Your regular hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist are joined by special guest co-host Michelle Minton for Episode 34 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin by finding that Twitter has conquered every aspect of society, the White House is waging war on the economy and New Yorkers are defending themselves against beer taxes. We next investigate the questionable management of the AIG bailout in Scandal Watch and handicap Chicago’s chances for snagging the 2016 summer games in Olympic News.

Congratulations to FreeStateNH (The Free…

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During the presidential primaries and in the campaigns, there was a lot of rhetoric about the need for “fair” trade instead of free trade. Candidates were in a populist mode, catering to critical manufacturing states that have lost jobs and serving up trade as the villain.

Now that Senator Barack Obama is the President-elect, there is renewed speculation on what path his administration will take on international trade. Will he make good on his campaign rhetoric that echoed the Democratic platform’s call for renegotiation…

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That liberals wish libertarians to go away is, perhaps, not surprising. But the issue is much more serious than even Jonah Goldberg realizes. McCain’s championing of “getting the monied interests out of politics” and Obama’s pledge to eliminate their influence both amount to an attempt to eliminate economic interest groups (and, indeed, interest groups that are in any way allied with economic interests - such as independent free market groups) from politics. But, politics is about interest group influences. If economic interest…

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Former CEI Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow Neil Hrab has an interesting take on Russia’s offer to help out Iceland with its own personal portion of the current global financial meltdown.

The West’s list of grievances against Russia is long…

But one can hear no peep of opposition today from any western country following Moscow’s offer to lend 4 billion euros to Iceland. Full Comment reported on that tiny nation’s current financial difficulties yesterday. Of all the countries affected by the crisis, Iceland may be…

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