In an article in the Los Angeles Times on November 29th, “The case against military tribunals,” Judge Andrew P. Napolitano presented his opposition to military tribunals in the U.S. government’s undeclared “war on terror.”

It’s a violation of the Constitution to use the panels without a declaration of war—and just calling it a “war” on terror doesn’t count.

A devoted constitutional expert, Fox News host, and avowed, conservative disciple of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, Judge Napolitano noted that:

The last time the government used a military tribunal in this country to try foreigners who violated the rules of war involved Nazi saboteurs during World War II. They came ashore in Amagansett, N.Y., and Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and donned civilian clothes, with plans to blow up strategic U.S. targets. They were tried before a military tribunal, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt based his order to do so on the existence of a formal congressional declaration of war against Germany.

In Ex Parte Quirin, the Supreme Court case that eventually upheld the military trial of these Germans—after they had been tried and after six of the eight defendants had been executed—the court declared that a formal declaration of war is the legal prerequisite to the government’s use of the tools of war. The federal government adhered to this principle of law from World War II until Bush’s understanding of the Constitution animated government policy.

Now in a new article by Rick Ungar, “True conservatives condemn military tribunals for terrorists,” he pursues the issue further and states:

American conservatives would do well to listen to the words of Judge Napolitano as he makes his case in support of strictly construing the Constitution. . . . Those who support the Constitution can’t have it both ways. You either respect the rule of law, even when it is inconvenient and a bit scary, or you don’t. That’s the whole point of having a Constitution. . . . Your leaders are hustling you, turning their alleged belief system inside out to score points with populist outrage – and turning the Constitution inside out in the process. These leaders are nothing more than scared little men and women caving into popular fear rather than doing their jobs.

As Judge Napolitano further noted:

The framers of the Constitution feared letting the president alone decide with whom we are at war, and thus permitting him to trigger for his own purposes the military tools reserved for wartime. They also feared allowing the government to take life, liberty or property from any person without the intercession of a civilian jury to check the government’s appetite and to compel transparency and fairness by forcing the government to prove its case to 12 ordinary citizens. Thus, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires due process, includes the essential component of a jury trial. And the 6th Amendment requires that when the government pursues any person in court, it must do so in the venue where the person is alleged to have caused harm.

Numerous Supreme Court cases have ruled that any person in conflict with the government can invoke due process—be that person a citizen or an immigrant, someone born here, legally here, illegally here or whose suspect behavior did not even occur here.

Think about it: If the president could declare war on any person or entity or group simply by calling his pursuit of them a “war,” there would be no limit to the government’s ability to use the tools of war to achieve its ends. We have a “war” on drugs; can drug dealers be tried before military tribunals? We have a “war” on the Mafia; can mobsters be sent to Gitmo and tried there? The Obama administration has arguably declared “war” on Fox News. Are Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and I and my other colleagues in danger of losing our constitutional rights to a government hostile to our opinions?

I trust not. And my trust is based on the oath that everyone who works in the government takes to uphold the Constitution. But I am not naive. Only unflinching public fidelity to the Constitution will preserve the freedoms of us all.

See here.

In sharp contrast to the State Department’s bellicose rhetoric, the White House now says Iran is incapable of enriching uranium to 20 percent—well below the more than 90% needed for a weapon.

The nation’s capital was buried in snow over the past week by two massive storms that blanketed the District of Columbia and much of the East Coast. Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and countless other cities and towns likewise were hit hard by stiff Arctic winds and record-setting accumulations of the white stuff.

But the news media has focused its attention on Washington, where “Snowmageddon” has stranded most of the capital’s 230,000 federal workers at home or in downtown hotel rooms and brought the business of government to a virtual standstill.

Reports estimate that every day Washington is shut down “costs” American taxpayers $100 million in lost productivity. But what exactly does the federal government produce? Nothing to speak of, as a matter of fact. The business of government by and large involves extracting wealth from the private sector and then redistributing to favored political constituencies what is left over after paying the generous salaries of federal workers and covering the bloated overhead costs of running the wealth-transfer machinery.

Mother Nature has frozen the grasping hand of government, at least temporarily, and, as a result, the private economy should thrive while Congress is unable to legislate and bureaucrats are unable to regulate.

It always amused me, when I was an economist at the Federal Trade Commission, to hear radio and TV announcements on snow days that “only essential employees should report to work.” Shouldn’t that also be true when the sun is shining and the streets are clear?

The Mises Institute has made available, at a price of $0, audio recordings of some of Murray Rothbard’s microeconomics lectures from 1986. The discussions of price controls and the economics of oil are very interesting.

On February 11 EU leaders agreed to provide financial support to Greece to keep it from defaulting on its bonds.  The argument given here and elsewhere is that a bailout for Greece would help stabilize the Euro zone.  Is Greece too big to fail?  Could a default by Greece really destabilize the Euro?

I have yet to see a good argument as to why this is the case.  First, if one is narrowly concerned only about the Euro, bailing out Greece can’t help support the Euro, and likely will weaken it.  A default by Greece should have no effect on the value of the currency, but an EU rescue might lead to political pressure to finance it partly by printing more Euros, resulting in inflation and a weakening of the Euro.

I can see that with other Euro zone countries like Spain and Portugal in similar situations, a default by Greece would raise questions about whether other EU countries might follow.  But taking this to its logical conclusion, that also means bailing them out too, which would be even more costly, and even more likely to lead to inflation and a reduction in the value of the Euro.

Another possible negative consequence of a Greek default would be that banks in other EU countries holding Greek bonds could be hurt.  But wouldn’t the more sensible policy in this case be to support those banks directly, rather than the Greek government?  Germany, for example, could buy any Greek bonds held by German banks, much as the Fed bought toxic assets of US banks.  I’m not saying this would be a good policy; I’m saying it would be better than bailing out Greece.

The EU monetary union requires members to maintain a budget deficit of no more than 3% of GDP and a national debt/GDP ratio below 60%.  Greece has violated both of these requirements, and not by just a bit.  Apparently, then, the EU leadership holds the view that if its rules are violated, the EU as a whole should provide financial support to the violators rather than let them suffer the consequences of violating the agreement.  This amounts to an open invitation to other deficit-laden EU countries to ask for the same support.

So, how can one make sense of the EU’s support of Greece’s fiscal irresponsibility?  It presents an opportunity for EU politicians to solidify and centralize their control over EU states.  EU politicians have long-desired to increase their control over member states.  Recall the 2005 EU constitution that would have substantially moved in that direction.  In every country where politicians had a say, they approved it, but in France and the Netherlands, where it was put to a popular vote, it was rejected.

As EU politicians continue to grope toward a constitution that will further centralize political power at the EU level, a Greek bailout presents another opportunity.  If the EU assumes the responsibility for the fiscal problems of its members, it then has good reason to extend additional powers to oversee and control their budgets.

Surely a bailout for Greece would be followed by additional powers at the EU level to control not only Greece’s budget but the budgets of all EU members.  The EU can’t put itself in a position of agreeing to support fiscally irresponsible member states without also having the ability to exercise more control over them.  The Greek fiscal crisis is just the kind of opportunity EU politicians have been looking for.

Is there a better explanation for the EU’s political leaders’ support of a bailout for Greece?

Each year, the Darwin awards are bestowed—generally posthumously—upon those who “improve” the gene pool by removing themselves from it through acts of incredible stupidity.

Recent Nobel Peace Prize awards increasingly appear to share the criteria that its recipients contribute to “improving” the gene pool by removing large numbers of people from it. Unfortunately, in these cases, it is not the honorees themselves who have been “removed,” but the victims of their hare-brained schemes.

As a case in point, the IPCC’s continuing admissions about the dubious “science” behind its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning climate change work, coupled with the previous Climategate disclosures, reveal scandalously poor bases for proposals for “reversing” global warming that would have disastrous implications for billions of people.

The most recent admissions of mistakes in the 2007 IPCC climate report include:
• The scientist quoted in the IPCC report as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 now says there is no scientific basis for the claim.
• A claim that agricultural yields in some African countries could halve by 2020 is based on a report by a Canadian environmental think tank, not peer-reviewed science.
• A claim in the 2007 report that climate change could endanger up to 40% of the Amazonian rain forest, is based on a World Wildlife Fund report on logging.
• Claims linking rising temperatures to increases in natural catastrophes contradict the underlying data: as increasing numbers of people build increasingly valuable properties in hurricane zones, lower numbers of hurricanes result in greater economic loss.

Sharing the 2007 Nobel, of course, was Al Gore, whose film, “An Inconvenient Truth” relied heavily on the now-discredited Michael Mann “hockey stick.”

The IPCC and Mr. Gore prescribe immediate, drastic, and global reductions in carbon emissions as the cure for the ills they cite. Yet, as environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg points out:

The fact is that whatever prosperity we currently have or are likely to achieve in the near future depends heavily on our ability to acquire and burn carbon-emitting fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

… Compared to other forms of energy, fossil fuels are abundant, efficient and cheap. In order to make drastic cuts in their carbon emissions, developing countries would have to pull the plug on domestic economic growth—thus consigning hundreds of millions of their citizens to continued poverty.

Poverty which translates to reduced lifespans, high infant mortality, and a degraded quality of life.

The more recent 2009 Peace Prize for President Obama similarly qualifies well under the terms of the Darwin awards as recognition for the doubling of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan under his administration, and the continued high death toll in Iraq.

While these recent selections have perhaps lessened the irony of the prize being established by the inventor of dynamite, a case can still be made for aligning it instead with the Darwin awards. The renaming of the prize would be especially fitting in celebrating acceptance of “the ends justify the means”: Peace through war. Eden through depopulation. Survival of the fittest through eugenics.

Until October 2008 bank reserves held by the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) paid no interest.  Banks are required to keep some of their deposits on reserve, but it was costly to keep excess reserves because they earned no interest.

For a bit more than a year now the Fed has been paying interest on bank reserves it holds.  This is a new policy and amounts to a windfall for banks.  The policy was enacted because when the Fed bought up all those toxic assets (also a new policy; prior to the mortgage meltdown the Fed almost exclusively purchased only securities issued by the US Treasury), it paid for them by creating new reserves.  If banks lent out those reserves, which they would have an incentive to do because reserves didn’t earn any interest, the money supply would skyrocket and inflation would result.  The Fed has kept banks from lending by paying interest on the reserves.

The Fed is keeping short term interest rates low, and that includes the rate they are paying on reserves, which is currently 0.25%.  The Fed currently holds about $1.1 trillion in excess reserves, so even at this low annual rate that would generate about $2.75 billion in risk-free interest income to banks.

That sounds like a lot of money to me, but the really big subsidies would kick in when the Fed starts raising interest rates as the economy recovers, to try to prevent inflation.  An interest rate of 2% on those reserves — still a low rate by historical standards — would pay banks $22 billion a year.

While the Fed makes this decision, ultimately the money comes out of the US Treasury.  Every year the Fed earns more on its holdings of government bonds than it spends, so returns the excess to the Treasury.  The more it pays in interest, the less it returns to the Treasury, so the Treasury has to borrow that much more to meet its excessive budget.

Essentially, the Fed is using taxpayer money to subsidize banks in an attempt to offset potentially pernicious effects of its bailout.  Banks benefit twice: once because the Fed took toxic assets off their hands; once because the Fed is now paying interest on the resulting reserves.  Perhaps the worst aspect of this is that rather than penalize firms that took risks that went bad, they are being rewarded, which will only encourage more risky behavior in the future.

The Fed’s bank subsidy is an example of one bad policy designed to counteract the effects of another.  If the Fed hadn’t bought those toxic assets it wouldn’t need to subsidize banks to keep them from lending.  It’s easy to spend money when the money you’re spending is someone else’s.

Obama, having acted in his early presidency like he would depart from his predecessor’s Iran policy, and having actually provided gestures of actual change in his diplomatic tone, has reverted back to the standard establishment approach. His administration is promising a new round of crushing sanctions.

Of course, so much of the propaganda in the mainstream media and coming from both parties, implicit in Obama’s entire posture, concerns the fictional threat Iran poses to the United States, its allies and interests. There is misinformation, for example, that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of international agreements, even though there is no credible evidence of this. The press echoes such completely debunked propaganda time and again without any relent. Obama went hysterical when Iran announced a new nuclear site, well before the nation had to, and claimed Iran had been “caught,” even though nothing it was doing was inconsistent with its pursuit of nuclear energy as allowed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory.

All of this ratcheting up of propaganda against Iran is very reminiscent of the case for war with Iraq—WMD, and ties to terrorists—and it is just as hollow. Even more important, none of the claims, even if true, would justify the U.S. widening its wars of aggression to the Iranian people, and sanctions are properly seen as traditional acts of war and belligerence.

Obama seems to be a true believer in progressive warmongering, but he probably also sees the political angle here. The neoconservative National Review recently called on Obama to bomb Iran if he wants to save his presidency. Sarah Palin has also been saying, explicitly, that if Obama gets “tougher” against Iran and in the war on terror, the conservative opposition to his administration will largely subside. I’m not sure if that is true, but Obama does have a lot to win, politically, from more war—at least in the short term. In the long term, wars tend to become unpopular, but not enough for Americans to swear off the foul poison next time the propaganda machine churns out “reasons” to bomb, invade, occupy and shed blood once again.

Audi ran a most insightful and disturbing, yet hilarious, Super Bowl ad on “The Green Police” and the very real meaning, threat, and foolishness of “environmental” statism.

Please also see the following Independent Institute books:

The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America, by Robert H. Nelson

Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close

A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth, by Wilfred Beckerman

Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture, by Ernest C. Pasour, Jr., and Randal R. Rucker

Cutting Green Tape: Toxic Pollutants, Environmental Regulation and the Law, edited by Roger E. Meiners and Richard L. Stroup