Is Obama's 'Prolonged Detention' American? | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary

Is Obama's 'Prolonged Detention' American? | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once warned: 'Throughout the world today there are men, women and children interned indefinitely, awaiting trials which may never come or which may be a mockery of the word, because their governments believe them to be 'dangerous.' Our Constitution ... can shelter us forever against the dangers of such unchecked power' (dissenting, U.S. v. Salerno, 1987)."

Killing in War - David Gordon - Mises Institute

Killing in War - David Gordon - Mises Institute: "If a policeman legitimately shoots at a suspect, the suspect cannot claim the right to shoot back in self-defense."

"Soldiers in an unjust cause have, for the most part, no right at all to engage in violent action against soldiers in a just cause. Not only do they lack moral standing to engage in aggressive warfare; they cannot legitimately even engage in defensive war, in most circumstances."

A Fake Financial Fix | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Fake Financial Fix | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Of course, the administration tells us that bailouts won't be needed — because the same regulators who missed the signs of the current crisis will get added powers to prevent the next one.

We're supposed to believe that, if only the Federal Reserve had the same oversight powers over AIG as it now has over Citibank and Bank of America, that the bailout of AIG would have been avoided. Just think: If only AIG had been managed and regulated as well as Citibank — because Citi is in such great shape now."

Bigger Than Madoff | Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary

Bigger Than Madoff | Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Take Medicare. The Government Accountability Office reports that the program makes about $17 billion in improper payments each year. And that doesn't include problems in the new $60-billion-per-year prescription-drug plan, which is a juicy target for criminals. Harvard University's Malcolm Sparrow, a specialist in health-care fraud, recently testified to Congress that official estimates are 'lacking in rigor,' are 'comfortingly low and quite misleading,' and exclude many kinds of fraud and abuse. He thinks that as much as 20 percent of the federal health-care budget is consumed by fraud, which would be $85 billion a year for Medicare."

'The bottom line is that the enormous size and complexity of federal health programs results in a huge waste of taxpayer funds. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services recently told Congress: "Although it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, everywhere it looks the Office of Inspector General continues to find fraud against these programs."'

Mischa Barton Hospitalized Under Involuntary Psychiatric Hold - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment - FOXNews.com

Mischa Barton Hospitalized Under Involuntary Psychiatric Hold - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment - FOXNews.com: "where she was hospitalized under Section 5150 of the California Welfare & Institutions Code, which allows authorities to hold a person for up to 72 hours if they present a danger to themselves or to others."

Is that pre-crime?

The Jobs Problem - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute

The Jobs Problem - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute: "Mandating benefits for employees imposes costs on employment. The would-be worker bears the cost. It makes the worker more expensive to hire. The employer has to pay not only a salary but also a benefit. If you make it more expensive to hire people, fewer people will be hired.

It is no different from eggs at the supermarket. If they are $2 each, you will purchase fewer of them — you will economize. This is nothing but the law of demand: consumers will demand less of a good at a higher price than of a good at a lower price. A salary plus benefits amounts to a price that the employer must pay to purchase the work of a laborer. At a higher price, less work will be purchased by the employer.

That means that requiring employers to provide health benefits to employees will make the present job situation worse, not better. It will intensify the current problem that people want to work more but are having a hard time getting employers to hire them."

The Zimbabwe-ification of South Africa? | Marian L. Tupy and Michael Kransdorff | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Zimbabwe-ification of South Africa? | Marian L. Tupy and Michael Kransdorff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Even when the government has succeeded in distributing land, much of it has ceased to be economically viable. According to the government's own statistics, some 50% of land reform projects have failed. A once thriving potato farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands is now a makeshift soccer field. A former tea estate in Magoebaskloof in Limpopo has become an overgrown forest. The list goes on."

Obama's Disappointing Secrecy | Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Disappointing Secrecy | Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The administration recently threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill, the annual legislation that funds the Central Intelligence Agency.

The trouble with the bill, according to the administration, is a requirement that intelligence officials brief some secret intelligence activities to Congress's full intelligence committees rather than just the 'gang of eight' (each party's leader in each house and the chairmen and ranking members of those committees). The administration wants to keep the power to determine whom it briefs."

"Thanks to a report written by the inspector generals of several federal agencies, we also learned last week that the National Security Agency's controversial, warrantless wiretapping program (the "terrorist surveillance program" to its Orwellian creators) found few, if any, terrorists, contrary to its advocates' claims."