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.

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.

Martin Devon has some tough questions for the so-called “Deaniacs” in his weblog, while Steven Taylor notes that Dean is essentially conceding the February 3rd primaries to Edwards and Kerry. I’ve long suspected that Howard Dean and Wes Clark are both “empty vessels” that gained much of their support based on voters’ projection of the attitudes they’d like their ideal candidate to have, rather than gaining much support on the part of their own articulated beliefs. Indeed, in Dean’s more candid moments, he’s practically admitted that he’s tailored his campaign to appeal to the “angry Democrat” base, rather than being committed to those beliefs from the start—witness his flip-flop on the merits of Bush presidency from prior to 2002 and afterwards, for example.*

Projection effects aren’t unique to these two campaigns, or even politics in general; it’s part of human psychology to assume that the people we like agree with us on political issues, and for us to want our friends and neighbors to share our beliefs. But trying to build a political movement around a candidate who is simply a target for projection is largely doomed to failure—the only modern president to win an election on such an empty platform is Eisenhower, whose historical status as a war hero is much less doubtful than Wes Clark’s and whose political skills effectively reached across the partisan divide.

The key question is whether or not Dean can recover. The conventional wisdom says “no,” and I suspect that’s right—particularly as long as Clark is around to divide the “mainstream strident anti-war candidate” vote and (more fatally) John Kerry continues to rack up primary wins. Kerry could credibly sweep next Tuesday, especially with the Jim Clyburn endorsement in South Carolina. The endorsement of Kerry from South Carolina’s only black congressman may tip the balance against John Edwards in the one state he clearly must win Tuesday, although Edwards probably also needs to win Virginia and Tennessee on February 10th to remain viable.

And, speaking only for myself, the sooner both Clark and Dean are gone from this campaign the better.

No, this isn’t the post I promised yesterday. Hopefully I’ll have something either tonight or tomorrow. But, regardless, we be jammin’ as they say…

Dead Parrot Ryan has an apt analogy. And, you know, Joe Lieberman’s accent does sound vaguely Canadian...

The long-awaited Hutton Report emerged today in Britain, and it looks to be far more embarrassing for the BBC than it is for Tony Blair’s government. On a similar note, David Kay’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee today painted a picture of widespread intelligence failures, rather than a deliberate effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence on Iraq.

Later today—after I get some work done on a consulting project I’m doing—I’ll have further thoughts on the nature of intelligence gathering and how it relates to, of all people, Howard Dean (among others).

I’ve been up in Memphis the past two days at the ass-end of a 56k dialup link, so I’ve been more of a punditry consumer than a punditry producer the past few days. Don’t expect that to change until late Wednesday… but, in the meantime, Steven Taylor has (virtually, at least) been all over New Hampshire, and ponders where things go from here.

My gut feeling is that John Kerry has a commanding but not insurmountable lead, while John Edwards is probably best positioned to catch him—if Howard Dean can’t win or even come close in his backyard, it’s hard to see him doing well elsewhere, whether we’re talking about the February 3rd primaries or the Michigan-Washington-Wisconsin trifecta that his campaign claims it’s positioning itself for. Wes Clark has largely failed to convert his military experience into a tangible asset on the trail—Kerry has the “people who respect heroes” vote cornered, and most military veterans have an innate distrust of generals, particularly ones who played politics in the service (a group Clark is apparently a member of, by most accounts); further, I don’t see Clark appealing to southerners so long as Edwards is still on the ticket. And I suspect Lieberman’s jet to Delaware tonight will divert to somewhere in Connecticut.

Of course, New Hampshire means nothing to either the Kucinich or Sharpton campaigns—two candidates who are in for the duration, and may be positioned to pick up some delegates down the stretch as voters in the late-voting states who want an alternative to the annointed winner (presumably Kerry) cast protest votes.

Also on the trail: James Joyner has a continuing roundup post. I’m flipping between MSNBC and Fox News here (with occasional forays to C-SPAN).

A heavily-medicated Kate has produced the latest edition of the Snark Hunt.

Continuing this evening’s meta-blogging theme, Signifying Nothing did not submit any material, as we didn’t have any snarky posts this week. We’re above that here at SN, you see.

By the way, I have to say that—in my personal experience—Tylenol 3 is one of the few sequels that’s better than the original.

The folks over at Samizdata have debuted their new design, which I have to say is mighty impressive (kudos to the Dissident Frogman for the design and Jackie for the heads-up).

Incidentally, one of these decades, hopefully either Brock or I will develop some artistic talent to liven up the SN experience.

Steven Taylor has the “eye of the storm” edition of the Toast-O-Meter up at PoliBlog. Classic line, in reference to Joe Lieberman:

Losing is: The defining characteristic of his campaign.

Go forth and read the spin—before it’s been spun.

Will Baude has been inquiring about the DVD industry’s Content Scrambling System (CSS) and its associated region (or locale) coding system. Today he asks:

The question that then plagued me was why DVD-players went along with this system. It makes sense that DVD makers would like the ability to price discriminate in different markets, but wouldn’t Dell disk drives be worth more if they could play discs from all regions? Who gains from the limited switching?

DVD player manufacturers have to license the patents of the DVD Copy Control Association (as well as patents for other systems, like the Macrovision video copy protection scheme) in order for their players to legally play DVDs. The DVDCCA’s licensing provisions require manufacturers to implement the region locking scheme—thus, you can’t get a license to produce a DVD player if you don’t implement the scheme.

Now, some far-east manufacturers evade this requirement by conveniently “forgetting” to lock the DVD region settings of their players, or by leaving secret menus available to allow people to break the DVD region coding scheme. And, it is my understanding that unlicensed players based on the “DeCSS” code circumvent this region lock scheme completely, but I don’t own any DVDs from outside region 1 (USA/Canada), so I’ve never tested this for myself.*

Arguably, the whole system is illegal under WTO rules, which specifically prohibit schemes like region locking and rules against “reverse imports” that are designed to maintain regional price differentials. But given DVD manufacturers’ interests in maximizing their profits (particularly in often egregiously overpriced Region 2 markets like Great Britain) don’t expect this to change anytime soon.

IMHO, $4/copy is a blatant ripoff for an official transcript, particularly when they’ll give you unofficial ones for 25¢ per page.

But at least I now have some proof I actually accomplished something the last five-and-a-half years:

(You’ll note the “Memphis State University” entry I ranted about before…)

« All done!

I don’t exactly want to turn this blog into CramerWatch, but this post struck me as being, well, a tad odd. He quotes at length from a Reuters piece on penis enlargement spam (no, really) and comes across this lovely tidbit:

At the heart of the problem, [NYU psychiatrist Virginia] Sadock said, is that since men don’t see many penises other than their own, they have little basis for comparison.

The exception, she said, is pornography, which gay men view more that straight men. And comparing one’s penis size to a porn star’s could lead even a well-endowed man to feel inadequate.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that New York’s gay community self-help arena has expanded beyond problems such as alcoholism and over eating to the affliction of a small penis.

“What is Small, Anyway,” is the working name of a support group in Greenwich Village, which acts as a safe haven for gay men who have small penises, or feel as though they do.

Participants complain about a gay community in which men brag about being bigger than they are and a country where big is king. Like at other support groups, most in this group are grateful just to be in a room together with people trying to confront the same problem.

A slim man with reddish hair told a recent meeting that he is made to feel he doesn’t measure up. “In our community the idea of what’s average (size) is very distorted,” he said.

Cramer’s response: “Of course, this wouldn’t be the only area in which the gay community is a bit distorted about what it considers important.”

Now, this strikes me as something of a weird reaction. For one thing, you’d expect gay men to have a more realistic idea about penis size—not less—since they, er, see more of them than straight men do. For another, I’m not entirely sure that gay men watch more porn than straight men do; now, it’s possible that more gay men watch porn than straight men, and it’s likely that the porn gay men prefer (which, of course, would be “gay porn”) has more penises in it, but I’m not convinced that once you pass the “selection function” (to borrow from Nobel laureate economist James Heckman, who I’m sure would love to know his name is in this conversation) that the count is markedly different in the universe of “porn viewers.”

Lastly, anyone who’s seen the god-awful ads for “Enzyte”—a product for “natural male enhancement” (i.e. a penis enlargement pill, distinct from e.g. Viagra and Levitra, which are erectile dysfunction pills)—would know that it’s being aggresively marketed to heterosexual males. Show me a straight guy and I’ll show you a straight guy who’s obsessed with the size of his penis. What I can’t fathom is that Cramer is apparently more obsessed with gay men than the size of his.

Cool thing discovered recently: the Chronicle has RSS feeds of its job listings.

Not-so-cool thing discovered recently: the postal service needs a 46¢ stamp. I went through two books of 23¢ stamps in about ten minutes on Wednesday. So much for saving trips to the post office…

Obsidian Winger Katherine R has been all over the Maher Arar case for the past couple of weeks; today she notes Juliet O’Neill’s reporting on the case, which has landed Ms. O’Neill under investigation by Canadian authorities. This report reinforces my previous suspicion that the whole situation was orchestrated from Ottawa, with U.S. authorities playing an important role of being all-too-willing to go along in making the dirty work happen. It’s clear Ottawa couldn’t have deported Arar to Syria themselves without there being domestic hell to pay—so they got us to do it for them.

Bottom line: I’m with Katherine on this: there need to be investigations on both sides of the border.

I didn’t watch much of the State of the Union Address (still working on syllabi, natch), but I did catch the tail end of it, and I sort of half-watched Chris Matthews anchoring MSNBC’s “postgame report”—the most interesting bit of which was the Frank Luntz focus group, I thought, mainly because I think those dial things they use are cool. Yes, I’m weird.

A few random thoughts:

• Do the dipshits who applauded when they heard the PATRIOT Act is expiring realize that they almost all voted for the bloody thing? That was probably the most lopsided vote since they passed the hideous, not to mention blatantly unconstitutional, Communications Decency Act in the mid-90s. (Incidentally, blatantly unconstitutional laws appear to have this interesting habit of getting lopsided votes in Congress; someone should research this scientifically.)
• I like the $300m for post-prison rehabilitation programs. Of course, I’d rather we decriminalize drugs and save ourselves the money, but that’s just me.
• I suspect the gay marriage thing was actually aimed at SCOTUS, or more specifically, Sandra Day O’Connor. Guess we’ll see if she was listening.
• At least Bush didn’t let out that Dean “crow sqwak” noise at the end of his speech.
• Speaking of Dean, I’m shocked he failed to include Mississippi in the list of states he promised to win (Olbermann had a map thingy of the list tonight, which was entertaining). Must not be any of them voters with Rebel flags on the back of their F-150s down here…

Anyway, cover letters to write then bedtime. Toodles!

By the way, James Joyner of OTB has all the reactions linked to one convenient post.

Patrick Carver is a wee bit upset by the one-sided nature of USM’s upcoming speaker series. I think he called Andrew Sullivan a “liberal” somewhere in there, too, but I won’t swear to it.

My transition to living with Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client is complete, now that I’ve discovered the bliss that Seth, er, I mean, is the Debian packaging of enigmail (and, for that matter, T-bird; for some reason, I didn’t think it was packaged until I started fooling around today). The anti-spam features are easier than futzing with Bogospam, the IMAP support with the dovecot server seems pretty robust, and it seems reasonably fast for my purposes.

I’ve spent most of today writing syllabi for courses that I’ve never taught, and probably will never teach (most notoriously, a syllabus for southern politics—a great class, and one that I’d love to teach, but one that nobody will offer north of the Mason-Dixon line). And I’m not done yet… still got a few more to go.

How this exercise proves I could teach these classes is beyond me. Gotta love being on the job market…

The news out of Iowa can’t be good for Howard Dean. The pressure’s now on for a convincing Dean resurgence in New Hampshire, which will be hard, given both Wesley Clark’s full-time campaigning in the state and John Kerry’s surge in Iowa.

Why did Dean sputter in Iowa? The easiest conclusion to draw is that Dean’s attempt to tap a well of anger among Democrats has failed, at least in Iowa, because Democrats as a whole aren’t quite that angry. According to the New York Times‘ account, Dean was unable to capitalize on anti-war sentiment:

A survey of voters entering the caucus sites Monday suggested that what had been Dr. Dean’s central appeal — his opposition to the war in Iraq — did him little good on Monday night. Just 14 percent said the war in Iraq had shaped their final decision, even though 75 percent said they opposed the war.

Dr. Dean’s showing also raised questions about what had been one of the most intriguing elements of the Dean candidacy: that he had recruited thousands of first-time voters who could transform the nature of American presidential politics. Although half the voters on Monday were attending their first Iowa caucuses, 36 percent voted for Mr. Kerry, compared with 22 percent for Dr. Dean and 24 percent for Mr. Edwards.

The question is now: what about New Hampshire? Clearly, Clark, Dean and Kerry are poised for a fight, with John Edwards in much the position he was in Iowa—any finish above fourth place can be spun as a win, as the key state for his fortunes is South Carolina—a state in which Dean has no traction and where, as Columbia’s The State reports, Kerry now has to scramble to rebuild an organization he dismantled to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire.

Of course, every reporter and political wonk’s fantasy is a brokered convention—something that isn’t in the cards quite yet, given that not a single delegate has been allocated so far. But, nonetheless, Vincent Kennedy McDean might be well-advised to tone it down a notch or two—while politics, like pro wrestling, is a rough-and-tumble sport, in only the latter do the “heels” often win.

Radley Balko shows the faces of the people who will, in all likelihood, decide the Democratic nomination. Here’s a hint: they look like Howard Dean’s cabinet in Vermont did…

Kevin Drum reckons the soft underbelly of the Bush presidency is Dick Cheney:

I’m going to stick with my suggestion that the Democrats could gain some traction by making Cheney a bigger issue in the campaign than vice presidents usually are. It would require a subtle touch, of course, but let’s face it: nobody likes an evil genius operating out of a hole. There ought to be something there we can take advantage of.

On the other hand, Unlearned Hand isn’t buying quite yet:

First of all, I think most Americans just won’t believe any claims that the Vice-President is exerting so much control. It goes against all conventional wisdom on vice-presidencies, and that’s a lot of inertia to overcome.

I’m not so sure about that; vice presidents have become more salient figures over the past 10–15 years than they used to be (see, e.g., Al Gore), although I’ll agree that the size of Cheney’s role is unprecedented. I’m rather inclined to think that vice presidents ought to have larger roles anyway, within the limitation that their primary job is to not die before the president does.

Cheney’s large role, in a lot of ways, is probably due to the relative inexperience of Bush in national politics. Interestingly, though, the “Ex-Governor – D.C. Insider” pattern has applied to every presidential ticket since Ford’s.

Second, it can easily be spun (perhaps correctly) into proof that Democrats know they can’t win by going after the President himself. Karl Rove could have a field day running ads that say “They are picking on the President’s staff because they don’t want to go head-to-head with George W. Bush.”

Well, it’s one thing to go after Andy Card and another to go after Cheney—the latter’s name, at least, is on the ballot. And I think there are legitimate issues that can be aired about Cheney’s role vis à vis Halliburton. I don’t know that I buy them necessarily (Cheney is hardly the first beltway insider to “descend from heaven” into a cushy job in the private sector, to borrow the Japanese coinage), but it’s a legitimate topic for discussion.

Third, I think Cheney’s presence is actually reassuring to a lot of people. To the extent that people do buy into the “Bush is dumb” rhetoric, many of them think having Cheney around makes for a perfect complement: Bush gives them the leadership and machismo that reassures a frightened nation, Cheney provides the organization and runs a lot of the policy analysis.

Perhaps that’s the case. On the other hand, I think the public perception of Cheney is that he’s on the verge of death—hardly a reassuring image. On balance, I tend to agree with Kevin and think Cheney’s a liability, at least on the image side.

Personally, though, I think Democrats could make much more hay with the Creepy Combo of John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge—at least with libertarian-minded voters like me who are deeply skeptical about Homeland Security’s smoke-and-mirrors operation and Ashcroft’s ties to the fundies and the CCC types. With a reasonably credible candidate at the front of the ticket (at this point, it’d have to be Edwards or possibly Kerry), that sort of message might sway my vote.

This is today’s OTB Traffic Jam entry.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find it in Daniel Davies’ account, but the case of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence officer who has become something of the “Valerie Plame” of the anti-war movement on the other side of the pond, seems rather open-and-shut.

Gun, an admitted opponent of the war in Iraq, is charged with violating the Official Secrets Act by leaking a memo, apparently from the NSA, soliciting help from their British counterparts at GCHQ in conducting intelligence operations against several U.N. delegations—something which, to the best of my knowledge, is not illegal in either the United States or Britain. But, you know, she’s being made a “scapegoat” (i.e. being charged with a crime she’s almost certainly guilty of) because of the “embarrassment” to the government (i.e. she broke the fricking law).

Anyway, if you’re inclined to venerate criminal acts, you’ll probably enjoy this Bob Herbert op-ed which plays the martyr card to the hilt. If not, well… scroll down, there’s better stuff here to read.

Update: Jacob Levy also has an interesting take on Mr. Davies’ clarion call.