CEI Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. Safety
The Department of Homeland Security hosts a forum on the latest trends in cybercrime.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer and Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on how private enterprise can help make the nation safer:
America has not done enough to protect the networks of roads, train lines, pipelines, power wires, ports, and fiber-optic networks that constitute the nation’s critical infrastructure. This infrastructure, indeed, faces threats from all directions, from nuisances to existential risks. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina showed the vulnerability of our systems. A snow storm can clog highways for weeks. A tornado can shut down power for millions. A malicious virus could cripple the Internet. Another airplane hijacking could paralyze long distance travel. A nuclear terrorist attack could destroy much in a major city and send the entire economy into a tailspin. While we can always mitigate—and in the case of terrorist attacks, prevent— these events, neither the government nor private enterprise can provide total safety.
2. Legal
The Supreme Court invalidates the use of race as a criterion for assigning students to public schools.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader analyzes the opinion:
While the Court’s decision authorizes the use of race to remedy past intentional discrimination, it cuts back on earlier cases that allowed the use of race to remedy unintentional discrimination.
3. Environment
Jim Manzi writes in National Review that conservatives should embrace global warming alarmism.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on why Manzi is missing the point:
[Manzi] suggests that conservatives turn global warming alarmism into a political advantage by essentially out-marketing the enviros on the solutions. ‘Conservatives should propose policies that are appropriately optimistic, science-based and low-cost… A key political question is there for which side could more effectively use its position on carbon taxes to peel off 1 percent of the relevant votes from the opposing coalition,’ he writes. Why won’t putting a happy-face on being the low-cost-provider of planetary apocalypticism work? Because averting planetary disaster is not what global warming alarmism is all about. There are many nefarious agendas driving the global warming controversy, none of them have anything to do with ‘saving’ the planet, and to pretend they don’t exist is to truly live in denial.
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
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