A A

Paul Gregory

A Shame the Republicans Must Let Politics Trump Economics

| February 16, 2012 | 8:00 am

The extension of the payroll tax holiday is bad economics. It may be good politics, or avoid a bad political outcome.

Economists know that temporary tax breaks have little or no effect on aggregate demand. Reducing payroll taxes for the rest of the year only increases the unfunded liability of social security and increases uncertainty. The net effect on growth and employment of extending the payroll tax reduction is likely to be negative. It is bad economics to all but die hard Keynesians.

Republicans are going along with bad economics because they are unable (or unwilling) to make the powerful economic case for ending the tax break. The longer it lasts, the more likely it is to become permanent, with disastrous results.

I guess we have little confidence in the good sense of American voters. If they are worried about the solvency of social security, clearly they could be made to understand that you don’t take away a large portion of its funding, for uncertain and unlikely short term gain.

Republican leaders wilt when they hear the President speaking about the extra $1,000 in the pockets of U.S. households.

Too bad.

Resize: A A A

Victor Davis Hanson

Why NATO Still Matters

| February 15, 2012 | 11:54 pm

The first Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the sober and judicious British Lord Ismay, famously remarked that the purpose of the controversial new postwar alliance would be “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Over the next sixty-six years of NATO’s existence, most in the Atlantic Alliance assumed that the first commandment was obvious, the second one was taken for granted, and the third would soon be irrelevant. No longer.

With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, few worry anymore about an invasion from a shrinking Russia. America’s recent loud announcements of a shift in strategic focus to Asia, coupled with continual cutbacks in troop levels within Europe, reflect, in trans-Atlantic terms, a new American desire to “lead from behind.” We saw that shift in the recent Libyan war, when the Obama administration outsourced America’s historic leading role in NATO to a militarily weak Great Britain and France, while predicating the legitimacy of the alliance’s intervention on United Nations directives (which were almost immediately exceeded when found bothersome to operations).

The alliance has recently not fared too well elsewhere. The effort in Afghanistan was to be the Obama administration’s “good war” (compared to Iraq) that would showcase NATO solidarity. Instead, we saw bickering European nations seeking to either evade or end their participation in the war. Note that Germany did not participate in Libya, and at home is facing fierce opposition to the continued presence of its shrinking contingent in Afghanistan.

Continue reading Victor Davis Hanson…

Resize: A A A

Thomas Sowell

The Progressive Legacy: Part III

| February 15, 2012 | 4:20 pm

The same presumptions of superior wisdom and virtue behind the interventionism of Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the domestic economy also led them to be interventionists in other countries.

Theodore Roosevelt was so determined that the United States should intervene against Spain’s suppression of an uprising in Cuba that he quit his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize his own private military force — called "Rough Riders" — to fight in what became the Spanish-American war.

The spark that set off this war was an explosion that destroyed an American battleship anchored in Havana harbor. There was no proof that Spain had anything to do with it, and a study decades later suggested that the explosion originated inside the ship itself.

But Roosevelt and others were hot for intervention before the explosion, which simply gave them the excuse they needed to go to war against Spain, seizing Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Although it was a Republican administration that did this, Democrat Woodrow Wilson justified it. Progressive principles of imposing superior wisdom and virtue on others were invoked.

Wilson saw the indigenous peoples brought under American control as beneficiaries of progress. He said, "they are children and we are men in these deep matters of government and justice."

Continue reading Thomas Sowell…

Resize: A A A

Thomas Sowell

The Progressive Legacy: Part II

| February 15, 2012 | 1:00 pm

"Often wrong but never in doubt" is a phrase that summarizes much of what was done by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the two giants of the Progressive era, a century ago.

Their legacy is very much alive today, both in their mindset — including government picking winners and losers in the economy and interventionism in foreign countries — as well as specific institutions created during the Progressive era, such as the income tax and the Federal Reserve System.

Like so many Progressives today, Theodore Roosevelt felt no need to study economics before intervening in the economy. He said of "economic issues" that "I am not deeply interested in them, my problems are moral problems." For example, he found it "unfair" that railroads charged different rates to different shippers, reaching the moral conclusion that these rates were discriminatory and should be forbidden "in every shape and form."

It never seemed to occur to TR that there could be valid economic reasons for the railroads to charge the Standard Oil Company lower rates for shipping their oil. At a time when others shipped their oil in barrels, Standard Oil shipped theirs in tank cars— which required a lot less work by the railroads than loading and unloading the same amount of oil in barrels.

Theodore Roosevelt was also morally offended by the fact that Standard Oil created "enormous fortunes" for its owners "at the expense of business rivals." How a business can offer consumers lower prices without taking customers away frombusinesses that charge higher prices is a mystery still unsolved to the present day, when the very same arguments are used against Wal-Mart.

Continue reading Thomas Sowell…

Resize: A A A

John Taylor

Will Greece get another bailout?

| February 15, 2012 | 11:11 am

« Older Entries

Switch to our mobile site