Copyright Case May Have Profound Effect on Treaty Power | Ilya Shapiro | Cato Institute: Commentary

Copyright Case May Have Profound Effect on Treaty Power | Ilya Shapiro | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'as a matter of constitutional structure, history and logic, a treaty cannot increase Congress's legislative powers. Not only is the power to "make treaties" distinct from the power to execute treaties already made, but such an expansive interpretation of the treaty power would allow Congress and the executive to circumvent the Article V amendment process.'

'JUSTICE SCALIA: It seems to me Congress either had the power to do this under the Copyright Clause or it didn't. I don't think that powers that Congress does not have under the Constitution can be acquired by simply obtaining the agreement of the Senate, the President and Zimbabwe. I do not think a treaty can expand the powers of the Federal government. I mean, this is either okay under the copyright clause or it is not.'

Obama's Odd Sense of Fairness | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Odd Sense of Fairness | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'The actual tax rate Mitt Romney, Warren Buffet and most other wealthy people pay on dividends, when correctly calculated, is about 52 percent, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the federal and state corporate-level-profits tax burden, plus federal and state taxes on dividends.'

'The federal government admits that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted through fraud and mismanagement. Medicare fraud alone costs tens of billions of dollars each year. Nevertheless, somehow the president thinks it is more “fair” to enact job-destroying tax increases rather than insisting that officials in his own administration clean up the fraud and waste or lose their jobs, as would happen in any private company.'

$189,000 | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

$189,000 | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'measured as a percentage of GDP (the value of all goods and services produced in a country over a year), our budget deficit is roughly a quarter larger than France’s. In fact, among European countries, only Greece and Ireland have larger deficits this year than we do.'

'If one includes all the unfunded liabilities of pension and health-care systems, Greece’s total debt equals 875% of its GDP. France, the next-most insolvent country in Europe, owes 570% of GDP. The United States, however, now owes 885% of GDP, more than any other industrialized country.'

Why There Is No Human Progress without Capitalism | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why There Is No Human Progress without Capitalism | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'For thousands of years, there was virtually no such thing as human progress. The great French historian Fernand Braudel observed, “Peasants represented immense numbers of people, the vast majority of human beings... constant poverty... For century upon century, clothing remained unchanged... the general rule was changelessness.” In Europe, peasant possessions were generally limited to little more than a shirt, a pair of pants, perhaps a simple jacket, a bench, a table and a straw-filled sack that served as a mattress. In India, there were hardly any chairs or tables to be found. There were few chairs in Islamic lands. Multitudes perished because of famines — France alone had hundreds of famines before 1800. Famine undermined the ability of people to resist common deadly diseases like typhoid fever, purple fever, whooping cough, sweating sickness, diphtheria, smallpox, influenza, syphilis and the plague.

Capitalism, as economic freedom is often called, has changed the world for the better by harnessing individual self-interest — the most reliable motivator there is. In markets, functioning without subsidies, special favors or bailouts, entrepreneurs have had powerful incentives to provide what consumers want.'

Revealing Slain Victims' Rap Sheets Draws Fire | Fox News

Revealing Slain Victims' Rap Sheets Draws Fire | Fox News: 'As Mike Ainsworth walked his two sons to a school bus stop, he heard a woman being carjacked scream, and ran to help. The woman was not hurt, police said, but the Good Samaritan was shot to death by a suspect who fled.

When police gave out the details of Ainsworth's killing, they also announced he had been arrested for drugs and other non-violent crimes, keeping with a year-old policy in which criminal records for slain victims are released — sometimes before they've been publicly identified.

New Orleans police say revealing a victim's rap sheet lets the public know that much of the violence is happening between people with similar criminal backgrounds. Families of the slain victim's say the practice is insensitive, and others outraged with the policy say it has racial overtones and sends a message that the victims got what was coming to them.'

A 'thermal battery' for villages in India | Cutting Edge - CNET News

A 'thermal battery' for villages in India | Cutting Edge - CNET News: The thermal battery is a large container that stores a specially designed liquid that doesn't freeze, even below the freezing point. People pour milk, which has just been milked from cows, onto a cylinder-shaped tank, which is cooled by the thermal battery's liquid. As the milk flows over the cylinder, it's rapidly chilled to an appropriate temperature for storing.
And when the grid is not available, the thermal battery can run for several hours on a car battery, and so it avoids dirty diesel generators. The first machines Promethean Power will deploy are roughly the size of a large refrigerator. To remove heat from the cooling liquid, it circulates through a traditional compressor loop, the same used in heat pumps, air conditioners, and refrigerators, White explained.

New Science Being Used To Fight Arson Convictions | Fox News

New Science Being Used To Fight Arson Convictions | Fox News: 'Research in recent decades has challenged long-held assumptions about how flames spread and the tell-tale signs they leave.

"Our scientific understandings have improved in recent years, and the effect of that has to be to say, 'We've got some innocent people who've been declared guilty based on misunderstandings,'" said John Hall, director of analysis and research for the National Fire Protection Association.

For example, decades ago, it was common for investigators to conclude an accelerant like gasoline was used if a fire burned particularly hot. In fact, the new arson science has found no such correlation, experts say. Another mistaken assumption: A V-shaped pattern on a wall of a burned building is proof of arson. All it shows is where a fire started.'

'For example, tests have found that pour-like patterns on the floor can occur because of radiant heat, even without accelerants, according to Beyler's report. Experiments have also found that melted plastics can create patterns that look like liquid spills, Beyler said.'

'But tests conducted in the 1990s showed that fires can hit the point of "flashover" — when all combustible surfaces ignite at once — in under four minutes with no accelerants.
Connections between a fire's speed and heat and the possibility of arson have "been discredited and shown to be much less significant than previously thought in the investigation of a fire," Florida-based fire scientist John Lentini, one of the country's leading independent fire analysts, said in a 2002 affidavit on Lee's behalf.
"Back in the day there were a lot more fires called arson that were actually accidents," Lentini said in an interview. "There was a lot of misinformation out there."'

Our best scientific knowledge may not always be accurate and we need to take into consideration the confidence that our best scientific knowledge has -- especially when it involves people lives!

Fearmongering Won't Make Us Healthier | Patrick Basham and John Luik | Cato Institute: Commentary

Fearmongering Won't Make Us Healthier | Patrick Basham and John Luik | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'The case for alarmist warnings is based on four assumptions. First, people wish to avoid disease and death. Second, consumers suffer from an "information deficit," that is, they either don't understand the risks of a given behavior or they underestimate those risks. Third, once they know that a certain behavior or product can lead to disease and death, they will avoid it. And, fourth, warnings give people the information necessary for them to change their behavior.

The reality, however, is that assumptions two, three, and four are, for many people, false.'

'The truth is that more often than not, scary or detailed warnings cause many consumers to disregard the information completely. A consumer's income is the key factor in determining which foods, for example, are purchased, and that income cancels out the effects of information.

The danger, however, is not simply that labels and warnings will fail; they may also be counterproductive. For example, large numbers of excessive risktakers display what psychologists call "reactance," in which there is a high level of resistance to the demands of outside authority and control.

For these individuals, a warning label represents an attempt to unreasonably (at least from their perspective) shape their behavior and makes them more likely to ignore rather than heed the warning. Warning labels also highlight risk, and for those attracted to risk-taking, this serves to make the very thing warned about more, rather than less, attractive.'

Worship of the Mob - Ben O'Neill - Mises Daily

Worship of the Mob - Ben O'Neill - Mises Daily: 'The reason is that democrats never regard existing democracy as their preferred political system — they regard it only as a transitory state to a democratic utopia in which the elected leaders will agree totally with their own values and social-political views. Mises has observed that "the critics of the capitalistic order always seem to believe that the socialistic system of their dreams will do precisely what they think correct."[2] Hence, when people talk about the importance of democracy, it is never democracy as it has ever actually functioned, with the politicians that have actually been elected, and the policies that have actually been implemented. It is always democracy as people imagine it will operate once they succeed in electing "the right people" — by which they mean, people who agree almost completely with their own views, and who are consistent and incorruptible in their implementation of the resulting policies. This is what allows an intelligent group of people to espouse mob rule as a desirable principle, even as they simultaneously commit acts that brand them as criminals worthy of imprisonment under the very social system they maintain.'

'Democracy, of the unlimited kind lauded today,[3] is a form of socialism, in the sense that it arrogates ultimate power over all decisions to the government. Implicit in the notion of people's present love affair with mob rule is the assumption that government, through the collective "will of the people," should have the prerogatives of ownership of all resources in society, should it choose to exercise these. The democrat brooks no limitation on the legitimate powers of government and hence gives total ownership over all of society to this institution.'

'People still have not absorbed the lesson of democracy that should have been learned when Socrates was condemned to death by his fellow Athenians for his impiety.[5] Might is not right: whether expressed through raw physical power or through the voting booth, it is illegitimate and undesirable for people to aggress against their fellow human beings. Rejecting the rule of the mob is an important step towards peace and prosperity.'

Mr. Rubenstein, You're No Adam Smith - James E. Miller - Mises Daily

Mr. Rubenstein, You're No Adam Smith - James E. Miller - Mises Daily: 'With the existence of the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and other bodies that make up the 115 regulators that oversee the financial sector in the United States, the claim that such a system constitutes free-market capitalism is preposterous. The evidence is clear that Alan Greenspan's cutting of the federal-funds target rate in the early 2000s and the expansion of the monetary base set the stage for the housing bubble. That "unfettered exuberance" on Wall Street was only a byproduct of the Fed and government's intervention in the economy. Business fluctuations brought on by changing human demand do exist in true capitalism, yet they are self-correcting and don't lead to years of prolonged unemployment.'

'No proponent of free-market capitalism denies that wealth disparity develops. For it is that exact wealth disparity that serves as an incentive for entrepreneurs to create and workers to produce in order to better their own personal standard of living. Contrary to popular belief, capitalism is not a system of rugged individualism but rather one of social cooperation that expands the division of labor and offers new opportunities of employment even for those less able to compete with more-productive workers.'

'As a rule, capitalism is blamed for the undesired effects of a policy directed at its elimination. The man who sips his morning coffee does not say, "Capitalism has brought this beverage to my breakfast table." But when he reads in the papers that the government of Brazil has ordered part of the coffee crop destroyed, he does not say, "That is government for you"; he exclaims, "That is capitalism for you."'