Tyler Cowen asks what the definition of “austerity” is, and sort of answers it:

I wonder if some Keynesians have in mind the baseline of “the expansionary policies which I think would be appropriate,” in which case doing less than the Keynesian optimum is always a form of austerity.

I have a more simple definition: it’s a word used to cast moral and emotional judgment on a set of policies without having to actually discuss what those policies are and whether they may be justified or have some basis.

Barack Obama explicitly supported gay marriage in 1996:

In a 1996 questionnaire filled out for a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper, then called Outlines, Obama came out clearly in favor of gay marriage, which he has opposed on the public record throughout his short career in national politics.

“I favor legalizing gay marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

Here’s the narrative the administration has created: President Obama used to believe that, in line with his religious beliefs, that marriage is between a man and woman, homosexuals should be able to have civil unions, but his views “evolved” until he decided that no, “marriage” should not be restricted to heterosexuals.

Unless the president’s views changed after 1996, when he said he’d “fight” efforts to prohibit gay marriages, and then changed again suddenly, that’s simply a fiction created by the administration. The reality is 16 years ago, when it was far from popular, the president believed gay marriages should be legal, but changed his public position to be a politically-viable candidate. And now that changing his public position again is in the interest of his campaign, and especially since Biden forced the campaign’s hand, the president decided to affirm his support for gay marriage.¹

Of course, biting your tongue and keeping quiet on your true beliefs is a staple for politicians. But Obama was supposed to bring change to Washington, a new kind of candidate who didn’t deal with such cynicism and calculation. And, worse, the administration’s narrative has been that this was a change-of-heart for the president, something he came to believe after considering it heavily, and the views of his wife and daughters. Which makes this all the more cynical: they’re covering the president’s all-too-political opposition to gay marriage in the past, and sudden conversion now, with a story about how he just couldn’t keep that belief any more because he realized it’s wrong.

No. He believed it was wrong, and kept it anyway.

1. But not his support, it’s worth noting, for doing anything about it on the federal level. He believes marriage is a state issue, despite the Defense of Marriage Act, while he also apparently believes marijuana is a federal issue that must be enforced by the federal government. Being coherent isn’t worth much in Washington, I guess. [↩]

President Obama now supports same-sex marriage.

Why do we need government to define marriage for us to begin with?

Brian Galle argues the Supreme Court could uphold healthcare reform’s individual mandate under Congress’s power to levy taxes, and also firmly limit the Commerce Clause:

In brief, upholding the statute under the taxing power would allow the Court to issue a genuine holding—not just dictum—narrowing the scope of the Commerce power, while at the same time avoiding the unpredictable mess that invalidating the statute would bring. In addition to potentially flammable political blowback, tossing the Act in whole or part could throw the health sector — 1/6 of the economy, and even larger share of many state budgets— into total chaos. At argument, Justice Kennedy sounded ready to reap that whirlwind if that was what it took to make his point about the limits of federal power, but maybe he doesn’t have to.

Interesting argument.

Peter Feaver on the Obama campaign’s bin Laden advertisement:

The critique of Romney was fundamentally dishonest in the way that campaign ads often are. The ad cherry-picked Romney quotes and deployed them out of context. The valid Romney observation that defeating al Qaeda would require a comprehensive strategy, not one limited to hunting down a single man, got distorted by the Obama scriptwriters into a hesitation to pursue Bin Laden. And the valid Romney observation that it was a mistake to boast in advance about conducting unilateral strikes against the territory of our Pakistani partner got distorted into an unwillingness to act in America’s national interest.

Republicans have been angry, as expected, and Democrats have responded that the right’s sudden righteousness on political advertisements is a bit rich considering the Bush campaign’s proclivity for using national security as a club to beat Kerry over the head in 2004, which is true.

But wasn’t Obama supposed to be above this kind of crap? It was Obama, after all, that spoke of learning to “disagree without being disagreeable” when he announced his candidacy in 2007. I suppose those words don’t matter much when there’s an election to win, though. Change we can believe in, I guess.

President Obama called Paul Ryan’s budget plan “thinly veiled social darwinism”:

“Disguised as deficit-reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism. It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it — a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training; research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”

Marc Eisner comments:

Ryan hopes to achieve federal spending reductions to 20 percent GDP by 2015. By way of comparison, average spending during the George W. Bush presidency was 19.6 percent GDP. During the Clinton presidency, average spending was 19.8 percent GDP.

If Ryan’s goal of reducing government spending to 20 percent GDP is radical, the empirical record seems to argue otherwise.

Wow, I never thought that President Obama would lay down the gauntlet and call President Clinton’s policies social darwinism. You have to admire his willingness to call a spade a spade, even when it’s one of his party’s greatest heroes. Bravo.

President Obama believes it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to overturn his healthcare reform:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.  Well, this is a good example.  And I’m pretty confident that this – this court will recognize that and not take that step.

One of the Constitution’s central purposes is to make sure that a majority of citizens, acting through their “democratically elected Congress,” cannot trample over people’s rights. The purpose is to restrain both the government from intrusive actions and to prevent a majority of citizens from using government to do so.

Being passed by a majority in Congress does not make a law sacrosanct.¹ Democracy—rule by the majority—is not an ideal or end. It is a means of achieving a goal, which is a more just government and society, one that protects the people’s rights. It’s absurd to argue that the Supreme Court should let a law stand that violates the Constitution because Congress voted for it or even that a majority of citizens support it.

The “unelected group of people” ad hominem is troubling, too. Obama knows well that the Supreme Court justices are not subject to elections and term limits for good reason: to separate them from the political passions of the day and to allow them to make cool, informed decisions. You could argue that the current court is heavily partisan and so this safeguard has been short-circuited. I disagree, but that’s a different argument, and it’s not the argument the president is making. If we take Obama at his word—that he finds it troubling that an “unelected group of people” can overturn a law passed by a majority of Congress, then he’s arguing the Supreme Court should be subject to elections. He’s arguing that an arrangement that’s functioned remarkably well since the beginning of the country should be overturned and replaced, because—because why? Because his healthcare reform may be overturned? Because suddenly it’s unacceptable for the Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by majorities in the legislative branch?

I don’t think that’s what he’s arguing, though. I think he decided to take a cheap-shot at the Supreme Court as a part of the opening shots of his campaign. And that—that he is making the Supreme Court a target for his campaign—may be a worrying foreshadow of what we’ll see during the summer and fall.

1. If that were the case, I’m curious why the administration would seek to eliminate Bush’s tax cuts. After all, they were passed by a majority of Congress. [↩]

Lyle Denniston:

If Justice Anthony M. Kennedy can locate a limiting principle in the federal government’s defense of the new individual health insurance mandate, or can think of one on his own, the mandate may well survive.  If he does, he may take Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and a majority along with him.  But if he does not, the mandate is gone.  That is where Tuesday’s argument wound up — with Kennedy, after first displaying a very deep skepticism, leaving the impression that he might yet be the mandate’s savior.

I wish I could have seen today’s oral arguments.

The administration would like things both ways on healthcare reform:

There are other complications. Mr. Verrilli’s argument that the penalty is not a tax for purposes of the 1867 law is in potential tension with one he will make on Tuesday, that the mandate was authorized not only by Congress’s power under the commerce clause but also by its power to levy taxes.

Mr. Verrilli argues that the name that Congress gave the payment required for violating the mandate in the health care law —a penalty, not a tax — matters for purposes of the 1867 law but is irrelevant in connection with the constitutional taxing power, where “it is the practical operation of the provision, not its label, that controls.”

Today the mandate is a penalty. Tomorrow it is a tax. Other words which mean the same thing: the mandate is whatever we want it to be, so as we get the result we desire.

Nick Gillespie on the House GOP’s proposed budget:

Yet Ryan’s plan is weak tea. Here we are, years into a governmental deficit situation that shows no sign of ending. How is it that Ryan and the Republican leadership cannot even dream of balancing a budget over 10 years’ time? All of the discussion of reforming entitlements and the tax code and everything else is really great and necessary – I mean that sincerely – but when you cannot envision a way of reducing government spending after a decade-plus of an unrestrained spending binge, then you are not serious about cutting government. If Milton Friedman was right that spending is the proper measure of the government’s size and scope in everybody’s life, then the establishment GOP is signaling what we knew all along: They are simply an echo of the Democratic Party.

Ezra Klein:

The different authors focus on various ills. Yglesias’s pulse is quickened by height restrictions, like the ones here in Washington. Avent takes aim at the local coalitions who band together to fight new real estate development for all manner of parochial reasons. Glaeser is particularly eloquent about the way ordinary buildings get designated “historical” to impede new development. But all make basically the same point: Because we don’t fully appreciate how important cities are in stoking economic development, we dismiss the economic costs of regulations that make them too expensive for many to live in.

It makes sense that cities—and the concentration of people that results—leads to a higher level of productivity. When you’re surrounded by more people, doing a variety of things, there’s more opportunity to learn, because it’s right out your front door. You’re exposed to more things and when you find something that grabs you, it’s a lot easier to get started.

That’s even more important now, because most of our big gains this century will come from combining two disparate ideas that no one thought were connected before—seeing connections where no one else saw them. Concentrating people is a very effective way to allow that to happen.

We should make it as easy as possible, then, to allow people to move to cities. But it’s not. Living in many cities tends to be very expensive, and as Klein points out, it’s not due to inherent economic reasons. It’s due to public policy, and that’s absurd. We’re holding back our potential by doing so.

The Obama administration believes that an executive branch review of facts counts as due process before killing American citizens:

The Obama administration believes that executive branch reviews of evidence against suspected al-Qaeda leaders before they are targeted for killing meet the constitution’s “due process” requirement and that American citizenship alone doesn’t protect individuals from being killed, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech Monday.

Doesn’t that make you feel safe knowing that the executive branch reviewed evidence before killing an American?

The issue here isn’t that the government shouldn’t be able to kill American citizens fighting against the U.S. in a war zone. I don’t know of anyone who thinks that. The issue is that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by U.S. drones in Yemen, a country the U.S. is not (officially) at war in. Effectively, the administration is arguing the U.S. should be able to assassinate U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, if the executive branch deems they are planning to kill U.S. citizens and they cannot be captured.

I sympathize with the Obama administration, because they’re trying to fight a different kind of an enemy. Al Qaeda has no national affiliation nor are they congregated in a single area, so fighting them with the rules of war for nations is, well, difficult. But rather than just say that the executive branch should be able to decide on its own when to assassinate U.S. citizens, we need to create new standards for when it is permissible and when it isn’t. And there must be some kind of oversight, because it’s absolutely insane to allow the executive branch to be jury and executioner, however solemnly they carry that responsibility.

Avik S. Roy:

Under the current system, drug companies have an incentive to compete on price. If you have health insurance that covers birth control today, your insurer is likely to charge you a higher co-pay for expensive, “branded” versions of birth control over cheaper, generic ones. If you don’t have health insurance, and you’re buying the Pill directly from the pharmacy at Wal-Mart, you have even more incentive to shop on price.

Under the new mandate, this price incentive disappears. Insurers will be required to pay for any and all oral contraceptives, without charging a co-pay, co-insurance, or a deductible. This “first dollar coverage” of oral contraception kills the incentive to shop based on price.

Wal-Mart sells Sprintec oral contraceptives for $9 per month.

Roy’s right, but increasing health costs only helps proponents of a public system. If costs increase, they can argue that the private market is failing to control costs, and therefore we must make health care a public function.

That’s what’s happening. By mandating certain items for coverage, the federal government is assuming a greater and greater role in health care, moving us closer to a public system. At some point it will be inevitable.

This will sound like a bad joke or a “Modest Proposal”-like satire, but it’s not. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, two Melbourne academics argue that infants are equivalent to fetuses and, when the burden they put on their parent(s) or the government is too high, can be aborted:

Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

(Via Sven Wilson.)

Let me walk through what Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are arguing and their logic. They begin with the contention that newborn infants are morally equivalent to fetuses—that is, they have no right to life—and thus people should be able to kill them (they prefer the term “abortion”) if they place too great a burden on the parent(s) or government which pays for medical care.¹ They further make clear that this logic not only applies to infants suffering from debilitating, chronic conditions, but also to healthy infants that should expect a healthy life.

Just let that sink in for a second. They are arguing that parents should be able to murder—sorry, abort—children who they believe impose a burden on them. They suggest that other individuals should decide whether a human being will live or not, based on how convenient their life is to them. They are arguing this because they believe that being human does not also mean having a right to life, and thus the parent(s)—who we know are alive—are prioritized.

But how do they decide when a human has the right to life? They argue that a human becomes a person with a right to life when they have the capability to make “aims” (by which they mean intending on accomplishing something for themselves) because killing them would harm them by depriving them of accomplishing these aims:

Now, hardly can a newborn be said to have aims, as the future we imagine for it is merely a projection of our minds on its potential lives. It might start having expectations and develop a minimum level of self-awareness at a very early stage, but not in the first days or few weeks after birth. On the other hand, not only aims but also well-developed plans are concepts that certainly apply to those people (parents, siblings, society) who could be negatively or positively affected by the birth of that child. Therefore, the rights and interests of the actual people involved should represent the prevailing consideration in a decision about abortion and after-birth abortion (2).

Let’s unpack their logic a bit, because they did not further explain it (which is disappointing, since this is the crux of their argument). What they seem to be getting at with “aims” is that the person is self-aware and actively directing itself. This “test,” though, is an absurd way of deciding such a basic question of whether a person has a right to life or not. Let’s say there is an adult who lives at home with his parents and never leaves the couch. He has no “aims” besides eating the food his parents provide him and sleeping. While he may be capable of greater aims, functionally, his aims are no different than an infant child’s: to eat and sleep. Remember, Giubilini and Minerva are arguing that killing someone who is capable of making aims is wrong because it would prevent them from accomplishing their aims. Substantively, this adult man and an infant child have the same aims, and thus according to this logic, the parents have the right to kill him, because he poses an undue burden on them.²

Perhaps Giubilini and Minerva would respond that the primary consideration is whether the person is capable of making aims, but there is no doubt that infants—as soon as they are born—are capable of making aims. Their aim is to survive and to eat, and they accomplish those goals by crying until their parent provides them what they want, whether that is food or simply being held. That is, they want to eat, and they pursue a strategy to achieve their aim. Maybe the authors would further respond that aim doesn’t count, because the desire to eat and the strategy they use are instinctual, but that’s a rather poor argument to make: how then do we decide when an individual is in fact making an aim that is purely of their own volition? What is the bright-line which decides that this infant is alive, but that one is not? There is no clear line which divides it. We simply cannot know it with any certainty. And if we cannot know with certainty that an infant is alive, shouldn’t we presume that it is?

There’s nothing inherently different between what Giubilini and Minerva argue and a similar argument used to justify abortion—they simply have extended it to its logical conclusion, which is that, if fetuses are not alive, then there’s no reason that just-born infants are alive, either. I have no doubt, however, that many people who support the right to abortion reacted with horror and disgust while reading this paper, and for good reason: because while life may well start when a person becomes self-aware, we also inherently know that each individual, by their nature as a human being, has a right to life. Their right to life is not a societal construct, something created by everyone else and subject to change. It is a result of their nature as a human being, being capable of self-awareness, and when we deny that, we also deny something fundamental about being human.

What this paper illustrates is that when the point where a human being becomes alive is up for debate, and can be legally defined by law, we enter a time where we can allow the legally-sanctioned murder of many, many people, because we have dehumanized human beings, because we have decided they are not alive, like we are. We can do so while assuring ourselves that we are doing the right thing, the moral thing, while all along we are allowing people to be murdered for the parent’s or society’s convenience.

1. This logic, by the way, is a primary reason I oppose government involvement in health care. Once government pays for health care, they have a perfectly logical reason for deciding whether a person should live or not. In this case, the writers imply that government should be able to decide whether a baby lives or not because it may place a burden on the government to pay for its care. That’s perfectly logical if we believe infants have no right to life. Other cases include the elderly who suffer from mental debilitation with no chance of recovering, or for drugs which extend the life of people suffering from terminal illnesses or increase their quality of life before death but are also very expensive. [↩]
2. In fact, it’s easy to argue he poses a greater burden than an infant child, because if an adult man still lives at home and has no intention of supporting himself, the expectation is that burden will continue indefinitely, whereas there is a reasonable expectation for infants that they will become capable adults and support themselves after a certain period of time. [↩]

When Obama took office, his administration said they would not prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries operating in accordance with state law. This signaled a new stance, where marijuana—illegal by federal law—would effectively be a state issue, as it should be. Since then, the administration has completely reversed their earlier policy. Tim Dickinson writes:

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush’s record for medical-marijuana busts. “There’s no question that Obama’s the worst president on medical marijuana,” says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “He’s gone from first to worst.”

Very disappointing. Their policy on marijuana was, short of decriminalizing it on the federal level, exactly right. Our drug laws are patently absurd. We should have learned from prohibition that it doesn’t work, and it makes things much worse, because it empowers criminals. And yet here we are, making the same mistakes we’ve already made, putting people in prison that shouldn’t be, and sustaining drug cartels and gangs.