In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Turley blasted President Obama’s record on civil liberties:
Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.
However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly.
Today brought better news. MSNBC reports that the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon struck down two PATRIOT Act provisions dealing with probable cause-less searches. The case centered around Brandon Mayfield, an attorney in Portland, was falsely linked to the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Mayfield was arrested and fingerprinted. His fingerprint was falsely matched to a print found in Madrid. After that, the FBI put him “under 24-hour surveillance, listened to his phone calls and surreptitiously searched his home and law office.” This, according to Judge Ann Aiken, crossed the line.
Two provisions down, many more to go. Until then, President Bush’s third term continues.
OPINION
TIM CAVANAUGH: “Steven Chu, Oh Where Are You?”
“Sphinx-like Secretary of Energy Steven Chu may or may not be getting closer to approaching a plan to begin the process of preparing to lay the groundwork for issuing a preliminary statement on the Solyndra bankruptcy. ”
MICHAEL LEWIS: “California and Bust”
“On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds soared. Four days later, the interest rates paid by the U.S. government on its new 10-year bonds were plummeting on their way to record lows. The price of gold rose right alongside the price of U.S. Treasury bonds, but the prices of virtually all stocks and other bonds in rich Western countries went into a free fall. ”
DANIEL INDIVIGLIO: “Did Congress Kill the Debit Card?”
“Some Americans are outraged that Bank of America intends to charge its customers a $5 fee for using their debit card. And simply switching banks might not help: others are expected to follow. While frustration over yet another bank fee is understandable, this one should surprise no one. Congress acted to cap the debit fees that banks could charge retailers last year, and banks are reacting by directly charging their customers a portion of these lost fees to make up the difference. The move could mean the end of the debit card.”
[click to continue…]
Rail transit advocates in Honolulu, Hawaii, have seen better days. Significant opposition is threatening the future of the proposed 20-mile, $5.5 billion elevated rail transit corridor. The project, championed by Hawaii Democrats, is the dream of long-time Senator Dan Inouye. Most view it as little more than an expensive monument to the 87-year-old Inouye, who has represented Hawaii in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years and is something of a state institution.
Critics of the multi-billion dollar elevated rail project have noted that it would destroy the views of Honolulu’s famous waterfront, ruin some of Oahu’s best farmland, cost far more than service that could be delivered by bus rapid transit, fail to provide access to major population centers, and fail to address congestion issues. According to the recent “2011 Urban Mobility Report” [PDF] from the Texas Transportation Institute, traffic congestion costs the Honolulu area $287 million per year — putting it at number six among medium-sized metro areas with the most costly congestion problems. The city has also misled the public on supposed environmental benefits of the project, knowing full well that energy intensity (Btu per passenger-mile) is generally greater for heavy rail transit than for personal automobiles (see Table 2.13 and Figure 2.3 of the Transportation Energy Data Book [PDF]). This recent editorial provides some more background details, and it is worth noting that petroleum-fired power plants provide more than 75 percent of all electricity generated in Hawaii.
[click to continue…]
Minnesota based American Crystal Sugar employee lockout exposes the untenable nature of union contract negotiations. Yesterday, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union’s final charge against American Crystal Sugar was dismissed. BCTGM filed four charges against American Crystal Sugar’s for failing to bargain in ‘good faith’. All charges were denied by the Minnesota National Labor Relations Board.
A quote from John Riskey, president of BCTGM local, on the dismissal of the unions charges against American Crystal Sugar demonstrates current union tactics. “But we will appeal,” Riskey said. “We’ve been building our case all along to take to Washington, D.C. and we will be appealing to Washington, D.C.”
Unions know if their appeal reaches Obama’s NLRB, the employer will be forced to make concessions. The pro-union bias of the NLRB is creating unnecessary conflict in communities, hurting both employers and employees. American Crystal Sugar had operated for 30 years without a labor impasse. However, in the current political climate, union officials do not need to negotiate reasonable contracts. Appeals and court decisions are far more effective means to success.
[click to continue…]
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
September 23, 2011
>>Featured Story
Matt Patterson, editor of Capital Research Center’s Labor Watch and author of Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge Story, has been named the new Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow. Read more about the fellowship here.
[click to continue…]
Here’s a fresh batch of regulatory bloopers:
- In Michigan, it is legal to kill ducks during hunting season, but not to scare them.
- In Pateros, Washington, it is illegal for dogs to be nuisances.
- Massage parlors are illegal in well-named Horneytown, North Carolina.
- In Salem, West Virginia, it is illegal to eat candy if you’re going to church in the next 90 minutes.
- In Maine, it is illegal to walk on any street with untied shoelaces.
- In New Britain, Connecticut, fire trucks on their way to a fire may not go faster than 25 mph.
- In Brooklyn, New York, it is against the law for horses to sleep in bathtubs.
- In South Dakota, it is illegal to fall asleep inside a cheese factory.
In this morning’s CEI Podcast, my colleague John Berlau predicted that the new price cap on debit card swipe fees would lead to the end of free debit cards and free checking. He pointed out that while this is an unintended consequence, it is also entirely foreseeable.
It didn’t take long for that prediction to come true. Bank of America just announced that it will start charging its debit card users $5 per month. They are not the only ones:
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are testing $3 fees for debit cards in select areas, and Citibank recently announced it is raising its fees for checking accounts. Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Thomas McCrohan said last week that Visa and MasterCard, the top two debit card companies, may increase drastically increase (sic) fees on small purchases to offset the losses.
Thanks, Congress.
OPINION
ROGER SIMON: “The Four Laws of Politics”
“‘So what do you think of Perry?’ the guy asks me. I look at his hands.You always look at the hands, an old-timer once told me when I was starting out as a political columnist in Chicago. It’s the first law: Guy asks you about politics, you look at the hands.”
ERIN GEIGER SMITH: “Could One Music Downloader Change U.S. Copyright Law?”
“In the age of iTunes and an-app-for-everything, Joel Tenenbaum’s battle with the music industry over illegal downloading seems as relevant as an eight-track cassette.But it turns out the fight could produce something surprisingly enduring: a change in copyright law.”
JOHN WHITFIELD: “Libertarians With Antlers”
“Charles Darwin, not Adam Smith, will one day be considered the father of economics, says Cornell University professor and New York Times columnist Robert H. Frank in his new book, The Darwin Economy. He argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection gives a better description of how markets work, and fail, than Smith’s theory of the invisible hand.”
[click to continue…]
Wisconsin college administrators attacked the First Amendment this week, both by censoring a professor’s poster and criticism of fascism, and by inciting a flash mob to shut down a conference organized by a critic of the University of Wisconsin’s affirmative action policy, which allegedly violates the Constitution and federal laws against racial discrimination. National Review describes one of the incidents:
Earlier this week, campus police showed up at the office of theater professor James Miller to take down a poster he had displayed on his office door. The poster featured a quote from the short-lived television show Firefly, Joss Whedon’s libertarian cult classic that is part throwback Western, part space fiction, and features characters (ironically) who battle an authoritarian government. The poster on Miller’s door featured the following quote, from a character named “Mal” Reynolds, explaining why he could be trusted not to kill another character in his sleep: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” Reaction from the UW–Stout administration was typically hysterical . . . saying they could not allow the poster, as it represented a threat of violence. UW–Stout police chief Lisa Walter e-mailed Miller, saying the poster “depicts violence and mentions violence and death” and that the campus’s threat-assessment team agreed the poster could be “constituted as a threat.”
As Christian Schneider notes at National Review, it was idiotic for college officials to equate something that merely “mentions violence and death” with a violent threat. Under that reasoning, professors would be forbidden to “post a copy of the Gettysburg Address,” since in it Lincoln pleaded that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” It would also be a “threat” for a historian to recite Patrick Henry’s plea to “give me liberty or give me death.” As Schneider notes, administrators’ suddenly expansive definition of “threats” is ironic, since “if you stroll through any faculty lounge at the UW–Madison campus, you’re bound to find implicit threats against Gov. Scott Walker posted everywhere.”
[click to continue…]
Niger is the poorest country in Africa and the world: Many of its people go hungry every day, many children die before their fifth birthday, and countless thousands have died in past famines. Now, it’s getting much poorer, as black migrant workers from Niger are forced to leave neighboring Libya because of the color of their skin in the aftermath of the revolution there. Workers used to send money home to Niger from Libya, enabling impoverished family members to survive. But now these workers have been forced to leave Libya, where some black migrant workers were lynched, and many others have been rounded up and jailed in appalling conditions after being falsely accused of being mercenaries for the brutal, recently-ousted dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi.
As the New York Times reports,
For tens of thousands of people from Niger, the downfall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has been an economic catastrophe, plunging them suddenly from a world of good pay in Libya back into the precarious universe of their home country, one of the poorest and most dependent nations on earth. Officials in Niger estimate that at least 200 people continue to arrive daily. The government admits that it does not have the resources to help them.
More than 200,000 Nigeriens have fled the fighting since March, according to the government here, laboriously traversing the desert from Libya, where they were earning unheard-of sums, by local standards, as tailors, security guards, cooks and drivers. A majority of those who fled are now destitute, hungry and, along with the thousands of families dependent on remittances from Libya, without prospects. Officials in Niger estimate that at least 200 people continue to arrive daily, and that more probably come through the porous desert border crossings. The government admits that it does not have the resources to help them and is pleading with outside donors for help . . . it is disastrous in a country where the World Bank says more than 60 percent of people live in extreme poverty, where famine lurks when rains do not arrive . . .Suddenly, the migrants who had supplied Libya’s labor . . . find themselves thrust into a domain where limbless beggars congregate at intersections.
[click to continue…]
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
Twitter 
Facebook 
CEI.org 
WorkPlaceChoice.org 
GlobalWarming.org 
CEI On Demand Video 
Liberty Week Podcast 