Eric has posted a very good 1000-word essay on immigration. He does a good job laying out a libertarian position on immigration close to my own. Key points: our current illegal immigration situation is a result of the laws of economics and our misguided minimum wage laws and even a police state environment would not be able to keep out illegal immigrants who wanted in. Read the whole thing.

Posted by: JohnL at 03:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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What can I say that this picture doesn't?

For the first time in US history, a foreign flag has the honor of flying above the Department of State.

Via Publius Pundit (via Instapundit).

Update: Yes, we are all Brits, for now.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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With Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retiring, the blogosphere is abuzz with speculation about whom the President will name as her successor. I have previously posted my criteria for what I would want to see in a justice, and a "short list" of potential nominees I would like to see. Of course, none of them are within the Bush circle (all are too libertarian, and not conservative enough) so it's just a fun speculative game.

Other posts that are more useful:

Professor Randy Barnett provides a helpful guide to following the debate, with the most insightful [to me] comments critiquing conservatives:

LESSON ONE: Watch the switch from a list of ignored textual provision to good and bad results.

This debate should not allowed to be turned into a debate over results. It should instead be a debate over constitutional method and the restoration of portions of the text that have long been discarded. This includes challenges to judicial conservatives who, like Justice Scalia, would continue to ignore the Ninth Amendment or Privileges or Immunities Clause because they fail to meet his standard for a "rule of law." Ignoring portions of the Constitution because they fail to conform to your theory of the "rule of law" is no different than ignoring portions that fail to conform to your theory of "justice."

(Emphasis mine). Of course we libertarians often share much common ground with "conservatives" in critiquing the excesses of past activist supreme courts that abandoned original intent. So the most interesting debate to me is the one between the libertarian and conservative philosophies. Read Barnett's other two lessons here.

Nick at Crime and Federalism has a list of questions he would like to ask.

But the best post I have found so far was Annika's Freakin' Idiots Guide to the Supreme Court. The choice cut is her handy cut-out-ready pocket guide to the court, which describes Scalia thus: "Anthony Scalia: The first Supreme Court Justice to score perfect 18's in intelligence, wisdom and dexterity on the LSAT. He carries a short sword, is skilled in the use of the bo staff, has 36 hit points, and is also a 13th level Palladin [sic]. The ABA rates him as: good.

My predictions about candidates below: more...

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Jeff Goldstein nails MSNBC's Brian Williams, just like our patriotic forefathers did with their blunderbusses loaded with nails and glass at the Battle of Bunker Hill (which, when you get right down to it, is not all that different from the nail-and-rat-poison methods of the modern-day minuteman, right?)

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Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

- Mr. Dubois in Starship Troopers.

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