But his opposition to making English the official language is not, in any event, at the top of the list. I oppose official languages and support full separation of language and state. I can see why some might disagree, but nevertheless it would seem like a strange libertarian critique of a man that he opposes state nationalization of the language. Yet a letter from the Libertarian Party makes just this criticism of Biden to illustrate how bad he supposedly is.

As I say, he is bad, very bad. Most important, he's a big warmonger, and indeed he is meant to "balance out" one of Obama's few strengths: being relatively "weak" on war, at least compared to McCain.

Most of the LP's other criticisms of Biden seem to be aimed at the right, playing on conservative hot button issues and illustrating Biden's deviation from constitutional conservatism more than libertarianism. Much of the criticism centers on minor or even dubious pointsagainst him: he's for motorcycle helmet nationalism; against earmark limits and federal restrictions on gun manufacturer liability (as is, for different reasons, Ron Paul); and pro-Amtrak. Now, Biden's anti-free market record is quite bad, but what kind of critique is any of this for a Democrat? He's for minimum wage laws, but what presidential candidate since maybe Goldwater was against them? Why no mention of Biden's warmongering and police statism – the most telling deviations from libertarianism, especially given the rhetorical facade of the Democrats?

Even most Republicans don't seem fixated on English as an official language, and Obama is opposed, so this especially seems like an odd point to bring up. I oppose it on libertarian, anti-state and Constitutional grounds, but even if some Libertarians support it, is this supposed to steal to nativist vote from Obama? Just because Bob Barr holds a litany of conservative and other eccentric positions doesn't mean we should hold them all up as the standard for libertarians, or for America. One of Barr's biggest problems with McCain, meanwhile, has been McCain-Feingold – a horrible law with totalitarian aspects, but not the biggest statist problem we face. Feingold, in fact, is probably my favorite senator all around; I think that support for one such horrible law can only be so decisive in assessing a politician. After all, Bob Barr's campaign itself tried to use the unconstitutional law to force their way into a church's private debate. Thank goodness, for the sake of free association and religious liberty, this time the federal judge was more respectful of constitutional boundaries than the LP candidate's team.