I present without further comment… NASCAR bacon:

Charles Franklin applies Zaller to the public’s reaction to the Miers SCOTUS withdrawal. Meanwhile, the post-Miers speculation centers on Samuel Alito and Michael Luttig, two potential nominees who are, in the words of Steven Taylor, “radically more qualified than Miers.” Then again, pretty much everyone who’s ever cracked the spine of a con law textbook probably falls in that category…

After seeing about five minutes of the Cocktail Party, I’m inclined to agree that the new Gator uniforms are hideous.

Then again, it seems to be working for them, since they’re now up 14–0 on Georgia.

Ah, well, it’s more exciting than the Plameout…

þ: Amber Taylor, whose blog’s worth appears to be underestimated.

I’ve been doing some SPSS labs with my methods class this semester, and I stumbled upon a mildly interesting little finding: in the 2000 National Election Study, the mean feeling thermometer rating* of gays and lesbians is higher among respondents with cable or satellite TV than among those who do not have cable/satellite. It’s marginally significant (p = .057 or so in a two-tailed independent-samples t test). I’m not sure if the cable/satellite variable is standing in for a “boonies versus suburbs/urban areas” thing or something else.

It’s also fun because the test is significant at the .05 level if you do a one-tailed test (though, since I have no a priori theory as to why cable/satellite households would like gay people more than non-cable households, I’m not sure a one-tailed test is legitimate), but not significant at .05 if you do a two-tailed test, so it’s useful in illustrating that marginal case.

Colby Cosh points out a poll showing that nearly 40% of Canadians would never vote for a candidate for public office with a history of alcoholism. Is it the prudes or the pollsters? Colby suspects the latter, and I am inclined to agree.

Tyler Cowen links a list assembled by Foreign Policy ranking the “most influential political scientists,” who—apparently owing to the sampling frame—seem to all be IR scholars.

Not that there’s anything wrong with IR, mind you…

Political scientist Charles Franklin takes time out from the pretty graphs to reflect on the meaning of Rosa Parks’ role in history, echoing some themes of discussions I’ve had with Mike Munger and others who grew up in the segregated South.

After 8 days of the cold and an intermittently-painful earache that started yesterday, I cancelled my morning class and went to visit the doctor—long story short, she believes I have an ear infection, so I’m now on a nuclear-powered decongestant (complete with heavy machinery warning) and antibiotics for the next ten days.

Rosa Parks, the woman whose refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped catalyze the civil rights movement, passed away yesterday at the age of 92; there’s more from the Montgomery Advertiser.

It looks like Clayton Cramer has gotten himself a book advance. Anyone care to speculate on a title for this magnum opus? (Bonus points if you can work in more than one of Cramer’s obsessions.)

I’ll leave the interpretation to someone who actually cares about Plamegate, like Tom Maguire, but offhand this New York Times report sounds like a big deal:

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Meanwhile, the GOP appears to be gearing up for a Ken Starr-reminiscent smear operation against special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, which isn’t making TigerHawk or Andy McCarthy very happy.

Today’s “big sports news” is that Texas is #1 and ahead of Southern Cal by a few billionths of a point in this week’s release of the BCS rankings, thus reigniting the BCS doom-and-gloom scenarios.

The bottom-line facts are as follows:

• USC has done nothing more impressive this season than any of the other major undefeated teams (Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and UCLA). Bama and Georgia are both undefeated in the only conference where every team has a defense; Texas just demolished a Texas Tech squad who themselves were demolishing all comers; UCLA has beaten up on the same weak conference opponents as USC with identical results.
• The only reason we think USC is entitled to be ”#1” is because the AP and coaches ranked them #1 in August before a single game was played—back when they also thought Tennessee was the third-best team in the country (instead of the third-best team in the SEC East) and UCLA was in the “others receiving votes” category in both polls.
• It doesn’t matter who’s ranked #1, as long as you don’t drop out of the top two.

So, guys, can we put the controversy on hold until Thanksgiving, at least?

þ: OTB and others.

In the midst of an article on Wal-Mart’s new low-premium/high-deductible health care plan, the New York Times makes the sort of bizarre statement that could only be made by a news organization whose employees have never set foot in a Wal-Mart:

Currently, fewer than half of Wal-Mart’s workers are covered by company health insurance, compared with more than 80 percent at Costco, its leading competitor.

Costco is Wal-Mart’s leading competitor? Perhaps in the warehouse club space, but that’s small potatoes compared to Wal-Mart’s discount store/grocery business, where its main competitors are K-Mart, Target, Meijer, Kroger, and the like. I strongly suspect those competitors are much less generous with health care than Costco (and perhaps even less generous than Wal-Mart).

Fact checking, it’s a beautiful thing.

I’m not feeling particularly diplomatic these days (in part, because my visit to Target this evening came up with some cold medicine with some newfangled pseudophedrine substitute instead of the real thing, as if I was going to be making some crystal meth in the apartment while trying to recover from my cold)... so, here’s a definitive political stand: I oppose the Miers nomination—or, more accurately, I oppose her confirmation by the Senate.

And, for what it’s worth, “trust me” is a pretty lousy argument if you don’t trust the president’s judgment on other matters (in my mind, Gitmo first and foremost) either.

ESPN.com reports that, according to NFL sources, the only way the Saints are likely to come back to New Orleans is if they play in a Super Bowl. Given the team’s history of threats to leave town for greener pastures (most recently—and, in retrospect, ironically—for the Mississippi Gulf Coast), nobody should be particularly surprised.

If Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco are smart (admittedly a dubious proposition), they’ll shake down Saints owner Tom Benson for as much buyout money as possible—and then spend it on something other than luring another NFL franchise to town.

þ: OTB.

I still have the rather nasty cold, but I think it’s finally getting better. I think spending most of today in bed helped.

I just sent out The Damn Impeachment Paper™ for the third and (hopefully) final time. To put things in perspective: when I wrote it originally for my Congress seminar, I was a first-year grad student, and now I’m almost two years post-PhD.

Anyway, read it here. If it seems harsh, consider the one-line review I got of the last iteration (paraphrased): “How is this different from Rothenberg and Sanders (2000)?” Uh, the difference is that they were wrong.

As they say, heh.

Or to put it another way, one man’s pork is another man’s necessary infrastructure project. After all, the good people of New Orleans could get along just dandy with a repaired 4-lane I-10 Lake Pontchartrain bridge for years to come (especially when you consider that the depopulation of the city is going to make a widened span unnecessary for the forseeable future, Mayor Nagin’s revitalization fantasies aside)... Katrina alone shouldn’t bump them to the head of the line for a fancy new 6-lane span. And, surely, a real “porkbuster” would favor letting the FHWA bureaucracy, not Congress, decide where the money would best be spent. Let’s see how many votes that Coburn amendment would get; my bet is pretty close to zero.

Incidentally, my lack of sympathy also goes for using emergency rebuilding funds to pay for decades-old wishlist items and “new urbanism” tripe on the Gulf Coast instead of sticking to the essentials.

I think Jason Kuznicki gets to the heart of my discomfort with same-sex marriage opponent Maggie Gallagher’s guest-starring gig at The Volokh Conspiracy.

Analogy of the day: Ann Coulter : Josef Goebbels :: Maggie Gallagher : Clayton Cramer. Discuss.

I just realized today that my graduate transcript lists my date of birth on it. At least now I can blame all my rejection letters on hostility towards wunderkinder instead of the blog.

Blue chip quarterback Robert Lane will move to fullback this week in addition to continuing as the backup QB, apparently solidifying Micheal Spurlock’s role as starting QB and Ethan Flatt’s role as clipboard-holder. Coach O’s other position changes seem to have worked out well thus far (most notably, moving Jamal Pittman from HB to FB, and making Mico McSwain the #1 HB), so maybe Lane as a fullback will work well too.

Lucky me: I have apparently caught a cold. At least I only have to lecture in one of my two classes tomorrow—the other class gets to take a midterm. Lucky them.

The definitive history of the investigation into Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium from Africa—including how and why Joe Wilson found himself in Niger. þ: TigerHawk

Thus concludes my weekly lack of interest in Plamegate.

Did I mention how much I hate phone interviews?

One of the interviewers today made the mistake of asking me the question of what appealed to me about their job more than my existing one. I don’t think my answer went over big…