Go Free Yourself

After renting the disaster that was Semi-Pro this weekend (I had such high hopes—it starred Will Ferrell!), I was ready for a good movie. The Singing Revolution delivered. It’s about Estonia’s struggle to end Soviet occupation with a series of non-violent demonstrations, and it’s an amazing story. Plus, the music is beautiful.

If you’re in Chicago, it plays at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. tonight at the Gene Siskel Theater. Visit the movie’s website to watch the trailer and see the other locations where it’s playing. If it’s not showing anywhere near you, you can sign up to bring it to a nearby theater.

Read the New York Times review of the movie here.

Go see it! You won’t be sorry.

Enjoy:

See more of the work “Empower Texans” is doing by visiting their website.

Look, I’m all for representative government and for returning political power to the people. Congressman Peter J. Roskam (R-IL) is apparently all for it, too—in fact, that’s his impetus for launching the “There Oughta Be a Law” initiative, which is designed to collect legislative ideas from Roskam’s constituents on what they believe are the solutions to some of the toughest issues our communities face today.

It could be a decent idea in theory—especially if some enterprising libertarian introduced some sound policies for fiscal responsibility and smaller government, as opposed to more meaningless legislation—but considering other “There Oughta Be a Law” initiatives yielded such stellar results as drug testing for welfare recipients and seat belts for dogs, I’d say it misses the mark in practice.

What idea would you submit to Congressman Roskam?

(Hat Tip: Reason Hit & Run)

Happy Monday, readers. Hope you’re not having one of these kind of days:

I’ll be out of town until Friday evening, attending a grant writing training in Los Angeles. (Life is rough, I know.) I’m going to try to keep posting when I’m not in training sessions, but content might be kind of light this week. I’ll definitely be back in full force next Monday, though.

In the meantime, enjoy your week!

Washington, D.C., take notes:

In Florida, most residents can now take their gun to work, provided they have the proper permit. The measure would allow employees to keep guns in their car for self-protection and would prohibit business owners from banning guns that are kept locked in cars on their private property.

While this is good news for support of the Second Amendment, it also prevents business owners from determining what goes on on their own property. Readers, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

(I do know that Dwight would be so happy about this.)

Do you know your state’s gun laws? Check out Wikipedia’s comprehensive list.

(Hat Tip: Fark.com, which called this bill “the Fark-headline-generator-act of 2008.”)

…with food stamp dependence.

In West Virginia, one in six receives food stamps, the highest level of participation in at least 30 years. And The New York Times reports that, nationwide “the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.”

Today the Columbus Dispatch reports that nearly 1 in 10 Ohio citizens now receive food stamps, the highest amount in state history and double since 2001.

Things just keep getting better, don’t they?

UPDATE (3/28): The article linked above states that low wages, unemployment, and the rising cost of groceries, gasoline and other necessities are to blame for this financial hardship in Ohio. Here, read an interesting article about the “Government Engineered Food Crisis,” written by Linda Chavez (chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of “Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics”) and posted on Townhall.com.

In honor of Easter weekend, I won’t be blogging for a couple days. But I’ll be back on Monday, so tune in then!

Well, it looks like the day for drinking copious amounts of beer has come just in time: 75 percent of Americans believe our economy is in a recession. As a result, the economy has now eclipsed the Iraq war as the most important issue on American minds.

Awesome. Bottoms up!

(For other, more cheery St. Patty’s Day news, check out USA Today, which brings you “all the green-related news that’s fit to blog.”)

We’ve had some technical difficulties during the past week over here at Blogivists, but I think we may be up and running again now. I’ll be posting again later today–stay tuned.