Think Tank West

By Julian Sanchez It looks as though we’ll be getting a straight one-year reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, without even the minimal added safeguards for privacy and civil liberties that had been proposed in the Senate’s watered down bill.  This is disappointing, but was also eminently predictable: Between health care and [...]

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By Sallie James An article today in BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest (What? You don’t subscribe??) contains an explicit rejection by India’s trade minister of the idea that carbon border tax adjustments belong in the WTO’s agenda.  Border tax adjustments in this context refers to de facto tariffs that would “level the playing field” for [...]

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By Jim Harper Everybody’s wrong. That’s sort of the message I was putting out when I wrote my 2008 American University Law Review law review article entitled “Reforming Fourth Amendment Privacy Doctrine.” A lot of people have poured a lot of effort into the “reasonable expectation of privacy” formulation Justice Harlan wrote about in his concurrence to [...]

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By Tad DeHaven The two large housing government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been in government receivership since September 2008. The U.S. Treasury has given the housing GSEs $112 billion in cash infusions, and this past Christmas Eve it quietly announced it would cover all of Fannie and Freddie’s losses beyond the original [...]

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By Cato Editors The White House meeting on health care will begin at 10:00 AM EST Thursday and Cato health policy experts will be here to offer live commentary on the event. We’ll also stream the meeting live here at Cato@Liberty. Questions for the experts during the live-blog are welcome. Cato Experts Live-Blog Health Care [...]

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By Michael F. Cannon Photo Credit: Aaron Powell

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By David Rittgers Contrary to the claims of some conservatives, gays can and do serve in the military. This video highlights the story of a combat medic at Fort Hood, Texas, one of the major troop installations in the United States. Warning: long video (13 minutes). Sergeant Darren Manzella served as a combat medic, and [...]

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By Justin Logan Yesterday Defense Secretary Bob Gates complained that European defense spending is too low: The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an [...]

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By John Samples The Washington Post offers an instructive campaign finance story this morning. The essence of the story: employees of banks and brokerage houses contributed more to candidate Barack Obama in 2008 than to his rival John McCain. A lot more in fact: such employees gave almost twice as much to the current president [...]

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By Ian Vasquez A report (PDF) released today by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemns in well documented form the growing violation of human rights under the regime of Hugo Chavez. The 302-page study is yet another confirmation of the multitude of ways in which individuals, NGOs, union leaders, politicians, activists, businessmen, students, judges, [...]

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