Update to my Candidate Guide and other news

I’ve published some updates to my 2012 GOP Candidate guide to demote some candidates who are gone, insert a candidate who had been neglected, and update a lot of text to reflect more recent developments in the race. (I also added some interesting data I came across regarding the estimated value of each candidate’s home.)

In regular news, there have been some developments against SOPA and PIPA in recent days. Ars Technica does a good job summing the backpedaling that has emerged thanks to the clamoring calls of opposition from the tech community over the last few weeks. We also have more people joining the SOPA fight, a strange response from a Senator’s staffer (but proof that the opposition calls are working), and an interesting response from the White House. (Thanks to the misnamed “Hacker News” for the hat tip on all four of these links.)

In meta news, I’ve been chatting with Simon over on Classical Values about the possibility of doing a guest post responding to his position that closing our military bases around the world would create a dangerous power vacuum. We both have things that we like and dislike about Ron Paul’s policies, but Paul’s desire to bring our troops home from around the world has always been something that made sense to me, while admittedly not being very familiar with the “power vacuum” position. So I’m doing a little research and will hopefully find some time to express why I’m not afraid that the world would become a more dangerous place if we brought all our troops home, or at least offer the best reasons I can give that I don’t think I need to be afraid –  and give Simon, who seems to have more experience and knowledge on this issue, a chance to shoot them all down 🙂 Hopefully by putting this on a public blog post I will solidify my commitment to get such a post written in the near future. (And assuming I do so, I will either link to it from here, or if the guest post thing doesn’t work out, just post it here.)