Reading

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (9780684868554): Pauline Maier.  Pretty interesting.  Amazing to read what a battle it was to get the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution, and how the Federalists opposed it so strongly.  It seems that they were so convinced that the Constitution would ensure good government that they had what amounted to a religious conviction that the science was settled just one more Five Year Plan was necessary sometimes you've earned enough that no such Bill was necessary, and they seem to have found the idea a bit insulting.
Interesting to note that the term "Anti-Federalist" was not in common use, but that the term "Republicans" was.  That was not the only item that resonated with current events, either.
Recommended.  Pauline Maier has written several other books on 18th Century America, and I'll be looking to pick them up.

Have You Seen My Country Lately?: America's Wake-Up Call: Jerry "Michael Garibaldi" Doyle.  In case you missed it, Babylon 5's Chief of Security is a conservative.  This book is his take on where America is going, told in terms of his life and career.
You probably wont have any epiphanies reading it, but it's interesting, and well-written.  I like his bit about celebrities needing someone to serve as a "smoke alarm."

How Firm a Foundation (Safehold) (9780765321541): David Weber.  This is book 5 in Weber's Safehold series.  The books are good reads, and Weber manages to avoid having "Merlin" be too much of a Deus Ex Machina. But they are yet another of Weber's mega-uber-super-novels.  The story moves along, but frankly I think that, as thick as the books are, the series could have been over by now. 
Weber also experiments with the dilemma I talked about a while ago, to wit, his story takes place on a planet far in the future, and to make it clear, there has been a pronounced (heh)  vowel shift which causes names to be spelled--phonetically, I presume--um... oddly.  "Zhasper" instead of "Jasper", for instance.  This may be a good example of how these things can distract from the story, as you struggle with unfamiliar spellings of names, and wonder if you're pronouncing them correctly in your head...

Disclaimer:  All links go to Amazon.com.  I make no money off purchases, I am not an affiliate or associate or whatever they call it.  (I think I actually used either Bill Quick's or Tamara's link to look them up, in fact.)