By Ravi Bhatia-Talk Radio News Service

Animal cruelty clashed with first amendment rights today in the U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v. Stevens, which also marked Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s second day sitting as an Associate Justice in the Court’s new term. 

In 2004, Robert Stevens was indicted and charged with selling three dogfighting videos to undercover law enforcement agents. Congress enacted the statute in 1999, which deemed that whoever sells depictions of animal cruelty would be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years. 

Steven’s 37-month sentence was 14 months longer than NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s, who had participated firsthand in a dogfighting venture. Although dogfighting is illegal in all 50 states, the practice is legal in Japan, where much of the footage in Stevens’ videos came from. 

According to Neal Katyal, the government lawyer defending the law, a “robust market” in animal cruelty exists. Upholding the statute would dry up the market for such material, he argued. It would also add to the precedent set in New York v. Ferber in 1982, when the Court ruled that the First Amendment right to free speech did not forbid states from banning the sale of child pornography.

The Ferber case was the last time that the question of whether or not material was too obscene to receive first amendment protection was addressed.

Patricia Millett argued on behalf of Stevens, suggesting that the statute was drafted too broadly and that it applied to legally protected activity.

Congress had enacted Article 48 in order to outlaw “crush videos,” which depicted close-ups of women inflicting torture on animals such as hamsters, puppies and kittens with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes.

The Supreme Court will release their decision on the case later this year, although the tone of the hearing implies that the justices are leaning towards affirming the decision of the Court of Appeals in overturning the law.

The United States needs a dramatic increase in defense spending as well as a massive overhaul of its national security decision-making process in order to avoid a catastrophe, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Monday.

“[We need] a national security budget and a homeland security budget driven by meeting the capabilities of our opponents, not by meeting their intentions. We are today running very big risks in the name of saving a few billion dollars that may end up killing several million Americans. The time to fix that is before the disaster happens,” said Gingrich.

He described several threats to national security such as nuclear, biological, and cyber attacks, as well as electromagnetic pulse attacks that could wipe out most of the country’s electrical structure. Gingrich stated that the U.S., like Japan, should start militarizing outer space in order to protect the massive amounts of communication technology orbiting the Earth.

Gingrich also criticized the federal government’s inability to act decisively and quickly, explaining that bureaucracy hinders the country’s ability to move at the speed of the modern world or sustain its defense system.

“We have been the most fortunate generation in history…We are still today the richest, freest, and safest people in the history of the world. That will only remain true if we have the courage, the discipline, and the foresight to insist on the kind of changes we need in order to maintain safety as the highest single value of the American people, a base on which you can then build prosperity and freedom,” said Gingrich.

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service.

Analysts for the Brookings Institution gathered to assess the North Korean threat on America and its allies in reaction to N.Korea’s recent underground nuclear bomb detonation and the launch of two short-range missiles.

The think tank was pressed into discussing the matter following North-Korea’s acceleration in its military activity.

Pyongyang had already caught the international community’s attention in October 2007 by unsuccessfully testing a nuclear weapon.

However the threat posed by the North Asian state has reached new heights after N.Korea announced that it had conducted underground nuclear tests on Monday, followed by two short-range missiles (a ground-to-ship missile and a ground-to-air missile) launched from an east-coast base on Tuesday.

Michael O’Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution warned that although “Their options are limited,” threats must be taken seriously, they must be mitigated.

Richard Bush, a Senior Fellow and Director for the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, confirmed that “They have a problem though, and that is that deterrence is not yet credible; their missiles don’t fly far enough and accurately enough, the weapons design is not yet perfect and so they need to test, that’s the only way they can demonstrate to others that they have the capability to inflict harm on the United States and on Japan.”

If the production of the missiles is one leap closer to achieving significant nuclear capabilities, O’Hanlon explained that “The real issue is the size of the weapon and how deliverable it would be by the North Koreans, if they were to choose to deliver it some day.”

Additionally, “[The missile] has to survive the stresses of missile flight, which are no trivial,” said O’Hanlon.

However, according to the analysts, this does not mean that a threat is nonexistent but rather that the U.S should not be concerned by missiles coming from North Korea directly.

O’Hanlon said “I would say the most worrisome question is the sale of nuclear material because if they attack South Korea, their regime will end.”

O’Hanlon concluded that “The only thing they can plausibly get way with is the sale.”

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

If America is to remain an international superpower, it must control the world’s oceans, according to U.S. military and policy experts.

“The United States quite simply is a maritime nation,” said Michael Auslin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Our future is possibly more tied up in the Pacific than with Europe.”

“The more power diffuses to the international system and Asia, the harder it will be to protect the global commons and the more difficult it will be to protect maritime security,” said Ashley Tellis, senior associate at with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Tellis said that the interests between rising nations, like India and China, are not all shared by the U.S. and would be unreliable partners who would almost certainly take advantage of any global cooperation.

Tellis is skeptical of the concept that international maritime cooperation “is essentially an idea that is pivoted on the notion of cooperation, and it works best in a world where all nations have common interests.”

Historically, the domination of the seas has been vital to the continuing strength and viability of powerful countries. But America’s role as a global hegemony is in jeopardy as Asian nations, like China and India, are taking militaristic actions to control large bodies of oceans.

In 1994, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was officially enforced, which defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world’s oceans. But before China signed the treaty, they extended their territorial waters to the continental shelf, which was much farther than the 12 miles stated in the original treaty.

America did not sign the agreement, which creates a global system of signals to aid in communication in order to prevent any misunderstandings.

According to Bernard Cole, a professor at the National War College, the Chinese view the situation as: America must “stay 200 miles off our coastline at all times and we won’t have any conflict.”

Japan is another major player within the Asian-Pacific region because of the strength of their economy and relations with America. But Japan itself is at a “crossroads toward rising or falling as a nation,” said retired Vice Admiral Hideaki Kaneda of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. “It is very critical in the long term to maintain this important maritime alliance for Japan and the United States.”

Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation describes a scenario of how America may be drawn into war against North Korea because of the alliance system. The basis of the system involves America’s duty to protect Japan if they are attacked by an external force. (0:34)

 

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by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

The planned rocket launch in defiance of international law by North Korea should not hinder U.S. hopes of achieving the peaceful denuclearization of the North, an opinion backed by senior-level U.S. diplomats.

“Korea and the U.S. are fully at one voice now in tackling the North Korea missile launch and also in pushing forward the six-party process,” said Han Duk-soo, Korean Ambassador to the United States.

“The six-party talks should be promoted. That is at present the only alternative to the peaceful denuclearization of North Korea,” said Han Duk-soo. “Peace and security and prosperity in this region is very crucial not only for this region but also for the global community.”

Lee Ki-Taek, Vice Chairman of the National Unification Advisory Council said that the launch was a threat. But “It does not matter whether it was a satellite or missile for it was clearly not hope,”he said.

Charles L. Pritchard, President of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C. said that the Obama administration has shown a “conservative” response to what’s been going on with North Korea.

“The United States, it has been said here already, intends to maintain the six-party talks as the basis of engagement of North Korea. That may not turn out to be quite as accurate as they hoped,” Pritchard said.

Pritchard said that the U.S. has made an emphasis on bilateral ties, and has been directly engaged in the consultation process with North Korea and Japan.

Pritchard suggested that the continuation of the tri-lateral coordination is necessary, but that the idea of withholding visas for North Koreans as a form of punishment should be tossed out the window.

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

“Now the G-20 is not an easier group to get into a consensus, it’s very much harder,” said Jeremy Rabkin, a Professor of law at George Mason University School of Law.

Today at a discussion on the upcoming G-20 meeting in London, panelists expressed their concerns about the meeting, the topics that should be addressed, and the likely results from the meeting.

J.D. Foster, a Senior Fellow in the economics of fiscal policy at the Thomas Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies of the Heritage Foundation, said there are three issues at stake in the summit, the first being stimulus spending. “Should it be an international priority? Second, international institutions…. Should entirely new institutions of global governance be created? And third, underlying the both of the first two questions is the question of sovereignty. Should nations retain the basic right to regulate their own markets even if the result is that their systems of regulation differ?” Foster also said that at the summits they take on the task of lecturing one another usually on things that they themselves are not doing very well. “In this case we hope very much that the American president, President Obama, heeds some of the lectures of his European counterparts. It is a shameful situation to find ourselves in where we hope the European leaders are effective in lecturing the American president on the dangers of debt finance but that’s where we are.” Foster went on to say that people all over the world have the right to be angry with the U.S. “The Czechs, the French, the Germans, everybody else in the world is right to be angry at the United States and other governments engaged in this sort of enormous debt finance stimulus which won’t work, but they should be more than concerned; they should be furious. They should be furious because this is going to drive up interest rates at some point…. It will be affecting global financial markets,” concluded Foster.

Desmond Lachman, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy, said “Europe to me looks like it’s basically in denial. Japan has run out of policy instruments…. interest rates are at zero. China is still counting on exports, really not being flexible on its exchange rate or trying to modify its economy….. You know that I think they diagnosed the problem correctly,” he said. Lachman went on to say, “I think what they have done is executed rather poorly.” Lachman expressed that the the fiscal stimulus package was poorly designed and that the Geithner plan is not attacking the problem in the banking system, saying that the problem is not one of liquidity but of solvency.

Rabkin stated that he thinks it is very unlikely that we are going to see enhanced global governance as the outcome of G-20 deliberations and said that the G-20 group is science fiction. “The majority of these countries are poor and somewhat chaotic. The idea that you’re going to propose a elaborate system of global controls, and ‘China’ will say yeah good idea we really want people to come into our country and monitor how we do our regulation. I think it’s fantastical,” he concluded.

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

Today in a press conference held by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), John McCain (R-AZ), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) an announcement was made about the introduction of  a drug importation legislation that will reduce the cost of prescription drugs in the United States.  The “Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act” the Senators stated will bring consumers immediate relief and will force the pharmaceutical industry to lower drug prices in the United States.

The bill, which is the same as last year’s proposal by President Obama, will allow U.S. drug wholesalers and licensed pharmacies to import FDA-approved medications from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Japan. The costs in these countries, which are 35 to 55 percent lower than in the U.S. will allow Americans to benefit from these prices also. The legislation only applies to FDA-approved prescription drugs produced in FDA-approved plants from countries with the same safety standards. 

At the conference Senator Dorgan pointed out a comparison between the drug Lipitor that is made in Ireland which gets distributed to both Canada and the United States. “I have in fact two bottles here, the only difference is in color, one is red and one is blue…The only difference is the U.S. consumer gets to pay more than twice as much for the identical pill put in the same bottle. That’s unfair we believe.”

Senator Stabenow stated “This is not like buying a pair of shoes or buying some other commodity when you cant get your medicine, it literally is life threatening so this is a very serious issue for people and we can make a dramatic difference by passing this legislation.”

Senator Dorgan said that he is confident that President Obama and his administration will support this bill because Obama introduced the exact piece of legislation last year. “He and his chief of staff co-sponsored this identical bill…You would expect a President that signed up as a member of senate for this identical bill to support it as he already has done in his budget message.” Dorgan concluded. 

“If we let the world know that we’re going after every drop that we can responsibly gather, and let the world know that we are going to be the least reliant country in the world on oil…we would send a ripple throughout the world,” said Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) during a telephone conference on energy independence and national security.

“We wouldn’t need to be at the mercy of other people. It wouldn’t impact our foreign policy decisions as it does today.”

Voinovich made the case that the combination of the country’s debt and reliance on foreign oil received from hostile nations has created a security concern that neither presidential candidate has properly addressed.

“The problem that they’re not talking about is that 51 percent of the debt is owned by foreign countries…70% of it is being bought by the Chinese, the Japanese, and the OPEC nations.”

Voinovich likened the situation to a business whose competitors have a supply that’s in demand and control of their debt. He said that under those circumstances it was doubtful it would be in business much longer.

We must take the missile threat from Iran seriously.

Such was the statement of Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. General Henry A. “Trey” Obering III at a Missile Defense Status briefing at the Pentagon. Iran, he says, is working on an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 missile and a new 2,000 km medium-range ballistic missile known as the “Ashura.” Iran is acquiring “advanced ballistic missile capabilities,” and they’re doing it with foreign assistance and an “aggressive development and test program.”

So what was Iran testing last week? Intelligence provides that info, Obering said, but the Iranians themselves are the ones providing the information. Although this may call into question the accuracy of the information due to bias, Obering said that based on what he has seen, they [Iran] have the capability to have long range missiles. And by having Iran talk about the possibility of a space launch brings to mind something else: the ability to have an umbrella of cover under which they could make booster missiles capable of traveling intercontinental distances.

The thought of a nuclear missile capable of reaching the United States from Iran strikes fear into the heart of every American, and Obering stressed that this is the very reason the missile defense system in Europe is needed. Based on azimuth trajectories (the arc a missile would have to travel in order for it to intercept another target), we need radar detection in the Czech Republic, and our actual interceptors located in Poland. Any closer, and they could not travel the proper trajectory to destroy an enemy missile in time to avoid significant damage.

But what if the attack isn’t nuclear, and is, in fact, an EMP? EMP’s are missiles that deploy an electromagnetic pulse, capable of disabling electronics across a large area. The amount of disabling caused is proportional to how close it is to the target when it goes off, hence the desire to intercept those types of missiles as far above the ground as possible. The House Armed Services Committee discussed that threat and said the potential damage would be significant.

The United States has eighteen nations around the globe that we can do missile defense interaction with. “It’s not the United States only” that is concerned, and there are a growing number of nations that want defense. Placing our interceptors in Poland is where it makes the most sense. Although Russia says that we’re exaggerating a missile threat from Iran, and has also come to a misconception that we are pointing missiles at Russia themselves, there are three fundamental problems with that theory. One, the angle of the missiles would actually fire them 256 kilometers into space if they went all the way to their apex, two, interceptors don’t carry the same payload such as an actual destructive missiles does- they’re only designed to hit things that do have that payload, and make them explode on themselves, and three, a European interceptor site (up to 10 interceptors) “would be easily overwhelmed by Russia’s strategic missiles force,” should we fire at them.

Russia, apparently, has been invited to “come have a look,” and we’ve made a proposal: we will set the defense system up but we won’t bring it completely operational unless the Iranian threat emerges. Obering said that an Iranian threat has emerged when there is proof they have the capability to fire off a missile that can travel 2,000 – 2,500 kilometers, and, if we wait till they actual fire off those missiles, it’s too late to get our own defenses up to defend against it. There is the need to be ready now, not later. Yes, Obering said, they [Iran] have long-range missiles.

Tests have been conducted utilizing missiles fired at the proper trajectories from Alaska and California, to emulate an actual airstrike. Obering said they’re concerned that Iran and North Korea will develop the ability to counteract our defense, and shoot our interceptors down before they can do what they are meant to do: protect. That is why by the end of this year we hope to have two tracking satellites that can track launched missiles more precisely than we do with our current ground radar, such as the one located in Japan. Since we have fielded an initial capability to defend the United States against ballistic missile attacks, we must take into account future uncertainties. Right now, we’re hitting our targets within centimeters from where we’re aiming.