RALEIGH — There are a number of unique advantages to writing an online column. Given the rate of compensation, there better be.

One of them is that an online column has few boundaries. It can be long or short. It can be silly or serious. It can be a free-standing piece of thumb-sucking puffery or a link-laden tome of pseudo-erudition.

It’s not like I can’t do the more traditional kind of column. I’ve been writing a weekly column for North Carolina newspapers for 16 years now, so I have developed the discipline required. But in a feature that tries to react to the day’s events — and to do so typically late at night after several harrowing rounds of “Daddy, can I have a drink of juice?” and “Daddy, can I have a drink of water?” and “Daddy, can I stay up all night and play Age of Mythology?” — the absence of the need for discipline is most welcome.

So today, I’m going to do what I’ve done on a few other occasions: I’m going to give you a reading assignment. Now, I’ll say right off the bat that you won’t find the following links interesting if you 1) have no interest in the Patriot Act or civil liberties issues, or 2) have no interest in the conservative/libertarian movement and the tensions within it. So if both descriptions fit you, feel free to click away to where you weirdo hang out on the web.

If you’re still with me, I think you’re in for a treat. Last Friday, I got a call from an Associated Press reporter looking to do a story about Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft’s scheduled trip to Durham the following day to defend the USA Patriot Act. Although I’d been following the issue since its passage nearly two years ago, I didn’t feel like I was up enough on the latest controversies about it to have an informed opinion. So before I called the reporter back to supply some thoughts for his story, I checked around to some of my favorite web sites to get the latest analysis and commentary.

Over at the libertarian Reason magazine, where I used to work years ago and still contribute the occasional article (such as one of the features in the Oct. 2003 issue just out), I ran across a piece by Reason editor Nick Gillespie questioning conservative defenders of the Patriot Act. Then at the conservative/libertarian National Review, which is edited by an old friend of mine and for which I also write occasionally, I ran across a response to Nick’s piece by another (new) friend, NR’s Ramesh Ponnuru.

This led me to other rhetorical punches and counterpunches on Patriot and related issues on the two web sites, particularly within their two blogs (posts in which I can’t link directly, or at least don’t know how to). Morever, I discovered that the Patriot Act disagreement was only part of a larger story of escalating blogger warfare between Reason and NR. It turned out that last year Reason had published a rather juvenile and unfunny parody of NR’s blog “The Corner,” which was answered (scroll down a little) in a snarky manner by NR’s online editor, who was then answered by the Reason parody’s author, and so on.

If you’re willing to surf on my web wave a bit here, I think you’ll find the exchanges interesting and entertaining. And, hey, if you don’t, there will be something else entirely in this space tomorrow, and you’ll forget all about it.

Another advantage of the online column.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.