Cato Video

Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails featuring the author Christopher J. Coyne

The United States was created in part to explicitly reject the abuses of King George. One of those abuses, so-called "general warrants," allowed police to search homes and businesses without evidence of a crime. The broad collection of Americans' phone records, e-mail correspondence and purchase records has largely occurred without suspicion of criminal activity. Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, comments on the redefinition of privacy by the National Security Agency. Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg.

Jim Harper discusses the NSA and Verizon on CNN's The Don Lemon Show

Jim Harper discusses the NSA and Verizon on CNN's Starting Point

Featuring the author Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; moderated by Christopher A. Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute. Since the Mexican government initiated a military offensive against its country's powerful drug cartels in December 2006, over 55,000 people have perished and the drugs continue to flow. The growing violence has created concerns that Mexico could become a failed state, and U.S. leaders worry that violence and corruption is seeping over the border, both south into Central America and north into the United States. In his compelling new book, The Fire Next Door, Ted Galen Carpenter details the growing horror overtaking Mexico and explains how the current U.S.-backed strategies for trying to stem Mexico's drug violence have been a disaster. Officials in both governments insist on staying the failed course rather than exploring significant policy change. This is a critical subject the presidential candidates are not addressing — but will have to face. Boldly conveyed in The Fire Next Door, the only effective strategy is to defund the Mexican drug cartels by abandoning the failed drug prohibition policy, thereby eliminating the lucrative black-market premium and greatly reducing the financial resources of the drug cartels. A refusal to renounce prohibition, demonstrates Carpenter, means that Mexico's agony will likely worsen and pose even more significant problems for the United States.

A leaked (and secret) court order and other documents reveal that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone records on millions of Americans for months at a time, spying on e-mail communications with the knowledge of large Internet providers and collecting a vast catalog of Americans' credit card transactions. Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, discusses the revelations. Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg.

The recent Maryland v. King decision revealed Antonin Scalia to be less of the opponent of individual liberties than his detractors would claim. In his dissent, he made clear that many supporters of broad DNA testing would like to use it to identify people not currently suspected of any wrongdoing. Cato Senior Fellow Walter Olson comments. Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg.

The OPEC cartel has been the key actor in world crude oil markets for four decades and counting. Even so, there is a surprising amount of disagreement about the nature of OPEC's influence on oil markets.In a new study published by Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), authors Andrew Morriss and Roger Meiners survey the academic literature and conclude that OPEC is an unstable cartel that has, at times, been effective in significantly increasing the price of oil. When the cartel has failed in this exercise, however, the price of oil has collapsed, possibly lower than would have been the case were the market not subject to cartelization. Morriss and Meiners believe that much of the volatility that characterizes world crude oil markets can be laid at the cartel's doorstep and, as a consequence, "the international market for oil is not a free market." Fred Smith will discuss the policy implications of Morriss and Meiners' findings. James Smith, who has written extensively on the OPEC cartel, will comment.