Blog Recommendation

I've said repeatedly that, when he's going strong, Billmon is the best (political) blogger out there; and I stand by that. But the past few days he's been in a bit of a lull. So I thought I'd take a moment to recommend to my (still-largely-hypothetical-at-this-point-but-hey-you-never-know) readers another superb blog, one of a number that are in competition for the second slot (and no, I don't intend to rank them beyond raving about Billmon).

Publius is the pseudonymous commentator at the Legal Fiction blog, and he's terrific. He's particularly interesting on issues of political ideology, an issue near and dear to my heart (and my dissertation), but he's interesting across the political spectrum. (He's a former conservative turned fairly-conservative-by-any-rational-standard-therefore-fairly-often-Krugmanesquely-hysterial liberal.) And he's been on a roll recently. Here are three posts of his that you should check out:

1) his analysis of why, all appearances to the contrary, the new, Bush-style conservatives are in fact quite similar to the Burkean conservative ideology (small government, hesitant in the face of change, suspicious of power, etc) that they at first glance seem to have betrayed;

2) his (pre-election results) discussion of the strengths and weaknesses shown by the recent liberal internet campaign on the part of Paul Hackett in Ohio (in the August 2 special election which he narrowly lost (damnit));

3) and, best of all, his analysis of "The Other Vietnam Syndrome", the one which liberal hawks suffer from. This gets at an issue -- why did liberal hawks support Bush's war, and to what extent have they failed to learn from this? -- that I have been thinking of writing more about. But Publius gets it in a nutshell.

-- And there are lots of other great posts in his archives, too, so if you're interested dig around. But those three are a good place to start. Enjoy!

(Oh, and on the issue of Bush's endorsement of Creationism (in its Intelligent Design drag in this instance, but, in the spirit of honesty, let's call it what it is), Pharyngula has the basic serious response, as well as links to half the !@#$% galaxy which has commented on this. But really Giblets of Fafblog has the best response -- as is so often the case.)