The Literatus Weighs In

Our old friend, the hardest working man in showbusiness and published poet, the Literatus writes in:

Oh hey [name redacted], you Obama blusher you: sure, every political person likely had unsavoury radical friends in their youth. I believe you yourself associated with the likes of Sarah Polley, Warren Kinsella and even Garth the Albino (shudder) back in the Trotskyite anti-racism day, right? OK. But you haven't exactly clasped any such nutter by the shoulder and slipped him $50 every week for the past two decades, have you...? Obama's foaming cleric is his priest, is his confessor, is his family's spiritual advisor, not some regrettable campus acquaintance from old times.

I kinda like 'em both, mind you; Wright at least is among the great roaring creatures of American religion, and Obama is undeniably a fine-tuned political receiver/and amplifier. Not that it's much of our business; not that it makes much difference.

In the event the Pithlord were to seek elective office, it would be trivially easy to put together an oppo file. That's why I've decided to confine my political activities to being a smartass on the Internet.

I've Changed the Template

As you probably noticed. I need to do some fiddling to get the links and comment widgets working. Comment if you wish.

Update: Sorry, DON'T comment unless you can tell me how to get my Haloscan comments back. Jeez.

Whither Pith & Substance?

Those sensible souls who avoid meta-blogging should skip this next bit.

Some have written in to say how pointless are those blogs without any focus based on the proprietor's (relative) expertise. I suppose it's interesting that Brad DeLong thinks George Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached, and that the media is unfair to his political perspective, but were it not for the fact that he is an expert in economics and can express this expertise well, I doubt I would return very often.

The loss of Supreme Court of Canada case blogging obviously could render this site nothing more than my rants and meditations on stuff I don't really know much about. I am "opinionated and vain", but I'm not opinionated and vain enough to think that people will keep coming back for that.

The Court is a fine website, but it is narrowly focused on recent SCC decisions. There is much to say about the constitutional present. But what is this thing -- the Canadian constitution -- which Good Queen Bev and her crew are screwing up? It's a constitution "similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom", so it imports the whole constitutional history from Runneymede to Bagehot. It develops out of British colonial policy to a French Catholic polity in North America through Durham to the Confederation debates. And someone in the blogosphere needs to stand up for the Privy Council. There is a lot there, and it would be interesting to see if it can be made into reasonable blog fodder.

If I have a thought about anything that could be a blog post, I'm not going to let my internal editor stop me form posting it. Turning off that editor is the key to blogging at all. So who knows what you will get. But I will come back to the Anglo-Canadian constitutional history theme.

Death of a feature

I recently heard from an old friend who hates blogs:

Blogges are the work of the Anti-Christ. Most of them, anyway, yours saves itself by having something resembling a focus that cannot actually be described as "another misinformed voter's partisan thoughts on the War and the [Insert hated party here]."

This was from an old friend, mind you, so I can't be sure whether the exemption to the general anatehma was intended to save my feelings. But, in any case, I will no longer qualify for it, since I am going to end the feature that gives this blog such focus as it has. There will be no more snarky Supreme Court of Canada reviews.

For those of you hurting at this news, I can only hint that there will be a new participant on Osgoode's The Court blog whose style may seem strangely familiar. In accordance with Osgoode's strict rules on the subject, this person will have to use his real name, and will be expected to use a spell checker and refrain from accusing the Supreme Court of treason.

Misinformed thoughts on the War and partisan politics will continue to be found here.

Der Untergang des Blogosphere

The Globe and Mail points me to this article claiming that October 2006 represented the peak of blogging. Since then, there has been more exit than entry. Soon enough, Josh Marshall and Instapundit will be one with Nineveh and Tyre.

Those of us with a Tory bent will find this comforting. A reactionary's hobbies should not be cutting edge. In an earlier time, such a scruple might have kept the Tory from all kinds of fun. But the contemproary globoculture makes everything a matter of antiquarian interest quickly enough. A generation ago, it would be necessary to affect an interest in Early Music or the Odes of Pindar to be considered a genuine fuddy duddy. Now, it is sufficient to be an expert on The Clash or to care about the merits of the Clinton impeachment.