I think "the Bleat" is about the best name for a blog I can think of. "The Screed" is pretty close to it. Too bad Lileks has them both. I can think of a bunch of other good names, like "the cavillry," "phillipic," "casuistry online," but they don't connote self-deprecation the way Lileks' do. They lead one to expect something along the lines of Josh Marshall's blather (another good blog name). Cockalorum isn't bad. It probably sends a few to their Big Dictionaries, but I can't really do it justice. I'm too uneven. Sometimes it comes fully formed and clear as a bell, but other times I need a week of tweaking and that isn't consistent with the concept of blogging. Sometimes, I admit, I sound like a right-wing crazy--maybe that's what I am on some issues--but I really prefer to be able to offer some rational argument.

I don't really hate anybody. They've really got to be annoying and incredibly stupid, or both. What bugs me most is when people I know to be very bright, like Peter Beinart and Erwin Shemerinsky, or my sister-in-law and her husband go off on the latest Democrat talking points. At first, I tend to wonder if I heard them correctly, then I wonder where they get their information. It usually takes a few minutes before I come around to realizing that they are just operating on reflexive liberalism, which these days coincides with irrationality. They can justify the bigotry of senators, like Pat Leahy, who announce that no faithful Catholic is qualified to serve as a federal judge. Gotta preserve the Constitutional rights to abortion and sodomy.