In Whitewater, a town of about 14,000, there are a few hundred — career bureaucrats, politicians, would-be town squires — who walk around as though they own the place. 

The idea that anyone might criticize their views, might question their policies, seems to them an offense against the natural order itself.  Unaccustomed to lawful political criticism, and being a self-important and thin-skinned lot, they react to lawful commentary as though someone had just spat on the floor of the Sistine Chapel. 

One is encouraged to talk here, about positive developments only, in a stifling, hyper-positive way that sounds like the stilted language of a party propagandist:      

Meanwhile, in Washington, the new federal administration is looking more anti-speech by the day.  Yesterday, I posted on the Obama Administration’s request to citizens to report other citizens’ criticisms of administration proposals (“Reason.tv: Obama to Citizens on Health Care — Send All Fishy Emails”).   

The president himself seems ill-disposed to speech from those he contends ‘created this [so-called] mess’ in health care.  The American tradition has genreally embraced the view that the answer to speech is more speech. 

That’s not the president’s view, it seems. “But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”  

UPDATE, 9:28 PM: An astute and knowledgeable reader wrote earlier this evening with information about Maine Coon cats. I am happy to post it as an update:

“I liked the video about the Coons, but one problem — it isn’t one of the largest cat breeds, it is the largest breed. Otherwise the information was accurate.”

Here’s a second installment of cat blogging. Over the years, some of the web’s biggest bloggers have blogged about cats (NYT free registration required). (I first learned about these cat-celebrating posts from Instapundit.com.) Called catblogging, they features photos of cats, in tribute to felines.

The greatest Americans have liked cats: Lincoln, Twain, and Hellboy (a federal agent helping the U.S. government fight evil) — cat fanciers all.

The Cat Fanciers’ Association of America recognizes about forty breeds of domestic cats, but all cats, single or mixed-breed, are admirable.

Cats have an independent spirit that’s a fine reminder of the individualism which Americans — at their best — so abundantly possess.

Today, I’ve posted a video of about MAINE COON CATS, a recognized CFA breed. Enjoy!

Here’s the third of three Reason.tv videos for this Thursday.  This one’s on health care.  

Reason notes that the “Obama Administration goes on the offensive against Matt Drudge and other critics for spreading ‘disinformation’ and ‘lies’ ” about health care.  

What’s telling is that Linda Douglass, communications director of the Administration’s health care effort, really doesn’t understand the over-reach of her request that citizens report to government on news accounts and criticism that seems ‘fishy.’

It’s in the private marketplace of ideas that these matters should be debated, and criticized, and challenged. 

Her request: report to the administration on private critics of the administration’s efforts, is beyond government’s role in a free society.  If an administration wants to publish memoranda in support of its efforts, so be it; asking citizens for names of critics, however, is intrusive and chilling of free expression.         

Candidly, it’s the kind of over-reach one would expect in a small town, not from the federal government.  A small town like, say, a banner inland city of the Midwest….  

We can be grateful, surely, that no collection of assorted local officials and private ‘confidential informants’ (in Whitewater both terms synonymous with ‘pompous, small-town nothing’) would ever try to gather information on lawful, private-citizen critics. 

Here’s the accompanying description of the video from Reason.tv: 

In an effort to push back against criticism of its health care reform plans, the Obama administration is sending one of the many former journalists in its employ onto the digital airwaves of YouTube to attack Matt Drudge and other critics for spreading “disinformation” and “lies.”

Since “we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House,” health reform Communications Director Linda Douglass says, “we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Reason.tv’s Dan Hayes is nothing if not patriotic, and with a good nose for fish, so he took his camera in the dead of night and went hunting for perpetrators.

The results, as shown in this two-and-a-half-minute video, should scare every American who cares about truth and health care.

The Foundation for Economic Education — FEE to its many admirers — has fought for liberty since just after the Second World War.

“Fee’s Lawrence W. Reed: How Having the Government Run the Economy Is a Recipe for Disaster” is the second of three videos from Reason.tv that I will post today. 

Here’s the accompanying description from Reason.tv: 

The Foundation for Economic Education, or FEE, is one of the oldest libertarian organizations in the country. Founded in 1946 by Leonard Read, FEE holds seminars, publishes The Freeman, and has inspired generations of classical liberals and free-market thinkers.

Lawrence W. Reed has headed up FEE since September 2008, after two decades running the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

In this Reason.tv interview, conducted by Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch at the Freedom Fest conference in Las Vegas, Reed talks about how he first came to his politics in 1968 because of Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring,” and how the mission of teaching free-market economics remains as urgent as ever in 2009.

Approximately 5 and a half minutes. Shot and edited by Dan Hayes.

Thursday’s a libertarian version of NBC’s Must See TV at FREE WHITEWATER, with three videos from Reason.tv, the video website of Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation.  

First  up, “F.I.R.E.’S Greg Lukianoff On Threats to Campus Speech.” The four-minute video records an interview in which constitutional lawyer Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education describes unconstitutional speech codes on campuses across America.   

Many public campuses across America, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, impose unlawful restrictions on free speech, a prissy neo-Victorianism that persists.      

Here’s the accompanying description from Reason.tv:

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) was launched a decade ago to defend free speech against a wave of campus speech codes, bizarre orientation requirements, and punishments against students and teachers alike from exercising their First Amendment rights. 

Though political correctness has moved off the front page since then, the structural intolerance remains very much in place, says F.I.R.E. President Greg Lukianoff. Lukianoff, a graduate from American University and Stanford Law School, has been with F.I.R.E. since 2001, helping the organization win several legal and public relations battles against censorial universities.

Even so, he says, a full 77 percent of public colleges and universities maintain “laughably unconstitutional codes.” 

In this Reason.tv interview, conducted by Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch at the Freedom Fest conference in Las Vegas, Lukianoff talks about F.I.R.E.’s successes and sketches out the speech battles yet to be won.Approximately 4 minutes. Shot and edited by Dan Hayes.