That is Walter Williams’ argument in this column. Civil disobedience is merited for laws that unconstitutionally restrict freedom. That was the case with regard to the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s (which state officials in Wisconsin openly defied and refused to cooperate when ordered by the Supreme Court to enforce it, a point Tom Woods makes in his book Nullification) and will also apply with regard to Obamacare if it is upheld by the Court.

You might have read recent reviews of American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks‘ latest book, The Road To Freedom, which bases its title on Hayek’s classic Road to Serfdom.

If Brooks’ ideas pique your interest, be sure to listen to his Carolina Journal Radio interview on the road to freedom.

The N.C. Chamber is calling on state lawmakers to scale back maximum weekly unemployment benefits and cut the total number of state-funded weeks of unemployment from 26 to 20.

Locker Room readers might recall similar ideas from Fergus Hodgson, who has unveiled a plan that would help North Carolina pay off a state unemployment debt that’s creeping toward $3 billion.

Cafe Hayek’s Quotation of the Day:

… is from Jonathan Macey’s fine essay in today’s Wall Street Journal – an essay whose title, “Losing Money Isn’t a Crime,” is spot-on correct and germane:

The real lesson of what J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has called the bank’s “egregious failure” in risk management is that hedging is far more difficult to do in real life than it appears to be in theory—because the real world is a complicated place. The trades that J.P. Morgan made were extremely complex, and it certainly appears that they did not work the way that they were supposed to. But the reason that markets work better than central planning is because market participants learn from experience, and they learn fast and thoroughly because they suffer significant losses when their investments, whether they be hedges or not, turn out badly.

Thus, far from serving as a pretext to justify still more regulation of providers of capital, J.P. Morgan’s losses should be treated as further proof that markets work. J.P. Morgan and its competitors will learn from this experience and do a better job of hedging the next time. They will learn because they have to: In the long run their survival depends on it. And in the short run their jobs and bonuses depend on it.

The second lesson from J.P. Morgan’s failed hedging effort is that politicians and regulators are opportunists who will use any pretext to increase their power and influence.

While Andrew Romano peppers much of his Newsweek profile of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez with barbs aimed at Mitt Romney and the GOP, the article does offer occasional interesting anecdotes.

[A]s she prepared to run for D.A., she decided to re-register as a Republican. Martinez has told her conversion story so many times that local politicos can recite it by heart. A couple of Las Cruces conservatives invite her and Franco to lunch. Martinez is wary. But as the Republicans talk, she begins to change her mind. She finds that she agrees with them on issue after issue. She’s pro-welfare reform, having seen the “cycle of dependency” firsthand as a prosecutor. She’s pro-Second Amendment, having carried a gun since she started “securing bingos in parking lots at the Catholic Church” for the family’s security firm as a teenager. (The .357 was so large that “as I walked, I got a nice little bruise on the hip,” she recalls. “But my dad said, ‘You’ll only need to fire once.’”) She’s against higher taxes, having witnessed her father struggle to hire new employees. And she’s opposed to abortion, being a Catholic and all. Afterwards, Martinez turns to Franco in the car. “I’ll be damned,” she says. “We’re Republicans. Now what?”

To me, Martinez’s tale has always seemed a bit too tidy. So as we speed along I-25 in the Suburban, I start to push back: Didn’t you realize you agreed with Republicans on abortion long before this revelatory lunch? And what about welfare reform, the hottest topic in Washington at the time? But Martinez just stares at me. “Nope,” she finally says. “I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. I registered Democrat because my parents did. They were, we were. There was no thinking behind it. And you’ll hear that over and over here in New Mexico.” Which, of course, is the moral of Martinez’s story, and the reason she repeats it so often: There are a lot more Latinos out there like me, and a lot more of them could be Republicans. But we need to properly persuade them. “As a Hispanic, I grew up this way,” she tells me. “I didn’t suddenly become conservative. It was only the label that changed. ”

Martinez’s story brings to mind the recent Carolina Journal Radio/CarolinaJournal.tv conversation with Victor Guzman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly’s North Carolina chapter.

You might quibble with his policy prescriptions — finding a modern-day European version of Alexander Hamilton, for one — but it’s hard to dispute Harvard historian Niall Ferguson‘s description in the latest Newsweek of the current state of European affairs.

In the midst of a severe financial crisis, the French have just elected a champagne socialist on promises of a 75 percent top tax rate and a lower retirement age. The Greeks also had an election in which the established parties lost to a ragbag of splinter groups. The outcome of the election was that they need to have another election. (Cue Zorba the Greek theme music.) Meanwhile, the wailing gloom of the flamenco emanates from Spain, where youth unemployment is now around 50 percent.

Within a few hours of arriving in London, I hear the following announcement on the train: “We apologize for the late departure of this service. This was due to the late arrival of essential personnel. [Translation: the driver overslept.] However, we are happy to inform customers that the London Underground is running a nearly normal service.” It’s that “nearly” that is so quintessentially English.

Three days later, in Berlin, I finally reach the Europe that works. Well, sort of. As usual, I find myself marveling at the sheer idleness of the richest and most successful country in the European Union. Lunchtime in the leafy garden of the Café Einstein on the Kurfürstenstrasse shows no sign of ending even at 3 p.m. It’s Thursday. Did you know that the average German now works 1,000 hours a year less than the average South Korean? That’s why when you go on holiday the Germans are already there—and when you go home, they stay on.

WTVD asked the John Locke Foundation to comment for its lead 6 p.m. story on the James O’Keefe video that documents potential voter fraud in North Carolina.