There's much I'm missing these days. The 150th Carnival of the Vanities was posted at Riding Sun before I even thought to submit an entry. And it's a great carnival too, written by an American motorcyclist in Japan. So go read it.

And while I'm busily documenting my own carelessness, there's something else I missed: an opportunity to submit names for a list John Hawkins has compiled of the "least favorite people on the right."

A whole bunch of right-of-center blogs voted, and here's the list of the top vote-getters (number of blog votes are in parentheses):

18) Tom Tancredo (4)
18) Ralph Reed (4)
18) Newt Gingrich (4)
18) Lincoln Chafee (4)
18) James Dobson (4)
18) George Pataki (4)
18) Arnold Schwarzenegger (4)
14) Tom DeLay (5)
14) Rush Limbaugh (5)
14) George Voinovich (5)
14) Chuck Hagel (5)
13) Andrew Sullivan (6)
11) Tucker Carlson (7)
11) Bob Novak (7)
9) Sean Hannity (8)
9) Rick Santorum (8)
8) Arlen Specter (10)
7) Jerry Falwell (15.5)
6) Bill O'Reilly (16)
5) Michael Savage (17)
4) Pat Robertson (19.5)
3) Ann Coulter (20)
2) John McCain (21)
1) Pat Buchanan (28)

I don't mean to sound like a scold, but I have to ask, are bad opinions uttered by people in the headlines the worst thing we face?

For example, right now, a lot of people are worked up over whether Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools. As I've said before, I think that for the government to quantify what is in the mind of God probably violates the Establishment Clause:

The bare assertion that evolutionary theory is an anti-religious value judgment against divine "intelligence" does not make it so -- any more than the failure of geology to teach that God made rocks is an assertion that he didn't. Intelligent design thus strikes me as a gratuitous -- and circular -- assertion that evolution denies intelligent design or is at war with it. (One might as well assert that teaching human reproduction negates "gay theory" or that teaching English negates Swahili.) To not assert something is not to deny something not denied, nor does it mean being at war with it.

It is as unscientific as it is unnecessary, but I suspect the idea is to bootstrap into being the unstated assertion that "God" is "intelligent." The latter idea -- that God has human features such as intelligence -- is another unprovable theological assertion, and for it to be taught as fact would be another form of unconstitutional religious indoctrination (favoring one view of the divine over another).

Calling a natural phenomenon intelligent is about as helpful as calling it stupid. (Might as well assert that evolution damages self esteem.)

Which is a far cry from the sort of thing James Sensenbrenner is doing, and I can't believe he isn't getting more attention.

Is the man too boring?

This is a man who's not merely spouting opinions with which we may disagree. He's actually working to do the following:

make it a federal five-year-felony for people witnessing teen drug crimes to fail to affirmatively become a government informant;

add three years to the sentence of anyone who owned a gun when committing non-violent crimes like bankruptcy fraud; and

treat possession of drugs as sales;

Moreover, Sensenbrenner already helped make into law the statist REAL ID Act.

A true believer in his own laws, Sensenbrenner recently wrote an ex parte letter to a judge demanding he increase the sentence of a drug defendant from eight years to ten.

I would have assumed that he'd have at least made it to the top twenty on John Hawkins list, and I feel very guilty that I failed to participate.

Sensenbrenner's mandatory informant law alone is an absolute disgrace to the American tradition of freedom. To threaten to imprison people for five years if they don't call the police on other citizens -- that is totalitarian stuff which is un-American, and Sensenbrenner makes me as ashamed to call myself a Republican. (Which is why I wrote this post.)

Why more people aren't alarmed, I don't know. Probably, it's because unlike Ann Coulter, Congressman Sensenbrenner doesn't issue inflammatory statements, doesn't grab the headlines, and slips past everyone's radar as not being, well, "interesting."

Yet what he does is far worse than what these others merely say. Much as I disagree with what the windbags on the list have to say, words are not deeds. If the government imprisons me for five years because I didn't inform on my neighbor, that's a deed, not a disagreement. If a group of citizens did that (threatened me with force unless I betrayed someone) that would be extortion, if not something worse. (Something which if I said it I'd run the risk of being accused of political hyperbole, and playing into the hands of the enemy.)

In short, Sensenbrenner wants to use government force to make me talk.

I only wish there were some way to get him to talk. Yes talk! Like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson! Anything would be better than having him legislate.

But for all I know, the man is boring, and wouldn't make it as an on-the-air media personality. He might even put his colleagues to sleep.

Huh?

Like while Congress slept, freedom wept?