The FBI looked the other way when it knew that several people were being framed for a crime they did not commit.  Some might say, “Well, we all know there were certain abuses when Hoover was running the bureau in the ol’ days.”  But behold the argument advanced by the attorney representing the United States government:

Yesterday, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the FBI had no duty to share internal documents with state prosecutors and insisted the state was responsible for convicting the men in the slaying of Edward “Teddy” Deegan in Chelsea.

“The United States is not liable to plaintiffs because they were convicted as a result of a state prosecution,” Bridget Bailey Lipscomb said. “The FBI did not initiate this prosecution, and there is no duty of the FBI to submit to state or local governments any of its internal files.”

The government is not denying the fact that it knew what was happening. Nor is it saying the plaintiffs were wronged but are asking for too much money.  The government is instead arguing that it had no duty to come forward. 

At a minimum, one might ask what the FBI means when it says that one of its “core values” is “Accountability [by] accepting responsibility for its actions and decisions and the consequences of its actions and decisions.”  Maybe the director means that his agents will not arrest people who bring lawsuits against the bureau alleging illegal conduct.  Maybe he means something else. 

At worst, criminal laws were broken here.  An ordinary citizen can go to jail for suborning perjury.  It is also a crime to stand by and let a crime take place without notifying the authorities (misprision of felony).  The feds evidently believe they are not bound by these rules.  Pretty shocking.  Even if the judge rules against the Department of Justice, we should not forget what it argued in this case.

To listen to a Cato event on the FBI’s informer scandal, go here.     

From today’s Cincy Enquirer:

More than 11,500 Cincinnati Public School students are eligible to receive state-paid vouchers to attend private schools next year, but state officials say that Cincinnati Public officials are hindering them from getting the word out.

The district is the only one in the state that has refused to provide to the state the addresses of students who are eligible for tuition vouchers.

This Saturday and next, the Ohio Department of Education is conducting free parent information sessions in Cincinnati to describe how students attending 27 Cincinnati schools that are in “academic watch” or “academic emergency” are eligible to receive Ohio EdChoice Scholarships to attend private schools.

All in all, CPS is just another brick in America’s educational Berlin Wall. They can try to keep kids from escaping to freedom, like East German border guards during the Cold War, but eventually that wall is coming down.

The only thing that these folks can do is choose whether to help the process of educational liberation, or hinder it.

Someday their grand-kids or great-grand-kids, who will enjoy school choice, will ask them which side they were on. How will they answer?

While a lame argument is disappointing for the opportunity cost of having read it, a lame argument put forth as rebuttal to one’s own assertions can be affirming.  But, to paraphrase a colleague, there’s nothing better than being challenged with lame arguments by adversaries who have wide media circulation.  For that, I thank you, Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan takes exception to the arguments I make in this piece, which appeared in the Washington Times last week.  The theme of my op-ed was that Congress should curtail its instinct to blame trade for everything that’s wrong with America.  I even go as far as to suggest that, with strong economic growth, strong job creation, and a low rate of unemployment, things might not be all that bad in America.  And at the very least, Congress should take the time to honestly assess the meaning of the trade deficit.  What Congress would find is that the deficit is highly pro-cyclical (meaning that is shrinks when the economy contracts, it grows when the economy expands, and grows faster when the economy grows faster – see some of Dan Griswold’s work on this topic).  I also suggested that the trade account has very little to do with trade policy, and much more to do with demand in the United States and abroad, as well as differences in habits of savings and consumption.

For those empirically sound (and verifiable) assertions, Buchanan lampoons libertarians for possessing some religious-like devotion to their beliefs regardless of the facts before taking two of my points out of context to serve as springboards into his xenophobic, isolationist, nationalistic rage.

When we win at trade, it doesn’t mean they lose (“cleaning those foreigners’ clocks”).  We are all winning at trade as the economic pie grows larger and larger—so much so that the large U.S. economy can grow at a moderate-to-strong pace every year with the exception of two for the past quarter century, while the small-to-medium-sized Chinese economy simultaneously can grow by double digits every year during the same period.  

But rather than reinvent the wheel under which arguments like Buchanan’s have been reliably squashed throughout the years, I invite you to peruse this collection of timeless commentaries from Cato scholars and others about Buchanan-like views on trade and globalization.