First Russ Roberts and John Papola had the rapping economists, now we have singing revolutionaries:

Check out this inspiring video by my colleague Rob Raffety about Ben Thurtchley, Congressional staffer by day, volunteer citizenship instructor by night:

Jack Hunter, a columnist I had never read before today has penned a great column on the incredible stench of hypocrisy that surrounds the dismissal of Ron Paul by America’s conservative leadership. Hunter makes the point that Ron Paul is the only voice on the right who is actually calling for a smaller, more humble government. The fact that Paul and his die-hard followers are almost despised by mainstream “conservatives” shows that their dedication to any real reduction in the scale and scope of government won’t last beyond the closing of the polls in November.

There are a few others out there looking at big-picture politics and trying to push forward policies that would represent real reform, not just the same politically-motivated, short-term thinking that has put our country in the position that it’s in today. A stand-out figure among them in Paul Ryan, of my home state of Wisconsin. He’s taken on the budget and health care in a serious and genuinely conservative way, by proposing the deep cuts to spending that are necessary for a sustainable fiscal future.  This is more than most of the supposed leadership of the right can say.

Anyone who isn’t taking on the debt in a serious, policy-reforming way is surrendering our country to a future of governing by crisis, where politicians will finally be forced to act as they’ll be facing the eminent collapse of our economy and potentially our system of government.

Reihan Salam wrote a great piece at National Review Online today that outlined how the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a group made up of the MPAA and RIAA among others, is pushing for the US Trade Representative to consider countries that use open-source software to be added to a list of countries that don’t respect intellectual property rights.

This is, of course, absurd. If someone chooses to give away their intellectual property and you elect to use that property, you’re making a perfectly legal and moral decision that in every way respects IP.

So what’s the motivation for this? Salam sums it up in a single sentence:

Basically, a handful of large corporations are trying to use the power of the US government to limit the ability of other firms, large and small, that are built around OSS business models.

So once again the policy of the United States government is being co-opted by large corporations to support their self-interest.

At the conclusion of this ppost, Salam gives out a nice shout out to me and Tim Lee of the Bottom Up blog:

To understand how and why OSS resonates with core libertarian principles, I recommend reading Tim Lee and Cord Blomquist.

I appreciate the recognition and being thought of as a defender of “core libertarian principles.”

For more on the USTR’s Special 301 watchlist, check out this post by Mike Masnick at TechDirt.

I’ve enjoyed CNBC documentary reports like “The Age of Wal-Mart,” which explored not only the business of Wal-Mart but also its effect on small business, how it saves low-income families much-needed money, and both the positive and negative effects on our culture.

Compare this to “Marijuana Inc.” This new report fails to explore the impact of marijuana use on individuals, families or communities. It also ignores the crime created by prohibition of marijuana and fails to draw the obvious parallel to alcohol prohibition.

Instead, this piece reports banal factoids, like how even “normal people” in California are learning how to grow pot because it’s very profitable. I can’t help but think that this sort of verbiage is evidence of a anti-pot bias on the part of the producers that kept them from asking hard questions or exploring some of the complexities of this issue—the very stuff that would have made this report even somewhat compelling.

I would be willing to excuse a one-sided, non-comprehensive look at the marijuana industry if it illuminated any aspects of the industry or the policy debate that I was unfamiliar with, but “Marijuana Inc.” fails on that front as well. Somehow I had already heard that California has marijuana growers and dispensaries.

In conclusion, FAIL.

My friend Seth Goldin sent me a link to an essay by John Hasnas, an Associate Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, entitled “What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian.” The essay sums up my present feeling perfectly.

According to the site Today’s Big Thing:

An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you’ve ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.

This is priceless.