Vietnamese businessmen set prices in gold rather than the depreciating paper currency. (Thanks to Matthew Alexander.)

Don’t forget businessman Steve Tucker, who was sentenced to 10 years in a federal cage, with no possibility of parole, for the crime of selling lightbulbs. (Thanks to Chris Witmer.)

Peaceful Finland, that is, where Americans apply for asylum to escape militarism.

What the totalitarians at the Pentagon are doing to an anti-war Marine.

The US imposes its intellectual “property” laws against an Australian in Australia, and grabs him for 10 years of gang rape in its prison-industrial complex. Shame on the toady John Howard for going along with this. (Thanks to Tom Bernhardt and the others who sent this to me.)

Fred Reed argues that Mexico is freer in many ways than the empire. Tonight Lou Dobbs was interviewing some professor, and both agreed that Mexico was irresponsible for spending just 10% of GDP on government. That meant, they said, that Mexico was stinting on government education and government medical care. Hmmm.

“Imagining the death of the king” was famously designated as treason under Edward III. “Even joking about shooting the president is a crime,” a high government official told Drudge. Let me add that I don’t like this skit; not working for the government, I do not believe in shooting people, nor joking about it. But only in an unfree society could such an offense be criminalized. Of course, joking about shooting you or me is not a crime. But the looter-in-chief is no mere mortal.

“Thank goodness for Child Protective Services,” writes Robert Mayer.