The Iraqi version of Jack the Ripper, Al-Zarqawi, got his. So, that was good. But our buoyant mood was ruined by the Rhode Island legislature. Though not near the malingnancy of Al-Zarqawi, they planted a small, silly IED in the pathway of freedom. Just a pinprick — insignificant — still, as ominous as smoke curling out of the barn door. The political philosophers who ponder the fate of the miniature state of Rhode Island made a new law: you must neuter your cat. The state, having established a beachhead on my private life is driving inland.

In a series of posts to an Internet discussion group several years ago, David Friedman severely criticized Murray Rothbard’s account of Adam Smith in his Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (Edward Elgar, 1995). These comments have enjoyed wide circulation, and various posters to the Mises Institute Blog have referred to them.

Gotta love ThePirateBay.org, a Swedish website. They offer an index to various data files--movies, videos, songs, what have you--that you can download via “Bit Torrent” technology. The files are not stored on their servers; they merely provide users with links as to where they can download various material from.

A new federal report on hurricane damage, writes Lew Rockwell, argues that we certainly need local and state regulations, certifications, and licenses.

Danilo Nogueira provides a brief history of the Brazilian inflation in The Language of Inflation: Traps in Translating Brazilian Portuguese. The article is one of the more insightful articles that I have seen on the topic. The author, a business translator, examines the inflation from a translator’s perspective. He illustrates what Hayek called the corruption of language through politics as words are used to obscure politically inconvenient truths.

As immigration reform debates continue to heat up Washington and rankle the folks on talk radio and cable, in barber shops, and throughout the Web, we need to remember similar incidents throughout our history. As each new wave of immigrants entered the US, false crises were created and used to crackdown on the newcomers and expand government.

Niall Ferguson goes to great length to keep from mentioning that socialism had something to do with it.

Based on correspondence from this blog item on kids and the web, the number-one issue that makes parents reluctant about the web is its red-light district. Well, let me cut to the chase: K9webprotection is a free program that solves the problem, and better than any of the others I’ve tried.