Reminder: the second Memphis Bloggers’ Bash is tomorrow at the Blue Monkey on Madison (in the heart of Midtown Is Memphis), starting at 6:30 p.m. Be there, or, er, be somewhere else.

Jeff Jarvis asks:

Now it’s time that a social scientist or a pollster to measure the passion of our opinions—and an issue better come out pretty high on that passion scale before any reporter can say it’s deeply divisive.

Jon Krosnick at Ohio State (a social psychologist/political scientist) has published at least a half-dozen papers on attitude importance (e.g. “the passion of our opinions”) over the past 15 years. So, my suggestion to the pollsters would be: go forth and read Krosnick.

I’d also suggest that they go back and read Converse on attitudes and nonattitudes and “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” but I suspect they read—and forgot—such things long ago; they certainly don’t need me reminding them.

The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

There’s a petition drive is underway in Colorado to allocate the state’s electors in proportion to candidates’ popular vote. All I can find is the title as it will be presented to voters; I can’t find the actual text of the proposal (including any minumum threshold requirement or whether there will be “bonus” electors for the plurality winner), so it’s hard to judge what the impact of the plan will be.

I suspect the substantive effect of such provisions, if adopted in every state, would be minimal across the board; while candidates might arguably be more inclined to focus on the most populous states, I’m not sure that the actual benefit of such a strategy would be very large. Instead, the sensible strategy would be to focus on states where you’re close (say within 100,000 votes) to gaining an additional elector, and it’s not at all apparent that these states would be more likely to be large.

At the individual level, I suspect PR for the electoral college would somewhat increase turnout in relatively lopsided states like Massachusetts and Mississippi, and somewhat decrease it in perennial “swing states” like Florida and Ohio, but I think that would have more to do with campaign effects than any sort of utility calculus by voters.

Incidentally, there’s probably a good undergraduate or first-year graduate student paper in an analysis of the effects of various electoral college allocation systems (PR, bonus PR, congressional district, plurality), with particular focus on elections with relatively large third-party voting (1948, 1968, 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2000).

More from Daniel Geffen, James Joyner, DavidNYC, and Jane Galt.

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Over at Fafblog, Giblets explains the god of ceremonial deism, the god we invoke in pledges, in oaths, and on currency:

This God is a fitting adornment for oaths and flags and coins. Especially coins! Ceremonial God blesses your divine use of a slot machine with every quarter you feverishly insert. He marks His glory upon every dollar bill you stuff into the g-string of an aging lap dancer. He is the God of Coke and Pepsi, the all-embracing deity of McDonalds and Wal-Mart. All are one in His commercial bounty.

Giblets longs for a day when God will proudly stand out not just on money, monuments, plaques, greeting cards, university mottos, bumper stickers, action figures and gun shows, but on everything from hamburger wrappers to beer to car insurance. Giblets had a Big Mac dripping with special sauce yesterday, and he thought “Is this special sauce godless, commie special sauce? Or is it All-American, True-Blue, Under God special sauce?” And the sad thing is my friends that Giblets did not know, because it did not say on the box.

Eugene Volokh gives the legalist’s reasoning as to why the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Newdow v. Elk Grove; I still believe the original plan of the justices who voted for cert was to also reach a substantive conclusion on the constitutionality of the pledge requirement (perhaps in line with Thomas’ concurrence), but Scalia’s recusal threw a wrench in the works of that happening.

Meanwhile, Alex Knapp agrees with Dahlia Lithwick that the more important issue settled in the case may relate to the majority’s newfound respect for the principle of federalism, at least in the area of family law.

Prof. David Chalmers of the University of Arizona has put together a list of philosophical weblogs.

Many conservatives like to bash the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, pointing out that in recent years it has had more decisions overturned by the Supreme Court than any other Court of Appeals. I’m no legal expert, but I’ve long suspected that this is because the Ninth Circuit has been faithfully applying precedents that the Supreme Court has been in the process of overturning over the past two decades. Which is exactly what a lower court is supposed to do. Other Courts of Appeals have, to a greater extent than the Ninth Circuit, been instead playing a game of “guess what the Supreme Court will say.” To the extent other Courts have been right in their guesses, they have been overturned fewer times.

Some support for this thesis is contained in today’s concurring opinion in the Newdow case by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court’s most conservative Justice. Thomas, who would have overturned Newdow on the merits, writes: “I conclude that, as a matter of our precedent, the Pledge policy is unconstitutional.” (Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)