David. Thank you and thank you to all of you for being here. It is good to have you here. My colleagues are going to talk about specific policy issues in their area of we can per tease. Im going to open with more general, philosophical, political discussion. A lot of people believe that politics are a struggle for power and certainly if you look at history that is what politics is. It is the continuation of war by other means. It is a quest for power for your race, tribe, religion, region, whatever, your industry these days. Politics is a lot about power. But we always hope that some people in the discussion of politics and policy will stand for something bigger, something broader. Like the Public Interest, freedom and justice, the ideals of the declaration of the independence and the pledge of allegiance. We hope in washington thats what think tanks do. Think tanks are separate from abstracted from the daytoday struggles for either political power or special interests benefits from public policy. Obviously, there are some who do that better than others. In the ideal of the think tank is committed to the Public Interest, even though we may disagree what the Public Interest is. Some think tanks insist they dont have a world view a perspective, a political philosophy. They are just about analyzing and seeing what works. Im in favor of that. But to define if something is working you have to define what the goals you seek to achieve. Is freedom one of the goals that policy ought to enhance . Is justice . Is social progress . Widespread prosperity . All of those things are standards that you judge whether policies work or you dont. You might have other standards. At cato we are upfront about having a perspective. It is best known as being libertarian. It could be known as professors of classic liberal or maybe just individual rights and free markets, peace, prosperity, and freedom. But libertarian is the name we get associated with most of the time. I did a book and we have a new book coming out by another scholar this fall on the system of liberty. I want to take a minute to skiss three key ideas that discuss three key ideas. And they under lie what scholars usually talk about. The first one is individual rights. Now, classical liberals can disagree on what the source of individual rights is. Some thing our rights come from god, human nature, some think from a study of history. One thing i think we all agree on is they dont come from government. They dont come from a king, parliament, or even a constitution. They are not prescribe bid any human agent. They are rights we have as human beings that are protected by and guaranteed by the constitution but not granted to us by the constitution. People get that wrong sometimes, i think. They say constitution grants me my right to free speech. No, constitution protects your right of free speech. Second idea is spontaneous order. If you have taken a political theory class, you might say that individual rights is the normative theory. They say what things ought to be. There is no need to believe in individual rights or anything to recognize the fact in the world of spontaneous order. To most of us, most of the order in the world seems planned. It took a lot of planning to organize this event today. Took a lot of planning to organize the cspan network. It takes a lot of planning to build automobiles, create airlines. All of the things we see in the world takes planning. Why is there food in the groceries every day . You think that must be planned but, in fact, the most important order in society are not planned. They are way beyond the ability of any person or group of people to plan. Thats not just a point about the economy. Think about language. Nobody planned the english language. It arose spontaneously it evolved just like the french language, the russian language. There are a few languages that have two things in common, they were designed by human beings, they were planned and no one speaks them. All the languages that people speak are examples of spontaneous order. Law, i know were here in the ray burn Rayburn Office building and everybody thinks they are involved in making law. The fact is, law evolves spon spontaneously. Sometimes they turned to a neighbor to settle them. Some of the wisest neighbors became known as judges. Thats how precedent and case law built up. It was actually much into that process that government started saying lets write it down. And intrude it and change it through legislative or skeeverd. Money, most people think money is something ben bernanke prints. But it evolved because again, people had problem. How do i trade . If i have a fish and you have an apple then we have an easy trade. But if i dont like apples and you have enough fish then we have to make the trade possibly among a larger group of people. Again, the government took over the creation of money but they did not origin nate it. Then there is originate it. Does someone direct it . Does congress instruct that food gets put in the Grocery Stores . , there is supply and there is demand. There are is this network of solving peoples needs. Freeman talks about how he went to china and was asked by the minister of finance or somebody like that in china, a very smart man. He asked Milton Freeman who is in charge of materials distribution in the United States . He said for once he is speechless . Who is in charge . I thought of telling him the chicago board of trade but that is not the answer either. The answer is no one is in charge of materials distribution. The market coordinates that and thats why we have a lot of materials in the United States and they had hard i will materials in china back when they tried to plan and organize materials distribution. This was written about the spontaneous order which is the idea that experts can direct resources more efficient i will than can millions of independent decision makers. We saw that most strikingly in the communist world. The soviets could plan something more efficient than the chaos of the free marketplace. But we also see it here at home. We see back in the Clinton Administration they brought in him and he was going to organize the entire economy and decide what goods and services we will need in 20 years so they can be planned so we can create them. Hillary clinton created a complicated Health Care Plan that was passed by the obama administration. They also think they know that what we need is green energy. Were going to channel a lot of resources to green energy. It is not just democrats who do this. The state of virginia has been trying to plan the love lives of virginians for 100 years. They try to keep the mental feeble from reproducing, they try to keep people from different races from marrying and people from the samesex from marrying. In the same case it is we know better than these exerts who should love, how people exrpt exrpts whoexperts how we should love. We always say at cato a government of delegated and thus limited powers. We have our rights, we delegated the protection of them to a government. In the document the constitution, we enumerated what powers we were delegating to the government and by doing so we limited them. If it is not within the constitution the government cant do it. There are a few things actually delegated to the federal government and they should do those things. Government is essential to a free society but it should be limited. Let me Say Something briefly about politics. This is for the state of the union for a lot of libertarians the Election Results were discouraging. If elections were have gone the other way, they would still be discouraging. Not a happy situation. However, there are some libertarian trends going on in america, some of which we noticed on election day. One of them is people finally starting to question the wisdom of drug prohibition, another form of Central Planning and intrusion into peoples lives. Two states voted to remove the criminal penalties of the private use of marijuana. Possibly the first step to ending this centurys prohibition maybe 100 years after we ended alcohol prohibition. I published a book last year it is an ebook. I can show you on the ipad. Heres the cover of my book and one of the things i said was that the Washington Post did a poll of swing voters late in the election year. Among other things they found out that the true swing voters, they were very picky. They asked people have you made up your mind . Are you an npt . Do you usually vote relationship or democratic . There was about 5 who are really open in any typical election. Of those true swing voters they asked them true questions and 64 of them said they support Smaller Government with fewer services. 63 favored gay marriage. In some sense, if you like gay marriage you should vote for obama and if you like Smaller Government you should vote republican. What happens if you like both . Then Neither Party fits well. There was another poll reported that most americans want a shrunken federal government, support for Smaller Government is up significantly in recent years and it marks a piveyot issue. When you ask people the poll question, do you support Smaller Government with fewer services . You are telling people the benefit of larger government. You are not telling them the benefit of Smaller Government. If you rephrase the question a little more fairly, do you support Smaller Government with fewer services and lower taxes . You get about another 10 points. Instead of 60 you get almost 70 for i prefer the one with fewer services and lower taxes. Republicans have not been good at finding it but there is a constituency in america still of people who would not call themselves little bit and probably would not call themselves as liberal. But they do believe in Smaller Government and social tolerance. Either party could go after that constituency which is a swing constituency more of the work in our book demonstrates people with those views have swung back and forth between the parties more than most. As we talk about public policy, i know people on capitol hill think about politics and i urge you the think about the possibility there is this group of libertarian leading swing voters who are up for grabs in some sense for a party that supported Smaller Government and social tolerance. Thanks for much. [applause] that was great, david. I think the first time i ever heard you speak was i dont know if it was on the hill or not but i was an intern. I dont want to say how many years ago but every time i hear you i learn something else. Or i will how to better present these ideas we believe. Im here to talk about a long list of different policy areas. I handle constitutional law and other things related to that. Im going to focus on traditional appointments, gun control, and continuing obamacare litigation. This is the state of the union as it were so what kind of report in my area in terms of the constitution . Well, people seem to care about it. Or at least know about it more than they did five, 10 years ago. Increasely, people ask where do you get the power to do this . Not do you as a result of v your analysis together correctly when evaluating public policies. Had is good. The big one the Supreme Court decided in june, they adopted every argument that cato made to it. Now someone else responsible for the tasking power. In terms of the law were better off in terms of the decision. The operation was a success that the patient died. I think the constitution and constitutionism is moving along oven though the president and other members are saying things like we cant get anything done because of this constitution. Sometimes you have to ignore that the other branches of government are not supportive so we have to do our own thing. But luckly the constitution is there and you just saw last week the d. C. Circuit apellet court here throw out the appointments to the board. Under that excuse that the constitution does not give the president to power to nominate things to agencies when he thinks congress is in recess. I mean, the recess appointments provision in the constitution was meant to allow the federal government to function while the senators were coming back on horseback from the fartherest western regions of the country, ohio, kentucky. It took weeks to get here so you have to have the government functioning. No, the court said you cant do that. The only recess at least count are the ones between sessions, summer doesnt count, easter doesnt count. And for only positions that became open during that period. So all of a sudden not just the nrlb but a whole bunch of appointed people their position is in jeopardy. Richard at the Consumer FinanceProtection Bureau was renominated official i will last week. In terms of jew dishal apointments obama made fewer nominations than bush or clinton. You may have read or heard or know that he con confirmed fewer judges. He sent up fewer nominations. Hard to confirm judges that are not nominated. The confirmation rate was lower for bush but obama had a higher percentage of court of appeal judges. I dont know what is going on with the district judges, whether there is problem on the ground or obama is nominating them late in the cycle. Then they are not getting voted on a lame duck or what have you. It is not a matter of obstructionism or people not getting hearings for that matter. Hearings are about the same rate for bush or clinton. Physical fewer nominees have been filibustered either successfully or unsuccessfully. President obama did not want to spend a lot of Political Capital on his nominees. Even the ones that were higher profile he could see this could be an example of progressive, how i want to shape the court sort of view. The president did not twist any arms or use up any Political Capital. Now after reelection, he might start doing that. Of course, he also had two Supreme Court appointments to make which takes time and energy. I dont think that can explain the whole deal. I dont think were going to have any more Supreme Court vacancies for a while. They all seem to like what they are doing. God bless her she survived cancer three times and she is the oldest one. My bet is that she resigned at some point in 2015. The big cases this term at the Supreme Court, theres one in affirmative action, Higher Education at the university of texas. We can see a decision in that probably soon. It was back in october, i think Voting Rights case out of alabama questioning the continuing wisdom and constitutionalty of a law, the section of the Voting Rights act that requires states certain jurisdiction. Im not talking about the confederacy. To clear any election regulation be it moving your poling location from a firehouse to a schoolhouse by the federal government. It is not correlated of voting rates of minorities. So were probably going to see the Supreme Court strike that down which will make waves. And of course, a couple of gay marriages are before the court. It is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court this term will strike down all restrictions on gay marriage, require all states to provide it. The cases they took can be decided without reaching that point. One is the defensive marriage act, Section Three about federal benefits that the federal government has to give certain benefits to people who are lawfully married in their state who are gay. You can see Justice Kennedy making the deciding vote but on the federalism grounds. Without talking about fundamental rights or equal protection. Then there is californias prop 8 thing. I think the most likely thing there is there is some technicality of who will can stand in the room to respect your case. That is one way to hand it on the federalism grounds while not enshrining on the constitutional rights. They are not ready to do that. Moving on the what is right now, what alex is going to talk about the hottest issue and that is gun control. President obamas executive actions, there were 23 of them. They were a pleasant surprise in a certain extend. He wasnt legislating himself a ban on assault weapons or confiscating guns or anything like that. I printed out the white house statement and drew a chart and tried to tick off where their potential Second Amendment problems and where there are other problems. I did not find any Second Amendment problems. What i did find was orbleely depending on how things plan out but when they get around to writing the legislations there might be intrusions on privacy. There might be concerns about where does the federal government get off telling regulating certain aspects of our lives be it your relationship with your doctor or how a business runs its practices, how First Responders local and state right lane to behave or what kind of plans they are supposed to put together. A couple of items macon tra dignity the laws more square squarely. Obamacare forbids the collection of guns. One of the directives is to say that obamacare does not prohibit doctors from asking about guns in their home. Without obamacare that is something they could do in the federal government. I looked at the language and you should as well. It seems like, for good or ill, that contradicts it. So the center for Disease Control is prohibited by law from conducting certain types of research that could be catergorized as advancing gun control or affecting gun policy. Here one of the items is directing the c. D. C. To do research in this area. It is a techni