That blue flag to the right is that of New Hampshire, hanging dismally and dejectedly at the thought that the Libertarians still haven't managed to vote out the state liquour stores.

Today the President signed an act that forbids homeowners from entering into certain contracts that would alienate their right to fly the U.S. flag, or from gathering together in communities of like-minded people to do so.

One smart-alecky question is where Congress gets the authority to make laws superintending state property and contract law like this. Some think that this is obviously a regulation of interstate commerce, although that seems like a bigger stretch than usual to me. Nonetheless, I've previously defended the enumerated power here on the grounds that forcing people to retain the right to fly the flag is probably necessary and proper to the execution of whatever power justifies establishing or defining the flag in the first place.

Of course, what power is that? On the first day of the two Con Law sections I T.A.ed last spring, we talked for 30 minutes about McCulloch v. Maryland, and then I handed out the statute where Congress first added two stripes to the flag for Kentucky and Tennessee, newly admitted to the union and asked them where the enumerated power for that statute came from. Some of them clearly thought the question was stupid, but even they mostly got into it by the end. I'd say about half of each section decided that the flag-- or at least the establishment of it by federal statute rather than spontaneous order-- was unconstitutional. The rest of them (including me) decided it was probably necessary and proper to the military powers and other foreign affairs powers.

Lots of people are talking about Ruth Franklin's book review/ essay on book-reviewing (complaining that there are two many good reviews out there). And also about A.O.Scott's movie review/essay on movie-reviewing (asking, essentially, what the Hell is wrong with everybody?) Our Girl in Chicago provides reflections on both.

Franklin's essay-- essentially a little bit more than the first half of her review-- is utterly quotable, but really better if read in full:

Bad reviews are motivated by anger, but good reviews are motivated by love; and it is easier to become angry than to fall in love. Every reader had a first love, most likely in childhood: a book that we could not get enough of, and guarded selfishly for fear that someone else might come to think of it as their own; a book with which we identified completely; a book to which we probably would not want to return as adults for fear that it might not live up to our memories. Perhaps we were serial monogamists, who exhausted the entire work of one author only to move on to another the next month or year. Perhaps we were polygamists, who could not be satisfied by one book at a time, but had to have many all at once, from different genres and different time periods. But whatever our inclinations, over the years our capacity to love books becomes dulled by repeated frustration. Every time we pick up a book, we expect to fall in love; but after a certain number of disappointments, our expectation turns to mere hope; and eventually we give up even that.

[Keep reading.]