My only blogwatch is a listed crime…

Lots of interesting stuff here, which is good, since I have very little time to blog at the moment….

The Agitator: Agitator vs. Ashcroft, a five-part series (that’s the kicker, but the previous posts are more important IMO), important for fans of federalism.

Amygdala: The UN’s military record;

Balkinization: The Pledge of Allegiance and civil Deism. Extra-short version of my take on things: I really, really dislike civil Deism, and would give up lots of cute slogans and catchphrases in order to get rid of it. But there is a less vague and self-serving understanding of the “under God” phrase in the Pledge, in which the phrase is considered an expression of the constraints we place on ourselves and our government–we must subordinate our actions not to some utilitarian calculus or private morality, but to truth and its Source–and that is worth preserving. In other words, I don’t really have an opinion one way or another–there are good and bad points to keeping or scrapping the phrase. It pretty much depends on how Americans are willing to understand the words.

Also, Professor Balkin reminds us to keep an eye on the Patriot Act, and not to be fair-weather federalists, if we’re going to be federalists at all. (Maybe I’m misreading Balkin’s own position here, but it seems to me like he’s saying the Commerce Clause basically means Congress can regulate or legislate upon any activity it wants to, unless specifically prohibited, i.e. it can’t establish a church. If the Constitution gives Congress unlimited jurisdiction with a couple districts of restraint, as opposed to offering Congress some enumerated powers and reserving the other stuff to the states, can I just say that the Commerce Clause seems like an… unusual place for the Founders to have located that understanding of what they were doing? Put another way, do states only get to make those laws that Congress isn’t interested in or hasn’t gotten around to yet?)

Light of Reason: More law–this time about ye olde Texas sodomy case–LOR and I strongly disagree on some pretty basic things here (that have nothing to do with sodomy)–I’ll try to work up a reply, including stuff about what the Ninth Amendment is and isn’t for, sometime this week, but for the moment I’ll just say that LOR is promoting the philosopher-king view of the Supreme Court. (Also, does it matter to LOR whether the Constitution would ever have been accepted if people thought it prohibited state bans on immoral sexual conduct? IOW does it matter that there’s a bait-and-switch going on here–first one generation gets people to accept a law invoking a fairly broad/vague statement of rights, and then, eventually, some [nine, to be exact…] members of a later generation decide that means the law institutes their own view of the proper interpretation of those rights? It seems to me like that’s changing the law out from under people. Hayek would not approve.)

Matt Welch: He’s got a couple posts on the new president of the Czech Republic, a bad actor. Scroll around.

Tenelux on the Smiths. He’s right you know. (I note that they also have inadvertently provoked some of the best misheard lyrics–“Sweetness, I was only joking when I said I’d like to mash a beetroot in your hair…” “Nature is an anguished tangerine…”)

Unqualified Offerings: Important post–UO vs. Kenneth Pollack.

What’s Not to Like? has added a D.C. section!!! Spread the Chocolate City love! –Oh yeah, and there’re also places for people from the other half-colonial hangouts, like American Samoa, and Guam.

Finally, I’m adding Church of the Masses (Hollywood from a Christian perspective) and AfricaPundit to the blogroll, and also point you to the very neat-looking Write This Way site, a blog guide for aspiring writers, especially those with ambitions of this-worldly success. Samuel Johnson tells us that no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

…But last night the plans for a future war was all I saw on Channel Four…