The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
Members of Congress consider repealing the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., citing a recent federal court ruling.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the verdict that ruled the handgun ban unconstitutional:
“[The argument that the Second Amendment only applies to state militias] overlooks the fact that state constitutions’ bills of rights, which are expressly designed to protect individuals’ rights against their very own state, often contain the same language as the federal Second Amendment. State constitutions’ gun-rights provisions likewise often speak of the “people” as having the right to keep and bear arms, and the importance of a well-trained state militia. These provisions can scarcely guarantee a ‘collective right’ of the state, rather than an individual right, since their entire purpose is to limit a state’s power over its own citizens.”
2. SCIENCE
Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug turns 93 this week.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Director of Food Safety Policy Gregory Conko on Dr. Borlaug’s enormous contributions to human health and welfare:
“Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize winning agronomist, will turn 93 on Sunday, March 25, 2007. It’s a birthday well worth celebrating. His life’s work — known around the world the Green Revolution — is estimated to have saved more than a billion human beings from starvation. Still, at age 93, Borlaug still spends much of his time in the wheat and corn fields outside Mexico City, helping teams of scientists and farmers breed new and improved varieties. And, he jets around the world, working with farmers in Africa and Asia, and trying to convince governments that they should free their people and allow them to apply the best new technologies and their own ingenuity to conquering the problems that cause low agricultural productivity and food insecurity..”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Al Gore urges Americans to follow the lead of Britain on global warming policy.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on Gore’s hypocrisy on global warming:
“On the Senate side, Inhofe confronted Gore with the hypocrisy of his preaching to the rest of us about the need to use less energy — by taking colder showers, hanging laundry outside to dry and keeping our homes colder in the winter and warmer in the summer, among other things — while his own personal electric bill for his Nashville mansion is 20 times the national average. Gore responded that he purchases so-called “green energy” — electricity produced by wind turbines, solar panels or methane gas — for his mansion. What he failed to mention, however, is that he just began buying green energy in 2007, even though for years he’s been telling anyone who will listen that they need to green up their energy use.”