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Daily Dispatch for October 30, 2001

U.S. Rewards Pakistan
Supreme Court Takes Closer Look At ADA
Talks To Finalize Kyoto Treaty Under Way

U.S. Rewards Pakistan

President Bush signed legislation Saturday allowing him to lift sanctions on Pakistan imposed after a 1999 coup that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power, the White House said. The law is another element in a package of U.S. rewards for Pakistan's help in the U.S.-led war against terrorism, and it allows Bush to waive the sanctions for two years. Bush and Musharraf plan to meet next month in New York, according to The Washington Post.

In "America's Strange Bedfellows in the War on Terrorism," Senior Defense Analyst Charles V. Peña explains Bush's concessions to Pakistan. He warns that in the past the United States has allowed a single purpose to blur its vision and seek alliances that later backfired. "We need to avoid tunnel vision and being blindsided in our zeal to go after the terrorists responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," Peña says.

Supreme Court Takes Closer Look At ADA

The Supreme Court expanded its examination of federal disability law today by agreeing to decide whether an employer can refuse to hire people who can perform the requirements of the job but who, because of a medical condition, would put their health or life in danger by doing so, according to The New York Times.

The case is an appeal by Chevron U.S.A., which withdrew the offer of a refinery job to a man who on his employment physical exam received a diagnosis of chronic liver disease that could be made worse, perhaps fatally so, by exposure to the chemicals and solvents used in the refinery.

The job applicant brought a discrimination suit under the Americans With Disabilities Act and won a ruling from the federal appeals court in San Francisco that "disabled persons should be afforded the opportunity to decide for themselves what risks to undertake."

In "How the ADA Handicaps Me," disabled lawyer Julie Hofius reflects on the 10th anniversary of the ADA. She writes that, "the physical obstacles have been removed, but they have been replaced with a more daunting obstacle: the employer's fear of lawsuits."

In "Handicapping Freedom: The Americans with Disabilities Act," Director of Regulatory Studies Edward L. Hudgins calls the law "one of the worst cases of the Bush-era regulation of the economy" and explains all its drawbacks. In "EEOC, Supreme Court Open Floodgates for Disabilities Claims," James M. Taylor explains how the ADA and its interpretation by the EEOC and the Supreme Court allow for a slew of unfair lawsuits.

Talks To Finalize Kyoto Treaty Under Way

U.N. talks to seal an unprecedented climate change treaty got under way in Marrakesh with the United States taking a back seat, according to Reuters.

The 2,000 delegates from 160 countries have two weeks to set out in legal detail principles adopted in Bonn in July on making significant cuts in the next decade in emissions of the 'greenhouse gases' blamed for raising the earth's temperature.

The treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol and forged in 1997 in Japan, must be ratified by a majority of industrial nations responsible for global warming in order to take effect.

In "Europe's Kyoto Scam," Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michaels writes, "Kyoto would help wreck the economic engine that drives America forward while Europe lags behind. The persistent and significant differences between American and European gross economic production and unemployment are not accidents. Europe's leaders know Kyoto would 'fix' that."

Cato Institute scholars have long opposed the Kyoto treaty and have written extensively about it and global warming. In testimony before Congress, Michaels explained why the Kyoto Protocol is "a useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty." In "Kyoto's Chilling Effects," Michaels writes that the protocol has poor chances of being ratified by the United States as "both Democrats and Republicans can agree that Kyoto will wreck our economy, according to just about every credible study that uses realistic policy assumptions." Director of Natural Resource Studies Jerry Taylor agrees in "Hot Air in Kyoto," stating that "impoverishing society today to avoid a very uncertain problem tomorrow would harm, not help, future generations."