Human Rights

FOIA Victory Will Shed More Light on Warrantless Tracking of Cell Phones -

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday (pdf) that the government must turn over information from criminal prosecutions in which federal law enforcement agencies obtained cell-site location information without a warrant.

Ten Years Since 9/11: Preserving Our Civil Liberties -

The Bush and Obama administrations' efforts to prevent another major terrorist attack have created an alarming imbalance between security concerns and the protection of personal freedoms. Cato scholars reflect upon the civil liberties legacy of 9/11:

In 1971, President Richard Nixon named drug abuse as "public enemy number one in the United States," and officially declared a "war on drugs".

But the long federal experiment in prohibition of drugs has given us crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children.

Carter has strongly criticized the Obama Administration’s two-track policy of conditional engagement and sanctions punishing North Korea for repeatedly violating U.N. resolutions. In a November 2010 Washington Post op-ed, Carter downplayed North Korea’s belligerency by characterizing Pyongyang’s shelling of a South Korean island and disclosure of a uranium enrichment facility—another violation of U.N. resolutions—as merely “designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future.”

Evidently, Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that organized labor ought to remain outside of government. He is said to have recognized the horrible prospect that conflicts of interest would arise in such a relationship. History has born out his concern, as state governors across the country can attest to.

Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to a similar conflict of interest concerning military contractors and government. Eisenhower saw similar problems in the intellectual pool of expertise that is paid to serve the government, and, vicariously, themselves.

Hemispheric Think Tank Says Time for Drug Policy Rethink -

Now that a bipartisan coalition in the House has voted to repeal ObamaCare, an even larger bipartisan coalition has approved a Republican resolution directing four House committees to "replace" that ill-fated law. Cato scholar Michael F. Cannon argues that it's a bit premature to be talking about replacing ObamaCare. "No matter how good the Republicans' proposals are, they will be utterly ineffective so long as ObamaCare remains on the books," says Cannon.

...then only Criminals would have Ice Cream! Hmmm... I suppose, but since many good citizens abide by unjust laws based on fear of ramification, it would depend on the criminality and the level of punishment handed down for the possession of Ice cream. The statement is very true in a legal sense because, like drug users that believe it is their right to ingest things into their own bodies as long as no one else gets hurt, good citizens that would choose to circumvent the law would be, by law, criminals. Imagine a justice system clogged up by Mexican dairy product. Mmmmm!!!

then we may have to ration them like a can of tuna in a Chilean Gold Mine....

The 2010 Index of Dependence on Government - The number of Americans who pay taxes continues to shrink—and the United States is close to the point at which half of the population will not pay taxes for government benefits they receive.

Why has the Obama Administration, as part of its lawsuit against the Arizona statute that attempts to help enforce national immigration laws, not claimed that the state law requires or allows illegal racial profiling? The answer is surprisingly simple: Arizona state law actually contains more stringent restrictions against racial profiling than federal guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).