Supreme Court Hears Case Of Animal Cruelty And Free Speech

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.

Gingrich: We Are At The Edge Of A Catastrophe

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.

North Korean Threat Not So Imminent?

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.”

Experts: Sea Control Vital to American Supremacy

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.”

American attack on North Korea possible due to alliance system

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)