Free Republic

The Establishment is very concerned this morning that the representatives of the people have resisted demands for stricter gun control measures. The president calls it “shameful.” The New York Times editorial board intones, “The Senate Fails America.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post deplores a lack of “courage” on Capitol Hill, though some might think it takes courage to defy the overwhelming drumbeat of the national media. Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the...

You hear a lot about the politicization of science, but the real problem is the moralization of science. The New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt has made a compelling case that moral differences drive partisan debates over scientific issues. Dan Kahan and others at the Yale Cultural Cognition Project have identified cultural differences that bias how people assimilate information. Together, Haidt and Kahan’s research suggests that what you believe about a scientific debate signals to like-minded people that you are on their side and are therefore a good and trustworthy person. Unfortunately, this means that the factual accuracy of beliefs...

Sheldon Richman and I spent a lot of time last week running through numbers from the Congressional Budget Office in order to gauge sequestration’s effect on federal spending. In the resulting column, Richman lays out the numbers and asks a pertinent question: How the $#!?% is the average voter supposed to have a clue about this stuff?  From Richman’s column:  I subjected myself to this pain because I’m a professional masochist. I’m paid to do it. How many people who are not so rewarded are likely to search for, locate, and download CBO spreadsheets to see the numbers for themselves?...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

This is a USA map of Guns used for self-defense. Gun control proponents cannot deny that people use guns successfully against criminals, but they tend to play down how often such events take place. The purpose of this map is to draw more attention to this aspect of the firearms policy debate. It is not comprehensive, but is useful. http://www.cato.org/guns-and-self-defense

Republicans believed a Mitt Romney win would seal Obamacare's fate. Democrats - or rather, the lonely two-fifths of Americans who support the president's beleaguered healthcare law - believed an Obama win would secure its future. Both sides were kidding themselves.Romney may have pledged to repeal the law, but his positions on Obamacare had the life span of a rainbow. He supported an identical law when he got the credit for signing it as governor of Massachusetts. He then opposed Obamacare when that's what GOP primary voters wanted to hear, and later endorsed parts of it when he thought that's what...

Contrary to popular myth, states are under no obligation to expand Medicaid or create a health insurance exchange, and they should refuse to do either. That from Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. He argues that the costs to the private sector will be significant if states agree to create exchanges.

COMMENTARY | Mitt Romney's international excursion included gaffes over Anglo-Saxon heritage and Olympic insults in England, insulting the Palestinian culture in Israel, and getting a hostile reception from the freedom-loving trade union Solidarity aware of Romney's anti-labor stands. Lost in this forgettable foreign policy trip included one of Romney's best moments, when he touted the virtues of economic liberty in Poland. The only question is Romney's commitment to such freedom, which has been in decline throughout the Bush and Obama Administrations...

Like many in the liberty movement, I’m disheartened by the current goings-on involving the Cato Institute, namely, the power struggle between, on one side, Cato’s co-founder and President Ed Crane, and on the other side Charles and David Koch. (Of course, there are many other people on each side of this dispute, but these are the main representatives of each side.) The immediate source of this dispute is the disposition of the shares in Cato that belonged to former Cato Chairman Bill Niskanen, who died late last year. The Kochs believe that they, the Kochs, are entitled to those shares;...

Recent momentous events at Cato have drudged up some age-old questions about libertarianism and politics: how should libertarians interact with politics and political candidates? Should libertarians compromise “full freedom” by promoting half-measures in the form of less-than-perfect candidates who are better than the alternatives on some matters but perhaps worse on others? Many of the most long-standing divisions within libertarianism are partially a result of different answers to these questions. Some regard all interactions with politics and politicians as inherently corrupting and a tacit endorsement of governmental oppression. Others feel that a refusal to engage in politics is a one-way-ticket...

The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. The restriction of access to firearms will make criminals unable to use guns to shoot people. Gun control laws will also reduce the number of accidental shootings. Those are the desired effects, at least in theory. It is important, however, for conscientious policymakers to consider not only the stated goals of gun control regulations, but the actual results that they produce. What would be the effect of depriving ordinary, law-abiding citizens from keeping arms for self-defense? One result seems certain: the law-abiding would be at a...

Cato Institute scholars Malou Innocent, Chris Edwards, Neal McCluskey, Ilya Shapiro, Jerry Taylor, Dan Mitchell and Dan Ikenson respond to President Obama's 2012 State of the Union Address.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) hearts former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), so much that Christie says it is ”completely intellectually dishonest” to compare RomneyCare to ObamaCare. Why? Because Romney didn’t raise taxes, and President Obama did. Oh. Avik (pronounced O-vik) Roy explains how Christie gets RomneyCare so very, very wrong: There isn’t a single person, left or right, who follows health policy seriously who disagrees with the assertion that Romneycare was the model for Obamacare. And Massachusetts has had to raise taxes, after Romney left office, to pay for the law’s significant cost overruns. Here are some examples,...

Hear Us Now is pleased to host Randal O’Toole of the CATO Institute on October 11th. His topic will be, “The Best Laid Plans”: […]how government attempts to do long-range, comprehensive planning inevitably do more harm than good by choking American cities with congestion, making housing markets more unaffordable, and sending the cost of government infrastructure skyrocketing.

Below are some random thoughts on Cato’s founder, Edward Crane. Consider it a free-flowing free speech exercise. Indulge me. First, the “Libertarian Party Correspondent”, Edward H. Crane III strikes one as naïve, at best. Here he is in August 1973 (Reason, Aug/Sep2008, Vol. 40, Issue 4): If there were any remaining doubts as to the viability and future of the Libertarian Party, its 1973 National Convention in Strongsville, Ohio, early in June must surely have eliminated them. The L.P. is no longer a tenuous coalition of hesitant and dubious allies but rather a united front of determined individualists committed to...

Blake Edwards, comedy director, Julie Andrews husband and Peter Sellers star-maker, has died at the age of 88. He directed “The Pink Panther,” the original, not the Roberto Benigni/Steve Martin versions, and “A Shot in the Dark” and “10″ and “SOB,” a pretty entertaining send-up of over-the-hill Hollywood. He also did “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Wild Rovers,” “The Party.” The one that made perhaps the biggest splash was his gender-bending (and still old fashioned) farce “Victor/Victoria.”

The fiscal conservative-libertarians at Cato Institute have issued a report card for current governors, and they aren’t exactly generous with the praise. If a C is the minimum passing grade, then just 27 out of 50 states manage to keep from failing the test. At the top of the list, the Wall Street Journal reports, are at least two presidential aspirants — Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal, and a third that gets a B, Mitch Daniels: The Cato report card gives the lowest grades to Governors who proposed or enacted the biggest tax and spending increases, while Governors who cut...

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-js031401.html

By 2012, our national debt will be larger than the entire U.S. economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. So what's on the front burner in Washington these days? Zoning issues in lower Manhattan! Is it OK to put a Muslim community center close to Ground Zero? I don't know, but local authorities don't seem to mind. That should settle it, but what Sarah Palin calls the "9/11 mosque" has somehow become a headline-grabbing controversy. On Friday, President Obama insisted that Muslims have the "same right to practice their religion as anyone else" and can build a mosque near the...

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s traffic congestion could double in the next couple of decades, with Charlotte drivers facing the same types of delays Chicago drivers face now. That was the conclusion of a 2007 John Locke Foundation report. It recommended $12 billion of spending to clear North Carolina’s congested urban roads and prepare for future traffic growth. Many traffic problems outlined three years ago continue to cause concerns today. Randal O’Toole, senior fellow with the Cato Institute, recently tackled the issue from a national perspective in the book Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It....