As a libertarian, you ought to love the way government buildings are ugly.

I tell Matt Welch:

Google and free speech.

The NYT features a Bloggingheads clip with Matt Welch and me.

"This is sounding very much like a Gary Hart 'Monkey Business' moment..."

Follow me around!

(Click through if you want to understand the context. I'm just putting up a highlight for the folks who bellyache about having to watch a whole, long "Boringheads." The fact is, this one isn't boring, but you won't know that unless you watch it. Remember, what Gary Hart said was "follow me around... it will be boring.")

I talk to Matt Welch about freedom...

... and sex scandals, politicized media, and the meaning of various buildings:



IN THE COMMENTS: Shouting Thomas said: "One hour and two minutes. No can do. Is there a highlight reel?"

And Deborah made this clip:

"So there was never a question of whether this narcissist millionaire shirt-unbuttoner would manfully rise to the defense of his poor, underprivileged pal Dominique Strauss-Kahn..."

"... but just how thoroughly he would soil himself, his country, and his alleged professions in the course of the apologetics. Well, thanks to the editing genius of Tina Brown, we now have an answer."

Writes Matt Welch... about the loathsome French "philosopher" Bernard Henri-Levy. Those are Welch's quotes, but I'd have put them there independently.

Even California didn't want to legalize non-medical marijuana.

Prop 19 failed. In yesterday's Bloggingheads — the "Non-Obsolete Edition" — Matt Welch and I talked about the effort to legalize the so-called "recreational" use of marijuana, which is far less popular than the "medical" use. You can watch the whole segment here, but — I know these Bloggingheads things are long — I don't want you to miss the part where I connect the favoring of medical legalization to left-wing values that I despise. It's only 80 seconds:



Note that the "medicinal" use of alcohol — "self-medicating" — is considered especially bad. The good alcohol use is for personal pleasure — one might say the pursuit of happiness — and most certainly not out of a physical need. Isn't it odd that it's the other way around for marijuana?

***

If you watch the whole segment — 16+ minutes long, sorry — there's a lot of discussion of the way the federalism problem would work out if the state stopped criminalizing marijuana. It's a misnomer to say that would "legalize" marijuana, because the federal crimes still apply. It would still be a crime to possess, grow, or distribute marijuana. The federal government can't force state officials to carry out the enforcement of the federal law. (It can lure them into that role with conditions on spending, but it can't commandeer the state law enforcement personnel. That's Printz.)

As Matt notes, Eric Holder announced a few weeks ago, that if Prop 19 passed, federal drug agents would "vigorously enforce" the federal law in California. California's a huge state, and that would be damned hard to do. I suggest that Holder may have only said that to try to influence California voters to reject Prop 19, and Matt seems certain that was the reason. And that seemed to work.

It would have been quite chaotic if Prop 19 had gone the other way. In the 16+ minute clip, you can see that Matt loves the idea of the chaos that would destabilize everything with, perhaps, the ultimate result that the federal government would give up on its marijuana crimes. I, on the other side, resist the chaos. I don't think it would work well to have something appear to be legal and at the same time be a very real federal crime. Much as I like decentralized law and the benefits of federalism, where there is valid federal law, it supersedes state and local law. That is the constitutional structure.

Yesterday afternoon, Matt Welch and I tried to talk non-obsoletely about last night's election.

Topics, as framed by Bloggingheads:

Why Ann voted against her old pal Russ Feingold
Just a pendulum swing, or something fundamentally new?
Will the Tea Party take over the GOP, or vice versa?
Matt vs. Ann on Prop 19
Advice for Obama (which he probably won’t take)
The GOP’s possibly futile attempt to stop Sarah Palin

ADDED: Matt Welch is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine.

"Note to Welch: Just ’cause guys will listen to a story about three women in a hot tub..."

"... doesn’t mean a woman wants to hear about three dudes clogging the pool drain with free floating back hair."

***

Here's the part of the BHTV that refers to. It's also a featured link in the sidebar at Bloggingheads with the teaser "Matt Welch. Mickey Kaus. A swimming pool. What happened next may be enough to derail a Senate campaign."

***

Mickey Kaus has qualified as a candidate. Congratulations!

Mickey Kaus and the fear of microbes.

Matt Welch discloses:

It's the new Bloggingheads — with me and Matt Welch!

It's called "It's Fun to Be Goo" and is mostly in response to the passage of the health care bill, but there's some cool miscellaneous material in there, like the story of Matt and Mickey Kaus in Eugene Volokh's swimming pool, which includes my idea for a Speedo based on the California flag.

"Are tea parties racist?"

Matt Welch examined this (newly revived) question last December:

It started in early August, as members of Congress began facing their unusually restive constituents in a series of town hall meetings. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, citing not one shred of contemporary sociological evidence, asserted that “the driving force behind the town hall mobs” is “cultural and racial anxiety” on the part of the “angry white voter.” Within a month, that bit of omniscient whitey baiting was perilously close to conventional wisdom....

Welch attended a rally:

But if there was anything “overwhelming” about the protest it was the percentage—which I would place well above 90—of signage and conversation specifically referring to government spending, economic policy, and creeping federal interference into various areas of life. I saw nothing about affirmative action, nothing about welfare, nothing about illegal immigration, almost nothing about hot-button social conservative issues, and very little on foreign policy. If race played a central role, 100,000 people did a good job of hiding it.

Matt Welch vs. Tom Daschle's glasses.

"Why do you need a Department of Commerce?"

"The Department of Commerce... has no legitimate Cabinet-level function."

***

The link goes to a Reason magazine column by Matt Welch. The first quote comes from Clarence Thomas, and the second quote from Bob Barr. The Thomas quote goes back to a 1987 interview with Reason I hadn't seen before. 1987 was 5 years before Thomas became a Supreme Court Justice. Here's the relevant passage (with some typos from the obviously scanned text fixed):

Reason: I suspect that [Thomas Sowell] might think that the EEOC ought not to exist. Why do you think that this agency should exist in a free society?

Thomas: Well, in a free society I don't think there would be a need for it to exist. Had we lived up to our Constitution, had we lived up to the principles that we espoused, there would certainly be no need. There would have been no need for manumission either. Unfortunately, the reality was that, for political reasons or whatever, there was a need to enforce antidiscrimination laws, or at least there was a perceived need to do that. Why do you need a Department of Labor, why do you need a Department of Agriculture, why do you need a Department of Commerce? You can go down the whole list--you don't need any of them, really.

I think, though, if I had to look at the role of government and what it does in people's lives, I see the EEOC as having much more legitimacy than the others, if properly run.

Not really that strong of a statement against the Department of Commerce, is it?

Skipping ahead, I see Reason asks the very question that sets off my anti-libertarian feelings. From the interview:

Reason: Say I'm a private employer and I'm a racist, and no matter how qualified a black candidate is I don't look at him. Isn't it my right to hire whom I choose? Should the state force me to hire somebody?

Thomas: I guess theoretically, you're right. You say, it's my property and I can do as I damn well please. I'm able to choose my wife, I can choose my employees. I can choose where I live, I can choose where I want to locate my business, the whole bit. I think, though, that we've embodied the principle of nondiscrimination because we don't have a homogeneous society. And the problem is that we had state-imposed racism in our society. We had segregation and slavery that was state-protected, state-imposed, state-inflicted. The state can't undo the harm that was done, but I feel very strongly that if there is any role for the state, it is to protect us from others.

Let's look at it from the other side. When you prevent somebody from participating in our free society and the economics of our free society, I have some real problems. That's a right to me.

Reason: Well it's clearly immoral to do that, but should it be illegal?

Thomas: I'm torn. If I were to look at it theoretically, as you say. I would have to say I'd like the state out of my business. Putting it back in the context of reality, I can't say that. I have seen the devastating impact of the denial of economic opportunities to certain groups, including my race.

Putting it back in the context of reality.... I like seeing how quickly Clarence Thomas said that, and I will continue to be wary of the kind of people who seem to continually need to have that said to them.