James Joyner caught this nugget from Ms. Coulter at CPAC today:

Oddly, the woman who calls everyone who disagrees with her on international affairs a “traitor” and idiotic comments by college professors “treason,” is a big supporter of the Confederate flag. Even divorced from its civil rights era racial connotations, the flag represents treason against the Union in the most literal sense.

An interesting piece in today’s Clarion-Ledger about academic misconduct at Mississippi colleges and universities.

Funnily enough, I just talked about this topic Wednesday with my public opinion class when I handed out their take-home exam. It seems to me that honor codes and the like are just part of the puzzle; just as important is for faculty members to create circumstances in which students will be less tempted to break the rules—or, failing that, writing exams that would be very hard to effectively cheat on.

Brian J. Noggle points to news that Alanis Morissette has taken U.S. citizenship. Since the entire raison d’être of her musical career was to fill her label’s Canadian content quota, I expect her musical career (what little of it remains) to come to a screeching halt.

Todd Zywicki suggests that increased advertising for legal services has increased bankruptcy filings. I tend to think that to indicate causation, Zywicki ought to at least demonstrate whether the trend in bankruptcy filings was flat before the Supreme Court found lawyers’ commercial speech constitutionally protected in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. Unfortunately (for him, at least), Zywicki’s graph starts in 1979, two years after the 1977 ruling in Bates.

Even if he could show that, considering that this time period also corresponds with the emergence of the consumer credit card industry it would be difficult to disentangle the two effects. Slithery D is also unimpressed.

This is my entry in today’s OTB Traffic Jam.

The Hill reports that Harold Ford, Jr. will be running for the Democratic nomination in the open-seat race for Bill Frist’s seat in the Senate in November 2006. While the article suggests that Ford’s rather controversial family may be a handicap, he’s generally stayed out of the shadow of uncle John Ford’s sleaze and his father’s alleged corruption.

James Joyner suggests that Tennessee has a “rather deep” bench of potential Republican opponents, but social conservatives like Van Hilleary, who make up most of the House delegation, haven’t fared all that well in statewide races; in recent years, successful Republican candidates have been in the moderate wing of the party, like Frist, Lamar Alexander, Don Sundquist, and Fred Thompson, and it doesn’t look like there are many of those on offer. Despite Tennessee’s generally conservative outlook, it’s a state that’s willing to elect moderate Democratic politicians like Phil Bredesen and (in his pre-veep life) Al Gore in statewide races by fairly comfortable margins, so it seems to me that Ford has a pretty good shot, particularly if the inept Hilleary gets the GOP’s nod.

By the way, Mike Hollihan has gotten a sneak peak at the campaign poster:

Fail to win reelection? Well, if you’re well-connected enough, you may get to stay on the state’s payroll.

Laura points out that better-qualified adjuncts are probably quite annoyed that lovable losers like Jim Florio, Al Gore, David Dinkins, and Ronnie Musgrove are pulling in real money to teach 1–2 classes a semester at various private and public institutions.

Everyone’s favorite piece of neoconfederate propaganda, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, continues to pile up negative reviews, this time from Max Boot in The Weekly Standard. (þ: Instapundit and Eric Muller)

Sheila O’Malley has word that one of my favorite shows when I was a kid is coming to DVD. That, the A-Team, and CHiPs had me in kid heaven.

Yes, I was a dork.

Belated congrats to Tim Sandefur on his engagement and to all those Signifying Nothing readers out there whose hot Valentine’s Day dates were not with a treadmill in the HAC.

Some interesting thoughts on the difficulty of organizing a conspiracy:

Every time [a possible conspiracy] comes up in a class I ask the students if they’ve ever tried to order a pizza for 3 people, and if yes whether it was difficult to agree about what to get on it and how to divide it up. Occassionally a light bulb goes on over one of their heads when they make the connection that if pizza is this hard than conspiracy must be damn near impossible.

Completely unrelated: has anyone noticed that the recommended serving size of virtually any frozen pizza (so far tested with DiGiorno, Tombstone, and Kroger-brand Tombstone clone) is one-fifth of a pizza? However, dividing a pizza—particularly the “thin crust” DiGiorno, which is square—into fifths is left as an exercise for the consumer. (þ: Cold Spring Shops)

Marc Cooper is rightly outraged that the Bush administration is attempting to stop former American POWs during the 1991 Gulf War from collecting damages for being tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

While I’m somewhat sympathetic to the administration’s argument that the new Iraqi regime needs the money to help it get on its feet, and I recognize that the law that the POWs sued under (the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996) is designed mainly to deplete the assets of anti-American regimes like Cuba and Iran rather than for the purpose of securing any meaningful “justice,” I have to say this is an incredibly boneheaded decision, one that Congress would do well to force reconsideration of.

I don’t always agree with Stephen Bainbridge, but he has a point about Paul Krugman’s latest missive:

Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. (Link)

Which is precisely the Democrats’ problem. In their party, being what the Economist’s Lexington called “a moderate governor of one of the most left-wing states in the union,” qualifies you as a centrist. There’s a big difference between being a centrist in Vermont (or Manhattan or LA) and being a centrist in, say, Missouri.

Of course, that cuts both ways; a Republican at the center of his or her party (Thad Cochran? Bob Taft?) is going to be well to the right of the centrist voter in many states, and certainly would not be the same thing the media would label a “moderate” Republican (someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, or Christie Todd Whitman). Howard Dean may well be at the center of his party (or at least the “Democratic wing” of it, as he would put it), but that doesn’t make him a political moderate like fellow Democrats Martin Frost, John Tanner, and Joe Lieberman.

Nice to see the appellate courts still wasting time on claims of reporters’ privilege; it’s only been 33 years since Branzburg v. Hayes after all. And, if we’re really lucky, this means the stupid Valerie Plame business will be settled once and for all… of course, I’ve said that before. (þ: OTB)

Via the AP: Rolls-Royce announces plans for Mississippi engine-testing plant:

BAY ST. LOUIS — Airplane engine maker Rolls-Royce said today it had selected a site in Mississippi to replace its outdoor engine-testing facility in central England.

Rolls-Royce PLC announced in 2001 that it planned to close the facility in Hucknall, 120 miles north of London, once it found a new location. The firm said today it had chosen NASA‘s John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis — its first partnership deal with the space agency.

“This move highlights our growing commitment to the U.S.,” James M. Guyette, president and CEO, Rolls-Royce North America, said in a statement. “As a global company with nearly 100 years of operations in this country, we are pleased to be able to conduct this important work on these shores.”

Among the engines to be tested at the Stennis site are the Rolls-Royce engines for both the Airbus A380 “Superjumbo” and Boeing 787 (formerly 7E7) Dreamliner.

Mike Hollihan looks at the motley collection of felons and other miscreants hanging around Shelby County’s halls of government today and wonders where the scandal is.

James Joyner on the interminable Terry Schiavo saga:

While the issue of withdrawing life support is a messy one, I have a rough time getting too upset with the husband, who I consider the real victim in this case. His wife died fifteen years ago but, because of advancements in medical technology and the stubborn resistance of his in-laws to facing the truth, he’s being cast as the villain for simply wanting to pull the plug and get on with his life. He shouldn’t have to divorce a woman who died fifteen years ago in order to do that.

Why the Schindlers have any legal standing in this case is beyond me. Terri was an adult who was legally married. Absent a living will or other document whereby she was able to establish her desires before she entered a vegetative state, her husband is the one who has to make these crucial determinations. Certainly, he is in a better position to know what she would have wanted than the Florida legislature or Jeb Bush.

Is my brain malfunctioning or is this New York Times account of the Iraqi election outcome actually less pessimistic than this WaPo account?

Of course, the WaPo account spends most of its first half trying to play up the idea that Iran and Iraq (two countries that had a bloody decade-long war in the not-too-distant past) are about to become buddy-buddy, with a generous assist from Juan “Stopped Clock” Cole, then undercuts it completely with this paragraph:

U.S. and regional analysts agree that Iraq is not likely to become an Iranian surrogate. Iraq’s Arabs and Iran’s Persians have a long and rocky history. During the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s Shiite troops did not defect to Iran.

On the other hand, the Times finds not an anti-American front emerging between the “pro-Iranian” Shiites and Kurds, but instead a recipe for weak government:

The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state. ...

The vote tally, which appeared to leave the Shiite alliance with about 140 of the national assembly’s 275 seats, fell short of what Shiite leaders had been expecting, and seemed to blunt some of the triumphant talk that could already be heard in some corners. The final results seemed to ease fears among Iraq’s Sunni, Kurd and Christian minorities that the leadership of the Shiite majority might feel free to ignore minority concerns, and possibly fall under the sway of powerful clerics, some of whom advocate the establishment of a strict Islamic state.

As a result, some Iraqi leaders predicted Sunday that the Shiite alliance would try to form a “national unity government,” containing Kurdish and Sunni leaders, as well as secular Shiites, possibly including the current prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Such a leadership would all but ensure that no decisions would be taken without a broad national consensus.

I tend to think that the Times is more accurate here, but only time will tell.

Update: On the other hand, Steven Taylor thinks the Times is making too much of “problems” that are really Comparative Politics 101, while Dan Drezner tries to wrap his head around the WaPo piece as well.

Half-Bakered’s Mike Hollihan is working on getting U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. a nickname with some street cred, since his having the skin tone of an albino and a juris doctor from Michigan apparently aren’t kicking it on South Third. I’m thinking something like “Master H” or “F-Unit” would work nicely.

Catallarchy’s Micha Ghertner suggested that “Libertarian Girl,” a blog I’ve never even read or seen before today, is not actually operated by a libertarian girl; the author confirms the theory. Ah, well, for those of you who have to get your libertarianism from a youthful female perspective, there’s always Jacqueline and Amber. (þ: JMPP)

Update: Wizbang!, always your home for coverage of the underbelly of the blogosphere, is now on the case.

The next time someone wants to sell you on the whole “red state/blue state” thing, point them to this AP piece:

LITTLE ROCK — In a bid for more national exposure, the Arkansas owners of the Miss Gay America Pageant have sold the franchise to a Mississippi company.

The annual pageant has had its headquarters in Little Rock for more than three decades. Organizers describe it as the largest and most prestigious female impersonator competition in the nation.

Former owner Norman Jones sold the pageant, its copyright and a smaller circuit of competitions on Feb. 4 to L&T Entertainment, a firm in Nesbit, Miss., about 20 miles south of Memphis.

Brian J. Noggle helps Bowling for Soup answer one of the rhetorical questions from “1985.” But when did Ozzy become an actor?

Another entry in our ongoing series, “cut the legislature’s pay and send them home”: the nitwits in the House have managed to make it harder to buy cold medicine than it is to vote in this state.

Buying cold medicine could require showing photo ID, signing your name and talking to the pharmacist under House bills passed Thursday.

The next time any Democrats in the legislature start whining about requiring voter ID, someone ought to remind them they voted for this idiotic bill.

As previously noted, it’s been announced that the September 3 season-opener between Ole Miss and the University of Memphis will be moved to Labor Day afternoon and televised on ESPN, according to today’s Clarion-Ledger.

Woot! (þ: Slashdot)

Steve Verdon has a good post on power supply problems in Texas. I added a few comments, taken from memory after being out of the power industry for several years. Take them for what they’re worth. The blog is free, isn’t it?:

I’ve been out of the power industry for six years now, but, based on what I knew then, Texas has even more problems. Every time I heard about Texas during the deregulation of generation during the 90s, it was always followed with a comment about them not being hooked into the national grid. If still accurate, they have prevented themselves from benefiting from surplus capacity in other states. Extraordinarily dumb, not unlike California limiting their grid operators to the day ahead market and making long-term purchasing agreements illegal.