Now that Congress has left town for its two-week Thanksgiving recess (talk about something to be thankful for!), your nation's capital is all abuzz about the new baby panda at the National Zoo, Tai Shan (also affectionately known as "Butterstick," since he was the size of a stick of butter when he was born a few months ago.)

Next month, Tai Shan will go on public display for the first time, so earlier this week the National Zoo distributed the first 13,000 free tickets to lucky panda fans.  Now it seems that a few of those fortunate ticket holders are selling their free passes on eBay and other websites. 

Judging from the absolute horror expressed by the millionaire news readers on this morning's Today show and the tone of last night's local TV news coverage (where the practice was called "disgusting"), you'd think these budding entrepreneurs had skinned poor Butterstick alive.  But we here at Americans for Prosperity see this as further proof that the free market improves the lives of everybody involved.

There are two groups of people in this equation: people who have tickets and people who don't.  Some of the people who don't have tickets desperately want to see Butterstick, but presumably didn't get tickets because they were busy doing other things during the two hours the tickets were available online.  Maybe they were earning a living.  Maybe they tried unsuccessfully to get through to the National Zoo's website, which reportedly crashed under the heavy traffic.  Or maybe they were busy watching Regis and Kelly.  It really doesn't matter.

The other group of people is made up of those who have tickets, but either don't want to see the panda, or can't attend at the time their tickets designated, so they're making their tickets available to people who are willing to exchange money for them.  They were entrepreneurial enough to spend some of their precious time and energy to acquire something of value to other people.  While some decry this as greed, we see it as giving some ticketless parents the opportunity to take their children to see the cute little guy, and giving some enterprising individuals the opportunity to earn a little extra cash to spend on Christmas gifts, heating bills or a night out on the town. 

To the millionaire free-market critics on the Today Show, we ask: what in the world is wrong with that?  We say nothing, so in honor of the free market, we are providing you with the direct link to the eBay page where you can buy your own tickets to see good ol' Butterstick for yourself: 

http://tickets.search.ebay.com/panda_Tickets_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsacatZ1305