Chris Moody's blog

Last month In March, the Supreme Court heard the case Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, in which the FEC banned the showing the film Hillary: The Movie, an attack piece on Hillary Clinton, shortly before last year's elections. Under McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation, that type of regulation is currently backed by law.

The Court will release its decision in the next few weeks, which will hopefully turn McCain-Feingold on its head.

If the FEC can ban a movie under the first amendment, what other kinds of speech can the government get away with censoring? The experts here say even books could be next. The question is, where should we draw the line? Or, when it comes to speech, should we draw the line at all?

This video sheds some light on the case, and examines what might happen if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the FEC.

While the media and the new administration would like to have us believe there is no dissagreement among economists that President Obama's massive stimulus plan is absolutely necessary, here are 200 leading economists, which include Nobel laureates and other very respectable scholars from across the country, who beg to differ.

The Cato Institute is running a full page ad in the Washington Post, New York Times and Roll Call this week with a letter showing that whoever says, "all economists agree on stimulus" is wrong.

The letter, which is signed by 200 economists, reads:

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance.More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.  More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

Full disclosure: Chris Moody is the Manager of New Media at the Cato Institute.