A video by Izzy Santa, of the Cato Institute.

Apparently not:

States suffering through tough times are reaching for a tonic.

Lawmakers in several states with tight control of liquor sales are considering legislation that would shift the job to private industry, saving money and raising revenue.

If these governments are running their stores in a profit-maximizing fashion, they gain nothing by selling them off.

The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.

I cannot imagine that such efforts will yield results; kids have too many ways to circumvent these restrictions.

Instead, what about health insurance premiums that increase with weight above the “healthy” threshold?

A new Mexico City law goes into effect March 4 that will allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, propelling the city to the forefront of the global gay rights movement.

A backlash is attempting to have the law declared unconstitutional.  One argument being made is that Mexico City already has civil unions for same-sex couples.

That argument, however, just raises the issue of whether government should provide marriage at all; it could instead provide civil unions to both same-sex and opposite sex couples, leaving marriage to religious institutions.

What can you do if you want help committing suicide, but you live in a state (all but Oregon) or country where assisted suicide is illegal?  Travel to Switzerland:

From the start, Mr. Minelli [founder of Dignitas] has kicked up controversy for his willingness to help foreigners die. Most groups in Switzerland don’t assist foreigners. Dignitas only helps foreigners. The number of foreigners Dignitas helps each year—132 in 2007, compared to 91 in 2003—has increasingly left the Swiss uncomfortable with the country’s growing reputation for “suicide tourism.” As of the end of last year, Dignitas had helped a total of 1,046 people to commit suicide.

I do not see a convincing reason for bans on assisted suicide.  Informed consent rules are reasonable, but that seems sufficient to me.

The U.S. and Canada, its largest trading partner, reached a preliminary deal to settle what had become an acrimonious dispute over “Buy American” provisions in the U.S. stimulus package.

The deal, if approved, will give companies on both sides of the border access to government procurement contracts at the state and local levels. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the increased access for U.S. firms in Canada would be worth billions of dollars in contracts.

Last year’s U.S. stimulus package requires that manufactured products used in projects paid for with federal stimulus funds be made in the U.S. While the restrictions were meant to exempt countries like Canada that have existing trade treaties with the U.S. and have signed on to the World Trade Organization’s government procurement pact, the Canadian government in the 1990s excluded its provinces and towns from those rules.

Even if this issue gets resolved sensibly, it should never have arisen in the first place.  When the government builds infrastructure, it should do so at minimum cost (quality adjusted).  The Buy America provisions interfere with that objective and risk killing jobs when our trading partners retaliate.

The short answer is, “We don’t know.”  Why not?  Because existing DEA rules make it virtually impossible to carry about appropriate double-blind trials.

Yet the anecdotal evidence for marijuana’s efficacy is stunning; here is one good example:

Even though it’s a crisp November day, the flower boxes of Mary Jones’s neat little bungalow are overflowing with brightly colored blooms. The bubbly mother of three has her utility vehicle parked in the driveway. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, her blond highlights glimmer in the late-fall sun. She looks like she could be a real-estate broker, and seeing the rock on her manicured finger, I imagine for a moment that her husband is a doctor or a lawyer. Mary would, in fact, be the ideal soccer mom, except that one of her now-grown sons played football, and rather than working in real estate, she grows and sells marijuana.

Read the rest here.  Anecdotes do not prove that marijuana works, but they make a good case for allowing objective scientific evaluation.

In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing. …

In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

In my mind the crucial question is whether to help distressed homeowners, and the right answer is no:

1. these homeowners assumed the risk of buying houses; they should accept the consequences;

2. homeowners who default will acquire a bad credit rating, but they will be free of their debt burden.  Instead of putting money into an asset they may never actually own, they can start to accumulate savings.

3. foreclosing on these homeowners does not mean homeownerhip will decline; it means the houses will become available at low prices to others with limited income.  What’s wrong with that?

I agree with President Obama; the U.S. Congress should repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and eliminate any federal prohibition on gay service.

The usual argument made for excluding gays from the military is that, because of anti-gay sentiment among some non-gay soldiers, the presence of gays might undermine cohesion and discipline. No evidence, however, supports this view; gays have served with minimal problems in numerous countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, United Kingdom, Switzerland). The same arguments made against gays in the military were offered decades ago in the United States to oppose racial integration of the armed forces, yet these forces are now entirely integrated with minorities disproportionally represented.

Whether policy should compel the armed forces to allow gays to serve openly – or just leave the issue to the individual armed forces – is a more subtle question. A decentralized approach might lead to slower change, but it might also produce a less polarizing transition.

In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.

When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.

Before the end of December, Verma and his friends had applied for gun licenses. He read up on India’s gun laws and joined the Web forum Indians for Guns. When he got his license seven months later, he bought a black, secondhand, snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut grip.

“I feel safe wearing it in my ankle holster every day,” said Verma, 27, who runs a family business selling fire-protection systems. “I have a right to self-protection, because random street crime and terrorism have increased. The police cannot be there for everybody all the time. Now I am a believer in the right to keep and bear arms.”

Two aspects of this story are especially worth noting.

First, it illustrates how escalating violence can increase the demand for guns; hence, the observation that guns and violence coincide in no way shows that guns cause violence.  This is a standard fallacy committed by advocates of gun controls.

Second, the story suggests that guns benefit owners by making themfeel safer.

If this perception of safety is false, or if it pervents more effective steps to avoid being a target of crime, then this feeling could be counterproductive.

But neither of those conditions seems likely.  So evaluation of gun control laws must recognize that they reduce the well-being of exactly the people these laws claim to help.