It’s one of my hopes that, someday, I’ll be able to say in good faith that Democrats have sound views on my pet cause of intellectual property law. Today, however, this pops up in my inbox:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leadership, and senior members of the Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to President Bush today calling for immediate action to promote and safeguard American intellectual property (IP) around the world. The Democrats made the case that cracking down on piracy and theft of American IP is critical to restoring economic growth, creating jobs and shrinking the trade deficit.

Some of this relates, according to the press release, to counterfeit auto parts and since I don’t even really know what that means I’m not going to say Pelosi’s wrong about it. As it pertains to software, music, and movie piracy, however, she’s all wet. Developing countries have always had weaker IP protections than rich ones. Certainly, the United States had very weak IP in its early days. That’s simply a rational response to the objective situation. Now it’s arguably true that the contemporary situation (internet and so forth) calls for globally uniform intellectual property rules. But there’s no way that we should achieve that goal by having everyone adopt US IP policy. Our current IP regime is too strict for the United States, and from the perspective of developing countries optimal policy would be even weaker than what would be optimal for the United States.

The problem is that the WTO/TRIPS process has been captured by a handful of large first world companies and is propounding a set of rules that don’t reflect the interests of average Americans or average Europeans much less average Chinese people. I’m not, in general, a critic of the free trade concept, but the multilateral trade regime has become increasingly focused on this business (which, despite the name, is only “trade-related” in the loosest possible sense) rather than the lowering of barriers to the exchange of goods and service. Really the only mitigating factor is that they’ve names the global IP agreement TRIPS, making it reminiscent of Captain Trips, the deadly plague that wipes out humanity in The Stand.

“The Bush administration plans to shut down a highly successful Iraqi police academy in Jordan even as security in Iraq worsens,” the New York Daily News reports. By orders of the State Department, which wants to move all training centers to Iraq, the Jordan-based academy “will stop training Iraqi police recruits this year.” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called the closure “mystifying and maddening.”

Last night on Jay Leno, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed, “To link me to George Bush is like linking me to an Oscar. It’s ridiculous.”

But on August 31, 2004, in a prime-time speech, Arnold said, “Our president, George W. Bush, has worked hard to protect and preserve the American dream for all of us. And that’s why I say, send him back to Washington for four more years.” As Vice President Cheney stood and applauded, he led the crowd in a raucous cheer. Watch it:

Digg It!

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Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) has repeatedly insisted that he never worked with fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff:

I met the guy two or three times in my whole life — he never once lobbied me on anything.

ThinkProgress has obtained Abramoff’s billing records (HERE), which show that the lobbyist personally spoke with Pombo on Sept. 10, 1996 and Nov. 21, 1996. On 11 other occasions in 1996 and 1997, Abramoff’s staff met with either Pombo or his staff.

Two days after the first meeting on Sept. 10, Abramoff gave Pombo $500. The congressman eventually received a total of more than $35,000 from Abramoff and his Native American tribal clients. $27,000 of that money came from Abramoff’s client the Mashpee Wampanoag of Massachusetts, “which received federal recognition from a bill Pombo passed through the [House Resources] committee in 2004.”

Pombo’s spokesman is insisting that these billing records are “greatly inflated,” but they nevertheless indicate that Pombo’s office was contacted — and perhaps influenced — by Abramoff. Pombo’s committee, the House Resources Committee, had sole jurisidiction over the Mariana Islands, one of Abramoff’s client that he overcharged. Despite repeated requests from Rep. George Miller (D-CA) to investigate Abramoff’s dealings, Pombo has refused to do anything.

(Say No To Pombo has more.)

David Boaz, executive vice president at Cato, and my friend David Kirby have a new study out on “The Libertarian Vote” that, in direct contradiction to what I said yesterday, purports to demonstrate that there’s a largish libertarian constituency — 9 to 14 percent of the population — and that it’s a persuadable constituency both parties should be trying to compete for.

I find this pretty unconvincing. The trouble is that the poll question they’re basing their work on are incredibly generic. Things like “Some people think the government is trying to do too many thingaygs that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your view?” America is famous, however, for having voters who want “small government” but don’t actually want to shrink any major government programs. Lots of people may think the government “does too much.” Cutting Social Security benefits, however, is very unpopular. So is cutting defense spending. The number of people who want to cut both is actually quite small. For fairly obvious reasons, there isn’t much public demad for “more government” as such. Instead, there’s appetite for specific governmet initiatives and the government gets “big” because the initiatives add up.