The Supreme Court heard oral argument in McDonald v. Chicago this week — the Second Amendment case with implications far beyond gun rights. The Court is quite likely to extend the right to keep and bear arms to the states and thereby invalidate the Chicago handgun ban at issue, but the Court did not seem inclined to adopt arguments that the Privileges or Immunities Clause was the way to go.

First, some background: The Constitution limits how much the federal government can infringe upon the rights of citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment extends this protection against actions of state governments, in part, by forbidding them from passing "any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." This clause was virtually eviscerated in the infamous Slaughterhouse case of 1873. Although it is unlikely that the Court will extend gun rights using the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Cato Senior Fellow Ilya Shapiro argues that it is the most appropriate route to restoring the right to bear arms to the people of Chicago:

The Privileges or Immunities Clause, far from giving judges free rein to impose their policy views, would actually tie them closer to the text, structure, and history of the Constitution. As it stands now—and as it seems will be the case after McDonald—many of our most cherished rights are constitutionally protected only to the extent that judges are willing to label them as sufficiently "fundamental." That interpretive method fosters an unprincipled jurisprudence and hurts the rule of law…. The right to keep and bear arms appears to be well on its way to being restored for all citizens across the country—and that is a good thing. The fight to restore the Fourteenth Amendment, however, to its proper role as principled guarantor of our freedoms against state oppression, goes on.

Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation explains the case further in a recent Cato Daily Podcast.

Despite polls that show that most Americans oppose the Democrats' health care plan, and lagging support for the bill in both houses of Congress, President Obama has made it clear that he will attempt to use "reconciliation," a parliamentary procedure that only requires a simple majority in the Senate, to pass the health care bill.

Cato Senior Fellow Michael D. Tanner explains how reconciliation works, and the risk involved:

For those not versed in the arcane rules of the U.S. Senate, reconciliation is not what a divorced couple attempts when they visit Dr. Phil. It is a mechanism for avoiding filibusters on certain budgetary issues. If Democrats can find a way to apply it to health care reform, they could pass a bill with just 51 votes, negating the election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and the loss of the 60-seat supermajority….Given the difficulties, therefore, no one expects the Democrats to try to pass a whole new bill. Instead, the House of Representatives would pass the already approved Senate health care bill without any changes. However, because the Senate bill is unacceptable to both liberal and moderate House members, they would simultaneously pass a separate bill under reconciliation procedures that would make changes demanded by the House.

President Obama has said that he is willing to compromise with Republicans to get the bill through, but as Michael Cannon, Cato director of health policy studies, explains, "Dropping a few Republican ideas into a government takeover of health care is like sterilizing the needle before a lethal injection: a nice thought, but the ultimate outcome is the same…. This is not bipartisanship.  President Obama is creating the illusion of bipartisanship while taking the most partisan route possible: forcing his legislation through Congress via reconciliation."

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President Obama hosted a bipartisan summit on health care reform on Thursday in a final attempt to find common ground with Republicans on the issue. Little was found. The entire six-hour summit was televised, and Cato scholars offered live commentary at the Cato@Liberty blog.

Cato Senior Fellow Michael D. Tanner writes that in the entire exchange, neither side brought up the real problems with health care:

If President Obama's health care summit showed anything, it is that when it comes to controlling health care costs there is bipartisan agreement in favor of looking for the easy solution. Both sides dragged out the traditional villains, "fraud, waste, and abuse." There was the usual search for silver bullets. Republicans dwelled at length on medical malpractice Democrats talked about pooling and the advantages of comparative shopping through the exchanges. Everyone was in favor of preventive care. But both sides seem curiously unwilling to address the most important participant in the health care equation — the consumer.

Cato Director of Health Policy Studies Michael F. Cannon's solution focuses on empowering consumers:

Letting workers control their health care dollars and tearing down regulatory barriers to competition would control costs, expand choice, improve health care quality, and make health coverage more secure.

The debate over whether gays and lesbians can openly serve in the military has reignited over the past few weeks, as Pentagon officials and policymakers decide whether the "Don't ask, don't tell policy," enacted by Congress in 1993, should be repealed.

Cato Legal Policy Analyst David Rittgers, who served in the United States Army as an Infantry and Special Forces officer, explains the weaknesses in the case for DADT.

Contrary to the claims of some conservatives, gays can and do serve in the military….The British and Israeli armed forces allow gays to serve openly and still have first-rate combat units. When Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says it is time to repeal DADT and believes that we can do so without compromising readiness, objections based on domestic politics, and not on military grounds, lose a lot of credibility.

Christopher Preble, Cato director of foreign policy studies and Gulf War veteran, says DADT should be judged on how it impacts the effectiveness of the U.S. military:

In all likelihood the commission will support the implementation of the change in policy…. We absolutely have to attract and retain the most qualified people, and we have more than just anecdotal evidence that people who were good at their jobs and were providing mission critical skills were removed from service by virtue of this policy. At the end of the day, that policy undermines our security.

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The Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off this week, drawing thousands of activists to Washington. The Washington Post reports, "Emboldened by a belief that their political fortunes are on the rise, conservative activists descended Thursday on the capital city they love to hate, seeking to stoke what they consider a grass-roots uprising against President Obama and Democrats in Congress….This year's CPAC, which began Thursday and will run through Saturday, had a festival atmosphere, as thousands of jubilant activists turned the Marriott Wardman Park ballroom into a hive of old-guard conservatives and Don't Tread on Me 'tea partiers' hungry for new leaders and messages that can carry the GOP out of the political wilderness."

Writing in Politico, Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz is skeptical about whether conservatives have learned their lesson after eight years of failed policies under Bush:

I am reminded that in February 2008, after seven disastrous years of overspending, federal intrusion, entitlement expansion, civil liberties abuses, and foundering wars, President Bush spoke at CPAC, and the assembled conservatives greeted him with chants of "Four More Years!" Really? You wanted more of that? And you're still cheering it in 2010? …Conservative leaders may have restated principles of long standing, principles that reflect the philosophy of Buckley and Reagan rather than the practice of Bush. And Tea Party activists may be demanding that both parties get control of spending and stop expanding government. But in 2008 and 2010, it appears that when you get committed conservatives together in a room, they display no regrets about the Bush disaster. No wonder the public is rapidly losing confidence in President Obama and his program (Romney: "the gold medal in the downhill was taken away from American Lindsey Vonn. It was determined that President Obama is going downhill faster than she is."), but voters are not yet ready to embrace Republicans.

Government Support for Nuclear Energy Misguided

President Obama announced this week he would allocate billions of dollars in loan guarantees to build a new nuclear power plant in Georgia, the first new nuclear power plant in the U.S. in thirty years. Cato scholars Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren have long argued that the case for government intervention in energy markets is flimsy: "Despite promises in the 1950s that nuclear power would soon become 'too cheap to meter,' 50 years of lavish federal subsidies and regulatory preferences have yet to produce an industry that can turn a profit without taxpayer help."

Calling the plan "radioactive corporate welfare," Taylor says the plan is highly misguided:

A good default proposition regarding the government's role in the economy would state that the government should not loan money to an enterprise if the enterprise in question cannot find one single market actor anywhere in the universe to loan said enterprise a single red cent. It might suggest — I don't know — that the investment is rather … dubious. Alas, like all good propositions regarding the government's role in the economy, this one is being left by the roadside by the Obama administration.

Many conservatives who regularly defend free and open markets praised Obama's decision to subsidize nuclear energy. The editors of National Review wrote, "the president has sent a clear message to the country — and to environmentalists — that nuclear will be part of the country's future energy mix. For that message, he deserves our approbation." Cato scholars have repeatedly warned against supporting such subsidies in energy markets, criticizing so-called "free-market advocates" who lose their way when it comes to energy policy. Taylor and Van Doren write:

Rather than defend free markets, [conservatives] bang the table about the need for national energy plans and government timetables for energy-plant construction…. How is the conservative case for the above subsidies any different from the liberal case for subsidizing solar or wind energy, or high-mileage automobiles — or, for that matter, the case for government backing of financial institutions and automobile companies? It isn't, and conservatives should not check their skepticism about central planning and the bureaucratic ordering of markets at the door when they walk into the energy-policy funhouse.

Taylor and Van Doren further outline a plan for sound energy policy in the Energy Chapter of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers. For more, read Richard L. Gordon's 2008 Policy Analysis on energy policy and government subsidies that makes the case against government intervention in energy markets.

The Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, named in honor of perhaps the greatest champion of liberty in the 20th century, is presented every other year to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advancing human freedom. The prize, a cash award of $500,000, will be presented to the winner on May 13, 2010, at the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty's Biennial Dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington D.C. The keynote address at the 2010 Dinner will be delivered by Pulitzer-prize winning columnist George Will.

In 2008, Cato awarded the prize to Yon Goicoechea, leader of the pro-democracy student movement in Venezuela that successfully prevented President Hugo Chávez's regime from seizing broad dictatorial powers in December 2007.

Established in 2002 and presented every two years, the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty is the leading international award for significant contributions to advancing individual liberty. The Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman passed away in November of 2006. The winner for the 2010 prize will be announced in the coming weeks.

The heavy snowstorms that rocked much of the country and shut down the federal government for nearly a week sparked a national debate over the cause of the record-breaking snowfall. Some argued that global warming was the cause of the massive winter storms while others tried to use the storms to argue against global warming alarmism.

Writing in National Review (Online), Patrick J. Michaels, Cato senior fellow in environmental studies, discusses the role of climate change in the recent severe weather patterns:

The fact of the matter is that global warming simply hasn't done a darned thing to Washington's snow. The planet was nearly a degree (Celsius) cooler in 1899, when the previous record was set. If you plot out year-to-year snow around here, you'll see no trend whatsoever through the entire history.

But of course, there are those who insist that it snowed more when they were little. That's partially a matter of physical perspective, as 20 inches of snow on the ground looks a lot bigger to a three-foot child than to a six-foot adult. It's also a matter of lack of historical perspective. The three winters from 1977 through 1979 are the coldest in the entire U.S. record, and 1979 included the third-ranking snowstorm, the so-called President's Day Mess.

Did I mention that the popular press back then, including Time and Newsweek, did not hesitate to blame the winters on the climatic bogeyman of that era — global cooling?

Unprepared to handle the weather conditions, the federal government halted all operations in Washington DC for four straight days. Some 230,000 D.C. area employees stayed home, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars "in lost productivity per day," according to federal officials. But, says Cato Senior Fellow Doug Bandow, those estimates take a narrow view of the big picture at play:

Using the term 'productivity' in the same sentence as 'federal government' is a dubious exercise. No doubt, in the sense of performing a task efficiently, the Feds can be productive…. But government efficiency doesn't mean productivity in a larger sense. That is, does government activity yield a better life for Americans? On net, the answer is no.

…If you believe the official estimates, the three day federal shut-down cost Americans nearly a billion dollars. But don't worry. Although Snowmaggedon has been awful for those of us who live in the region, it likely has saved the American people billions of dollars by slowing down the waste of tax dollars and limiting the harm of regulations.

Now if we could only shut down Washington permanently.

In the words of 19th-century judge Gideon Tucker: "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the Legislature is in session." So the country was almost safe this week.

Claiming that cell phone users have "no expectation of privacy" when using their mobile devices, attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department are arguing that "a [cell phone] customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that reveal cell phone users' whereabouts when they make and receive phone calls. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case Friday, and the outcome could make it easier to the federal government to track cell phone users' whereabouts without a warrant.

Jim Harper, Cato director of information policy studies, says that private cell phone use ought to be protected under the Fourth Amendment:

Cellular telephone networks pinpoint customers' locations throughout the day through the movement of their phones. Internet service providers maintain copies of huge swaths of the information that crosses their networks, tied to customer identifiers. Search engines maintain logs of searches that can be correlated to specific computers and usually the individuals that use them. Payment systems record each instance of commerce, and the time and place it occurred. The totality of these records are very, very revealing of people's lives. They are a window onto each individual's spiritual nature, feelings, and intellect. They reflect each American's beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. They ought to be protected, as they are the modern iteration of our "papers and effects."

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President Obama sent his budget to Congress this week, with the proposal that the government spend $3.83 trillion in fiscal 2011. The pricetag is $1.1 trillion more than the federal budget nine years ago had promised, a 41-percent forecasting error. Writing in National Review Online Cato scholar Chris Edwards argues, "The lesson from all this is that an administration's promised spending beyond the first year is meaningless. ...It scares the hell out of me that federal spending down the road could be 41 percent higher than even the huge increases projected by Obama."

In the statement released with the budget, President Obama repeatedly blamed the Bush administration for leaving him in a position where he had "no choice" but to send the nation deeper into debt. He blamed "irresponsible risk-taking and debt-fueled speculation—unchecked by sound oversight" for a deep recession that he claimed his administration's massive spending prevented from becoming a depression. But, as Cato Budget Analyst Tad DeHaven notes, Obama can blame Bush all he wants, but his budget is merely an extension of that bad policy:

Not once does the president acknowledge the role the government played in fomenting the recession. Instead, the president promises to move away from "business as usual" even though more spending, deficits, and debt are precisely that: business as usual. In this regard, the Obama administration's first term is looking more like George W. Bush's third term. Bush left the president with a $1.4 trillion deficit in FY2009; the deficit under Obama's first year is set to rise to $1.6 trillion and would still be $1.3 trillion in FY2011.

President Obama announced this week his intention to use $30 billion in TARP funds to create a new small business lending fund. The fund would offer what CNN calls "super-cheap capital to community banks that boost their small business lending this year."

Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies, calls the move "somewhat disingenuous":

The problem facing small business, outside of the massive uncertainty being created by Washington, is one of credit availability, not cost. For those who can get credit, its quite cheap, arguably too cheap. So if the president doesn't intend to lower the cost of credit, the plan must be to lower the quality; using the $30 billion to cover expected credit losses. Of course, we tried throwing lots of taxpayer money at unsustainable homeownership, is there any reason to believe throwing taxpayer money at unsustainable businesses is going to work any better? If the president truly wants to help small business, then the first thing to do is ask Congress to repeal the credit card bill and then just get out of the way.

In a recent Cato Daily Podcast, Calabria explained how Obama plans to use TARP to bail out companies and a regular and perhaps even permanent basis.

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President Obama's first State of the Union address on Wednesday focused on the economy, jobs, and education. Obama proposed a new jobs initiative, called for a freeze on non-defense-related discretionary spending, outlined plans to increase child-care tax credits, and introduced other relief to middle-class families and students. Cato Institute scholars live-blogged the address, offering real-time commentary of Obama's proposals.

During Obama's speech, Cato Budget Analyst Tad DeHaven noticed striking similarities between Obama's address and Bush's rhetoric. DeHaven dug up Bush's speeches and found surprising similarities between the two presidents. Cato also produced a short video that cut through the rhetoric and explained what the president really meant. Here are a few overall impressions from Cato experts:

Gene Healy: Overall, this speech was a major climb down. The president who was going to stop the oceans' rise is now going to settle for "nearly doubling" the child-care tax credit. But in a way, that's progress.

Andrew Coulson: On education, this really was indicative of a third Bush term: more spending, more federal intrusion, a disregard for evidence proving the failure of federal programs. Americans looking for hope and change in education must turn to their state legislatures.

Tad DeHaven: There is a lesson to be learned this evening, and one that the burgeoning Tea Party movement in particular should heed. President Obama didn't suddenly wake up last January with the awesome power to shape every facet of our lives: how we educate our children, get medical care, or purchase a car or house. It was the actions of his Democratic and Republican predecessors that enable him to wield such power today. The preceding Bush administration illustrates how power exercised by one administration is inherited by the next. In particular, the massive increase in federal spending, deficits, and debt that President Obama is rightly being criticized for are a continuation of the Bush legacy. Sure they differ on the details and some of the issues, but at the end of the day both men have demonstrated through their actions that they believe our individual liberties should be subjugated to the almighty state.

Cato experts put some of President Obama's core State of the Union claims to the test. Here's what they found.

The Stimulus

Obama's claim: "The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That's right — the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill. Economists on the left and the right say that this bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster."

Back in reality: At the outset of the economic downturn, Cato ran an ad in the nation's largest newspapers in which more than 300 economists (Nobel laureates among them) signed a statement saying a massive government spending package was among the worst available options. Since then, Cato economists have published dozens of op-eds in major news outlets poking holes in big-government solutions to both the financial system crisis and the flagging economy.

Spending Freeze

Obama's claim: "Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years."

Back in reality: Edwards: "The president's proposed spending freeze covers just 13 percent of the total federal budget, and indeed doesn't limit the fastest growing components such as Medicare.

"A better idea is to cap growth in the entire federal budget including entitlement programs, which was essentially the idea behind the 1980s bipartisan Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law. The freeze also doesn't cover the massive spending under the stimulus bill, most of which hasn't occurred yet. Now that the economy is returning to growth, the president should both freeze spending and rescind the remainder of the planned stimulus."

Plus, here's why these promised freezes have never worked in the past and a chart illustrating the fallacy of Obama's spending claims.

Job Creation

Obama's claim: "Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year."

Back in reality: Cato Policy Analyst Tad DeHaven: "Actually, the U.S. economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since the stimulus passed and 3.4 million total since Obama was elected. How he attributes any jobs gains to the stimulus is the fuzziest of fuzzy math. 'Nuff said."

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The Supreme Court decided on a major free speech case Thursday, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down laws that restrict organizations from spending money to influence political campaigns. Cato scholar Ilya Shapiro comments, "Today the Supreme Court struck a major blow for free speech by correctly holding that government cannot try to 'level the political playing field' by banning corporations from making independent campaign expenditures on films, books, or even campaign signs. ...In short, the Citizens United decision has strengthened both the First Amendment and American democracy."

The decision immediately sparked not only criticism of the Court's ruling, but of the language of the Bill of Rights itself. Some even called for a constitutional amendment to alter the First Amendment. Constitutional scholar Roger Pilon says these overreactions and worries over "the end of democracy" are baseless:

Relax. Half of our states, states like Virginia, have minimal campaign finance laws, and there's no more corruption in those states than in states that strictly regulate.  And that's because the real reason we have this campaign finance law is not, and never has been, to prevent corruption.  The dirty little secret — the real impetus for this law — is incumbency protection... The First Amendment is not a "loophole."  It's the very foundation of our democracy, and we are the stronger today for this decision.

The decision also triggered an outcry from politicians, who have vowed to work to somehow change the ruling. Robert Brady, chairman of the House Administration Committee, released a statement that read, "I will be working directly with my colleagues, the Leadership and the White House to study the Court's decision and to put together a timeline for legislative action that ensures the Court's decision will not define the ways elections are conducted in 2010." Likewise, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) said, "In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible." Even President Obama said he would work to "develop a forceful response to this decision."

Cato scholar John Samples, author of the book The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform, notes, "Nothing worries members more than free and critical speech, especially when the upcoming election already looks really bad for incumbents."

To find out the background behind the Court's decision, watch this short video and read Cato's amicus brief.

Republican long shot Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in a Massachusetts special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy on Tuesday. Brown's victory ended the Democratic super-majority in the Senate, which appears to have put the government takeover of the health care system out of reach.

Calling the election "The Brown Revolution," Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz says that the election should act as a warning for overreaching politicians who have prematurely assumed the 2008 elections were a mandate for big government. Brown's victory represents something much bigger than just the filling of a Senate seat in Washington:

Given President Obama's falling job approval, growing opposition to the Obama health care plan, the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the fury in Nebraska over Ben Nelson's wheeling and dealing, the growing recognition that libertarians are a major part of the decentralized "Tea Party" movement, and rising poll support for "smaller government," the Brown victory is a flashing red light with a siren warning Democrats not to proceed with a health care bill that voters don't like and a big-government agenda that Americans weren't voting for in 2008. Brown is no libertarian. But he campaigned against the Obama-Reid-Pelosi health care plan and against tax increases, so he will be part of the opposition to the current governing agenda. And he stood up to challenge the Democratic machine when no one else did.

Cato produced a new video that discusses the meaning of Tuesday's upset, and provides more analysis on the election.