A new year brings a new episode of LibertyWeek, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and Senior Culture Correspondent Ryan Lynch. We start out by wishing everyone a happy new year and direct them to the new Bureaucrash t-shirt store – with only eleven and a half months of shopping until Christmas, you’ll want to stock up on stylish, revolutionary apparel at Bureaucrash Contraband. After observing a couple of timely anniversaries, we move on to Scandal Watch, where we raise some questions about the electoral race between current U.S. Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) and onetime SNL funnyman Al Franken. Next it’s off to the high seas where we tangle with Somali pirates and are rescued by the French Navy (who knew they still had it in them?) before confronting Vice President-Elect Joe Biden’s war on the economy. We wind up the headlines with the tale of alleged New York City skank Liskula Cohen, and her effort to get the courts to force Google to rescue her from her online tormentors.

Finally, it’s time for Pop Culture with Ryan Lynch, in which the panel examines our favorite books, movies (and graphic novels) that have thoughtful, pro-freedom messages. Below is a list of the works we discussed. As a extra special website bonus, we’ll even have links to the ones we didn’t have time to get to on the show!

Mister Dog by Margaret Wise Brown

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Global Frequency by Warren Ellis

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (more on V from CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray here)

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

The Thin Blue Line - written and directed by Errol Morris

Red Dawn - co-written and directed by John Milius

Vanishing Point - directed by Richard C. Sarafian

Firefly - created by Joss Whedon

We end the show, as always, with some fresh Olympic News – this time about octo-lympian Michael Phelps’ latest $1 million endorsement deal in China.

# Special thanks to Jason Talley for the Tweet of the Week.