Journalist-turned-blogger Bill Hobbs reports on the pro-income-tax credentials of a number of members of Tennessee's “tax study commission”; the commission is already under fire for its rather white-male-ish complexion — all 14 members selected so far (of an eventual total of 15) are Caucasian men.

You can tell a sport has too many rules when nobody has the faintest clue what rules apply on a botched field goal attempt that turns into an incomplete pass (due to defensive pass interference downfield) although there's an illegal man downfield with time expired. (Got all that?)

I've always thought the ineligible man downfield rule made absolutely no sense, but after this weekend I'm convinced most of the NFL's rulebook is similarly asinine. Terrell Owens is a walking exemplar of “unsportsmanlike conduct,” as he's proved for the past few years, yet he's not ejected while some poor Giants lineman is.

Steven Den Beste has basically the same reaction I do to the latest Palestinian outrage, as does James Lileks. I have Israeli friends and relatives, and I'm tired of the Palestinians and their continual BS. Indiscriminate murder is not a valid response to any injustice. As of now, I wash my hands of whatever the Israelis decide to do with them; I don't care anymore.

Incoming TDOT commissioner Gerald Nicely faces some real challenges in his new job, but he's making the right noises in this interview with the Nashville Tennessean. As I said before, I think TDOT's problems are more perception than reality; however, there are some real issues:

• The politicization of the project allocation process is unseemly and needs to stop. If Phil Bredesen follows through on his word and concentrates on merit (traffic needs and economic development) in selecting projects, this will be a major improvement.

• The “Tennessee Rail Plan” is largely dead-on-arrival and needs to be scrapped. It will do virtually nothing to reduce the need for additional capacity on I-40 between Memphis and Knoxville. The only part that makes any sense is the rerouting of rail lines and consolidation of intermodal facilities in Memphis.

• Delaying or reconsidering the south leg of TN 840 at this point would be counterproductive.

• Reconsidering the I-475 “Orange Route” selection would be similarly counterproductive; by all measures, it is the best alternative. A route via Pellissippi Parkway (a so-called “Green Route”) would just increase congestion on I-40/75 and would not function as an effective bypass route.

• Any construction on the north leg of TN 840 should be delayed until after construction of I-475 and I-69 is well underway.

Rather than writing several paragraphs to summarize my reaction (which was basically to pump my fist in the air and shout YES!), let me just link you to Radley Balko's take on the Indianapolis Colts, his plug of Penn Jillette's recent airport experience in Las Vegas, and his comments on the ADA's potential impact on the Super Bowl (also mentioned at Hit & Run, or as Radley calls it, “ReasonBlog”).

Radley Balko and Jacob Sullum write on the latest study from the neo-Prohibitionists on so-called “binge drinking.” Both point out that the definition is a bit bizarre: five drinks in a single sitting, with no reference to time at all. So, for example, if you start drinking at 6 p.m. and stop at 11 p.m., if you only have one drink in an hour you're “binge drinking”; never mind that if you weigh more than 100 pounds you'd barely even have a buzz at the end of it.

I won't pretend there isn't a problem with alcohol abuse in this country, but this definitional trickery seems to be another in a long line of those perpetrated by MADD (and other public health advocates, who want to make their favored societal problem a “disease” or ”public health threat”) to move the goalposts and demonize behavior that offends their personal sensibilties more than it causes tangible problems in society.

The zone-flooding on this one has started; InstaPundit and Radley have linked to this TechCentralStation column by Iain Murray that argues “The Temperance Movement is Back”. An interpretation that MADD has fallen victim to mission creep (as many groups do once their core goals are accomplished, like the NAACP, the feminist movement, and the Environmental Protection Agency) might be too charitable; MADD is rapidly showing its true colors as a prohibitionist group akin to the Womens' Christian Temperence Union of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Here's a challenge: read this puff piece on Keith Jackson from the San Diego Union-Tribune without feeling the urge to projectile vomit. No word on whether Keith ever returned all the gifts he got when he “retired” four years ago.

The Economist takes on Josh Marshall's latest, er, talking points on North Korea (subscription required, natch). You don't need a subscription to read their fairly thorough debunking of the anti-Americanism is Bush's fault thesis, however.

For a more sensible take (well, than TPM's, at least) on the North Korea business, see David Adesnik's latest at OxBlog; on Iraq, Adesnik takes down the “Iraq=Oil” theory (”This time, the critical issue is that Saddam has mocked the authority of both the US and the UN for over a decade. We realized on Sept. 11 that this had to end.”) and Steven Den Beste's discussion of strategic versus tactical surprise is worth a read. And, for good measure, Bryan Preston takes down TPM.

Trent Lott's new “leadership position”: chairmanship of the Senate Rules Committee. (Officially, it is the Committee on Rules and Administration.) As PejmanPundit puts it, “The post is utterly meaningless, for all practical purposes.”

Not only is the post meaningless — one could argue that the job is pointless. While the Senate does have rules, they are nowhere near as elaborately developed as those of the House (for much more on this, see Barbara Sinclair's excellent and accessible Unorthodox Lawmaking). The Senate largely chugs along on unanimous consent agreements (UCAs), which are negotiated between the majority and minority leaders; UCAs function much like House rules, but they break down when someone wants to place a “hold” or carry out a filibuster (the House abolished the filibuster in the 19th century, and over time developed in such a way that for anything of consequence to be considered on the floor it requires a rule).

Coupled with the fact Senate committees are weaker than House committees anyway (again because of the absence of per-bill rules in the Senate — anyone can offer any amendment on the Senate floor), chairing the Senate Rules Committee is a massive white elephant position, devoted to minutae such as deciding committee jurisdictions, determining the elegibility of senators, and overseeing the Architect of the Capitol. In sum, running for governor has probably gotten a lot more tempting in the past day or two.

The pseudonymous Bitter has a challenge for the blogosphere: help her rile up fellow students at her womens' college in New England. The deadline is Monday, so put your mind to work and give the girl a hand.

Bowl season will be over tonight with the Miami-Ohio State contest in Tempe (my prediction: OSU 27, Miami 24).

A few miscellaneous notes:

• The SEC goes 3–4. Ole Miss, Auburn and Georgia held up their ends of the bargain, at least, while Arkansas showed how thoroughly one-dimensional their offense is (how, again, did they win the SEC West?), Florida and LSU put in respectable showings, and Tennessee, well, played like Tennessee has all season long.

• Alabama fans are wondering if they can return Mike Price after the 34–14 drubbing that Washington State got at the hands of Oklahoma. (They're probably also wondering how many more years they're going to be on probation.) Price's system would be a move away from the option attack that served Alabama well in 2002, tending more toward the play action style favored by most of the conference (except Arkansas).

• The SEC's team to watch in 2003 is Kentucky; fresh off sanctions and with a new coach, they're likely to make things interesting in the SEC East. (However, Georgia will repeat as SEC East champion — you read it here first.)

• The SEC West will be the same clusterf*ck that it was in 2002, although Alabama will not go 4–1 in the division. Mississippi State will remain the “Vandy of the West.”

• If Eli Manning returns to Ole Miss, the Rebels probably have the inside track to win the SEC West, with a largely favorable schedule (with just Vandy, Florida, Auburn and MSU on the road, along with an early trip to Memphis — where Ole Miss fans will outnumber Memphis fans at the Liberty Bowl). Without Manning, Ole Miss will have to rely on an untested QB: either Micheal Spurlock or Seth Smith.

Finally, my early pick for 2003 National Champion: none other than Georgia.

By the way, what's the over/under on how many times Keith Jackson retires during the game? He and Dan Fouts almost give CBS's SEC crew a run for their money in the “worst booth in college football” sweepstakes.

Eugene Volokh debunks the far-right myth of the Dixiecrats as being either libertarian or constitutionalist:

But then [Paul Craig Roberts] proceeds to defend the Dixiecrats on the merits:

It was left to the libertarian, Llewellyn Rockwell, to point out that, fundamentally, states' rights is about the Tenth Amendment, not segregation. Thurmond's political movement sought a return to the enumerated powers guaranteed by the Constitution to the states. . . .

Lott's tribute to Thurmond is easily defended on principled constitutional grounds. However, to speak against the neoconservative Republican and liberal Democrat ideal of a powerful central government is as impermissible as to utter words deemed to offend the legally privileged.

Interesting, that: Did Thurmond's political movement also seek a return to, say, the Fourteenth Amendment, also part of the same Constitution, which required states to give blacks the "equal protection" of the laws, something that the 1948 South notably neglected to do? What about the Fifteenth Amendment — were the Dixiecrats also enthusiastic about protecting blacks' constitutionally secured rights to vote? In fact, what seems more like a system of entrenched class privilege in which some aristocrats (granted, often a majority, unlike in real feudalism) lord it over the downtrodden commoners — 1948 Dixie (or 1948 America more broadly), or 2002 America, with all its warts?

As I have argued in the past (as anyone who has suffered through my POL 101 will testify), Jim Crow was the very embodiment of the problem of “majority faction” that James Madison warned about in Federalist 10, and one of the few situations that justifies federal interference in state affairs.

Incidentally, those who would defend the GOP as the “Party of Lincoln” should bear in mind that just 21 years after Lincoln's assassination, Republicans abandoned their principles in the “corrupt bargain” of Hayes-Tilden, where the GOP abandonded its responsibility to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments in exchange for the presidency.

A few miscellaneous thoughts for today, since I don't have anything in particular to say:

• I'm going to take a real course (ECON 610: Public Choice) this semester, at 8:00 a.m. no less; we'll see how long that lasts.

• Only 11 days until SimCity 4!

• Go check out Kos' Political State Report, particularly if you like “inside baseball” coverage of politics.

• David Adesnik @ OxBlog has some more interesting North Korea stuff.

Clarion-Ledger political columnist Bill Minor says it's 50–50 that Trent Lott will run for governor of Mississippi in 2003.

Advantage: blog.lordsutch.com!

Bill Hobbs is kind enough to pass along this Fisking of the Nashville Tennessean's lead editorial. Choice quote:

A stab at honesty: “tax reform” = “income tax” in Tennessee media and government language. California’s total 2002 revenues from taxes and licenses were $12.9 billion lower than their revenues for 2001. Personal income tax collections were $11.5 billion lower and corporate income tax collections were $1.4 billion lower, accounting for every bit of the total revenue reduction. Sales tax and other collections were up slightly, offset by those that were down. But the income tax is California’s primary revenue source, accounting for 67% in 2001 and 61% in 2002. Tennessee can equal California’s “performance” with the healthy dose of stupidity required to implement “tax reform”.

Well, in fairness, in Tennessee “tax reform” also means “divert gas tax money to the general fund.” TDOT may not be a paragon of government efficiency, but I don't think there's anyone outside the Sierra Club who thinks Tennessee spends too much on highway construction and maintenance. You can argue with the allocation of those resources — Mississippi has done far better in a similar time frame with less money to build an efficient four-lane network.

More to the point, though, Tennessee's taxpayers don't trust the state government to spend their money wisely or run their affairs properly. The mismanagement of TennCare, blatant legislative gerrymandering in urban areas, and the rank ineffectiveness of the Republican caucus hardly inspire confidence among the electorate.

Virginia Postrel writes in Wednesday's New York Times on “Tax Policy as a Tool and a Weapon”; go forth and read it.

She mainly discusses the relative merits of changing the tax treatment of dividends, corporate tax reform, and a payroll tax cut. On the latter, she writes:

Reducing the payroll tax would give every worker an immediate tax break and encourage companies to hire (or retain) employees. It's a winning idea whether you're looking for a Keynesian jolt to consumer spending or a supply-side boost to hiring. And it would particularly benefit low-income workers, who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes but still owe payroll taxes.

However, she notes a low-end payroll tax cut — exempting the first $10,000 of income, for example — could have perverse policy implications, by making it more cost effective for employers to hire two workers on a part-time basis than one full-time worker. A cut in the payroll tax rate, as opposed to an exemption, might therefore be economically preferable.

Of course, cutting the payroll tax has other problems associated with it — either future benefits will have to be cut accordingly, or general taxes will have to be diverted to subsidize social security and Medicare; neither option would be very palatable. A solution some have suggested — taxing high-income workers on their full incomes without a corresponding benefit increase — has some appeal to income redistributors but may not be popular with the electorate (and a tax increase is a tax increase, at least in a 15-second sound bite).

One plausible option (speaking as a “policy wonk” rather than a libertarian) is to have a rate cut in the payroll tax, coupled with a new tax in two years (bringing the total rate back to the old rate) tied to privatized accounts. The holiday would serve a useful short-term goal, while the new financing arrangement would kickstart a move toward privatization of social security.

InstaPundit and Bryan Preston pass on word that The New York Observer has named David Letterman its Media Mensch of the Year; this part sums up why:

[He] flew to Kandahar for Christmas Eve with cigars, 5,000 T-shirts, Paul Schaffer [sic] and Biff Henderson (and no video cameras!).

Jay Leno, on the other hand, would have asked our troops a bunch of trivia questions and aired the dumbest responses on national television. That's the difference between class and crass.

Just for the record: I don't have any answers. I don't think Josh Marshall makes a compelling case that Bush 43 screwed the pooch, but I don't know that Bush 43 is 100% right either.

What I will say is that I think it's way to early to start assigning blame; North Korea is clearly taking advantage of the South Korean interregnum, world preoccupation with Iraq, and a general need for Kim Jong Il to be the center of attention at any party. Maybe the PRK feels disrespected by the Bush administation, but that doesn't excuse the six years of broken promises during the Clinton era. If anything, the sabre rattling this time has been less intense (a preemptive strike on PRK nuclear facilities isn't on the table in 2002, but it certainly was in 1994, perhaps due to Clinton's fascination with Blip Warz as a foreign policy tool). Unlike Marshall, I'm pretty sure Bush isn't bluffing and the U.S. and South Korea can successfully resist an invasion by the North.

I just realized that the above is basically a bunch of unrelated sentences strung together, rather than a paragraph. Sue me.

When you've just been fired from your job as Mr. GOP, what do you do? Well, if you're Trent Lott, you come to a rally in your hometown with 3,000 of your closest, mostly white friends (I'm experiencing ugly déjà vu of Bill Clinton's Rose Garden “I've Been Impeached” Party in 1998), where seldom is heard a discouraging word. For example, try these paragraphs on for size, courtesy of Clarion-Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell:

Through this ordeal, Lott said, he's found opportunity. "There are some things I can do out there now that maybe I couldn't do before," he said.

While he failed to specify what he meant, he did talk about making improvements in education, national defense and homeland security.

Hasn't that been the problem all along — failing to specify what he meant?

Mitchell seems to go out of his way to talk to all “several dozen” blacks in attendence, generating quotes from at least two, possibly three of them (unfortunately for this dissection of the event, the AP Stylebook now frowns on referring to quoted parties by race, so you have to read between the lines).

"They should not vote for anybody to have a special day," whether King, Lincoln or Washington, [Huey Pierce, of Bogalusa, La.,] said. "We should have a Presidents Day or a Heroes Day, just like we have a Veterans Day. It's not any one individual."

I fully agree; henceforth, nearby Jefferson Davis County will be renamed Traitors County, to not honor any one individual.

Lynn Rouse, former chairman of the Jackson County Republican Party, blamed Lott's fall on a national media frenzy.

If claims of Lott supporting segregation were true, he said, wouldn't there be evidence of such segregation in Jackson County?

Why, Lynn, I'm glad you asked. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Gini Index of African-American residential segregation for the Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula MSA was 0.659 (on a scale where 1=segregated and 0=desegregated). While certainly lower than that of Chicago (0.922) or Detroit (0.940), or even Jackson (0.769), it is hardly the least segregated community in the country, being eclipsed by such paragons of equality as Topeka (0.608, site of Brown v. Board of Education), Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (0.600), and Charleston, S.C. (0.577), among others. Other indices suggest that the Gulf Coast region is as segregated as communities of similar size in the South; there is clear and ample evidence that Jackson County is, in fact, still segregated by any plausible definition of the term. Not to mention the rally itself, which seems to have been, charitably, around 95–98 percent white.

Of course, Lynn is probably referring to de jure segregation; however, since that pesky Brown v. Board of Education decision found that to be inconsistent with the 14th Amendment, you won't find de jure segregation anywhere in the United States (with the usual caveats for all the state-sponsored resegregation that seems to be in vogue these days, largely in secondary and tertiary education).

Meanwhile, adjacent Harrison County still has a problem with another legacy of the Confederacy, in which a sizable minority (42%) of locals voted to remove a public display of the Confederate Battle Flag.

It's safe to say, though, that the Gulf Coast's favorite son seems to reflect the views of his neighbors — or at least, his white ones.

Charles Rangel thinks reinstituting the draft would be a peachy idea; today, Glenn Reynolds briefly mentions the Rangel op-ed and links to commentary by John Stryker; Tacitus (as mentioned earlier) has a different take.

I don't see how any reading of the 13th Amendment can be squared with a military draft. The draft is, by definition, involuntary servitude, and the only differences between it and slavery are (a) you get paid and (b) the government's the slaveowner, neither of which meet the exception for punishment for a crime. (I suppose the government could constitutionally draft felons, but I don't think criminals would make very good soldiers, “Dirty Dozen” films notwithstanding.)

Aside from that, though, there are more practical issues. Draftees in general don't make very good soldiers (all other things being equal), except in situations where the draft is a response to a clear and present danger to one's own country (the Israeli draft is probably the only current one that fits this definition; the World War II drafts in Britain, her colonies, and America fit as well).

In the absence of a clear and present danger that draftees care about, drafts tend to have pernicious effects; citizens flee to foreign states and burn draft cards in protest, for example. Peacetime drafts, more often than not, paper over deficiencies in militaries by giving the impression of a “large, capable standing army” when much of that army is just going through the motions for a year or two before finding something productive to do; at best, it's a way to keep unskilled youth occupied rather than unemployed, while at worst it creates the illusion to domestic politicians of having an effective military that, in fact, is largely useless. (Ask the Russians, whose draft-dominated forces were routed in Afghanistan and can't even control their own territory in Chechnya.)

Rangel's argument for a draft, though, largely centers on its effects on domestic politics; leaders will be reluctant to order the armed forces into war, his theory goes, since (some of) their children will be on the front lines. Assuming that this is not Vietnam Redux (where it is clear that the children of the elite weren't spending a lot of time in the Mekong Delta or the Hanoi Hilton), the implication is that self-interest will stop some number of politicians from waging war that they would be willing to wage with someone else's children. I'm not convinced that this is the case at all; it might actually lead to a more gung ho attitude among some members (“little Johnny might make colonel if he gets some combat sorties”), for example.

I can see an argument for a citizenry more informed about the military — in my first year as an undergraduate, I had to take two basic ROTC courses, and I did have the experience of being an Air Force Brat for the first 15 years of my life — but a draft isn't the way to do it.

The pseuononymous Bitter contributes a female perspective (in multiple parts) to Radley Balko's dating advice in response to some other dating advice that meandered toward him on the Blogosphere (this isn't the Bible, I'm not going to give a geneology of the meme). Then again, I'm not sure if I want dating advice from someone who plans on having a Season Pass to “Joe Millionaire.”

I really have nothing to contribute to either debate, except to say (a) “The Bachelor” is only watchable among other people so you can make fun of the participants, as Justin and Michelle can attest, and (b) spending much of an entire evening ranting half-drunk on Killian's Irish Red about a former colleague of mutual acquaintance to a table full of women doesn't seem to work all that well.

OxBlog's David Adesnik writes on Josh Marshall's supposition of a resurgance in anti-Americanism as a campaign tactic; his thoughts aren't far off mine.

Meanwhile, Tacitus has some interesting thoughts on Charles Rangel's newfound enthusiasm for the military and Kos' attack on Confederacy nostalgia (and, by extension, Southerners). And Eugene Volokh notes that U.S. citizens are seeking refugee status in Canada at the rate of about seven every fortnight (not sure what the reverse figure is; having broadcasts of “Delgrassi High” inflicted on you may be considered torture under some U.N. conventions). Good stuff worth reading, even if I don't have a lot of time to comment on it.

Daniel Drezner weighs in on Josh Marshall's “is there a larger meaning to anti-Americanism?” thoughts.

Xtina's new single, Scott Ritter's new career, and Vengeance Wednesday: all these and more are among Tim Blair's predictions of 2003: more include a miltary alliance between Belgium, Monaco, and Switzerland (the “Lexus of Evil”), a late discovery by Hans Blix of numerous weapons in Iraq (mostly American ones), and Robert Fisk's new assignment by The Independent — as a restaurant critic (perhaps he could get some pointers from Frederic Koeppel).

Sometimes I wonder if the Memphis Commercial Appeal actually is capable of reporting local highway news. Why? Well, for example, the CA neglected to mention at all that TDOT awarded a $23 million contract to Hill Brothers Construction for the extension of TN 385 between U.S. 72 and TN 57 (Poplar Ave.) in Collierville, as well as a $16 million resurfacing contract on I-40 east of I-240. Not to mention another TN 385 project let in October: $18.9 million for construction between I-40 and U.S. 64, awarded to Dement Construction. The CA reports on meetings of the Shelby Farms board on the Walnut Grove/Kirby-Whitten project but doesn't mention at all TDOT's public hearings on the proposal.

I can only assume the CA simply doesn't pay attention to this stuff (granted, TDOT doesn't seem to post press releases on highway project contracting, although they have Internet-accessible public hearing and contract pages); what little road material that does appear is written by environmental reporter Tom Charlier (who described I-69 in a lead paragraph as a swathe of “development and destruction,” hardly neutral language) or a poor slob on the neighborhood beat (who's just happy he's not covering the bridge club's latest sojourn).

The latest from Josh Marshall suggests that running for election elsewhere on an anti-American platform is good politics:

But add these and other election results up and you start to see that hostile reactions to America's newly strident and confrontational stance in the world are becoming an important force in world politics and an important force in the domestic politics of many of our allies.

Think of it this way: when was the last time one of our friends -- or someone friendly, rather than unfriendly, to our current policies -- won an election in a major country around the world?

I think Marshall over-sells his thesis: Schröder and Roh talked up anti-American themes in their campaigns, but fully expected that the U.S. would forget about that ugliness after the election, an assessment that at least Schröder is finding wrong. As for Lula in Brazil, Marshall would probably find, as The Economist reports, that he too is kissing up to the gringos post-election. More to the point, none of these successes should be surprising — the left outside the United States has historically defined itself in terms of its opposition to American foreign policy adventurism.

Marshall may forget that history due to the relative quiet spell during the Clinton administration (where U.S. foreign policy was largely quasi-multilateral, with a smattering of wagging the dog when it was politically convenient), but it was certainly alive and well during the Reagan and Bush 41 years: the British Labour Party was basically a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CND until Tony Blair led it out of the electoral wilderness, and the German SPD (Schröder's party) was largely on the same page for much of the same time while Germany's CDU/CSU and FDP governed, leaving the SPD free to pursue wacky unilateralist views (in their case, unilateral nuclear disarmament) with the Militant Tendency wing of Labour.

Of course, if these three leaders were actually serious about their anti-Americanism — if they actually wanted the United States to withdraw from Germany (à la De Gaulle) or South Korea, or withhold financial support from South Korea or Brazil — then Marshall probably ought to worry; but, if that were the case, the costs to those states would be far higher than the costs incurred by the United States. In such a scenario, Germany would have to provide for its own defense out of its already stretched budget and probably precipitate a continental arms race in the process, South Korea would cease to exist as a viable nation-state, and Brazil's economy would stop functioning within a day; none of these events would have much direct effect on the U.S. besides reducing the supply of mobile phones from Samsung. Regardless, anti-Americanism is trendy on the Euroleft, and in the left in general, so unless real American allies like Tony Blair and John Howard start running on anti-American platforms, the pattern here isn't all that discernable.

InstaPundit has a roundup of discussion on the resurgence of anti-American rhetoric from the left; JB Armstrong has an interesting take as well.