Month: February 1999

Two years ago, a bad guy named Charles Dickerson voluntarily confessed to the FBI that he had robbed seven banks in Maryland and Virginia. Dickerson's lawyer, however, asked the court to suppress his client's freely given confession because the agents allegedly had "Mirandized" him too late. Throwing out a confession usually means that the guilty criminal goes free, and that would be the likely outcome in Dickerson's case. The district court duly suppressed the confession.

In his year-end report, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the trend to federalize crimes already covered by state laws "not only is taxing the Judiciary's resources and affecting its budget needs, but it also threatens to change entirely the nature of our federal system."

Milton Friedman deserves our gratitude for a multitude of contributions to American economic theory, political thought and public policy. But possibly his greatest contributions have been destroying the credibility of Keynesian economics and making libertarian philosophy and the idea of free markets academically respectable.

Although President Clinton talks about the need to save Social Security, the White House has refused repeated calls to put forth a specific plan because it might be politically divisive. No one has ever accused this administration of being a "Profile in Courage" except, of course, the White House press office.