Glenn Reynolds links to a Lynxx Pherrett dissection of the alleged ‘pay-for-play’ nature of Iraqi reconstruction contracts. The key graf, I think, is:

How do I know CPI is dealing from a stacked-deck? As Marshall Brodien said, "It's easy, once you know the secret!" CPI only looked at companies that were awarded contracts, then examined the companies' political contribution history and any connections to current or former government officials. What CPI never looked at, and according to their methodology never attempted to look at, was the political contribution and governmental connection histories of the losing submitters. In other words, there is nothing against which their results can be compared. Businesses make political contributions — we know that. People leave government service and go to work in the private sector — we know that. Thus, no matter what major company wins a contract, it is likely that they have 1) made political donations in the past—CPI researched contributions all the way back to 1990—and 2) employ some former government officials. Unless CPI can show that the contract winners made larger political contributions and employed more or higher-level ex-government officials, their report cannot support Lewis' charge of "a stench of political favoritism and cronyism."

In other words, CPI selected on the dependent variable. Quality social science here, folks…

Dan Drezner has more.

Steven Taylor, here and here, and Matthew Stinson both do me the favor of explaining why I’m not a huge fan of the Stars and Bars Southern Cross. Steven says it far more eloquently than I could:

My question to those who are adamantly in favor of the flag: why? What does it uniquely mean to you about your Southern heritage? And even if it means something dear to your heart, isn’t whatever it is you wish to extol being tainted by what the flag signifies to others?

I think a lot of white Southerners do, deep down, recognize that; hence why I often hear comments like “the blacks are just pretending they’re offended by the flag” or “I know one black guy who isn’t offended, so I really don’t think blacks in general are.” So I think the key to change here is not necessarily to get whites to change their views about the flag, but rather to convince them that blacks’ views on the flag are genuinely-held, rather than a fabrication of the NAACP and the SCLC and professional race-baiters like Al Sharpton.

Meanwhile, if you’re not entirely sick of the gubernatorial campaign, you can read this Emily Wagster Pettus piece on the Rebel flag’s role in the gubernatorial race. And, as a special bonus, Amy Tuck finally signed that affidavit saying she’d never had an abortion (no, don’t ask… I don’t even pretend to understand what that’s all about).

Mississippi goes to the polls in six days to elect a governor. And, if we’re really lucky, the people—not the House of Representatives—will elect this one.

On the issues I personally care about, the candidates are about indistinguishable. As Sid Salter points out, Ronnie Musgrove is essentially running—at least in white precincts—as a Republican who accidentally got the Democratic nomination. Maybe that’s just as well; for better or worse, there aren’t many Mississippians who share my, dare I say extremist, views on personal and economic liberty. There just aren’t that many Mississippians who are pro-choice (never mind that you can’t get a legal abortion in this state outside of Jackson, making the abortion issue essentially moot), pro-gay marriage, anti-Stars and Bars, and against burdensome economic regulations (like the absurd situation that has essentially shut down the distribution of wine and liquor in the state because our state liquor monopoly can’t make its computers work right). I’d worry if the major parties thought they could run a candidate who would appeal to me.

Ironically, if Ronnie Musgrove lived up to the reputation his detractors pinned on him, I might actually be tempted to vote for him. The truth of the matter, though, is that Musgrove barely lifted a finger to promote the new flag; he endorsed it and then went into virtual hiding until the referendum went down in flames in April 2001. Don’t get me wrong—I think the referendum was doomed to failure no matter how much effort was put into backing it. And I recognize that the referendum was largely engineered to forestall the initiative drive to amend the constitution to make the current flag virtually unalterable—an option still on the table should the legislature decide to mess with the flag again. But make no mistake: Ronnie Musgrove did no more than was absolutely required to keep his ass from getting grief from the Legislative Black Caucus.

Similarly, if Ronnie Musgrove had so much as lifted a finger to help blacks in this state I might be tempted to vote for him. Now, I understand Ronnie’s going to get 90% of the black vote just for having a (D) next to his name on the ballot. What has he done to deserve it? Turning the health department into a racial fiefdom may have helped some well-connected blacks in Jackson, but it’s hard to see how a sharecropper in the Delta benefited from that.

The bottom line is: Ronnie Musgrove isn’t a liberal, in any sense of the word. He’s only a Democrat because that’s what you needed to be to get elected to the state senate in Panola County. His own press is 100% accurate: “conservative, independent.” He makes 1980s-era Al Gore (not to be confused with the Y2K model) look like a McGovernik. Which is a shame, because you could do worse than 80s Al Gore.

Which brings me to what’s behind Door #2: Haley Barbour. If Musgrove is “conservative, independent,” Barbour is “conservative, conservative.” He is what he is. Those who criticize him for BlackHawkGate seem to miss the point; if Ronnie’s schedule had worked out properly, there’d be matching photos up at the Council of Conservative Citizens’ website: one with Haley’s beaming mug, and another with Ronnie’s right next to it. My general assessment of Barbour is that he’s a cipher as far as what he’d do in office. Oddly enough (for those who stereotype such things), Barbour’s Washington experience makes him by far the more worldly of the two candidates.

And, ultimately, I think that’s what this state needs. If only Nixon could go to China, maybe only someone like Barbour can come back to Mississippi. Someone needs to tell my fellow Mississippians that it ain’t 1962 any more, and that message isn’t going to be well-received coming from a Democrat. I don’t know if Haley Barbour is the man to deliver that message, but I sure as hell know that Ronnie Musgrove isn’t. So for governor, Haley Barbour (R) it is.

In other races:

• In the battle of the barking moonbats, aka the lieutenant governor’s race, I’ll be voting for Barbara Blackmon (D), mainly because I know she won’t win.
• For secretary of state, Eric Clark (D/I) because he seems competent enough. Wish he’d do something about all the Java on his pages though…
• For attorney general, I honestly don’t know.
• Auditor: Phil Bryant (R/I).
• Treasurer: Gary Anderson (D).
• Agriculture commissioner: dunno, don’t care; they’re all State graduates anyway…
• Insurance commissioner: don’t know.
• Public service commissioner, northern district: we have a public service commission?
• Transportation commissioner, northern district: Bill Minor (D).
• District attorney: I don’t even know which district I’m in. Sigh. Guess I have to figure that out.
• State senator: Gray Tollison (D)—I think former Oxford mayor Pat Lamar’s a twit. Demerits for his brother running my water company into the ground, though.
• State representative: some jackass who shares my name (the joy of spending the $15 filing fee to run… priceless).
• Constitutional amendment #1 (deborking the College Board): no, because I’m in a contrarian mood.
• County offices: no clue.

I thought the only dilemma I was going to be faced with this week was figuring out which side I despised more in the Colonel Reb Foundation versus Richard Barrett dispute (it’s Barrett, by a hair, although I have to give mad props to the Foundation for giving Barrett a new excuse to come to Ole Miss in the first place). Now, however, comes word that Donald Luskin is allegedly siccing a lawyer on Atrios; in this one, I think I have to feel sorry for the lawyer.

They’ve apparently kissed and made up. How sweet…

CalPundit notes the demise of the inept Iain Duncan-Smith as leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Four or five years ago I would have recommended Chris Patten for the thankless job of replacing him, but I think he’s since caught Mad Bureaucrat Disease (aka Brussels Spongiform Encephalopathy). Ah well, there’s always Lord Jeffrey Archer—as a convicted pathological liar, he’s well-qualified to be a British political leader.

I’m familiar with “run to the left in the primaries, then to the right once you’ve secured the nomination” as a viable campaign strategy for presidential candidates; however, Howard Dean may be going a bit far, n'est-ce que pas? That is, unless the Klan vote really is the swing vote in the South…

I don’t actually share Sharpton’s view that Dean’s agenda is “anti-black”—at least, it is no more (or less) anti-black than the Democratic agenda at large. Still, I found the story moderately amusing…

Meanwhile, Kate notes that Dean is pandering to the “metrosexual” voting block, a demographic apparently defined as straight men who’ve seen at least one episode of “Queer Eye…” or “Playmakers.”

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take part in the official CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

How did I get on this mailing list? I’m a registered Democrat fer cryin’ out loud! Most of the money-begging letters I get are from the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, and I know the GOP isn't buying mailing lists from them. The only conservative publication I subscribe to is the Wall Street Journal.

I wonder if they'll figure it out when I return the survey, in the postage-paid envelope, with a check for one cent and all the wrong answers checked. “Should small businesses be encouraged to grow and hire more workers?” Umm… “No.” Mwahahaha!

I also can’t figure out how I got on the mailing list for 1-800-JACK-OFF. Perhaps the two are related. Could the GOP be buying their mailing lists from phone sex companies?

Sunday’s Memphis Commercial Appeal endorsed Ronnie Musgrove for Mississippi governor. I’m sure that’ll help Musgrove big time in DeSoto County—a county full of people who moved there to escape from the establishment, “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” mentality the CA fosters north of the border.

Gary Farber points out the latest foreign policy coup—literally—of our one-two punch of drug czar John Walters and attorney general John Ashcroft: the toppling of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of Bolivia. Maybe if we’re really lucky, his replacement won’t turn out to be a Castro or Chávez. But, I’m not holding my breath…

Greg Wythe (GregsOpinion.com) notes a Washington Post account looking at the Texas and Colorado redistricting plans; notably, it quotes a lot of political scientists, instead of the legal scholars that generally appear in these accounts.

Notable quote from the article:

Whatever the answers, Thomas E. Mann, a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution, said that the Texas and Colorado experiments in multiple redistricting could have profound political consequences.

“If this is sustained, what we will have is a form of arms race where there is no restraint on keeping the game going on throughout a decade,” Mann said. “You ask, who wins in this process? This is a process designed not for citizens or voters but for politicians. It will lead politicians to say there are no limits. I think it threatens the legitimacy of democracy.”

I think this is the natural consequence of the Supreme Court’s muddled post-Baker jurisprudence: insistence on exact population equality between districts, despite the huge known sampling error of the Census making that equality essentially meaningless; a ridiculous level of deference to partisan gerrymanders coupled with the unclear dictates of the Voting Rights Act and vague, O‘Connoresque prohibitions against racial gerrymanders—which, due to bloc voting by African-Americans, are virtually indistinguishable from partisan gerrymanders; widespread abandonment of any conception of geographic compactness or geographic logic as desirable features for districts; naked partisanship by the federal judiciary; and a general failure to incorporate anything that political scientists who do applied and theoretical research in the field contribute. No wonder it’s a giant playground for political opportunists from both parties.

I still think the only viable way to eliminate this mischief is to incorporate an element of proportional representation into the system—even two or three seats in a state the size of Texas, elected by “top up” proportional representation, would be enough to both undermine the possible benefits of partisan gerrymanders and ensure that incumbent-protection gerrymanders don’t lead to a sclerotic delegation.

The Commercial Appeal on Sunday extracted its head out of the buttocks of the Turley-Belz-Lightman Memphis land-speculation elite just long enough to take a look at the city’s abuse of eminent domain as part of the massive, taxpayer-subsidzed Uptown redevelopment project—a project that wouldn’t exist without said land-speculation elite—near St. Jude. Money graf: a quote from Henry Turley, one-third of the prop-spec Axis of Evil, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the early 20th century “slum clearance” movement:

Henry M. Turley Jr., one of the private developer partners in the Uptown project, said there’s a clear public interest in clearing out blighted areas, and it’s imperative that municipalities use the legal tools available to them. He believes that governments aren’t using eminent domain enough in consolidating tracts large enough for redevelopment.

Collaborating in this shameful exercise are everyone’s favorite Memphians, the Memphis Housing Authority (slogan: “Nobody found guilty of corruption in 7 days!”). Quoth MHA executive director Robert Lipscomb:

Lipscomb said the authority is careful to protect individual property rights while at the same time not unduly enriching those who might try to stall and make a windfall.

Damn straight, Robert; the only people allowed to make a “windfall” in this are Turley and Belz. Heaven forbid any poor bastard who actually had to live in Uptown before the city decided to clear the place out benefits from the exercise.

The Clarion-Ledger today has polling data showing Barbour ahead of Musgrove, but in a statistical dead heat. Telling stat:

Experts say Musgrove needs to make inroads among white voters, 25 percent of whom said they’re backing the governor.

Bad prediction:

Musgrove holds another advantage. If neither candidate gets a majority, the election would wind up in the Democratically controlled Mississippi Legislature, just as it did in 1999, [Jackson State political science professor Leslie] McLemore said. “If it goes to the House, Musgrove will win it.”

Actually, if it goes to the House, dollars to donuts says either they elect the plurality winner (even if that means quite a few conservative Democrats have to switch parties) or we have a nice, long period of protracted litigation in federal court that ends with the plurality winner ending up in office anyway.

Donald Sensing has an interesting post looking at a Washington Times report that Israel may have deliberately attacked an American naval vessel collecting sigint for the NSA in 1967 during the Six Days War. Donald has some fodder for the conspiracy theorists (slightly Dowdified, since I didn’t want to blockquote all of the post):

In fact, why Israel would want to attack Liberty has been explained. Ariel Sharon, now Israel’s prime minister, commanded an Israeli armored division during the war. ... According to researcher and author James Bamford …, Sharon’s division slaughtered a large number of Egyptian soldiers it had captured as prisoners, clear war crimes. ... The killings were reported to Tel Aviv by radio. ... Bamford makes a very strong case that the Israeli government attacked Liberty in order to sink it, thus destroying the evidence of Sharon’s crime.

Definitely a must-read.

One of the sound-bites being paraded around is on whether particular Democratic candidates are “credible” on national security. The latest iteration of this theme was expressed by Joe Biden, who said:

[T]he candidates have to “demonstrate that they have a foreign policy, a security policy, that is coherent and is grown up, that we can handle the bad things out there in the world.”

But what is credibility? In this voter’s mind, it’s not strictly speaking about Iraq: by my standard, you could be credible but have opposed the war in Iraq. To me, I think credibility boils down to whether or not the candidate believes that other countries get to veto the use of American military power to achieve an objective that is in the national interest. Ultimately, this question—not the war question—is where many of the Democratic candidates lose their credibility with me.

This is not, mind you, a call for blanket unilateralism. When other countries share our objectives, and are willing to cooperate with us in achieving those objectives, we can and should work with them to do so. But when other countries clearly have different objectives than those of the United States—as was the case in the Iraq war, where a number of middle-power states wanted to pursue commercial ties with the Saddam regime and were plainly unwilling to commit their own resources to containing that regime’s ambitions for rearmament and obtaining non-conventional weapons—an American president would be deeply unwise to allow them to decide whether and how American military force should be used.

Lauren Landes, guesting at Patrick Carver’s Ole Miss Conservative blog, notes that Haley Barbour has picked up endorsements from 42 state Democrats, angering the state Democratic Party leadership. The list of Barbour endorsers is here. In general, it looks like a list of has-beens and small fry; notably, no current member of the state House or Senate appears on the list.

Meanwhile, Eric Stringfellow continues to blast Haley Barbour from the pages of the Clarion-Ledger.

Dan Drezner is mildly in favor of lifting the trade embargo on Cuba. While I think he slightly overestimates how totalitarian the Cuban regime is—I think it’s done a very effective job of brainwashing much of its populace, and it is almost as brutally oppressive toward political dissidents as the North Korean (DPRK) regime, but I don’t think it has as effective a repression apparatus as North Korea has or some of the old Soviet client states (most notably Romania) had, and by all accounts there’s a degree of economic freedom at the margins absent in the DPRK—I agree that simply removing the embargo won’t lead to miraculous political change. However, it will deprive Castro and his Hollywood apologists of their one legitimate grievance against the United States government—and, for that reason alone, the sanctions regime should be removed.

More thoughts on this are at YankeeBlog and OxBlog.

Warning for those offended by “France-bashing”: the extension of this post contains some.

Two months ago, Daniel Drezner noted the split over whether the European Union is an international organization or a supranational authority among IR scholars (my answer, when asked to provide one when I took an International Organizations course in the Spring of 1999, was “Yes and Yes“), and that upcoming events in France and Germany would help settle that question—in particular, whether those countries would be punished for violating E.U. treaty commitments.

Today, Glenn Reynolds notes that France is getting a free pass for violating the “growth and stability pact” that members of the single European currency agreed to; as Pieter Dorsman at Peaktalk noted yesterday, this isn’t exactly popular with smaller countries like the Netherlands who actually abided by their commitments to the pact.

Colby Cosh plays Excel number-cruncher and takes a look at the likely electoral impact of the merger between the Progressive Conservatives and Alliance north of the border. The raw math suggests the new party be able might deprive the Liberals of an overall majority in Parliament (though probably not by enough for the Conservatives to form a government), on the basis of the support for its candidates in past elections when they ran as members of separate parties. Of course, there’s still a campaign to be run, which no doubt will affect the numbers substantially.

Tom Maguire , Robert Musil, and Dan Drezner are not particularly impressed with Paul Krugman’s latest missive to the readers of The New York Times, in which he defends explains blames George W. Bush for Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s anti-Semitic diatribe in front of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s recent summit.

Dan points out that Mahathir has basically made a career of using anti-Semitic rhetoric to bolster his reign as head of Malaysia’s one-party state*, a career that well-precedes George Bush’s presidency, has generally been chummy with the Bush administration (as Mark Kleiman pointed out a few days ago, rather unhelpfully if you’re trying to defend Krugman’s ignorance of contemporary U.S. foreign policy), and has “no domestic flank to protect” seeing as he’s leaving office in November—although it’s unclear whether Mahathir will continue to pull the strings in Malaysia, as his neighbor Lee Kuan Yew continues to do in Singapore.

Tom, on the other hand, engages in full-scale fisking of Krugman, wondering if Krugman actually read the speech in question. Robert Musil does some fisking of his own, suggesting we could find quite a few alternatives to Mahathir as a “forward-looking” Muslim leader, and isn’t all that impressed by Krugman’s attempt to whitewash Malaysia’s brutal policies imposed on its ethnic Chinese minority as some sort of high-minded affirmative action program.

Sebastian Holsclaw says that many pro-lifers "muddy the waters of the abortion debate". Those on the pro-choice side, on the other hand, "poison the well of the debate".

Now that’s not fair and balanced, is it?

All snarkiness aside, Sebastian’s new blog, written by an articulate and reasonable conservative, is a welcome addition to the blogosphere. Liberals like me need conservatives like Sebastian to keep us honest.

Tom at Crooked Timber has a good piece on Diebold’s shenanigans with its electronic voting machines. Partsanship aside, I inherently distrust any voting machine that doesn’t keep a paper trail—whether we’re talking about those big old lever-based things that Mayor Daley loved so much or modern touchscreens.

I kid you not (OK, maybe I kid you a little)… Gary Farber has the scoop.

Mississippi is unique among the states in retaining an elected transportation commission. The state is divided into three commission districts, and each district elects a commissioner who serves a four-year term. The retirement of incumbent commissioner Zack Stewart has created a heated race in the northern district, with two major-party nominees vying for the post:

• Bill Minor, a Democrat from Holly Springs (Marshall County) who has served in the state legislature since 1980, most recently as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
• John Caldwell, a Republican from Nesbit (DeSoto County) who is a two-term county commissioner.

Minor credits himself with leading the struggle for the passage of the 1987 Four-Lane Highway Program, which increased the state gasoline tax to 18.4¢/gal. with the increased revenues dedicated to relocating and widening nearly two thousand miles of state highways. (The 2002 reauthorization of the four-lane program, “Vision 21,” added over a thousand more miles to be constructed or widened in the coming two decades.) Minor’s slogan is “Keep Minor working for Mississippi highways“; a wag might say that Minor could easily keep working on them if he’d stayed in his safe Senate seat. (This Bill Minor may or may not be related to the other Bill Minor who’s a political columnist for the Clarion-Ledger.)

Unfortunately, Caldwell’s site seems to be Flash-driven, and none of my browsers are being very cooperative with Flash today. So I can’t really say much about his campaign.

I don’t think this race is going to be about issues; the public statements by both candidates have generally favored the same things: pursuing (and completing) Vision 21, constructing Interstate 69 through the Delta, and supporting the upgrade of U.S. 78 between Memphis and Birmingham to Interstate 22. One concern that neither candidate seems to have addressed is the state’s rural bridge problem, with a large number of rural bridges on county roads—many constructed in the 1920s and 1930s—beyond their lifespan and in dire need of repair. Another potential concern is that—reading between the lines—many people in the southern part of the state apparently thought that Zack Stewart was delaying projects along the Gulf Coast so more money could be spent up north; will a new commissioner ameliorate these tensions, or exacerbate them?

Since the issues don’t distinguish the candidates, what will? Although the Northern District is geographically large (see this map), the only major population centers are the Memphis urbanized area (DeSoto, Tunica, and Marshall counties), Tupelo, and the Columbus-Starkville-West Point “Golden Triangle” region. Minor probably has more name recognition overall due to his service in the legislature, and seems to have been more aggressive in getting billboards and signs; on the other hand, Caldwell is probably better-known in DeSoto County, the most populous county in the district by far.

Overall, I think Minor probably will win the election by a substantial margin on the basis of his better name recognition, if only because a lot of Mississippi voters haven’t been accustomed to voting a straight ticket (I think Barbour will win almost all of the counties in the northern district handily, with the exception of the heavily-black Delta counties; Panola County, the home of Ronnie Musgrove; and possibly Lafayette County, which is home to all six liberals in the state).

Patrick Carver has a set of predictions up for the upcoming Mississippi election. Below the lieutenant governor’s race, most of the down-ballot elections have gotten almost zero publicity, which will probably favor incumbents (Anderson, though, will probably be helped by black turnout, as Patrick notes).

One thing I will say is that if the election does go to the Mississippi House, I think the plurality winner will be chosen by them regardless. If Barbour wins a plurality, there are two many “yellow dog” Democrats who will be absolutely killed in 2007 if they don’t vote for Barbour. And if Musgrove wins the plurality, the 1999 precedent (where Musgrove was the slight plurality winner) suggests that black Democrats aren’t interested in making a deal with the Republicans to cut out the “yellow dogs” and elect a Republican governor. Obviously the Legislature needs to amend the system—frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t been ruled unconstitutional already because of Baker v. Carr—but I’m not holding my breath on that happening.

Mark at Not Quite Tea and Crumpets posts his thoughts on last night’s gubernatorial debate, which is thankfully the last of the campaign season. He was rather underwhelmed by Ronnie Musgrove’s performance. (I missed the debate; hopefully C-SPAN will re-run it in the next day or so, but who knows?) The Jackson Clarion-Ledger also has an account of the debate.

In other gubernatorial news, Clarion-Ledger columnist Eric Stringfellow is unimpressed by Haley Barbour’s response to his picture being used by the Council of Conservative Citizens on their web site.