United Liberty

An earthquake rocked the libertarian world last week when news broke that a lawsuit had been filed over the ownership of shares in the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank founded some 30 year ago in the wake of Ed Clark’s run as the 1980 Libertarian Party Presidential nominee. It started, apparently, last year with the death of William Niskanen, who along with Ed Crane, David Boaz, and countless others, had spent three decades shaping Cato into not just the leading libertarian public policy think tank, but also an organization that has become well-respected on both sides of the political aisle.

It’s difficult to list everything that Cato has done in the past thirty years, because they’ve done so much. They publish numerous publicy policy analyis reports on every subject that the nation’s leaders deal with. For many years they have published a guide book for each new Congress. Since the late 1980s they have run Cato University, an opportunity for young libertarians to learn from an interact with some truly great minds. Indeed, yours truly particlpated in one of those seminars at Dartmouth College in 1989 and I still remember it as one of the most intellectually engaging weeks of my life. That’s just a short list, I’m sure I’m missing something.

In any case, the dispute that is rocking Cato now is, as I said rooted in the death of William Niskanen last year, and a shareholder agreement with Charles and David Koch:

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch filed a lawsuit Wednesday for control of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

The choices for libertarian oriented Republicans in this year’s Republican field are, admittedly, better than they have in the past. Not only is Ron Paul doing much better than he did four years ago, getting more press attention, and seemingly surging into second place in Iowa, but we’ve also got Gary Johnson, former two-term Governor of New Mexico.

There’s been much to lament about Johnson’s campaign, of course, not the least being the near disaster caused due to a campaign miscommunication that almost kept Johnson off the New Hampshire ballot, as well as staff problems inside the campaign. At the same time, though, Johnson has largely been ignored by the media, and kept out of nearly all the debates due to low poll numbers (although, as Johnson has noted himself, it’s hard to do well in the polls when they don’t even include your name on the list of prospective candidates).

The possibility that Johnson could run for the Libertarian Party nomination for President next year is also encouraging. It’s not perfect, of course, and libertarian Republicans have had to sit back and watch a bunch of incompetents like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain rise in the polls and get far more media attention than either their qualifications or their accomplishments would seem to warrant while a two-term Governor is ignored. Nonetheless, it’s better than we’ve had it in the past, and hopefully a sign that libertarian-leaning candidates are gaining wider acceptance in the Republican Party as a whole.

During a vist to Iowa, Congressman Ron Paul made a few comments about President Obama’s decision to decline to defend Section Three of the Defense Of Marriage Act on appeal. In the process, the Congressman gets several things alarmingly wrong and takes a position that is, quite honestly, a betrayal of the libertarian principles that he claims to hold.

 

“I supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which used Congress’ constitutional authority to define what other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a same sex marriage license issued in another state. I have also cosponsored the Marriage Protection Act, which would remove challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act from the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

“The people of Iowa overwhelmingly supported, both houses of the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law the Iowa Defense Of Marriage Act in 1998. Iowans then valiantly recalled three activist Judges who spurned the will of the people by over-turning the state’s law.

(…)

“Today’s announcement that the Obama Administration will abandon its obligation to enforce DOMA is truly disappointing and shows a profound lack of respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. President Obama has just unconstitutionally said that Iowa should have to allow San Francisco and New York City decide its marriage laws. That position is unacceptable.

Paul’s press release completely ignores the fact that there are two parts to DOMA, and that only one of them is before the Courts at this time.

In a post yesterday, Louis DeBroux points to the election results in Iowa which resulted in the rejection of three members of the Iowa Supreme Court primarily due to a campaign that decried their votes in favor of a ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state, as “one of the most important outcomes of the November 2010 elections.” While I agree with Louis that the rejection of three judges for doing their jobs is important, I have to strongly disagree that this is a positive development, or that it is ever a good idea to subject the  judiciary so directly to the popular will of an often fickle majority.

Like the social conservative groups that led the fight to defeat the Iowa Justices, DeBroux seems most concerned with the fact that the Iowa Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling is out of sync with public will. However, that attitude completely misses the fact that one of the most important roles of the Judiciary is to stand as a bulwark agaisnt the whims of a majority seeking to impose its will on the minority in violation of their rights. The fact that a slim majority of Iowans might not support same-sex marriage is not, and should not, be relevant to the legal question of whether or not gay and lesbian couples have the right to be treated equally by the state when it comes to the benefits and privileges of the civil institution called “marriage.” In fact, it’s precisely because the majority doesn’t support it, that the right must be projected by the judiciary. That’s not “judicial activism,” it’s the judiciary doing its  job.

This is part one in a debate between Doug Mataconis, a contributor at Outside the Beltway and United Liberty, and Jason Pye, editor of United Liberty, over whether the current debate over earmarks is distraction from the larger fiscal issues facing the nation.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans will take up the issue of whether to forswear earmarking during the upcoming session of Congress. On one side stands Jim DeMint who contends that earmarking is a corrupting process that helps increase the size of spending bills. On the other stands Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who contends that earmarking is an important legislative prerogative and that eliminating it would do nothing to cut Federal spending. While earmark opponents do have a point that the process can be corrupting when not done transparently, the truth is that the so-called “war on earmarks” is a diversion from the real battles that have to be fought in order to reduce the size, scope, and power of government.

Let’s take the Omnibus Spending Bill passed early last year as an example.