I bet you didn't get offered homemade carrot cake by the workers at your voting precinct today. You did vote, didn't you?

One of my favorite online publications turns ten years old this month, The Patriot Post. (Formerly known as The Federalist Patriot, and for a long time before that, simply The Federalist.) Publisher Mark Alexander has overseen a redesign of the publication's web site, and it's a big improvement over the previous design. You can now get notices of each new issue via RSS, and all issues since 2003 are archived online, with prior years to come. A subscription to The Patriot Post is free, and the publication is solely supported through reader donations.

I admit to having varied thoughts with regard to the free speech versus protecting our national emblem from being burnt aspects of the "protest" burnings of the American flag. Men and women have bled and died for our flag, from the time when our fledgling nation did not have a single standard, but several, to the present day and the present conflicts of the Long War on Terror. Yet it was not a scrap of red, white, and blue cloth these men and women sacrificed, but what that cloth represents. For anyone to burn a flag of the United States of America, except as the proscribed method of taking said flag out of service, dishonors the memory of those men and women. The other side of my mind, however, screams that the protest burning is the kind of freedom those sacrifices were made for. Quite the contest of ideals raging in my grey matter. Yet another reason to love the Internet: if you wait long enough, someone's going to come along and say what it is you want to say, only better. Tod Lindberg:

To tell you the truth, I'm not that crazy about such a constitutional amendment, for the simple reason that flag-burning is unique in the annals of protest for the way in which it perfectly encapsulates what a jerk the person burning the flag is. It is auto-discrediting in a way that no placard or chant, however idiotic, can equal. To set fire to the national emblem of a country that allows you to say and do as you please, including burning the national emblem, is to make the point that your freedom is so visceral a part of your nature that you are oblivious to it. It doesn't reflect well on you to be oblivious in this fashion, but it reflects well on your country for how deeply it ingrains the spirit of freedom into those lucky enough to live here.

That said, the last thing that a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning strikes me as is a slippery slope toward broader restriction on freedom of expression. Besides, our nation has more important things to worry about, like stopping radical Islamists from popping a nuke in one of our major metropolises. I don't think a majority of voters, while perhaps concerned one way or the other on the flag-burning issue, have it ranked as a high priority. It's more of a "when the jihadists are all dead or in prison" sort of issue.

I'm sure, like Jeff and Mark Alexander, I fall in to a distinct minority of conservative-minded folks in that I do not approve of the line-item veto. Jeff gives a great example of the sort of situation fiscal conservatives point to as their case for the line-item veto:

Congress has embraced the notion of passing ten-thousand-page omnibus bills that provide an appropriation for buying missiles, invest taxpayer dollars in education, reform the health-insurance, and by the way also fund half a dozen wasteful squanderings of the federal treasury. And if the President wants to veto it, he has to veto it all. Nuts, right? As Jeff goes on to say, yes, it is nuts. But members of Congress need to stand up and defend their reasons for why they want these "wasteful squanderings" included along with the legitimate items in such bills. (Though I will quibble that the government has no business in the health insurance business, either.) Equally so, the President--and this is any president, not just the current one--should get the message out to the American people why he's vetoing the entire bill, despite all of its good and legitimate items. More communication is the key. As Jeff puts it, the American people need to be made smarter as to the machinations of their government. The two parties seem to enjoy playing politics, so why not extend that to budgetary items? If Congress sends you a spending bill with bridges to nowhere in it, you veto it, tell the American people you vetoed it because of the bridges to nowhere, and mention you'd be happy to sign it when it comes back without the bridges to nowhere within. Likewise, if Congress sends a spending bill without any largesse--stop laughing, this is a hypothetical after all--and the President still vetoes it, Congress has that handy two-thirds majority thingy from the Constitution. Like net "neutrality" legislation, I think the line-item veto is a mountain that's actually a molehill. We have more important areas to concentrate on, like keeping those who wish to kill us outside of our borders.

James Taranto:

The Stephen Colbert kerfuffle, intrinsically uninteresting though it is, leads Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to an excellent insight:

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders--and they are all over the blogosphere--will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences--maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or--if you're at work--take away your office.

<p>But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in.</p>

This, it seems to us, explains several conceits of the Angry Left:

• The notion that criticism--whether of the Dixie Chicks or of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer--amounts to censorship.

• Claims by Democratic politicians that Republicans are "questioning" their "patriotism."

• Fears of incipient fascism.

What these have in common, aside from being totally fantastical, is that they all reinforce the image of the Angry Leftist as courageous dissenter. In truth, this country is so tolerant, indeed downright indulgent, of this sort of "dissent" that it affords no opportunity to be courageous.

Speak "truth to power" in America, and power will pat you on the head and say, "What an adorable little girl." Some on the Angry Left could actually have the courage to stand up if they were faced with real consequences--but they are unlikely ever to get that chance. America's almost boundless tolerance thus reduces them to the level of petulant children. No wonder they're so angry.

Stephen Moore, Political Diary:

During last week's debate about the federal earmarking process -- which is used to distribute pork to congressional districts -- House Appropriators struck back. The appropriators, of both parties, complain that fiscal conservatives in the House are trying to ruin a time-honored congressional tradition of passing out bacon by demanding full transparency for pork spending. In a letter to his colleagues, Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson went so far as to argue that the Framers wouldn't have approved of this effort to curb Congress's power of the purse and even claimed "earmarking is virtually required by article 1 section 9 clause 7 of the Constitution."

So we did some checking on the writings of the founders to shed some light on their view of the domestic pork process. The first budget ever passed by Congress approved roughly $100 million of funds in today's dollars. There were no Lawrence Welk Museums or Cowboy Hall of Fame earmarks in the bill -- which was only a few pages long. The founders believed that if a government function wasn't listed in the Constitution under the enumerated powers clause (Article I, Section 8), the right to spend money didn't exist. Pork was hardly an issue.

The biggest opponent to federal spending on parochial projects was Thomas Jefferson. Here is what Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison: "I view [road building] as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post roads revenues, but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest."

To be sure, there were defenders of congressional funding of local projects, most notably Alexander Hamilton. But back then the stakes and dollar amounts were much smaller. Given what's happening today in Congress with highway bills larded up with thousands of special projects, we'd say that Jefferson's warning was amazingly prescient. We'd also say that the founders would be mighty disgusted with the way Republicans and Democrats have been serving as guardians of the public purse.