Evil Angel's Milk Nymphos

At a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, 14 jurors adjust their earphones and set their gaze upon television screens that are carefully placed so as to be out of sight from most of the journalists and concerned citizens sitting in the courtroom. They watch as a milkman delivers his product to a house that's inhabited by scantily-clad women. Smiles appear on their faces and soft giggles can be heard as the milkman proceeds to engage in hardcore sex acts with the young ladies.

This was the scene at the trial of John Stagliano, a porn mogul who is currently being tried on federal obscenity charges over the films Milk Nymphos, Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice, and a trailer for a third video that was available on his company's website. If you haven't heard of this case before, Reason.tv just released a great video that will bring you up to speed:

America likes its drugs. This year, Americans will spend over $300 billion on prescription medications and the costs have been rising for sometime. For those who suggest that price controls are the answer, however, new evidence would suggest otherwise.

A recently published study from Fraser America compared individual spending on prescription drugs in both Canada, where the government controls prices, and the United States, in which pharmaceutical companies operate in a much freer market. Contrary to popular belief, the study found that Canadians and Americans spend a similar amount of their personal disposable incomes—and, in the aggregate, as a percentage of gross domestic product—on prescription medication.

Due to a government imposed price ceiling on name brand medications, Canadians pay 53 percent less than Americans. Because the price of generic drugs in Canada is not subject to market forces, however, those drugs are 112 percent more expensive. As the Fraser America study reports:

Last week, the Independent Climate Change Email Review panel headed by Sir Muir Russell released its report on the Climategate affair at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Reason's Ronald Bailey summarized the findings as follows: "All right, people. Move along. Nothing to see here."

Since its release, many critics have begun attacking the credibility of the committee charged with investigating the scandal. But was the report itself a whitewash or are global warming skeptics trying to push an agenda?

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Cato Institute scholar Patrick Michaels questions the commission's independence:

The number of people filing new unemployment claims dropped sharply last week, according to statistics released today by the Department of Labor. The number of newly unemployed dropped by 21,000 over the previous week to 454,000, the lowest level since early May.

While the economy is certainly not out of the woods yet, these numbers will add fodder to the debate over whether the Senate should approve a bill that would extend unemployment benefits until November 30. Many Democrats have been lining up in support, arguing that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy. And while Republicans have so far been able to postpone the bill's passage, there is probably a good chance that it will be enacted in some form (I suggest never underestimating the government's propensity to engage in costly spending programs).

Yet, a story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal provides further evidence for what many people have been saying for a long time, that extending unemployment benefits is counterintuitive:

In a ruling that favors free trade and rejects certain harsh controls over biotechnology patents, a European court has dismissed Monsanto's lawsuit that attempted to block the import of genetically modified (GM) soybeans from Argentina, where the company doesn't enjoy a government-protected monopoly over its product. The court said that patent protections do not apply to seeds once they have been harvested. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Over the weekend, I visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Viewing the progression from the early Wright Brothers flights to the space shuttles that ferried people to the moon, it was clear that aerospace technology has come a long way in the past century. And yet, in many respects, air travel has gotten worse in recent years.

Heightened security concerns cause long waits at the airport and increased hassles for international travelers. Supersonic jets no longer shuttle passengers across the Atlantic and traditional planes slow down to conserve fuel. It is also still relatively expensive to travel by air, a situation that could be mitigated by opening our skies to foreign competitors:

All my life I've heard calls from the whiny soccer mom crowd that we need public policy changes in order to protect the children. We need to ensure marijuana remains illegal because we don't want kids doing drugs. We should outlaw pornography because young people might get their hands on a copy of Playboy. There's too much sex and violence in the media and, god forbid, our children should get desensitized to that and not grow up to be whiny pussies like their mothers.

I have always resisted such calls because I've been of the belief that the long-term benefits of liberty are more important than anything gained from censorship and prohibition. I've also felt that it's really the parent's responsibility to ensure their kids don't do things like take ecstasy while watching midget Jell-O wrestling contests. Besides, there are benefits to things like sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As comedian Bill Maher said, "Drugs have done a lot of good [for my music collection]. I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead children."

Yet, perhaps it is the fact that I'm pushing 30, but I'm starting to think that maybe the soccer moms had a point after all. Don't worry, I'm not going to propose banning boobies on cable TV. After all, I figure that if they're good for babies, there's no reason to believe they're not good for teenagers as well. I do, however, think that we need to lower (or abolish) the minimum wage, for the sake of the children. I explore this issue further over at Hit & Run:

Last weekend in Toronto, G20 summiteers agreed to cut deficits in half by 2013 and "reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016." And it only cost them a billion dollars and a few breaches of civil liberties to achieve this result.

Here's your G20 wrap-up, with bonus late-breaking news of violence against journalists:

The big story from the event was not what the leaders did, but the police state that downtown Toronto was turned into.

The government had prepared for the event by spending an exorbitant amount of money on security. Police were given additional powers inside the security zone by a secret law passed by the Ontario government, which allowed them to arrest people for failing to produce identification. Police also told the public they had these powers around the perimeter of the zone, but later admitted they made this up.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Or so we're told by a host of characters, including religious zealots who have managed to convince 40 percent of Americans that the world will end before 2050, eviro-commies like Al Gore who would have us believe the world will cook us alive if we don't give the government even more control over the economy, as well as journalism's old guard who can't see past the death of newspapers. Trust me, if they tried to teach me anything during my two years of j-school, it was that I'll be working at a pizza joint for the rest of my life and that socialism really isn't such a bad idea after all.

Like most of these doomsday theories, however, reality is never as bad as the naysayers would have us believe. Reason Magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward decided to prove this point by sending two of her loyal interns (including yours truly) on a mission to analyze, and find alternative source to, the print edition of The New York Times:

FDA regulations imposing tough new restrictions on the tobacco industry came into force today. Among the measures are new constraints on retailers, stringent controls on how companies can market their products, and limitations on what words that can be used in brand names. The FDA was given the authority to regulate tobacco under last year's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which it has used to bully both retailers and producers.

Among the more draconian of the new rules is a prohibition on using terms such as "light," "mild," or "low" in brand names. These types of laws are generally justified by statistics showing that many smokers believe light cigarettes are better for their health. Yet there appears to be little to no evidence that prohibiting the use of the terms has any effect on this perception. A lot of people believe withdrawal is a valid form of birth control, but that doesn't mean that banning the practice will change anything.

Quite the contrary. A 2008 study published in the journal Tobacco Control looked at a similar piece of legislation in the United Kingdom. It found that misconceptions about the health benefits of light cigarettes initially declined, but eventually rebounded. The net change in perceptions after four years was no greater in the U.K. than it was in the U.S. The study concluded that, "bans on such terms are neither sufficient to eliminate false beliefs, nor do they produce greater effects than non-regulatory measures."