Via Beth Plocharczyk at Crescat Sententia, I’m pleased to see that the Democratic and Republican parties don’t have a monopoly on nutjobs. From the campaign website of Michael Badnarik, who is campaigning for the Libertarian presidential nomination, we have a new idea about criminal justice:

Given the opportunity, Michael would like to change one aspect of prison life to increase the safety of the people guarding them. Instead of allowing them to lift weights and exercise several hours per day (making them violent AND powerful), Michael would require them to remain in bed all day for the first month, and twelve hours per day after that. This lack of activity would allow their muscles to atrophy, making them helpless couch potatoes incapable of inflicting very much violence on each other, the guards, or unsuspecting citizens should they manage to escape.

Elsewhere on the same page,

Michael Badnarik has studied the Constitution for twenty years, and has been teaching an eight-hour class on the subject for the last three years. All of his political positions are derived from the principle of individual rights, and are consistent with the Constitution. He would like to see strict enforcement of the Bill of Rights, and would establish a “zero tolerance policy” for all elected officials who violate the supreme law of the land.

Except for the Eighth Amendment, that is.

Brock below ponders the Shelby County School Board’s renaming of its inter-semester break to “Christmas break.” According to the 2003–04 calendar, it was previously known as “Winter Break (Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s),” which strikes me as a rather unwieldy, albeit accurate, description. Amusingly enough, the 2004–05 calendar on the same website uses the same description, eschewing the revised, “non-PC” nomenclature.

(About a decade ago I wrote a column for the Ocala Star-Banner on this very topic; feel free to flex your Lexis-Nexis skills trying to find it… I’m certainly not going to rewrite it for this blog.)

USA Today reports that Andrew Gilligan has “sexed up” his resignation letter to the BBC into a plaintive declaration of his innocence. To borrow from John Kerry’s overused stump soundbite, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Incidentally, I’m guessing the over/under on Gilligan finding another job in “respectable” journalism is three weeks. As for the over/under on Paul Krugman conceding that state-owned broadcasters are no more impartial than their commercial counterparts—well, I have a bridge in Princeton to sell you.

Via Jane Galt and Jeff Jarvis.

The Shelby County School Board has thumbed its collective nose at non-Christians, changing the name of the winter break back to “Christmas break”. (The article does not say what it has been called in recent years.)

Quoth Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association:

[Dissenters] should get over it and be grateful we live in a free nation that tolerates different religious views and not in some Islamic country that forbids anything that is not Muslim.

And board member Joe Clayton, who sponsored the measure:

This is Christmas break. I get offended when I see that pushed to the background.

Maybe they could compromise and call it "Xmas vacation".

Well, at least they haven’t tried to remove the word “evolution” from the biology curriculum.

Who, exactly, is Dick Cheney’s constituency in the Republican Party? Sauromon figures and “dark princes” don’t generally have much of a political following, and Cheney doesn’t seem to be an exception to the trend. He’s not a darling of the Christian right—John Ashcroft’s their man, and Cheney’s lesbian daughter would probably not endear him to the right either. Cheney has always struck me as more of the “policy wonkish” sort—a right-wing Al Gore without the passion, if such a thing is possible (or, for that matter, not a redundant description).

Which, of course, makes me wonder why the idea of replacing Cheney on the Bush ticket in 2004 seems to be going over like a lead balloon. Even though the potential replacements—Rudy Guiliani and Condi Rice are the names most often bandied about—aren’t exactly faves of the right either, I don’t see how they’re a step down from Cheney for the base. And anyone that thinks a Rick Santorum or Ashcroft-style cultural conservative is a smart addition to the ticket is borderline delusional.

Kate, who’s been a recent victim of some serious crapflooding, is probably shutting down Electric Venom, barring a miracle. EV’s always been one of my favorite blogs, and I’m sure Kate would appreciate whatever help she can get in finding a new hosting provider.

Update: Panic attack over (well, for me at least). Phew!

I listened to most of tonight’s South Carolina Democratic primary debate in the car today driving up from Oxford to Memphis; what struck me most about the debate, besides Tom Brokaw’s inexplicable and repeated references to the Muslim world as “the Nation of Islam,” was the degree to which the amount of applause a particular statement received was inversely proportional with its plausibility as a policy.

Some of this, perhaps, can be attributed to Al Sharpton’s delivery, but it seemed as if even Dennis Kucinich got a better reaction from the assembled crowd than any of the more mainstream alternatives when speaking. Extremist candidates are often popular with the base of course—witness, for example, Alan Keyes’ appeal to debate attendees in his runs that never translated into primary votes. But if the crowd was at all reflective of the S.C. electorate,* Howard Dean may have put away the “red meat” too early…

In policy terms, all I can say is: thank God none of these guys will have a friendly Congress if they win the presidency. Just call me a cognitive Madisonian I guess…

Update: According to Dr. Scott Huffmon, a friend who attended the debate, there was "a tiny, but vocal, group of Kucinich supporters who were seated close to [the] stage," which would help explain much of the applause for Kucinich. Apparently the crowd was asked to refrain from applause and other noisemaking during the debate (except when entering and leaving commercial breaks), but the Kucinich and Sharpton supporters weren't particularly compliant with the request.