rfmcdonald | [LINK] Some Friday links (Reply)

Over at Bonoboland, Edward Hugh draws parallels between language policy as it exists in Catalonia and as it should exist in the Baltic States vis-à-vis immigrants, and points out that Hungarian unemployment rates have been falling of late because of the past generation of declining birth rates.

Joel at Far Outliers quotes from Tony Judt's recent history of Europe, describing how Europe's New Left looked to early Marxists in contradistinction to contemporary Soviet-bloc Communists.

Language Hat points out that the legacies of Stalinist repression in the 1930s may have doomed efforts to establish Belarusian as a "normal" language in its home territory, widely used by different social strata.

I've not cared to follow the story of Idaho Senator Larry Craig, recently revealed to have solicited for sex in an airport washroom, very closely. Some of the better coverage in the blogosphere includes Jason Kuznicki's speculations as to whether Craig's closetedness reflect character flaws which made him a bad senator, and the Tin Man's notes (1, 2) on how the Republican Party's quick purging of Craig contrasts to its tolerance of Louisian senator David Vitter's (female) prostitutes and reveals a structural homophobia.