Miranda Warnings, Education, Seatbelt Laws, Other Things

1. Lots of talk about whether this latest terrorist should be mirandized. First, I like this post by libertarian blogger, Jeffrey Miron, pointing out that Glenn Beck thinks the terrorist should be mirandized. I like how it shows how conservatives/libertarians still value individual rights, when they think the constitution actually contains the right. I think that it's interesting that Beck thinks the constitution contains the right (discussed below). I also think it's interesting how many different areas of law this question implicates (non of which I'm an expert in, so I could be misremembering the law).
1. War and peace powers. One argument against mirandizing is that when we are at war, the president has the power to detain the terrorist indefinitely under the war powers as an enemy combatant. No mirandizing necessary, because you don't get criminal procedure rights when you are the enemy in a war. That was kind of  the issue in the Hamdi case (dealing with detentions). Do american citizens engaged in war against the U.S. get habeas rights like other citizens? What's interesting is that Thomas and Scalia came out on polar opposite sides of the question, with the court landing in the middle. Thomas said the president can hold the citizen terrorist indefinitely without review, and Scalia said that the terrorist gets full habeas corpus rights unless congress suspends the writ. Republicans have mostly adopted the Thomas view, but I think I'm on Scalia's side. (I do think that it was key that Hamdi was brought back to the U.S. though).
2. Fifth Amendment. Miranda has been controversial since the case was decided. While it is based on the right against self-incrimination, that the fifth amendment only bars being compelled to be a witness against yourself. Miranda, therefore, rests on the assumption that all custodial interrogations without a warning and waiver are coercive. That's what's interesting to me about what Beck said--he assumes that Miranda warnings are a constitutional right.
3. Standing and the Exclusionary Rule. Not giving a Miranda warning doesn't mean the guy gets off scott-free. It just means that the exclusionary rule applies to the evidence he gave in answer to the interrogation. Other evidence it still admissible. It could be well worth not giving the warning and giving up the right to use the information in court in order to get additional information from the terrorist that reveals, for example, a network of terrorist. Also, only the right holder has standing to challenge the use of the evidence, so the testimony could be used against other terrorists.
4. Second Interrogation. If I remember criminal procedure right, the police can get a confession, leave, come back some time later, give Miranda warnings, get a waiver, and get another confession and even though the first confession is inadmissible, the second would be admissible. 
5. Emergency Exception. I just learned there is also an emergency exception to Miranda. I'm not sure I agree with Krauthammer that congress can create a statutory exception, however. I don't think a constitutional requirement can be overridden by statute, and whether the statute conflicts with the constitution depending on what the supreme court determines the Constitution requires. Also,while I agree that giving Miranda warnings is going to slightly increase the chance a suspect clams up, who today doesn't know their Miranda rights? I imagine the effect of Miranda warnings is very small.
6. In conclusion, I don't really have much of an opinion on whether terror suspects should be mirandized.
2. Here's a pretty good article about that Milwaukee voucher study making some of the same points we discussed a week or two ago.
3. At some point, the back and forth over at B v. E has to end. Still there is this one question I've been thinking about: If you distrust government why do you trust it with military power? This is basically the inverse of the question I posed: if you think your government is evil, why would you trust it with so much domestic power? I plain don't understand why, if you think government is so evil that it kills thousands of people for oil, you would trust it to teach your children 40 hours a week or to administer your healthcare system. I think if I believed government regularly started wars for oil, I'd be an anarchist.
4. The inverse does pose a small problem, however. If I distrust government why do I trust it with military power? A lot of libertarians actually do not trust the government with much military power. Ron Paul is one. I think Don Boudreaux is another. But they tend to think that government is evil. I'm not there. I think government is inefficient. But  I do think government tends to dole out favors to the politically connected. I'm sure the Department of Defense is no exception. So why couldn't a defense contractor capture the DoD the way libertarians think other agencies are captured?
5. Here is why I think that government use of military power is generally better than administration of economic programs:
1. It isn't necessarily better. Government has a role to play in solving community action problems and raising a military is a classic community action problem. But It's not that I think government will do a good job. It's just that we won't have a military without government.
2. Government officials can more easily convince themselves that their friends are the most deserving of government largess. It's also easy to convince yourself that inefficient spending is good for the economy (that's one of the premises of Keynsian economics).  Much of the cost of inefficient government is hidden. The cost of a inefficient government contract, handout, tariff or quota is what could have been produced in its absence. The costs are hidden and so easy to ignore.  It's much harder to delude yourself into thinking a war for oil is a good thing. The cost of war are not hidden. In fact, they are certain to be big news and to directly impact citizens, who will hold politicians accountable.
3. The question of war is more decentralized than the question of awarding a contract--at least in the case of Iraq. That decision involved the president, the CIA, other intelligence agencies and the Senate.
6. Do you think it is unfair to call Obama a socialist? interesting discussion here. In the traditional sense, where government controls the means of production, yeah, it's probably not accurate. But there seems to be another sense of socialist, where you believe that government can almost always improve markets by regulating them. Seems to me Obama's a socialist under that watered-down definition. Maybe we need a better word for people, who when they look around, all they see are market failures.
7. I'm less of a closed-boarders guy than I used to be. But the Suns wearing their Spanish-language jerseys still annoys me. 
8. Here are the issues that keep me from identifying as a Libertarian: foreign policy, immigration, abortion and sometimes drugs. In the Goldberg-Frum exchange, Frum asks Goldberg whether he supports seatbelt laws. I wonder if that is a good test of libertarianism. Do you support seatbelt laws? Both Frum and Goldberg do.
9. When I bought my house I knew it had water in the crawlspace. We've finally decided it's time to do something about it. I have four bids, and I'm tempted to go with the lowest, which is still expensive. But, the bids aren't for the same fix. Two are for a sum pump. One is for a pipe through some concrete. One is for a French drain. I don't want to do the cheapest if it doesn't fix the problem. But I'm not sure how to determine which fix is actually going to work. Any suggestions?