You know, the only thing I ever lost at summer camp was my pocket knife.

Steven Taylor of PoliBlog gets to the bottom of the whole Clark/disenfranchisement discussion. Suffice it to say I agree with Taylor’s policy prescriptions; however, I will say that the use of outdated voting technology in poorer counties seems to be more the result of those counties being poor—and thus devoting their limited resources to things that were perceived as more important than voting machines (like economic development, law enforcement, and public education), at least in the minds of most prior to the 2000 ballot controversy—rather than any deliberate action to systematically disenfranchise voters. Outside a very small number of academics, virtually nobody even knew, much less cared, that punch-card ballots had higher error rates than other voting methods until it became an issue in Florida.

If you are under the age of 70, and—at any point in your life—decide you “feel old,” there’s an easy remedy: come to Ocala, Florida, where you’re virtually guaranteed to be the youngest person in any given establishment.

Update: Matt Stinson may have had more fun in Ocala during a single meal than I had in two years of high school. Sounds about right.

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging rut lately; I think our extended downtime in mid-December somehow got me out of the “blogging groove,” so to speak. That, and being at the semi-proverbial “ass end” of the Internet, along with holiday and no-job stress, is severely cramping my style.

Original thought, maybe, soon.

That’s the question D.C. Thornton is contemplating in deciding whether to return to the Republican Party. He writes:

If I want the Republicans to remain true to small government, low taxation, the ability of individuals to govern their own lives and pursue happiness as they see fit, and counter racism, the work has to be done from the inside. Ranting from the outside does nothing to change anything.

I doubt Darmon can do it on his own—but if enough like-minded Americans from diverse backgrounds do the same, libertarian-leaning Republicans can accomplish what the Christian right did in the 1980s—fundamentally remake the Republican Party in their own image. The downside is that the “libertarian right”—perhaps a bit of an oxymoron—doesn’t have anywhere near the level of institutional backing that the Christian right did when it mounted its takeover.