In the next few days, Signifying Nothing will be gaining a new co-blogger: Brock Sides. Brock met more than enough of the desired criteria to qualify; I’ll leave it to him to decide whether he wants to specify which ones.

Brock, like me, has led a relatively interesting life; he started out as a philosophy grad student, and is currently working as a computer administrator in Memphis, Tenn. He’s currently the president of GOLUM (pronounced like “Golem” from Lord of the Rings), the Linux user’s group in Memphis. Brock’s somewhat to the left of me ideologically, but he shares my (perhaps-not-always-met) goal of keeping the tone relatively sober.

I hope you’ll give him a warm welcome and I think he’ll be a great addition to the blog!

Bill Hobbs reports that flouting one’s own constitution is becoming increasingly popular out west; the latest convert to the cause is none other than Gray “My Ass Is Grass” Davis, who is apparently conducting a bizarre experiment to see how much lower he can drive his own poll ratings.

Here’s the photos I took at my 10th high school reunion. I’ll see if I can collect some others from Wayne and maybe some other people too.

Erica, one of those who have RSVP’d for Dean’s blog party on Saturday (hence explaining how I discovered her blog), has apparently produced a reasonable facsimile of the sangria produced at Casa Dominick’s in Ann Arbor. Not only is the sangria there good, they also give change with $2 bills.

Regina Ip, Hong Kong’s odious secretary for security, is gone, and finance minister Antony Leung has been booted as well, according to the Financial Times. The Tung Chee-hwa deathwatch is now officially on. Money quote from the FT:

On Tuesday, a poll by the University of Hong Kong found that Ms Ip and Mr Leung were among the territory’s three least popular ministers. Mr Tung himself was the third member of that trio.

Anyone want to go for the trifecta?

Apologies for the downtime earlier today; I upgraded Apache on the server and it apparently didn’t like something in the configuration files. Things should now be back to normal…

Daniel Drezner has a post on the perils of being a political scientist in Arafatland. If my work annoys someone, at worst I might get blackballed at a journal; in the West Bank, you might get attacked by Fatah’s goons.

Not that this incident will make many of my more liberally-inclined colleagues in The Discipline™ to revise their views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course…

Conrad is quite gleeful at the latest idiocies of China’s puppet regime in Hong Kong and its cheering section in the business community. Say what you will about the content of his message, but at least this guy has mastered the art of non-verbal communication.

Due to time constraints, the “generating new content” side of Signifying Nothing doesn’t seem to be as productive as it used to be. I’m also interested in seeing how capable LSblog is for use by non-techies (or at least users who don’t have the access to tinker with the innards of the database). So, I’m looking for one or two people interested in joining the party here at SN (either exclusively or non-exclusively).

I’m fairly open-minded about political perspectives; my guess is that most of the audience is in the “economic right-socially liberal” quartile of a two-dimensional issue space. I prefer the tone sober (less Atrios or LGF; more CalPundit or Tacitus), and I’m not interested in proselytizing—religious or political. Bonus points if (a) I know you personally, (b) I probably should know you but for some odd reason I don’t, (c) I’ve consumed alcohol in your presence, or (d) you “do” mass political behavior, political psychology, or political sociology. A tolerance for minor teething problems with the software is a must (I haven’t lost a post since this blog started, but there are still a few small quirks here and there). Drop me an email if you’re interested.

I’ll also be seeking contributors for a separate, more serious blog venture I’m planning to launch in the next week or two (again, powered by LSblog). More details on that soon…

Doug took the presidential candidate selector (fun for the whole family!), and somehow managed to get Lyndon LaRouche to come out as a zero. Either they’ve fixed the algorithm to properly clip the continuum to the 0-100 range, or Doug was just “lucky.” However, I still haven’t given up looking for people who match LaRouche, mainly so I can seek restraining orders against them.

The short version: We came, we ate, we drank, we danced, we left.

The long version: A journalistic account of our tenth high school reunion would probably focus on its unrepresentativeness. Even accounting for the otherwise-disposed (due to imprisonment, disability, or death), the attendance was quite skewed. Most attendees appeared to still reside in Ocala or its environs. African-Americans and Latinos made up a goodly portion of our graduating class, but few of either were to be seen. Some cliques were far better represented than others; among the nerds, attendance was sparse, while the former “in-crowd” was abundant. But that account would be incomplete.

Of all the people I knew well and particularly wanted to catch up with, I only saw two. I wish more of those people had come. But I also got to see other people—the vaguely-remembered, the long-since-forgotten, and the wouldn’t-have-known-them-from-Adam—some of whom I got to know better. And I got to demonstrate the all-purpose white guy dance, always a plus for any social occasion.

Now, maybe some of the other attendees were stuck in the past, trying to recapture the glory days when they were the unchallenged Titans of the social pecking order. But for the rest of us, it was an opportunity to restore old connections and make new ones—and who could miss out on a chance like that? So, here’s to hoping I’ll see a few more of us in 2008.

Thanks to Alex Knapp at Heretical Ideas for selecting my sidebar quote as his Quote of the Day.

Kate links to news that “decisive proof of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs” has been located, according to The Australian. And it appears that Iraq had an ambassador to Al-Qaeda working out of its embassy in Pakistan (the latter story via Kate as well).

Alex Knapp links to an excellent Randy Barnett piece at NRO explaining how Justice Kennedy’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas departs from the court’s post-New Deal attitude toward civil liberties. The teaser:

The more one ponders the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the more revolutionary it seems. Not because it recognizes the rights of gays and lesbians to sexual activity free of the stigmatization of the criminal law — though this is of utmost importance. No, the case is revolutionary because Justice Kennedy (and at least four justices who signed on to his opinion without separate concurrences) have finally broken free of the post-New Deal constitutional tension between a “presumption of constitutionality” on the one hand and “fundamental rights” on the other. Contrary to what has been reported repeatedly in the press, the Court in Lawrence did not protect a “right of privacy.” Rather, it protected “liberty” — and without showing that the particular liberty in question is somehow “fundamental.” Appreciation of the significance of this major development in constitutional law requires some historical background.

If you’re as big a fan of the Institute for Justice as I am, you’ll know that this is a Big Deal for liberty—on par with their efforts to get the Court to revive the privileges or immunities clause.

Eugene Volokh reports on what may be the most disgusting appellate court decision since Plessy v. Ferguson. Apparently the Nevada state supreme court has decided it can elide parts of the Nevada Constitution it finds inconvenient when promoting its activist agenda. I’ve seen some absolutely contortionist legal reasoning in state supreme court decisions before (most notably, the Tennessee supreme court’s behavior in deciding the so-called “tiny towns” cases in the mid-1990s), but never in modern times have I seen a decision so absolutely horrible I thought impeachment was warranted. Until today.

You can read more on the story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and at Rick Henderson’s blog. Glenn Reynolds is rather unimpressed as well.

If there’s a common thread in the various “Bush lied” stories about the war, it is that the initial, wildly overoptimistic reports were generally based on interviews with anonymous sources. For example, in last month’s Washington Post semi-retraction of its reporting on the events that lead to Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s capture, the paper describes its initial reports as follows:

Initial news reports, including those in The Washington Post, which cited unnamed U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports, described Lynch emptying her M-16 into Iraqi soldiers. The intelligence reports from intercepts and Iraqi informants said that Lynch fought fiercely, was stabbed and shot multiple times, and that she killed several of her assailants.

“She was fighting to the death,” one of the officials was quoted as saying. “She did not want to be taken alive.”

Now, assuming the initial reports weren’t written by Jayson Blair or someone seeking to emulate his behavior at the New York Times, these “unnamed U.S. officials” must exist. More importantly, the reporters who quoted them know who they are. A full and honest accounting of events, whether in the Post and elsewhere, ought to identify who these officials are.

The practice of the media taking information on background in important stories has become disturbingly widespread. If newspapers want their reports that rely on anonymous sources to be trusted, there must be some clear sanction for dishonesty by people speaking on background—just as there is when the source is not anonymous (namely, damage to the credibility of the source). A journalist’s responsibility to the truth, and to her readers, must outweigh any obligation of anonymity to a source who has clearly lied or deceived the public.

The latest Chicago School piece in The New Republic by Daniel Drezner argues that Howard Dean is about as credible as his fellow Democratic candidates on national defense, although Dean does share Dick Gephardt’s isolationist views on trade. (A number of relevant links are at Dan’s blog.)

Meanwhile, James Joyner thinks the combination of frontloading and proportional delegate allocation may lead to a brokered convention. Since nobody’s going to completely run out of money before the primaries are effectively over, there is a fair chance that no candidate will get a majority of the delegates; if any candidates are going to drop out, they’re probably going to do it before Iowa. And given that the presidential primaries often are both standalone (with no other races on the ballot) and open, there’s a reasonable chance there will be significant cross-over voting among Republicans, which may help fringe candidates and those who may be perceived as too liberal to win the general election—Sharpton and Dean could quite possibly pick up a large chunk of delegates in the South with a combination of black votes and Republican crossover voters acting as “spoilers.”

Since the last “mystery graph” was such a success (not), and because I have nothing else to write, here’s another from the “Dutch chapter.” Enjoy!

Actually, I do have another Dean post poking around in the back of my head, but I’ll save that for when I get home.

Apologies for the relative silence here at Signifying Nothing; I’m trying to finish the revisions on what I call the “Dutch chapter” (because it uses data from the 1998 elections in the Netherlands; there’s nothing particularly “Dutch” about it beyond that) of my dissertation. I have a few quick calculations to do, and about a page or two to write summarizing the results of two more regression models, and then it can be shipped off to my committee for further review (I may add more pretty graphs later).

Next up on the cavalcade: revisions on the “Nader chapter.” Then we get to go back to revise the “Hillary chapter,” the “sophistication chapter,” and the “heuristics chapter.” And, once that’s all done, I have to write the intro and conclusion. And then it will be done. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

Conrad is starting a pool on when the main leaders of China’s puppet regime in Hong Kong resign. Apparently the people of Hong Kong actually want the puppet masters in Beijing to live up to their promise of “one country, two systems.” Imagine that.

My bets: Regina Ip is out by next Monday (July 14), with chief toady Tung Chee-hwa gone by Labor Day (Monday, September 1).

Meanwhile, I’m sure the people of Taiwan are sitting around saying, “Man, am I glad we didn’t sign up for that deal!”

I haven’t written about the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas until now for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I’m still working on dissertation revisions (which are going fairly well, much to my surprise), but also because I’m in broad agreement with where the Court came out. My general view on matters of individual liberty is that intrusions upon them by government should be subject to the strictest of tests: namely, in court parlance, strict scrutiny all-around. Absent a compelling governmental interest, there’s no good reason to restrict speech, religion, possession of firearms—or what forms of consensual sex people can engage in. Not only did the Court do the right thing for homosexuals, they did the right thing for millions of heterosexuals across the nation.

However, there’s a lesson in Lawrence—and the Supreme Court agenda at large—for my liberal and conservative friends alike, who decry the Court pronouncing against their preferred policies. It’s pretty simple: don’t pass laws that will invite activist behavior by the Supremes. If Texas’ legislature hadn’t been stupid enough a few years back to enact a new law against sodomy, the Court wouldn’t have been in a position to decide the issue. Don’t want affirmative action thrown out? Don’t pass laws that practically beg the Court to overturn it.

I won’t deny there are problems with the Supreme Court as currently constituted. The way the two halves of the court are polarized risks turning the interpretation of the Constitution into a barometer of Sandra Day O‘Connor’s current mood (as we’ve seen before during the absolutely horrid period where Powell was the swing vote—anyone who’s read Buckley v. Valeo, the current controlling precedent for campaign finance law, knows exactly what I mean). And, given the current polarization on Capitol Hill, I don’t see the Court improving anytime soon. But, on the other hand, they are the only branch whose current members at least show some semblance of having read and understood the Constitution, so for now I reluctantly cast my lot with them.

Like Joy, I’ve decided to add a SiteMeter visit counter to Signifying Nothing. The morbidly curious can compare its statistics with my locally-produced Analog stats, which are updated hourly and date back to February. I also added generic SiteMeter support to LSblog while I was at it.

I did have to make one small hack to get it to play nicely in the all-CSS layout; for some reason, it decides to comment-out the noscript element in the JavaScript version unless you set a variable (g_leavenoscript) to tell it not to. Look at the HTML source of the page if you want to figure out how I did it.

John Cole thinks Dean’s going to win the Democratic nomination. I guess if I had to put my money on anyone, I’d probably put it on Dean too—even though there are some Democrats who don’t think Dean is credible on national security. But when credibility on national security in the field of candidates is solely differentiated by whether or not you served in a war that half of the Democratic primary voters don’t remember (hi, John Kerry!) and the other half opposed, I don’t believe that’s much of a handicap.

Mark Kleiman writes:

If a republic is to maintain itself as a republic, rather than degenerating into an oligarchy or party dictatorship, it must be the case that the party in power can’t reliably maintain itself in power. Imagine, just as a hypothetical, a republic whose campaign finance system gave a big natural advantage to whichever party was most favorable to big personal wealth and corporate interests. Imagine further that the party favorable to those interests managed to get control of both the executive and the legislative branches. Now imagine further that the leadership of that party had no scruples about exploiting to the fullest its powers to help friends and punish enemies, in the interest of making its dominance permanent.

He goes on to claim that this is currently the case. Of course, it was also the case for the Democratic Party between 1961 and 1969; the Democratic Party between 1977 and 1981; and the Democratic Party between 1993 and 1995. In each case, the Democrats had the unqualified financial backing of “big personal wealth and corporate interests,” “control of both the executive and the legislative branches,” and “no scruples about exploiting to the fullest its powers to help friends and punish enemies.” Furthermore, unlike the Republicans today, these Democratic majorities had a Supreme Court that was broadly inclined to promote their social and economic agenda (even during the brief Clinton period). Yet, amazingly, we still have a republic, despite all of these shocking assaults on the separation of powers.

I won’t dispute the fundamental truth of Madison’s insights in Federalist 10. But a few years of unified government isn’t going to undermine the republic today, especially when the party in control of that government is essentially continuing the substantive policies of the previous Democratic administration with some fiddling at the margins of the tax code.

Following the lead of others (including Sam Ruby and Mark Pilgrim), I’ve added a feed of the new syndication format without a name to Signifying Nothing. This should also give Jeff a new test case for his Straw patch.

For the moment, it’s here (since it’s currently generated by the LSblog RSS module); it will probably move to a separate URL once the format (and name!) have been finalized.

Speaking of RSS, it must be very, very sad to live in the place Dave Winer does.