Blog Carnival Roundup

At least three blog carnivals this week are pointing their readers in this direction.

Carnival of Liberty LVI, posted by Michael Hampton at Homeland Stupidity, mentions my piece on gas prices, as does the latest Virginia Blog Carnival, assembled by James Martin on The Virginia Progressive.

Some highlights from the Carnival of Liberty:

Eminent domain abuse may be alive and well, but perhaps not for much longer. Doug Mataconis at The Liberty Papers examines the heartening decision from Ohio in Norwood v. Horney: A Crushing Blow To Kelo.

Recently the state of Maryland failed in a bid to punish Wal-Mart for being, well, Wal-Mart. Tom Anger at Liberty Corner explains why this isn’t good for liberty in The Bad News about Wal-Mart’s Victory in Maryland.

Michael Black at the No Angst zone cooks up some Mmmm, tasty government bacon in a virtual pork festival, highlighting yet another bridge to nowhere, this one in Nebraska.

When the Democratic Party is too socialist, the Republican Party is too fascist, and the Libertarian Party is too small, Doug Mataconis at The Liberty Papers asks What’s A Libertarian To Do?

And some highlights from this week's Virginia Blog Carnival:

Kenton Ngo refers to the House attempt to help combat online predators as “tilting at windmills” in “Deleting Online Predators Act Passes House: Still not impressed.” at 750 Volts. . . .

Waldo Jacquith does an amazing job charting the fate of bills that are introduced to the General Assembly. Go check it out at “2006 GA session stats“. . . .

Spank that Donkey goes after the Virginia General Assembly in a post entitled “Gov. & VA General Assembly: Screw the Poor” Do car tax penalties hurt the poor?. . . .

Not Larry Sabato does a great Regional breakdown of support for the Virginia Marriage Amendment in “I’m Perplexed- Updated“.

Meanwhile, the 12th edition of the Carnival of Family Life was kind enough to post a birth announcement, directing readers to my post, "I'm an Uncle!"

The next Carnival of Family Life will be hosted by The Pink Diary. The host of the next Virginia Blog Carnival is the NoVA Townhall Blog. And the next Carnival of Liberty will be found at Socratic Rhythm Method.

In other blogging news, in what might be a first, a federal court has cited a blog as an authoritative source in a legal opinion. Principled Discovery reports in a post titled "The Power of Blogging" that

a blog has been quoted in the dissenting opinion of a case voted not to be re-heard by the ninth-circuit court of appeals. Harper v Poway Unified School District is essentially about free speech in the classroom. In his dissent on page six, Judge O'Scannlain quotes the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog.

The relevant passage from the dissent goes like this:

A respected First Amendment scholar notes that the panel majority's decision constitutes

a dangerous retreat from our tradition that the First Amendment is viewpoint-neutral. It's an opening to a First Amendment limited by rights to be free from offensive viewpoints. It's a tool for suppression of one side of public debates (about same-sex marriage, about Islam, quite likely about illegal immigration, and more) while the other side reamains constitutionally protected and even encouraged by the government.

Eugene Volokh, Sorry, Your Viewpoint Is Excluded from First Amendment Protection April 20, 2006, http://volokh.com/posts/1145577196.shtml. No Supreme Court decision empowers our public schools to engage in such censorship nor has gone so far in favoring one viewpoint over another.

The dissent can be viewed here. The case deals with the question of whether a school district can refuse to allow a student to wear a t-shirt with an anti-gay slogan on it. (The opinions refer to whether the full Ninth Circuit should rehear the case, which had already been decided by a panel of three judges. The court refused the rehearing.)