Martin Devon of Patio Pundit catches the New York Times engaging in a bit of fantasy in suggesting that John “I don’t need the South” Kerry can, er, carry Tennessee in November. Said fantasy is based largely on an interview with Kerry campaign co-chair and Congressman-for-life-if-he-wants-it Harold Ford Jr. Quoth the Times:

The state has tended to vote Republican and has two Republican senators. Mr. Gore lost here in 2000 by four percentage points, but some say the issues will be different this time and that Mr. Kerry is a different candidate from Mr. Gore. And last year the state elected Mr. Bredesen, a Democrat, as governor, and he has become enormously popular.

“Some” might also note that Kerry is much further to the left than Gore ever was (until he got Deanentia), and Bredesen largely won because (a) his opponent, Van Hilleary, was an incredibly weak campaigner and (b) his predecessor, Don Sundquist, managed to turn the Republicans’ names into mud in the state by becoming a tax-and-spend liberal in his second term.

Also amusing: the article misspells the name of Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer.

Since people are Googling… Wonkette! has swiped the results from NRO. The Kerryman is kicking ass.

Bear in mind, however, that at least in Tennessee voters are permitted to vote early up to two weeks before the election; to my knowledge, there was no exit polling done of early voting sites. Not that it’d make much difference in the results, as early voters are only about 1/4 of the electorate, but in a close race it might matter.

Poliblogger Steven Taylor responded yesterday to my post on conservatism and the 2004 election. First he examines my argument with regard to divided government:

Chris makes an argument, that I have often heard, that the solution to the problem of insufficient fiscal conservatism is the return of divided government. However, I would note that in the twentieth century divided government has been the norm, and, likewise, deficits and ever-increasing spending has also been the norm, calling into question the idea that divided government results in curtailed spending. The only exception (at least in regards to deficits) was during part of the Clinton years, during which we did, in fact, have divided government. However, as I have argued before, the balanced budgets of those years were primarily a function of unexpected economic growth, not a tremendous feat of fiscal restraint the resulted from divided government. For that matter the Reagan era, one of divided government, is usually considered the hallmark of deficit politics.

Causality is difficult to prove here, but I don’t think that—necessarily—you can argue that the Clinton years were a fluke. Reagan was president with a Democratic House and a Senate that was sometimes under Republican and sometimes under Democratic control. The Democrats of the 1980s were hardly a model of fiscal responsibility—and coupled with Reagan’s fetish for supply-side economics, the two together created a giant deficit between them. As I stated in my earlier post, effective fiscal conservatism rests on control of the House and Senate—something that Reagan didn’t enjoy, but Clinton did. That Clinton also benefitted from a favorable economy that he had little control over doesn’t change the fact that Republicans in Congress were much more willing to say “no” when Clinton wanted to throw money at problems than they are today.

And I do think that in terms of national security one would see a rather substantially different world under a Kerry administration. That alone is sufficient reason to heed my prior advice. And do think that he is serious in his campaign rhetoric regarding foreign policy. Remember: this is the guy who voted against the first Gulf War even though Saddam has invaded Kuwait. I think that he is highly reticent to use force and does not have the temperament needed to fight the war on terror.

This is an argument I acknowledged, albeit somewhat glibly, in my post. But to a large extent I think a Democratic president is now stuck prosecuting the War on Terror forcefully, or he risks going down in history as a miserable failure the likes we haven’t seen since the late 1970s. Not that that’s much comfort if you think Kerry will get us all killed between now and January 2009, mind you. (I think the more likely scenario is that Kerry will simply fail to follow through with al-Qaeda and do the minumum necessary to protect the homeland, leaving us with a mess at the end of his term.)

[On domestic policy:] However, there would still be important differences. For example: the judgeship issue and I don’t just mean in regards to specific social conservative issue (although abortion is important to me), but just the general idea of having judges who at least make an effort to simply judge the law and let legislators legislate. I consider this to be rather significant.

I think the odds of either Kerry or Bush getting the nominees he wants on the bench are rapidly approaching zero at this point; however, Kerry or Bush might be able to accomplish a bit with recess appointments. The open question is whether or not the next president will dare make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court when Stevens keels over.

And a side note the “social conservative” issue: prostitution really isn’t that much of an issue for the DoJ, so that strikes me as a non-starter of an example. And in regards to the drug war (which I oppose on efficacy grounds, btw), a Democratic president is unlikely to function any differently than a Republican one on that one. From Nixon to the present the funding for the drug war has simply grown, and while Carter discussed support for legalizing marijuana, the basic approach to illegal drugs has been be pretty consistent across partisan lines. Indeed, the massive increase in funding to Colombia under “Plan Colombia” was under Clinton.

My example sucked because I actually meant to write “pornography.” Don’t mind me, my brain’s in deep freeze. But I suspect a Kerry administration would not prosecute either the War on Drugs or the War on Porn with the zeal that Ashcroft has shown. Of course, if you’re a SoCon that’s a bug, not a feature.

To be honest, I cannot conceive a situation arising in which the net policy desires of conservatives of any stripe would be furthered by a Kerry win, unless they occurred by sheer serendipity.

Serendipity works. I don’t think Bill Clinton particularly wanted to show fiscal restraint in the 1990s, but a funny thing happened as a result of his perpetual head-butting with Congress. If John Kerry had proposed No Child Left Behind, or the Medicare drugs bill, in the exact same form that Bush had, he’d have been laughed right out of Congress by the Republicans—and deservedly so. It may only be a marginal difference, but the difference between trying to give the president a record to run on and trying to deny the president something to take credit for may just be enough to encourage Congress to keep spending in check.

Now, if you’re someone who wants Roe and Goodridge to go away, this may not be enough to affect your vote. But if you’re someone who’s indifferent, or for that matter realistic, on social issues—let’s face it, Roe and Goodridge aren’t going away, because another two Scalias will never make it onto the Supreme Court—it’s something that might be worth considering. (On the other hand, it’s also worth noting that some people, including my esteemed co-blogger, who want more Breyers on the Court have made much the same argument. So your mileage may vary, as they say.)

Apparently hackers are also part-time epistemologists. My general feeling on the issue is that any enterprise that generally uses the scientific method to discover capital-T Truth is a “science.” Mathematics does this, ergo it is a science.

Then again, others differ; Rose-Hulman describes itself as “one of the nation’s top undergraduate engineering, science, and mathematics colleges,” implicitly arguing that mathematics is not a science (and neither is engineering—which I suppose is a whole debate of its own).

Apparently blogroll editing has become a spectator sport. Free hint: set your blogroll order preferences to “Alpha” so it’s easier to tell the differences.

Greg of En Banc links a short paper on the economics of student evaluation forms. Ole Miss just transitioned from paper “bubble sheet” forms handed out in-class to an opt-in online system somehow tied into our all-knowing but completely-screwed-up SAP campus management system.

Last I heard, compliance with the evaluation procedure was sharply lower—something I think would lead to a non-random error that biases responses downward, as students who disliked a class will probably be more likely to bother filling out the evaluations. On the upside, at least you don’t have to keep the original copies of the evaluations around for the written comments—which is a good thing, since the university managed to shred one semesters’ worth of evaluations a couple of years back, making those written comments lost to history.

Steven Taylor thinks conservatives need to learn to love the Shrub, since otherwise they may well receive eight more years of Clintonism. On the other hand, if you’re a conservative—not necessarily a Republican, mind you—a spell of divided government might well be desirable.

It seems to me, at the simplest level, that different sorts of conservatism require the control of different branches of government. Fiscal conservatism rests largely on control of Congress; if you keep spending and taxes down, there isn’t much the White House or Supreme Court can do about it. Social conservatism, on the other hand, rests on control of the presidency and the judiciary; the Justice Department effectively decides to what degree morals violations (like prostitution and drug crimes) are prosecuted, while the judiciary effectively sets the limits of what personal behavior Congress and the states can regulate.

There are, of course, other issues to base one’s vote on; the Clinton administration fiddled while North Korea and Iraq burned during the 1990s, instead expending political capital on dubious adventures like Haiti (which is now in more of a mess than when I was a wee intern in D.C. being briefed on this problem 9 years ago) and saving the Europeans’ asses in the Balkans. And, at the moment, it’s hard to tell if Kerry’s campaign-trail pronouncements are simply part of a red-meat distribution effort to keep the Deaniacs on the Democratic bus through November or actually serious foreign policy views—if you believe they’re the latter, you might think twice about jumping on the divided government bandwagon.

But, given that Congress is essentially a lock to remain in Republican hands for the forseeable future,* if you’re not much of a social conservative and you make under $200k it’s hard to see what you’d lose under a Kerry (or Edwards) administration.

This is today’s entry in the BTJ™.

Oh, goody, YAFNC. The browser that changes its name every season is now at 0.8. Download it early and often. No word yet on whether Clint Eastwood plans to sue.

Now off to dig through some SQL tables to rename this topic of the blog…

The Toast-O-Meter for this week has arrived, courtesy of Steven Taylor, although the bread is apparently borderline stale at this point due to Charter Communications’ ineptitude.

In other Campaign ’04-related news: Venomous Kate is perched on the fence for now, for a long list of reasons (via Dan Drezner, who’s doing some fence-sitting of his own).

Dan Drezner isn’t buying rumors that al-Qaeda has an unspecified supply of tactical nuclear weapons, but recommends vigilence nonetheless; the Belgravia Dispatch has similar thoughts.

I don’t have anything to add to either analysis; it seems rather implausible that the group would have such weapons yet not use them—if not against the United States, then certainly against Israel, which would seem to be an easier target. To paraphrase the Dispatch, terror groups generally aren’t known for their strategic geopolitical wherewithal, and mutually-assured destruction is pretty meaningless as a deterrent when your territory is a few hundred square miles of borderline-uninhabitable territory to begin with and you have a martyr complex to boot.

Will Baude and Tim Sandefur are engaged in a bit of a running battle with the Curmudgeonly Clerk over whether or not individual libertarians’ having moral positions constitute a betrayal of their commitment to not legislate on the basis of morality.

I tend to agree with Tim that the Clerk is confused on a number of points, and leave the detailed critiques to Tim and Will. My main, and unoriginal, observation would be that “societal acceptance” is something that is relatively independent of legality. (My second observation would be that Reason was a far better arbiter of libertarian thought under Virginia Postrel’s editorship, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Update: Tim Sandefur responds. Actually, after I wrote the above sentence, I realized that the word “arbiter” doesn't quite characterize my thought; I meant something closer to “exemplar.” Indeed, contra Jonah Goldberg (and his bloviation that National Review polices the boundaries of conservatism*), I don’t necessarily think libertarian thought needs an arbiter.

I’m seriously considering a thorough cleaning of the blogroll in the next few days. Who won’t be going: people who have linked us, and people who have interesting blogs. Who will: people whose blog content I can predict before even clicking through the link.

Then again, I might actually do something vaguely productive like work on the near-mythical impeachment paper instead…

Via Mark: advice on how to make Mozilla Firebird feel and behave faster.

Today’s CA features an article on the latest effort to make Mississippi’s seatbelt law a “primary offense”, which would permit law enforcement officers to pull over vehicles whose drivers or passengers were not complying with the law. The article notes:

Nationwide, states that switch from secondary to primary seatbelt laws report a 10- to 15-percent increase in seatbelt use, according to the National Safety Council, an Illinois-based advocacy group. In Alabama, seatbelt use climbed from 52 percent in the year before the state passed a primary law to 79 percent two years later.

However, NHTSA data suggests that figure is overstated: their 2003 survey shows an 8% differential between states with primary and secondary laws. And the Alabama figures seem downright implausible—although, given that seatbelt use is trending higher in all states, not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

There are no fewer than six different bills that would make the seatbelt law a primary offense; they mainly differ in (a) whether or not the maximum fine per vehicle would be doubled* and (b) whether or not non-use of seatbelts can be considered contributory or comparative negligence.

Since your DNS block doesn’t resolve back, and because you apparently have a Python bot that’s out of control downloading every page on this site, you’re now blocked at the IP level. Please email the management if you have a legitimate reason to be unblocked and/or you get your bot under control.

The California Yankee notes the revelation from Oxford University researchers that pigeons navigate the same way pilots do under VFR: they just follow the roads.

Which makes one wonder: how did pigeons get around before the Romans?

Sunday’s New York Times has a long article on the growth of low-fare airlines on the eastern seaboard, a trend that has largely bypassed Memphis, as this Memphis Flyer cover story from several years back documents. Although minor low-fare player America West and sorta-kinda low-fare (I’ve never seen one of their flights be cheaper than Delta) airTran do serve the market, no-frills big daddy Southwest has stayed out of Memphis for reasons generally unknown—although nearby Tunica Airport has hopes to lure Southwest to the Memphis market when it opens its full 8500-foot runway and full terminal in the next two years. There have also been indications that jetBlue will add Memphis to its lineup sometime in the coming year.

In 11 days, we may no longer have Howard Dean to kick around any more. G33k-turned-law-student Joy has Dean’s numbers from Wisconsin (via dKos), and they don’t look pretty at all, with Dean’s “unfavorable” rating approaching 40%.

Today’s Daily Mississippian shoots 0-for-4 on op-ed page articles. Let’s review:

• The editorial contains this whopper of sheer idiocy:

  Though it remains controversial, especially among circles of Christians and other religious groups, evolution is still one of the most widely taught theories about the roots of the world. When origins taught to students, not only in Georgia but also nationwide, it should be maintained that evolution has not been accepted as scientific law.

• A non-sensical column that proposes that improving the electric grid will, in and of itself, cause a huge economic recovery. Special bonus for the moronic statement that a “dirty bomb” during a power outage could kill 250,000 people.
• A long screed about how Greeks don’t contribute to the university’s endowment, or something.
• Last, but not least, a letter to the editor defending rude behavior, so long as the reason for one’s rudeness is proselytization.

Now, generally I don’t read the DM op-ed page for enlightement anyway, but today’s edition may have been the first that actually had the result of making me stupider.

Tim Sandefur is collecting nominations for “the canon” —as he puts it, “the ten Supreme Court decisions every American (not lawyers or law students!) should read.” So far, Scipio’s list seems the most complete:

1. Marbury v. Madison
2. Dred Scott
3. Plessy v. Ferguson
4. The Slaughter House Cases
5. Brown v. Board of Education
6. Erie
7. Wickard v. Filburn
8. Texas v. Johnson
9. Printz v. US
10. (tie) Mapp v. Ohio and NY Times v. Sullivan

He also lists, as honorable mentions: Korematsu, Roe v. Wade, Flood v. Kuhn, Lopez, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Harper’s Lessee.

Turning first to the Top Ten: my recollection is that I’ve never mentioned Erie, Wickard, and Printz, and I’ve only mentioned Slaughter-House in passing (trying to explain why the privileges or immunities clause is in the 14th Amendment) in intro. From the honorable mentions, Flood and Harper’s Lessee didn’t make it either; nor, I think, does Korematsu (no doubt to the chagrin of Eric Muller) or Lopez, but it’s been two years since I last taught the class (Fall 2001—I taught methods in Spring of 2002) so it may have been mentioned. All of the cases that don’t make it in (except Korematsu and Lopez) are ones I’d have to stop and think about before remembering what they’re about.

Notable omissions from Scipio’s list that do make it into the lecture: Griswold, McCullough v. Maryland, Casey, some of the gerrymandering cases (Baker v. Carr, Shaw v. Reno, Thornburg v. Gingles spring to mind), Washington v. Davis, Bakke, Miller v. Johnson, and Bowers v. Hardwick. Chandra v. INS (the line-item veto case) may or may not get a mention when we talk about the executive branch, as might U.S. v. Nixon. Romer v. Colorado might be in there too. If I were lecturing today, I’d have to add Texas v. Johnson, of course.

This might (or might not) tell you something about the biases of the writers of political science textbooks. Intro, mind you, isn’t a con law class; I have 375 minutes in the semester to talk about civil rights and liberties, and a lot of that time is devoted to things outside the courts. Nor is con law really in my general field of expertise, although I could probably teach it to undergraduates in a pinch if absolutely needed.

No, that isn’t a euphemism for masturbation; Xrlq has the details on the latest twist in the California grocery strike shenanigans.

The one good thing about being unemployed is I don’t have to deal with this pathetic attempt at a voice mail system any more.

Judging from the Plame leak investigation news, the idea of keeping Dick Cheney around seems more and more foolish by the day. He’s got no constituency in the base, Halliburton will always be an albatross around the administration’s neck with him around, and you can hang virtually every criticism of the administration on him—the WMD claims, Plame, corporate cronyism, the works—on his way out the door.

Not that I know who to replace him with, mind you…

Update: Robert Prather thinks I was a bit coy above in not naming Condi Rice as my preferred replacement. Certainly she would be preferable to Guiliani, I don’t see any of the “hard right” folks like Ashcroft or Santorum as being worthwhile, and I don’t really see any other credible candidates out there. On the other hand, making such a pick feels like nothing so much as jumping on the Panthers bandwagon last week did—for all I know, the right pick could be someone from left field (Fred Thompson?).

And, the Functional Ambivalent agrees that it’s time for Cheney to find a privately-financed, but still secure, undisclosed location.

Amanda Butler quotes from an op-ed by George WIll in today’s WaPo that’s mostly about whether Democrats can win without the South, but takes a foray through Republican fortunes as well:

Much academic and journalistic energy has been expended attempting to prove that Republicans became competitive in the South not because of positive change there but because of a negative change in the GOP —pandering to racists. But Gerard Alexander of the University of Virginia notes that Eisenhower, like Richard Nixon in 1960, polled badly among whites in the Deep South. Eisenhower ran strongest in the “peripheral South,” the least-polarized part.

States representing more than half the Southern electoral votes have been, Alexander notes, “consistently in play” since 1952. That was before the Goldwater candidacy, before school busing and at a time when congressional Republicans were stronger supporters than Democrats were of civil rights bills. A higher proportion of Republican than Democratic senators voted for the 1964 and 1965 civil rights bills, and in 1968 whites in the Deep South preferred George Wallace to Nixon.

Beginning in the 1950s, millions of Midwesterners and Northeasterners moved to the South. But, Alexander says, instead of voting Democratic, they voted Republican “at higher rates than native whites.” Even today, “identification with the GOP is stronger among the South’s younger rather than older white voters.” Republican strength has been highest among persons young, suburban, middle class, educated, non-Southern in origin and concentrated in the least “Southern” high-growth areas.

Eisenhower was, at best, a reluctant desegregator, as his actions at the time of Little Rock in 1957 demonstrated—and I’m not at all certain Eisenhower could have carried Southern states in 1960, had he been on the ballot, even without considering Harry Byrd’s presence on the ballot in Alabama and Mississippi.

That being said, I think a fair assessment of Republican strategy in the south would recognize that racial issues were an undercurrent, but not the whole story, and that Republicans benefitted from the racial issue only to the extent that southern Democrats conceded their racially conservative positions. By the time of Eisenhower, the New Deal coalition’s papering over of the Democrats’ internal racial divisions was coming apart as the inherent logic of New Dealism, and more boistrous antisegregationists in the North, pushed the national Democratic Party away from segregationism. But southern Republican successes were rare while the Dixiecrats continued to stick with the segregationists, and most of the successes were the result of Democratic defections, not home-grown Republicanism—a division that persists to this day.

Compare, for example, Bill Frist and Trent Lott—Lott is essentially a Dixiecrat, born and raised, who defected to the Republicans mainly for electoral considerations; Frist, on the other hand, is much closer to the traditional national Republican mold, albeit with a southern flavor. And, as the Lott generation leaves politics, the Frist generation is taking over as the face of southern Republicanism—a change that hopefully will lead to the politics of race receding into history.

My diploma showed up in the mail today; thankfully, even though a corner of the envelope was soaked through, the diploma itself was safely tucked away in the cover it came with, so was undamaged. Most exciting.