Remember John Kerry’s flip-flop on the Iraq-Afghanistan reconstruction bill? As Steven Taylor notes today, it apparently came about due to Kerry trying to counter Howard Dean’s strident anti-war rhetoric. Not that this absolves Kerry, of course, as Steven aptly points out:

Of course, in reality, it is really Kerry’s own fault for seeking political advantage when he should have been voting his own conscience. And, indeed, this is one of Kerry’s main political liabilities: it is difficult to ascertain exactly what his political conscience is.

As I pointed out in a comment at Half the Sins of Mankind, Kerry was in a bit of a bad position—which, of course, was the point of the roll-call; he could vote aye and catch hell from Dean then, or vote no and possibly catch hell from Bush later on (assuming he survived long enough to gain the nomination—which, at the time, seemed quite unlikely). He chose the latter option—better to live to fight another day, I suppose.

Just a reminder: Brock is still soliciting your list of “Schelling points” for Memphis, the United States, and the world. To review: where would you expect to meet someone if you arranged to meet them on a certain day at noon, but didn’t know where exactly to go?

So far, we’ve gotten four answers (2 votes for 2 different locations) for Memphis* and two for both the whole U.S. and the world. Keep your suggestions coming at blog@lordsutch.com!

I just got back from the second game of this weekend’s three game series against Vanderbilt; like last night’s game, the Rebels trailed 5–3 coming into the ninth (and were down 5–0 entering the 7th), but pulled out the 6–5 win with an effective 9th inning from the bottom of the order, including pinch hitter Charlie Babineaux, to improve their record to 16–1 on the season. Vanderbilt closer Ryan Rote was hung with his second loss in as many days (despite coming into the series 1–0 with 8 saves). And, as an added bonus, it was a beautiful day at the ballpark.

Update: Here’s the full account of the game.

PoliBlog‘s Steven Taylor has posted the latest edition of the Toast-O-Meter, with a preview of this week’s key Guam primary.

[Jack is having his mind rewritten by the repository of the Ancients, and in the meantime is filling out a crossword puzzle.]

Daniel: “Praclarush Taonas.” I think you wrote the name of the planet where we’ll find the Lost City in the crossword!
Jack (skeptical): Bit of a jump.
Daniel: Why else would you do that?
Sam: The clue for 7 down is “celestial body,” and he wrote “Uma Thurman.”
Jack: Yes.

Happily, Mississippi—like Texas—remains safe from the scourge on society known as the sex toy, thanks to our beloved state Supreme Court.

Amusing passage from the story:

Presiding Justice Bill Waller Jr., writing Thursday for the court, said state law provides that physicians and psychologists may prescribe sexual devices for their patients, and the patients may buy them from the physicians and psychologists.

I dare anyone in Mississippi to go to their doctor and ask to be prescribed a vibrator. Hell, if I had insurance that would cover such a frivolous use of the health care system, I’d go do it myself just for the sheer entertainment value.

The whole ruling is here, and almost certainly is fisk-worthy.

Update: Conrad reacts strongly:

Having met Bill Waller, all I can say is that, if dildos are illegal, Waller ought to have himself impounded immediately.

You kind of have to read between the lines here, but it doesn’t look like the faculty think much of Ole Miss Provost Carolyn Staton. David Steele of the DM leads with:

In a debate lasting more than three hours, the Faculty Senate decided to not release the results of Provost Carolyn Staton’s quadrennial performance evaluation for the moment, citing privacy concerns.

A bit of background: this whole thing started when the quadrennial review of the Provost was scheduled; originally, Chancellor Khayat only solicited evaluations from certain deans and department heads; the Faculty Senate then decided to circulate separate evaluation forms to the faculty and then tabulate the results, stripping identifying information. The results of this evaluation are apparently what the Senate has decided not to release for now.

The whole article feels like it was cut-and-pasted out of order; one paragraph, we’re talking about the USM situation, the next, we’re talking about Staton, and never is it clear how much of the debate appeared in public. Interesting tidbit:

Khayat addressed the Senate on the [Staton?] issue in an executive session.

After that part of the meeting, it seems a little flip-flop happened:

According to Acevedo, some of the information in the provost’s review was good and some bad.

He said people might misinterpret the data, although he stated earlier that he thought the numbers spoke for themselves.

You are invited to try to make heads or tails of this at your leisure. I’m at a loss.

Conrad reports that the latest foreign leader to publicize his desire for John F. Kerry to be president of the United States has stepped forward: none other than “Asian values” proponent and noted anti-Semite Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, no longer the titular ruler of Malaysia—although he doubtless is using the current occupant as his personal puppet (mind you, the literal variety of this act got his former deputy thrown in jail; sodomy remains quite illegal in Malaysia). More leaders? Foreign leaders? It makes no difference, as Mahathir fits both! The next Bush-Cheney TV ad is starting to write itself at this point.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the man who the media would like to be president—John “Keating Five” McCain—can’t quite decide whether or not he’s actually on board with Bush-Cheney. He and partner-in-crime Russ Feingold are also shocked, shocked to find independent expenditures by 527 organizations in this establishment.

Neither James Joyner nor Kevin Drum are particularly impressed that “Dr.” John Gray is siccing lawyers on people who question the legitimacy of “Dr.” Gray’s academic credentials, a Ph.D. from “Columbia Pacific University” and both a B.A. and an M.A. from “Maharishi European Research University.” The latter organization is affiliated with the Transcendental Meditationists, a movement best known due to perennial Natural Law Party presidential candidate John Hagelin; however, his academic credentials (including a Ph.D. in Physics) are from decidedly more mainstream universities.

Lily Malcolm asks:

Why do they call it a “game reset?” What is being reset?

My guess is that, theoretically, during the timeout the players are supposed to “reset” themselves into their designated positions on the court; thus, the “set offense” that Jim Woods refers to in this piece requires a “reset” to establish. However, since basketball—particularly pro basketball—is much more of a free-form game these days, I’m not sure the term retains much meaning.

Of course, I could be wrong; maybe they used to reset the shot clock on a timeout, and the term just stuck after the practice was abolished. A Google search found little besides hints on how to cheat in various basketball games for videogame consoles.

I have to say, that Brian J. Noggle comes up with some pretty good ideas every once in a while.

Of course, sometimes he doesn’t. Such is life.

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that someone is far more exercised about the First Amendment rights of a potty-mouth than the odious McCain-Feingold bill? The First Amendment was intended, first and foremost, to protect the rights of citizens to freely debate politics—that its interpretation has (correctly, in my opinion) been broadened, over the years, to protect my right to say “fuck,” is nice, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that McCain-Feingold was purposely designed to further protect incumbent legislators from fair and open debate of their actions. Compared to that, making Howard Stern’s bosses open their checkbooks for Stern’s misdeeds is chump change. (And I say that as something of a fan of Howard, although I tend to agree with my mom’s assessment* that “a little Howard goes a long way.” And, for that matter, as a fan of Jeff.)

Liberals sometimes see libertarians as stingy—and thus in league with conservatives—because of a rather curious phenomenon: libertarians don’t believe in public policy. Sure, there are the cute kids over at Cato and RPPI who try to pretend they believe in public policy, so as to curry favor with the political establishment, but any respectable libertarian won’t start with the premise that “problems” are matters to be solved by public policy. (Politics is classically defined as the science of “who gets what, when, and how”; libertarians inherently reject non-market allocation of resources, and thus don’t believe in politics at all in the “resource allocation” sense of the term.)

But, to the extent libertarians do advocate public policy, they tend to agree with fiscal conservatives, for the simple reason that the practical effect of most conservative initiatives is to minimize the amount of resource allocation done by the government, and they tend to agree with social liberals, because the practical effect of social liberalism is to reduce the amount of stuff the government does. Still, libertarians reject public policy—so “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger are not really any more libertarian than Nancy Pelosi or Rick Santorum; Arnie just agrees with libertarians more often than Pelosi or Santorum do.

Case in point: health care. Matt Yglesias says universal healthcare (presumably a single-payer scheme) would be a good thing. Libertarians, of course, would reject single-payer, and thus side with conservatives. On the other hand, if conservatives proposed some other universal coverage scheme—say employer-mandated coverage—libertarians would probably side with liberals. For a libertarian, the absence of public policy is preferable to the presence of public policy.

Now, the question is: assume we’re going to have a public policy, and that’s a given. Libertarianism stops giving useful answers at that point, except possibly to say “less interference is better.” In 20 years, we are going to have universal health care—like it or not. And, in a lot of ways, society would be better off if the funding mechanism were government single-payer than employer-sponsored: single-payer eliminates perverse incentives for employers to hire as many young people as they can, and it is less likely to be regressive in its effects (if Wal-Mart has to buy health insurance for all its employees, Wal-Mart customers are going to be paying for that—and Wal-Mart customers don’t include folks like John Kerry and George Bush). The downside of single-payer is that ensuring cost-containment without rationing is a lot harder (or, at least, a lot harder to get right—you don’t want patients waiting 6 months for MRIs, but you don’t want people getting 30 doses of Viagra for free each day either).

Of course, the beauty of being a libertarian is that you don’t have to worry about such things; you can just sit back, point, laugh, and say “see, I told you so” while the lines for CT scans circle around the block (which is the most likely outcome regardless). Because you didn’t believe in the public policy in the first place.

Today’s Clarion-Ledger has an interesting piece on Eli Manning’s heir apparent, Micheal Spurlock, and the competitors for his throne—much-heralded Louisiana prospect Robert Lane and 2003 third-stringer Ethan Flatt. Saturdays in Oxford this fall are going to be just a wee bit different than they have in the past few years (both under Manning and his eminently forgettable predecessor, who’s currently a CFL backup) with the athletic Spurlock running the offense.

The Clarion-Ledger reports that the IHL board is meeting behind closed doors today, one day after IHL university presidents met in a closed-door session with USM president Shelby Thames:

Citing “potential litigation at USM,” Mississippi College Board members today went into closed-door session at about 8:50 a.m. as dozens of faculty and students from the University of Southern Mississippi campus milled about the board’s offices off Ridgewood Road.

Both supporters and detractors of USM President Shelby Thames made the trip to Jackson as the board that oversees the state’s universities discussed Thames’ decision to oust tenured professors Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer and the resulting campus uproar.

More from Ralph Luker, who continues his browbeating of OxBlogger David Adesnik (whose ignorance of Mississippi geography is forgiveable, coming from someone who’s studying in the fens of East Anglia on the banks of the River Cam*) for his inattention to matters that might be of concern of a future Ph.D., even one coming from such high stations as Yale and Oxford and who might not deign to accept a job in the primitive backcountry that is 21st century Mississippi.

Scott has a roundup of Tuesday’s developments at his blog, including an extended discussion of the C.V. of Angie Dvorak, one of the peripheral issues in the situation.

Also of note: Clarion-Ledger columnist Eric Stringfellow thinks Shelby Thames is in over his head as USM president, and the Hattiesburg American wants an open hearing for Glamser and Stringer, rather than the closed hearing their attorney has requested.

I’m now starting to accumulate rejection letters at a not unreasonable pace.

Mark Kleiman wondered a few days ago why countries don’t try to muck around with internal politics to pursue their preferred policies (except, of course, when they do—most notably, during the steel tarriffs flap, the European Union was on the verge of imposing sanctions against the U.S. that were conveniently targeted at “battleground” states that George Bush needs for reelection).

The ongoing kerfuffle over John Kerry’s backdoor endorsements by foreign leaders suggests a reason why: if public, such endorsements are often counterproductive. I trust that the news that incoming Spanish prime minister Zapatero favors the election of Kerry won’t be prominently featured in Kerry’s advertising for that very reason. Even if you presume that Zapatero’s comments were made purely for domestic consumption by the Bush-hating European masses, he might have done well to consider that Bush—unlike Bill Clinton—is into the “personal loyalty” approach and doesn’t stand for the traditional left-wing European game of trying to have it both ways in a relationship with the United States (something that Tony Blair rather wisely figured out on his own, yet somehow this lesson is lost on Blair’s continental counterparts.)

Both Steven Taylor and Eric Lindholm note that John Kerry was on both sides of the supplemental appropriations bill for Iraqi and Afghan reconstruction. In particular, Eric notes this rather curious position by Kerry:

Mr. Kerry has indicated that he might have voted [in favor of final passage of the bill] had his vote been decisive.

Now, it is arguably rational for voters to behave differently when their vote is decisive (or pivotal) than when it isn’t; voting is both a symbolic act and part of a decision-making process. The normative question is: given that most votes are not inherently pivotal, should citizens nonetheless expect sincere voting behavior from their representatives, rather than the symbolic behavior that Kerry essentially admits he demonstrated? Given that representatives are supposed to be accountable for their votes—hence the use of non-secret ballots—my gut feeling is that citizens should expect sincere voting by the legislators they are represented by, whether we’re discussing procedural motions or votes on final passage.

Vance of Begging to Differ points out evidence that Bush administration officials deliberately hid the full cost of the recent Medicare bill from Congress until after the bill’s passage.

I just walked out to put something in the mail, and saw fire trucks down the street; the house two doors down is on fire (or, was on fire; it’s out now, as best as I can tell). It looks like the house was pretty well gutted, considering I can see inside the rafters where the flames burned through.

Amazingly, I wouldn’t have known this had I not gone outside to put something else in the mailbox (I didn’t hear the fire truck siren, though I did hear it when it pulled up). An hour ago, when I put a couple of other things in the mail, all was perfectly tranquil.

I thought I’d make myself useful today by filling out the paperwork to move the contributions I made was forced to make to Mississippi’s state retirement plan to my personal IRA. This is not an easy task:

• One form (Form 5) needs to be witnessed by two different people, in addition to me, then approved by the University of Mississippi HR department, then shipped off to Jackson for paperwork pushing.
• A separate form (Form 5C) does not require witnesses; however, I have to get the custodians of my existing IRA to approve the rollover, then have the form shipped off to Jackson for additional paperwork pushing. This would seem to be a relatively trivial exercise, except the closest branch of the credit union I have my IRA with is in lovely Picayune, Mississippi (best known as “the place all the signs on I-59 say you’re going when you’re actually headed to New Orleans”), which is about 6 hours from here.

I have thus decided the sensible course of action is to defer further action until I find out whether I’ll end up being a state employee again in the fall—the odds of that are rather slim, but one more year of state employment would be sufficient for partial vesting in the plan, thus making this entire exercise financially counterproductive.

Tim Sandefur points out that James Madison would be 253 today. Although the term “political scientist” wouldn’t be coined until much later, Madison was among the first American political theorists. Of course, he also managed to provoke the British into kicking our asses in the War of 1812, New Orleans notwithstanding . Still, when compared to the other “political scientist” president that we can claim as our own—the not-quite-as-infamous-as-he-should-be racist Woodrow Wilson, whose hopeless idealism in some matters of international relations has earned him a free bigotry pass in the history books—Madison is vastly preferable using virtually any metric.

Oddly enough, as they say, I was born in the now-no-longer (thanks to the newfangled abomination that is Nashville-Davidson County) town of Madison, Tennessee.

Steven Taylor claims the following today:

The hardest part [of academia] is everything you have to do to get the job in the academy in the first place, and those are quite rare.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report some good job news. A good friend, who’s ABD in sociology, applied for exactly one job this year, got exactly one interview, and was offered, and accepted, exactly one tenure-track job at a well-respected liberal arts college within two hours of the Grande Onze university where she is finishing her Ph.D.

What? You were expecting good job news from me? Surely you jest…

I’m taking Glenn’s advice and blogging outdoors this afternoon; it’s just a wee bit chilly where I am (on the north side of Weir Hall on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford), since it’s in the shade, but there isn’t a lot of choice—the alleged wireless network in these parts is nowhere to be found, so I’m sitting in a patio area that has wired 100 Mb/s Ethernet and power outlets. But, as they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words…

Don’t ask how much work it was to get that photo from my SprintPCS camera phone onto the blog. I guess I need to work on making that easier.