Your Whiskey editor may spend all of his time bouncing between Baltimore and New York, but he is too close to Madison, Wisconsin, for comfort.

A very dear friend hails from Madison. Both her sister and brother-in-law still live in the Madison suburbs and work for the state. Both belong to the union and both have joined the protests.

A horrifying aspect of modern life is how nearly daily threats to fundamental freedoms and human rights nearly require that citizens become politically aware and active.

Here we are struggling to put food on the table, cultivate a civilized private life, support things we care about, manage our households, and otherwise meet all the challenges of modern life, and then some jerk politician pushes some dangerous legislation that poses an all-out attack on everything we take for granted.

The government seems determined to turn out the lights on the digital age. And this is with or without SOPA or the other bills that were only this week shouted down by the global digital community on Blackout Wednesday. The very next day, after support for that legislation collapsed after an impressive mass protest, the FBI and the Justice Department demonstrated that they don’t have to pay any attention to all this silly clamor. Congress, legislation, polling, debates, politicians, the will of the people — it’s all a sideshow to these people.

“Sir, you can go ahead and button your shirt back up,” said the TSA agent.

We’d only been trying to help. We were passing through Houston on our way from Acapulco to the Agora Financial Symposium in Vancouver.

We’d opted out of the Rapiscan irradiation machine and so had to be felt up by an agent. We meant to call attention to how absurd the entire security theory was by playing the part of compliant victim with scorn in his eyes. So we slowly stripped until we were told to stop. We only got as far as unbottoning our shirt.

At 7:00 a.m. EST, Dr. Ron Paul announced his U.S. presidential candidacy. When asked why he’s running yet again, Dr. Paul answered, “Time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I’ve been saying for 30 years. So, I think the time is right.”

That may be true. More people are asking about the size and scope of the federal government. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is giving press conferences and being asked tough questions. Government deficits are getting plenty of attention.

Nobody really likes paying their taxes. But, as the old adage about “death and taxes” conveys, there is a sense that taxes are as legitimate and as inevitable as death itself. In their acceptance of taxation, many well-meaning people forget that taxation violates our most basic moral principles.

If you have ever been to a kindergarten or a playground where very young children play, you might have realized that, although the kids are too young to understand many things, they already have a surprising sense of justice.

Today is the 99th anniversary of the signing of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It enshrined into law an idea that stands in total contradiction to the driving force behind the American Revolution and the whole idea of freedom itself.

The budget deal is all but done. Woohoo!

Back to spending beyond our means again. Back to buying more iPads. Back to more public work projects.

What a huge relief it is to get that silly spending cap out of the way.

Or… is it?

The deal making its way through congress would provide for an immediate $400 billion increase in the borrowing cap. Then they’ll kick in an additional $500 billion cap increase this fall.

Having lived for more than a decade in Vancouver, Canada, but having defected years ago, I watched with some interest the riots of the other night.

For those that missed it, the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and soon after much of downtown Vancouver was on fire – cars flipped, shops burned, fights and
more.

I was there, living downtown, for the last hockey riot, in 1994.  I remember well the smell of tear gas and watching the battle below from my apartment.

The last few years as an executive in a manufacturing company gave me a frighteningly close look at the inner workings of regulators in our government. Maybe I’m just naïve, but what I discovered was shocking.