Think Tanked

MI's Josh Barro & CAP's Matt Miller Discuss Power of Labor Unions on CNBC

Manhattan Institute's Gelinas on Dodd-Frank Bill

Manhattan Institute fellow Nicole Gelinas argues in today's Washington Examiner that pushing the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill will only come back to hurt Democrats.

Once President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill into law, the topic of how to fix Wall Street will no longer resonate in the Beltway. Financial regulation will have come and gone without either party realizing that getting this issue wrong isn't a disaster for the future. A bad law -- as this one will be -- will add to the disaster now, further stalling job creation and crippling the administration's economic agenda.

Judith Miller on the New Yorkistan Problem

Manhattan Institute's Judith Miller writes in the Institute's City Journal that New York as a terrorism target is only one side of the city's problem.

Further, analysts cannot help but notice that while New York has long been militant Islamist terror’s Number One target, it has also increasingly become the main U.S. source of the challenge—“New Yorkistan,” as one seasoned counterterrorism analyst calls it. Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant who allegedly plotted to blow up New York subway trains, may have moved to Denver, but he grew up in New York and had friends in the city. Bryant Vinas, a former Boy Scout and U.S. army enlistee who discussed a potential attack on the Long Island Railroad with al-Qaida members in Waziristan, was born in Queens and raised Catholic in a middle-class household in Medford, Long Island. Faisal Shahzad, who tried earlier this year to blow up his SUV in Times Square, attended the University of Bridgeport and lived in two towns in Connecticut. Alessa and Almonte, both of whom grew up in New Jersey, bought some of the garb and gear they apparently intended to use for jihad in Somalia at an Army/Navy store in New York City, the complaint alleges. Alessa, seeing a fire hydrant in Jersey City, fantasized about a fire breaking out in the city in which “Allah,” “God willing,” would “rain gasoline down on that fire.” Alessa hated the city and his native country: “God willing, I never come back” to this “crap hole,” the complaint quotes him as saying, visions of body bags for American soldiers dancing in his head.

Manhattan Institute's Gelinas Claims Upcoming BP Bailout

Judith Miller & David Schenker's Dossier on Turkey

Judith Miller (Manhattan Institute) and David Schenker (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) have an op-ed in today's New York Post on Turkey that reads more like a dossier. 

They're upset over the official Turkish response to (and involvement in) the flotilla disaster, but it goes beyond that.

In May, Turkey and Brazil brokered a nuclear-enrichment agreement with Iran that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said makes the world "more dangerous, not less." The deal vastly complicates the administration's already-herculean task of building an international coalition to sanction Tehran for trying to build a nuclear bomb.

In fact, Erdogan openly opposes US-backed sanctions against Iran. As a result, the Obama administration is trying to force a vote on its proposed sanctions in the UN Security Council before Turkey rotates into the council chair later this summer.

Just last week, Turkey hosted a conference of Iraqi insurgent groups seeking to reconstitute as the US prepares to withdraw. The Istanbul conference was one of two meetings (the other in Damascus) that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned as "destabilizing." "The only ones benefiting," he said, "are al Qaeda and the terrorist organizations."

And the list continues.

Walter Olson Leaves Manhattan Institute for Cato

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for 25 years, is now leaving for a new position at the Cato Institute. Olson, an expert on over-litigation, runs the site Overlawyered and helped launch MI's popular PointofLaw.com. Before the Manhattan Institute, he was at the American Enterprise Institute.

From an Manhattan Institute release today:

After two decades of pioneering work in litigation reform, Walter Olson is leaving the Manhattan Institute to accept a new position as Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Wally was the first scholar to understand the size and systematic nature of runaway litigation in the American legal system.

In addition to commissioning Peter Huber's landmark book, Liability, he is the author of three major volumes in the field: The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, and The Rule of Lawyers. His work was widely cited and reviewed and influenced important policymakers and journalists from Karl Rove to John Stossel. He also founded and edited the first legal blog, Overlawyered.com, which launched in 1999.

Wally is one of a handful of scholars who helped to shape the Manhattan Institute's unique intellectual identity for turning intellect into influence. We all wish him well in his new venture.

Larry Mone, President, Manhattan Institute

Since I started at the MI, it has been my pleasure to work with senior fellow Walter Olson, who led the launch of the Manhattan Institute's award-winning legal web magazine, PointofLaw.com, in 2004. We are confident that Point of Law will continue to earn accolades under the leadership of founding contributor Ted Frank, whom the Center for Legal Policy is happy to welcome as a Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow and the site's new editor.

Jim Copland, Director, Center for Legal Policy