In this video by the New England Journal of Medicine, Cato adjunct scholar and George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin debates ObamaCare’s individual mandate with Jack Balkin, a professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Transcript here.

In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank urges President Obama to follow President Kennedy’s lead and use the power of the federal government to intimidate business:

Roger Blough, the U.S. Steel president, … defied Kennedy in 1961 by raising prices. “You have made a terrible mistake,” Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives’ offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining “hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the country club.”

Yes, that’s a great vision: a president using the far more powerful and far-reaching federal government of today to force every business, every union, every nonprofit in the country to fall in line. Is that really what journalists would like to see — a president deploying subpoenas, FBI agents, and IRS agents to effect political gain? This is just one of the problems with giving any government such powers.

I’ll have more to say later on Mitt Romney’s speech on federal spending, but his banal call for making government more “efficient” gave me an opportunity to share some good commentary on the subject. In a recent piece criticizing Indiana’s Republican-led state government for not doing “anything substantive to improve Indiana’s budgetary, fiscal or economic position,” Craig Ladwig, editor of the Indiana Policy Review, nails it:

Most troubling of all is that few in the leadership of either party share our belief that government must be kept small for smallness’ sake. The goal is not to run it “like a business” or make it more efficient (consolidate), but to ensure that government is simple enough that average citizens can understand and monitor its workings. The constitutional ability to do that and a passion for self-government (governing one’s self), thereby reaping the rewards and accepting the consequences, are what is meant by American exceptionalism.

Nor does the current leadership appreciate that government cannot by nature be proactively involved in prosperity, that it cannot create wealth but only refrain from taking it away or destroying it. Even Republicans busy themselves in such neo-mercantile schemes as tax rebates for politically favored companies and industries, or training programs to win more contracts from the federal government. At the same time, they slap a tax on entrepreneurial activity as soon as it finds success, most recently in Internet commerce.

Look, Democrats already work tirelessly to extract from us the revenue to support a bloated, systemically flawed and misguided state government. Do they need Republican help?

Milton Friedman famously described those trying to reform government without changing its makeup as being engaged in an attempt to transform a cat into a dog. This General Assembly may learn to bark, but it will still be a cat.

The “government efficiency” snake-oil salesmanship from politicians has become tiresome, especially when it comes from high-profile Republicans like Mitch Daniels and Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, I don’t see too many people “on the right” taking these people to task for it. So kudos to Craig.

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Dan Mitchell says that sequestration would be a small step in the right direction.
• The Senate vote on rural development subsidies symbolizes just how unserious most policymakers are when it comes to making specific spending cuts.
• Republican hypocrisy on energy subsidies.
• Government cost overruns: One reason to shift infrastructure financing to the private sector is that governments and their contractors often give taxpayers the shaft.
• The Military-Industrial Complex yells “jobs!” in a crowded federal budget.

Follow Downsizing the Federal Government on Twitter (@DownsizeTheFeds) and connect with us on Facebook.

Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting government grow faster than the private sector.

As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse.

But that’s the good news — at least relatively speaking. Over the next few decades, the problems will get much worse because of demographic change and unsustainable promises to spend other people’s money.

(By the way, America will suffer the same fate in the absence of reforms.)

Here’s one stark indicator of why Greece is in the toilet.

Look at the skyrocketing number of people riding in the wagon of government dependency (and look at these cartoons to understand why this is so debilitating).

By the way, Greece’s population only increased by a bit more than 16 percent during this period. Yet the number of bureaucrats jumped by far more than 100 percent.

And don’t forget that this chart just looks at the number of bureaucrats, not their excessive pay and bloated pensions.

With this in mind, do you agree with President Obama and want to squander American tax dollars on a bailout for Greece?

Yesterday, the Michigan Senate passed anti-bullying legislation that has anti-bullying legislators, activists, and sympathizers outraged. Why? Because at the insistence of some in the legislature, it includes a provision protecting religious speech.

A video of State Senator Gretchen Whitmer (D‑East Lansing) has already gone viral, with the senator railing that “as passed today, bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.” Similarly, Time columnist Amy Sullivan asks “why does Michigan’s anti-bullying bill protect religious tormentors?”

I’ll tell you why: because as odious as one might find the religious beliefs of many people, they are entitled to freedom of speech the same as anyone else. That is a basic American right, and all the desire in the world to protect kids from hearing things that might make them feel badly must not change that. Abridge that right, and any speech becomes imperiled if a majority simply deems it unacceptable. And the legislation in question does not protect bullying—if that is defined as physical assaults or threats of such assaults—for religious reasons. It only states that the legislation “does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian.”

Of course, being on the receiving end of constant pronouncements that you are doomed to Hell or something similarly hideous would almost certainly become difficult, if not impossible, to bear. It shouldn’t be something that any child is subjected to in school. But how do you balance protecting children against people’s fundamental right to speak?

The answer is that despite all the lofty talk of “democracy” and other empty rhetoric behind public schooling, you cannot protect everyone equally in a government school. No matter what policy a public school or district adopts, government will pick winners and losers. That’s why the only solution to a quandary such as this is educational freedom: Give control of education funding to parents, let them choose among independent schools run by free educators, and enable people to choose schools that share their values. Then all people can select educations for their children that comport with their values and needs, and without government deciding who is more, or less, equal than whom.

In honor of the release today of A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, I revisit my thoughts from 2008 on the film series’ view of freedom in America:

The movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was celebrated mostly as a “stoner” movie: smart young Asian guys smoke pot and get the munchies. When I finally got around to watching it, it was funnier than I expected. And very near the end of the movie, after an all-night road trip in which they encountered more obstacles than Odysseus, when Harold finally gives up and says he can’t make the last leg of the epic journey to White Castle, came this wonderful speech from Kumar:

So, you think this is just about the burgers, huh? Let me tell you, it’s about far more than that. Our parents came to this country, escaping persecution, poverty and hunger. Hunger, Harold. They were very, very hungry. They wanted to live in a land that treated them as equals, a land filled with hamburger stands. And not just one type of hamburger, okay? Hundreds of types with different sizes, toppings, and condiments. That land was America! America, Harold! America! Now this is about achieving what our parents set out for. This is about the pursuit of happiness. This night … is about the American Dream! Dude, we can stay here, get arrested, and end our hopes of ever going to White Castle. Or, we can take that hang glider and make our leap towards freedom. I leave the decision up to you.

Escaping persecution, poverty, and hunger … to find ample food and unlimited choices … the pursuit of happiness … the American Dream. Yes, I think writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg were on to something.

And then in the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, after another improbable road trip, the fugitive youths literally dropped in on George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. In the increasingly fantastic plot, the president invited them to join him in hiding from the scary Cheney, shared his pot with them, and then promised to clear up the unfortunate misunderstanding that landed them in Guantanamo Bay. An uninhibited but still skeptical Kumar said, “I’m not sure I trust our government any more, sir.” And President Bush delivered this ringing libertarian declaration:

Hey, I’m in the government, and I don’t even trust it. You don’t have to trust your government to be a patriot. You just have to trust your country.

Harold & Kumar: more wisdom than a month of right-wing talk radio. Hurwitz and Schlossberg get what America is about.