Tonight on The Independents: Up in Your Business! And Immediately After, Watch Matt Welch Debate Pot Prohibitionists on Hannity

Friday-night episodes of
The
Independents (Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT)
are based around a single theme. Tonight that theme is how the
government is getting all “Up in Your Business,” in all senses of
all those words. For instance:

* Codifying and enforcing all kinds of ridiculously
freedom-hating occupational licensing requirements, as explained by
Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes.

* Delaying and degrading your experience at the airport in
federally managed security-theater lines, as explored by Cato’s
Chris
Edwards.

* Prohibiting online poker, selectively and vaguely, as
testified to by professional poker player Dustin
Schmidt.

* Coming up with restrictions on your private property so
ridonkulous that you can’t tell whether the laws are fact or
fiction, as demonstrated in a game featuring as
contestants Fox
Business anchor Melissa Francis and
Red Girls Salonista
Dee Dee Benkie.

* Having ignorant health inspectors put the fear of God into
conscientious restaurateurs, as elucidated by Pink Tea Cup owner Lawrence
Page.

*
Gratuitously disrupting centuries-old symbiotic relationships
between breweries and cattle farmers, as disclosed by Widmer Brothers Brewing Company‘s
Joe Casey.

* Teaching kiddie entrepreneurs to hate (or serve!) government,
as lamented by the co-hosts.

The episode repeats at midnight ET and
again at 2 a.m.; and also Sunday night at 7 p.m. Saturday night’s 7
p.m. time-slot will feature a re-air of Wednesday’s “mystery
meat” show, featuring Julio Borowski and Chuck Woolery and John
Bolton and Two-Minute Hater Bernie Maxsmith.

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING TONIGHT’S EPISODE, please change the
channel to Fox News, where at 10 p.m. ET host Sean Hannity
is hosting a group discussion with about 20 of us humans on the
subject of “Stoned in America.” It is a sometimes barky exchange of
ideas, to say the least, and the narrow anti-prohibition caucus
(which also included known insane person Gavin McInnes and comedian
Sherrod Small) did
its level best to bring some freedomizin’ and rationality into the
argument.