Linkety-Dinkety

1. Found a cool new blog today: Pundit and Pundette. Classy. Christian-friendly. Links to lots of good music.

2. One of the things I’m reading right now is the new Brookhiser bio of James Madison . It seems to have been overlooked a bit, but it’s quite good. Tasty morsels on what an operator, legislatively speaking, Madison was at times, and a forthright summary (unflattering) of Madison regarding slavery.  Brookhiser has the very necessary virtues of being both a) dedicated to brevity, and b) a card-carrying Hamilton-defender.

3. At some point we need to discuss Santorum and the right to privacy. A fellow at Ricochet recently linked to an old 2003 interview where he seems to defend anti-sodomy laws , not on the mere (Thomas/Scalia) “they’re constitutional” grounds, but as good laws in and of themselves.  That’s a problem, and I hope Santorum has re-thought his position on that. Leaving laws on the books that are optionally enforceable invites police abuse.

In general, based on the 2003 interview, it doesn’t look like Santorum knows how to talk or think about this issue very well; he doesn’t, for example, appear to know how to distinguish the three levels of the right to privacy debate: a) the natural rights level, b) the Constitutional level, and c) the plain-old law level, state and federal. What has to be hammered over and over is the absolute usurpation by liberal “judge-rulers” of all sane constitutional interpretation principles w/ regard to b).  Sane people can disagree about whether there ought to be a right to privacy, i.e., about whether it is logically a natural right and if so perhaps ought to be put into the Constitution via amendment, or about whether we (usually at state-level) should pass particular laws, such as ones that legalize gay-marriage, that factually expand what might be called privacy, but no sane U.S. Citizen, gay, straight, liberal, or conservative, should be left ignorant about the Constitution-wounding judicial usurpations done in the name of this right, more of which are planned to be done soon enough.