TOWN HALL SPEAKER THREATENED — IN CANADA: Copyright Town Hall security threatened MP, students with ejection for handing out flyers.

At last week’s Canadian copyright town hall meeting in Toronto — the one where the speaker-roster was overwhelming stacked with representatives from giant entertainment conglomerates — security guards prevented the Canadian Federation of Students from distributing literature by the doors that advocated for more liberal copyright rules. They also stopped a Member of Parliament from one of the opposition parties from distributing flyers.

Gosh, it sounds like healthcare here in the States. Nobody wants to hear what the people think, do they?

UPDATE: And look at what’s going in in New Hampshire. “In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.”

THE PC WORLD FIGHTS BACK AGAINST STEREOTYPING BY THE MAC CROWD. As someone who’s bi-computeral, I can say that the difference is exaggerated. The Macs crash a lot more than advertised — especially when browing the Web, where performance seems to have gotten worse with software updates — while the PCs quickly get expensive as you add features.

BALTIMORE SUN: Maybe President Obama should see more C-SPAN. “President Barack Obama has lately taken to depicting the press, especially the cable TV part of it, as a troublesome child. According to him, cable TV never met a “ruckus” it didn’t like, and from time to time, the pundits in the press lose control altogether and get all ‘wee wee’d up.’ . . . I hope someone shows the president at least part of C-SPAN’s coverage Tuesday night. Not just for all the insight into the passions, anger and competing interests on health care that the cameras captured. But also for the way in which C-SPAN showed how balanced, informative, contextualized and even-handed cable TV coverage can sometimes be. Maybe the next time the president dons his media critic cap and speaks about the press and cable TV it will be with some wisdom and nuance — as well as with distinctions made among channels.”

THE BROKEN-TOY EXPERIMENT.

MEDICAL TOURISM:

In our survey of major U.S. employers, we found very little interest in medical tourism.

But there is a great deal of interest in it among the major media – the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and today, Forbes (via the Associated Press) have done major stories on it.

But here’s something curious.

All three stories have featured the exact same medical tourist – Ben Schreiner of Camden, South Carolina.

Sounds like journalists, at least, are bending the cost curve . . . .

LOCKERBIE BOMBER “set free for oil.” Also, they don’t have to worry about bombings and beheadings from the people who side with the victims.

REPORT FROM RALEIGH: Busing in pro-Obamacare marchers. “Oh, and there were many, many identical pre-printed signs.”

UPDATE: Report: Organizing for America Stages Show in Denver. An extensive account, with photos. Who’s paying for the buses?

MOE LANE: Where’s the GOP’s Ted Kennedy?

MORE DOG ABUSE. I still prefer this, though.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “Oh the humanity! Really, could Michael Vick have done worse?” Not where their dignity is concerned, anyway . . . .

STEPHEN GREEN, THE WEEK IN BLOGS: Bikini Bottom Problems & The Huffington Post’s Most Offensive Question Ever Asked.

THE TUCSON TEA PARTY’S RECESS RALLY: Robert Mayer sends this link to a blog report, and this collection of pictures and videos.

KOLD-TV reported a thousand there. Robert emails:

The townhall went very successfully, with a local news channel reporting 1000 in attendance.

However, one thug showed up at the very beginning and elbowed one of our attendees in the face. . . . The news coverage between the two stations were worlds apart. KOLD 13 gave us great, on topic coverage while KGUN9 focused on the imbecile who disrupted the event. It just goes to show that the mobsters are not the Tea Partiers, but the thugs who are trying to cram through the government takeover of health care.

It does seem that way.

POLL: 62% Like Tax Cuts Over More Government Spending. “The new findings mark a nine-point increase in support for taxpayers as the best judges of spending since January.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: The best 5 novels on political conspiracy.

THE TOP TEN BOOKS that don’t get enough respect.

WAPO Vindicates Cheney. Apparently harsh interrogation / torture turns out to have worked. “How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone!”

Kinda makes you wonder what’s in the documents the Administration won’t release.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder: Does It Matter Whether Torture Worked? No, not unless your position is based on it working or not.

WI-FI PROSTITUTES: “You gave yourself a virus, by the way.”

HEATH SHULER ON HEALTH CARE: Start Over From Scratch.

UPDATE: GOP senator signals fading hopes on health care. “A leading GOP negotiator on health care struck a further blow to fading chances of a bipartisan compromise by saying Democratic proposals would restrict medical choices and make the country’s ‘finances sicker without saving you money.’ The criticism from Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., echoed that of many opponents of the Democratic plans under consideration in Congress. But Enzi’s judgment was especially noteworthy because he is one of only three Republicans who have been willing to consider a bipartisan bill in the Senate.”

YEAH, GOOD CHANCE I’LL WIND UP with this in my stocking.

DAVID HARSANYI: Forget Death Panels, let’s talk Circumcision Panels.

Here’s the problem: Why is the CDC launching campaigns to “universally” promote a medical procedure? If you’re an adult (and nuts) or a parent, no one stands in your way of having a bris. Today 79 percent of men are circumcised already, and even if 100 percent were, the effect on the collective health of the nation would be negligible. If this is the standard, where does it stop?

And what would a proactive CDC mean if government operated health insurance? No, I don’t believe Washington would deploy a phalanx of grinning, twisted doctors to perform coerced circumcisions. But when the CDC dispenses medical advice of the “universal” brand, it’s difficult to accept that a government-run public insurance outfit wouldn’t heed advice and act accordingly.

What if the CDC, through meticulous study, were to realize that circumcision is an entirely worthless procedure? Why would “we” waste $400 a pop? Would the CDC campaign to “universally remove” the operation from hospitals? Today, incidentally, government-run Medicaid doesn’t pay for the procedure in 16 states. Most private insurers, on the other hand, do.

Though dismissed by public-option proponents, this is an example of how government persuasion can influence our decisions—first by nudging and then, inevitably, by rationing.

Indeed.

THE OFFICIAL Bacon Photo Contest. With bacon!

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire. Augmented reality, and more.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Ex-TSA screener gets 90 days. “A 30-year-old former Transportation Security Administration worker has been sentenced to 90 days in jail and five years of probation for stealing jewelry, gift cards and other items from tourists’ luggage as they were screened at Kahului Airport.” Seems like a rather light sentence for what was, after all, a breach of security as well as a crime.

AN AMUSING COMMERCIAL for the L.A. County Fair.

IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS VOLOKH POST on the right to bear arms and felons is a comment raising an important point:

I would start by pointing out that over the years, the legal system has “inflated” the value of a felony conviction, both by not adjusting the value of thefts for inflation over decades since these amounts were cast in statute, as well as multiplying the number of crimes that are felonies. The most recent example comes from, of all places, the Consumer Product Safety Commission where it is now a federal crime to sell a recalled product.

In my own state of Missouri, any theft over $500 is a felony. We can thank the Federal Reserve’s printing press that this is not nearly as much wealth as it used to be. How many golf club sets cost more than this?

In particular, we have downright multiplied the non-violent crimes that are felonies. A lot are more technical in nature. Having a blanket rule that felons lose their RKBA, in my opinion, does not serve justice at all.

Indeed, having felons lose any of their civil rights over nonviolent “regulatory” felonies strikes me as unjust, and I’ve meant for years to look at whether it might violate due process. At any rate, I believe the distinction between malum prohibitum and malum in se should come into play here. Here’s a related comment.

STIMULUS! A reader emails:

Who’s paying for upgrades to Aspen’s Pitkin County airport, where private jet usage dwarfs commercial jet operations? The taxpayer, of course.

The private jet tails made a nice backdrop for the shiny new “your tax dollars at work” sign at the airport this morning.

Thank goodness the Democrats are in power, or the fat cats would really be making out like bandits.