More thoughts on libertarianism and the efficacy of the Libertarian Party from Will Baude, who is looking for some sort of cross-party soft-libertarian caucus to take up the mantle of advancing libertarianism. He also writes:

I’d also like to see a group with the microphone and legitimacy of a national party that didn’t run fringe candidates but rather conducted in-depth research into the voting records and announced positions of candidates in every house, senate, and presidential race, and announced how closely they hewed to libertarian orthodoxy (on those things—unlike, say, war—where such an orthodoxy exists).

The Republican Liberty Caucus does this—or at least did this for a while—by compiling two “interest group” ratings for legislators—one each for economic and personal liberty.* Not sure if they still do it… anyway, I used the ratings in at least one iteration of the now-legendary impeachment paper. Unfortunately you can’t find RLC publicity standing on the street outside their headquarters, much less in the halls of power or the public discourse; however, I think that Republicans who want to push their party in a more libertarian direction won’t find a better place to put their money.

I spent Memorial Day afternoon at the funeral of my uncle, Bill Sides. Bill Sides was a World War II veteran, who served with the 236th Engineers in China, Burma, and India.

This was the first funeral I’ve been to with military honor guard. The graveside ceremony was simple but moving. One soldier, out of sight, played “Taps,” while two others folded the flag that was draped over the coffin into a right triangle with only the stars showing. Each of the three soldiers saluted the folded flag before presenting it to a family member.

The complex of meanings that this ceremony invokes surely differ from viewer to viewer, and I find it difficult to sum up in words what I felt on seeing it. Suffice it to say that the ceremony managed to honor at the same time both my uncle as an individual, and all America’s military veterans who have passed on.

Only a few hours left to buy BlogMatrix Jäger at the low introductory price of $10 US, versus the still-low new price of $15 US. I’d probably buy it myself if I lived more than 1% of my life in Windows…

Doug Allen wonders what the best future approach for the Libertarian Party is. In the comments on Allen’s post, Skip Oliva writes:

The LP’s flaw is that they focus exclusively on electoral politics, which is a high-cost, low-yield means of communicating your message when you’re a third-party. I’d like to see more LP activism in things like administrative law (which is where I focus my attention) and areas that aren’t the focus of popular and media attention, areas that could use some principles to shine a light on government abuse.

I think the larger question is whether a political party (e.g. the LP) is the best vehicle to advance those goals in the contemporary U.S. political system. I have previously written why I think not; rather, I think the best front is to support organizations like the Institute for Justice and the Cato Institute that work on the legal and interest articulation side of the spectrum. Groups like Cato and IJ have institutional advantages over political parties for pursuing goals outside the electoral process—most notably, the ability to attract tax-deductable donations.

Sean Hackbarth has some thoughts on Allen’s post as well.

James Joyner finds large gatherings of bikers to be something of an inconvenience but nonetheless, in this instance, in service of a worthy cause. He’s got a link to a WaPo account of the Rolling Thunder biker rally, which I suppose will be nothing new to those of us with Harley aficionados in the family. I was previously unaware that Rolling Thunder made political endorsements, however.

Dan Drezner takes a look at the results of the survey of the blog-reading habits of media professionals he conducted with Henry Farrell, and has some surprising findings.

One minor caveat to his analysis: I don’t think the Daily Kos counts as a “newly emerging blog,” as it’s been around longer than I have, although the current “community” format for it inspired by Kuro5hin (and powered by the same software, Scoop) is relatively new.

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Apologies for the brief downtime earlier today… we’re experiencing what might be called “power difficulties” here in Oxvegas, magnified by the fact that the BIOS on the machine that currently hosts Signifying Nothing has no “power on automatically when AC comes back on” setting. Hopefully things are now back to normal.

Like Brock, I can’t be excited about the Libertarians’ nomination of Michael Badnarik. And his enthusiasm for non-alcoholic beer makes me wonder about some other possible faults he may have—like, perhaps, support for the designated-hitter rule or liking the taste of broccoli.

Elsewhere: MNSlog misidentified Brock as a Republican (thanks for correcting it ☺), Q and O considers this evidence that the LP is a collection of “losertarians,” and Brian J. Noggle reminds us that he and his wife met Badnarik earlier this year in a basement. Oh, and some dude named Glenn Reynolds has some links. Heh.

I learned from Mike Hollihan that the Libertarian party has nominated Michael Badnarik for president.

So despite my threats, I won’t be voting Libertarian in November. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for someone who doesn’t respect the eighth amendment.

UPDATE: According to the Blogcritics article linked to above, "Badnarik is clearly a genuine connoisseur of N/A beer." Like I said, he's a crackpot.