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Update: More from CNET.

Well, the nanny state bureaucrats did it--they've run another successful American small business into the ground.

BuckyBalls are a desktop magnetic toy, and they're ingenious. They're basically tiny magnets in a variety of colors and shapes--balls, cubes, and rods.

They are targeted at adults, and they've been highly successful. Two entrepreneurs in an apartment with $2,000 started the company in 2009, and in a short period of time BuckyBalls became highly successful, sold in specialty retail stores.

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) came after them, and despite the fact that BuckyBalls has jumped through every hoop presented to them by CPSC, finally this year CPSC dropped the hammer. You can read the whole story, in detail, at this link.

Not to brag too much, but I kinda predicted the release of the Benghazi emails.

Kinda.

During the debate between the candidates for Vice President, when Joe Biden threw the State Department under the bus and blamed them for knowing about the terror attack and not telling the White House, I sent out this tweet:

In the same week that IPI resident scholar Dr. Merrill Matthews warns that time is running out before the US takes a dive off an entitlement cliff, record welfare spending makes headlines.

A new memo released today by the Congressional Research Service report that welfare spending has jumped 32% in just four years, reaching $746 billion in 2011.

Ed Komenda of the Sun-Sentinel cites IPI's music piracy study in the following article about a Delray man who says he profited from piracy for at least seven years. Thanks to global music piracy, the U.S. economy takes a $12.5 billion hit each year.

Komenda writes:

Gregory King told authorities he made a living selling pirated music for seven years - but deputies say his reign ended Saturday at the center of a Lake Worth flea market.

In Politico's The Arena, IPI president Tom Giovanetti responds to tonight's Vice Presidential debate, saying that undecided voters saw substance in Ryan, whereas Biden came across "almost as bipolar."

The Pirate Party tried to get accredited with WIPO as an NGO. Right.

A group that rabidly opposes intellectual property, that breaks the law and exists solely to oppose creators and innovators rights to own their creations, wants to participate in meetings of an organization that exists to further intellectual property understanding and protection.

WIPO correctly turned them aside, at least for now.

Our rabid IP-hating friends over at KEI are up in arms because someone at WIPO dared to suggest that it might be a good idea to set aside a day where actual innovators and creators get a chance to interact with and speak with international delegates to WIPO and with WIPO staff.

Predictably, Mike Masnick over at TechDirt could be counted on to amplify and exaggerate this idea, calling it an "IP Maximalist Agenda Day," and asserting that for some reason public interest groups would be locked out of the event.

Over at the Huffington Post (which I hate to link to), there is a good piece about how Internet piracy harms small, independent creators, in this case an independent movie producer.

Some excerpts:

Over half of Internet users admit to pirating movies. As a result, broadcasters and distributors are paying less money for content. In fact, in the last five years dozens of major movie companies, including Paramount Vantage, Fine Line, Miramax, Bob Yari and MGM have effectively stopped making and buying films all together.

I frequently participate in Politico's "Arena" group policy blog, and last night I posted my reaction to the presidential debate here.

Taxes are going up in 2013, and I mean REALLY up, as a result of a) Obamacare, and b) expiration of the "Bush tax cuts."

Here's a summary of the tax increases that will be hitting in just a few months, absent some kind of agreement between Congress and the Obama administration, which I seriously doubt.

In the New York Times, former conservative David Brooks responds to the leaked video of Mitt Romney talking about his electoral chances with the 47 percent of Americans who are going to vote for Obama because they have no "skin in the game" by referring to him as "Thurston Howell Romney."

It's cute. I'll give him that. We have already gone on record with our responses to the Romney video here and here.

But Thurston Howell Romney should still beat Gilligan Obama. Thurston was not entirely incompetent, after all. He managed to succeed at some things.

Let's take a look at whether or not Gilligan Obama has succeeded. Here are some economic stats that should matter more than any leaked video of a candidate talking to his supporters and simply saying the truth in a way that is uncomfortable to some.