I’ve seen this poll in a number of places, but Volokh conspirator Orin Kerr is the first I’ve seen that really dissects the results. Do 44% of Americans really want to curtail the civil liberties of Muslims in America? It doesn’t sound like it.

On Thursday, the Texas Transportation Commission announced a private contract to build a 316-mile toll road parallel to the congested I-35 corridor. Spanish toll road builder and operator Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte will pay the $6 billion construction cost and an additional $1.2 billion in concession fees to the state of Texas for improvements to other highways; in exchange, Cintra will collect tolls on the route for 50 years.

In North America, Cintra is one of the investment partners in the 407 ETR bypass of Toronto and recently made an agreement to operate the Chicago Skyway toll road (a section of I-90 connecting downtown Chicago to the Indiana Toll Road) for the next 99 years. TxDOT has an overview of the statewide Trans Texas Corridor plan; more details on this particular project are here and here if you can read Spanish.

Christie Todd Whitman gets it:

A clear and present danger Republicans face today is that the party will now move so far to the right that it ends up alienating centrist voters and marginalizing itself.

On the other hand, the eternally vapid Kathryn Jean Lopez proves her need to stick to pimping subscriptions (☣) rather than attempting to make political commentary, while the new-to-me Ed Driscoll apparently also needs to make the steep investment in a copy of Downs. Barring such expenditure, at the very least they should realize that telling moderate Republicans to go fuck themselves until their votes are next needed in November 2006 is a bit rude. (þ: memeorandum)

I just watched I, Robot (DVD, Book) and have a couple of questions for you sci-fi buffs out there. Not surprisingly, the movie is no better on its second viewing than on the first. However, it did make me want to read the book—which is one of my holiday to-do items—and it’s not bad as pure entertainment.

Having me question sci-fi logic is about as useful as watching a Hollywood movie discuss economics, which this one does—badly. Even so, I have a question: why not just modify Asimov’s first law to say that a robot shall not harm the life or liberty of a human? Because it might ruin the potential for future books pondering this dilemma?

Next question: one of the reviews of the copy of I, Robot (the book) says Asimov is part of the “ABCs” of sci-fi, with the others being Bradbury and Clarke. Why not extend it by one letter and have “D”, as in Dick, Philip K.? Is he not as respected as the other three? If not, why not?

Sign up for the one, the only Dead Pool 2005, and tell Lair we sent you—we’re currently tied for second in the referral contest, so every roster counts!

Greg Goelzhauser has returned from haïtus at Crescat Sententia with some thoughts in response to Dan Herzog on whether or not the public is “incurably ignorant” about politics. My general thought on such matters, oft-repeated here, is that any democratic society in which it might be rational for the public at large* to not be ignorant about anything beyond the most trivial of political matters would be incredibly unstable politically.

That said, Greg’s point about social norms is well-taken; knowing things about politics is excellent fodder for cocktail-party discussion, even if the details don’t matter for voting behavior one whit.† Clearly the answer, then, is to invite more people to attend cocktail parties, a program I’d fully support.

I hate these f*cking guys. They’re as bad as Illinois Nazis. Not only do they use opposition to the Iraqi war—which can be done in a principled fashion, as it is by many—as a means for bringing, Trojan-horse-like, xenophobia to mainstream outlets that would otherwise be revulsed by it; now, it’s come to include homophobia.

To begin with, I’ve had run-ins with these idiots before. They worship Rockwell—whom I despise, it’s no secret—and lose all sense of proportion when his views are challenged. They’ve been big supporters of antiwar.com, and have used it as a means of pushing rather radical notions: every attempt to support democracy abroad is seen as interference; every foreign supporter is a neocon stooge, or quisling. Even Pat Tillman, who died with the idea of protecting his country in mind, is fodder for their ends. It’s disgusting.

I would write more, but this is getting me a bit angry. Plus, it’s getting late; I was hoping for a peaceful cruise across the blogosphere before bed. Tom has more here and here. Read the comments; follow the links.

(þ: Volokh)

Currently listening to: Dio

One year ago, Al Qaeda believed they should work against the United States, rather than working to destabilize the Arab regimes. One year ago, Al Qaeda was focusing outward, rather than inward. One year ago, Al Qaeda believed in coexistence with the House of Saud.

One year ago, Al Qaeda believed the Caliphate could best be established by detente with the House of Saud, and War against the United States.

Today, Al Qaeda seeks detente with the US, and war against the House of Saud.

(þ: The Professor)

It may seem that we’ve been riding the Samizdata coattails recently, and maybe we have, but they’ve been on a roll and Britain is dealing with many of the same issues that the U.S. faces. Among these is habeas corpus. Our constitution provides us with guidance on the matter, thankfully, and it really hasn’t been as big of an issue as it might otherwise be.

The constitution allows Congress—some would say the President as well, during times of war (I disagree)—to place limits on habeas corpus, but in general it’s understood that the government may not violate it and must follow Congress’s will on the matter. In fact, the most notable, and contentious, example I can think of is the case of Yasser Hamdi. Even then, once it was established that Hamdi was born in the U.S.—and had a claim to U.S. citizenship—he was removed from Gitmo and brought to a U.S. prison where he stayed until released earlier this year, after renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Presumably, if caught in terrorist activities in the future, he won’t be given this kind of consideration.

Without getting too far into the difficulties around Gitmo, it seems to me that President Bush could have avoided that whole controversy by establishing military tribunals for the Gitmo inmates from the beginning, rather than asserting that they could be detained indefinitely with no judicial review at all. Perhaps a reader that is also a lawyer could provide some details and additional perspective.

My point in all of this—and I’ve definitely taken the long way around the barn getting there—is that habeas corpus is an essential barrier between us and a despotic government. Britain is dealing with that very issue now with regard to their own citizens:

I said that the power of detention [without charge or trial] is at present confined to foreigners and I would not like to give the impression that all that was necessary was to extend the power to United Kingdom citizens as well. In my opinion, such a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

“The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.”—Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Disagreements?

Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata has a post on the Millau Viaduct, the final link in the Paris-Barcelona autoroute, which opens today in southern France. More information on this long cable-stayed span—which cost €394 million ($530 million) for a 2.5 km (1.6 mile) span—is available here.

A brief peek inside the “fourth wall” of my life:

• I had a really good birthday yesterday, including dinner at Old Venice and a DVD-watching session† with my good friends Chad, Kamilla, and Kelly* at the humble abode.
• My dad got me one of these for my birthday, which has already been something of a conversation-piece and satisfies some of my cravings for Blinkenlights. Plus it looks festive next to my holiday penguins and facstaff party door-prize poinsettia.
• Normally I don’t blog about students, but one of my students from this semester has an interesting piece up at the Jackson Free Press website; I don’t necessarily agree with the all of its politics, but it’s thought-provoking nonetheless.

I haven’t been responding to a lot of comments lately, and please don’t take it personally.

The only reason I’ve had any time to blog is because exams ended last week, though my work did not. Christmas is a lot like a stay of execution in grad school; I still have a lot of shortcomings to address, knowledge-wise, and it will probably take me until next summer to handle them to my satisfaction. So, during the day I address deficiencies and in the evening have been able to blog a bit.

It doesn’t leave much time for responding to comments, though I do read them all.

People blog about their obsessions, and one of mine is Martin Scorsese movies. He has a new movie coming out tomorrow, The Aviator, and it will probably cut into my blogging time.

Here’s an excerpt from a NYT interview with Scorsese:

With “The Aviator,” the pressure is on, because assignments should be hits, to enable quixotic auteurs to win backing for the movies they really want to make. Mr. Scorsese’s labors of love – movies like “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Kundun” (1997) and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) – aren’t the kinds of projects studios line up for. His most recent film, “Gangs of New York,” released two years ago, was a 25-year labor of love whose box office returns weren’t overwhelming in relation to its $100 million budget.

Jay Cocks, a screenwriter who is Mr. Scorsese’s friend and sometime collaborator (on “The Age of Innocence” and “Gangs of New York”) explained the difference for audiences: “Movies like ‘Age of Innocence’ are what my wife calls eat-your-spinach movies. ‘The Aviator’ is not an eat-your-spinach movie. This is dessert.”

At least that’s the hope. As Hughes, Leonardo DiCaprio is meant to supply the sugar rush for the young moviegoers who make films into blockbusters. Mr. DiCaprio has been the driving force behind “The Aviator.” He is the reason it was made and the reason Mr. Scorsese, who directed him in “Gangs,” was offered the picture when Michael Mann decided not to direct.

My personal favorites are the troika: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, but as I said above, I like pretty much everything he’s done, with the noted exceptions taken into account.

Anne Applebaum is one of my favorite columnists because she’s willing to take on just about anyone, including the left, though she’s an editor at the WaPo. She also wrote what is probably the definitive book on the Soviet gulags. And she’s a babe, from the looks of things—and I wasn’t influenced by the song Jet City Woman, which I just happen to be listening to at the moment. [Yeah, I realize that’s a “stream of consciousness”-type comment.]

Given her experience covering the collapse of communism in the early 90s, she’s a good person to look to for the state of affairs in Russia at the moment. It ain’t pretty:

She had just turned 18. She was a freshman at a small American college. In flawless English, she explained that she was home for Christmas, visiting her family in Moscow. We spoke about how much her city had changed in the past decade, about the new shops, about how many Muscovites now travel abroad. Then, because we were stuck in Moscow traffic and had run out of small talk, I asked her what she thought about recent events in Ukraine. “We’re really upset about it,” she said. At first I thought she meant that she and her family were upset because the Russian government had helped the Ukrainian government try to steal the election. But in fact, they were upset because they thought Ukraine might leave Russia’s sphere of influence. “If all of these countries around us join NATO and the European Union, Russia will be isolated,” she said. “We must prevent that from happening.”

These were casual comments, and they came from someone who was in no way a typical Russian. But that was precisely the oddness of it: A young woman, educated in the West, felt affronted because Russia’s neighbors want to join Western institutions. And compared with the views of some others, who are not educated in the West, hers are relatively mild. A few days later, at a seminar for high school teachers on “civic education,” I was angrily asked why the U.S. government funds Chechen terrorism and why the American government wants to destroy Russia. Certainly not everyone in Moscow labors under the belief, which my companion in the car also expressed, that Russia will never—can never—join any Western institutions, or that Russia must make a “last stand” against Western encroachment, or that Russia must, at all costs, defend the last redoubt of its empire. Last weekend, at a somewhat ramshackle congress of Russian democratic and human rights activists, I listened to a handful of them argue passionately about the nature of Russian xenophobia and how to stop it.

Applebaum’s old employer, The Economist, lead with Russian decline this week as well:

THE drama playing out in the streets of Ukraine in recent weeks has been gripping in its own terms. But its bigger significance for the West lies north-east of Kiev, in Russia. As the tide moves towards a presidential election victory for the opposition leader, Victor Yushchenko, on December 26th, the efforts of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to thwart him have looked ever more cack-handed. But they have also depressed those who still hoped that Mr Putin’s Russia might move, slowly and tortuously, on to a path leading to political liberalism—and that he might prove an ally not a foe of the West.

As if Russia’s intervention in Ukraine were not enough, the Kremlin’s anti-western rhetoric has also risen. In an excess of hypocrisy even by Soviet standards, Mr Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have accused the West of meddling in Ukraine in order to destabilise the region (see article). This week Mr Lavrov attacked the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose monitors declared the Ukrainian election fraudulent three weeks ago. Mr Putin then widened the field of assault by criticising Iraq’s interim government and its plans to hold elections next month.

Update: Dale Franks has more. He also reminded of Churchill's quote on Russia:

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

I’ve actually been an admirer of how the Bush Administration has dealt with North Korea. It was one of the areas that Kerry tried to use to distinguish himself from Bush on foreign policy and ended up further alienating me in the process. I never really believed he would abandon the six-way talks and deal with the Norks directly—up to, and including, re-negotiating the armistice of 1953—but was trying to draw a distinction between himself and Bush.

I said at the time that I was opposed to anything that marginalizes China, since they are the only country that has any real pull with the Norks, outside of the threat of force. Apparently we will deal with them directly on a limited basis:

The Bush administration is willing to hold limited face-to-face talks with North Korea and will continue to help feed the country, but will not sweeten a proposed trade of economic concessions for a halt in development of nuclear weapons, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Wednesday.

Maintaining a tough line, Ambassador Christopher Hill said, “They have to come to the table and respond to the proposal,” which includes guarantees the United States will not invade North Korea.

Hill also stressed that any direct negotiations with North Korea would be conducted only under the umbrella of the six-country format the Bush administration set up, in contrast to the Clinton administration’s one-on-one negotiations.

“We are prepared to talk to North Korea as part of the six-party process,” Hill said at the Asia Society. “But we are not prepared to undermine the six-party process” that includes China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in the talks.

We’ll see. I think this limited offer is just to keep the DPRK from walking away altogether.

They’ve said the proper things all week, praising Eli Manning’s arm strength and reminding that nothing is given on a football field, even when a team on an 11-game winning streak meets one on a six-game losing streak.

But the closer the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense gets to facing No. 1 draft pick Manning, the more excited they get. They see the hesitancy in his eyes and the tentativeness of his throws, and they can’t wait to get at him.

While none of the Steelers wants to provide bulletin board material for the slumbering New York Giants by saying they erred by drafting Manning, it’s obvious they don’t feel he’s on the same plane as their own rookie quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger.

To them, Roethlisberger has never seemed nervous or intimidated, or exactly how they expect Manning to be when the Steelers (12–1) play the Giants (5–8) Saturday at Giants Stadium.

I’m really with Volokh conspirator Orin Kerr on this one: it’s hard to throw a pity party for a professor who has to “endure” Kerry / Edwards bumper stickers and a left-leaning faculty. His biggest gripe—horror of horrors—is that some faculty members will skip the RNC. Hardly evidence of oppression. Here’s “William Pilger’s” take:

My new tenure-track digs include a large office in a historic building with leaded-pane windows, sills deep enough to stack files on, and shelves on three walls filled with my own books, departmental gems, and junk from years past.

All the signs point to it: I’m finally a bona-fide member of academe.

Yet I’m gradually coming to realize that my membership card should read “in but not of”—something the 2004 presidential election set in stark relief. Maybe I should have seen it coming all along.

I was just finishing up the requisite two-year temporary appointment last spring—at my alma mater, of all places—when a relatively small group of conservative students asserted itself more publicly than the administration wished. Their claim: A leftist bias emanating from the college administration and faculty stifled discussion and real thinking in the classroom.

I had reached the same conclusion when I was a student there. During an “Introduction to Political Science” class, for example, I was required to write paper on how to solve global warming. My paper suggested that perhaps there was no reason to, since the scientific evidence was inconclusive. I got a D.

It occurs to me that some of the ongoing conventions of our little weblog may be unfamiliar to new visitors… so here are a few peculiarities that may be helpful to know.

The Mad Hibernian, Off Wing Opinion and James Joyner react to reports that the D.C. Council has approved a financing plan for the relocation of the Montréal Expos to Washington that doesn’t comport with MLB’s wishes. The Hibernian writes:

I’m sympathetic to the argument that D.C. taxpayers shouldn’t get stuck with the whole tab for a new stadium, but the City Council should honor the city’s original agreement with MLB.

It seems to me, on the other hand, that the city council as a whole is under no obligation to honor an agreement made with MLB by the mayor and a couple of city councilmen. If Mayor Williams wanted an agreement that would stick, he should have secured the backing of the council in the first place, rather than striking a deal independently and hoping a lame duck city council would treat it as a fait accompli.

And why is she quoting Vaclav Havel about orientals?

Fresh off reports that 49ers coach Dennis Erickson was the leading candidate to replace David Cutcliffe, the Clarion-Ledger is now reporting that Erickson has withdrawn his name from consideration, yet school officials still claim they will make a deal sometime this afternoon.

In other Ole Miss-related news, David Cutcliffe’s former “prevent offense” sidekick John Latina has taken a demotion in the coaching ranks from offensive coordinator to coach the offensive line at Notre Dame, after initially agreeing to work for Steve Spurrier at South Carolina; ESPN.com reports that Cutcliffe will be joining the Irish as well, taking the role of offensive coordinator. John Hunt is Latina’s replacement at Carolina.

Update: Michael Wallace reports that the Rebels have hired Ed Orgeron, the current assistant head coach and defensive coordinator of the University of Southern California Trojans; the official introduction is scheduled for tomorrow morning at the Oxford campus in the indoor practice facility.

Also, this is my entry in today’s OTB Traffic Jam; bigjim has more.

Sgt. Hook, as a gesture towards his men, is retiring from blogging. I’ve been reading him for the last 18 months or so—swapped a few emails as well—and he’ll be sorely missed. He’s a credit to his country.

Quiggin is a social democrat so, naturally, he sees the recent gains in capitalism (neoliberalism in his lingo) as just making the sectors where capitalism succeeds smaller and making the increase of government interference an inevitability due to capitalism’s own successes. For instance, he lists agriculture and manufacturing as areas that are appropriate to capitalism, but healthcare and education, not so much.

Europe will get increasingly economically weak for the next several decades and almost all of it can be accounted for in their demographics, not their philosophy. If their philosophy stays exactly the same, they will see much more government. That's not a philosophy that's ascendant; rather, one that is stuck in its own demographic constraints.

Like Quiggin, I’m influenced by my own views and disagree with his. He sees increased government interference, and he’s probably right about most of the rest of the world, but the U.S. is still an open question as I see it. Europe will be experiencing dramatically increasing median age, which will propel its welfare states even higher than they are now as a percentage of GDP (typically around 50%, as opposed to 32% for the U.S.). The only real hope they have for immigration is from the Middle East, from a culture largely untouched by the Enlightenment. In my opinion, it’s far more likely that we’ll be seeing a Europe in the future that’s far more illiberal (in the classical sense) if they accept new immigrants, and economically so even if they don’t.

The Economist has an excellent population survey from a couple of years ago that sheds a bit of light on the situation:

For 50 years, America and the nations of Western Europe have been lumped together as rich countries, sharing the same basic demographic features: stable populations, low and declining fertility, increasing numbers of old people. For much of that period, this was true. But in the 1980s, the two sides began to diverge. The effect was muted at first, because demographic change is slow. But it is also remorseless, and is now beginning to show up.

America’s census in 2000 contained a shock. The population turned out to be rising faster than anyone had expected when the 1990 census was taken. There are disputes about exactly why this was (more on that shortly). What is not in doubt is that a gap is beginning to open with Europe. America’s fertility rate is rising. Europe’s is falling. America’s immigration outstrips Europe’s and its immigrant population is reproducing faster than native-born Americans. America’s population will soon be getting younger. Europe’s is ageing.

Unless things change substantially, these trends will accelerate over coming decades, driving the two sides of the Atlantic farther apart. By 2040, and possibly earlier, America will overtake Europe in population and will come to look remarkably (and, in many ways, worryingly) different from the Old World.

In 1950, Western Europe was exactly twice as populous as the United States: 304m against 152m. (This article uses the US Census Bureau’s definition of “Europe”, which includes all countries that were not communist during the cold war. The 15 countries that make up the European Union are a slightly smaller sample: they had a population of 296m in 1950.) Both sides of the Atlantic saw their populations surge during the baby boom, then grow more slowly until the mid-1980s. Even now, Europe’s population remains more than 100m larger than America’s.

In the 1980s, however, something curious began to happen. American fertility rates—the average number of children a woman can expect to bear in her lifetime—suddenly began to reverse their decline. Between 1960 and 1985, the American fertility rate had fallen faster than Europe’s, to 1.8, slightly below European levels and far below the “replacement level” of 2.1 (the rate required to keep the population steady). By the 1990s American fertility had rebounded, rising back to just below the 2.1 mark.

According to Bill Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan, the median age in America in 2050 will be 36.2. In Europe it will be 52.7. That is a stunning difference, accounted for almost entirely by the dramatic ageing of the European population. At the moment, the median age is 35.5 in America and 37.7 in Europe. In other words, the difference in the median age is likely to rise from two to 17 years by 2050.

The U.S. is not settled by a long shot. First, we had a chance to follow Europe towards social democracy in the 1970s. Instead, we elected Reagan and enacted tax cuts—very steep ones which were partially repealed in the coming years. We’ve done something similar with President Bush who has been characteristically headstrong in his refusal to raise taxes as the boomers start to retire. He’s pushing for reform of social security and has already implemented MSAs on a limited basis. He’s right to do it, as well. I would far rather experience some short-term pain—even excruciating pain—rather than suffer slow decline, which will surely happen with the expansion of government that Quiggin envisions.

He’s an Australian and I’ll wish him well in his country’s little adventure. I just don’t want us to follow them.

Perry is on a bit of a roll. It appears that the UK is need of an ACLU, and perhaps a First Amendment as well. The UK apparently has a semi-funtioning Nazi Party whose members are getting arrested for “thought crimes”.

As Perry notes in his title, Nazis are pretty easy pickings. Totalitarians routinely go after easy targets—other totalitarians they oppose, pornographers and the like—to establish a precedent for broader moves against freedom. The UK is looking increasingly hostile to free speech—the canary in the coalmine for freedom, you might say.

Update: In a later comment to the same post, Perry, correctly in my estimation, says that imams, as well as their opponents, should be allowed to say whatever hateful things they wish to say. Fellow Brits should likewise be able to call them morons for saying as much. It's the exchange of ideas, however repugnant.

Another Update: Surprisingly, I managed to forget to include this quote from Jefferson, which seems wholly appropriate:

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?" - Thomas Jefferson

For the first time in two weeks I was able to both get a good night’s sleep and get up at a reasonable hour. And, after spending a little time around the blogosphere, a theme began to emerge: misogyny. Much of it was done in good humor, like this excerpt from Steve:

No woman has ever forgiven any man for anything, since the dawn of time. And the things we’re least likely to be forgiven for are the things THEY did or caused. Example: you dropped your girlfriend because she refused to stop stabbing you. This makes you a touchy bastard who can’t tell sincere violence from her special way of telling you she feels neglected. Example: you dropped your girlfriend because you kept finding her at Motel 6 under guys who liked telling her what to do. This makes you a resentful wuss who watches too many reruns of “Maude.”

Look on the bright side, though: It’s much better to be an unattractive man than an unattractive woman. Ugly guys like me are just one lottery ticket away from being sex symbols. But an ugly gal? Bottoms up on the Drano, honey.

Michele does an excellent summary of this as follows:

Men like sex. They like football and basketball but they like sex more. Women don’t like sex as much. Their version of porn is home improvement shows. They get off on Trading Spaces. Women like shiny metal kitchen appliances. Men like power tools. You can take away a man’s football as long as you replace it with some p*ssy, but don’t take away a woman’s decorating show, because not even a ten inch d*ck will be able to replace that.

Not that this is related, but Rachel Lucas is back in the saddle as the Blue-Eyed Infidel. She doesn’t have her picture up this time, but if memory serves she’s quite the babe. Misogynistic of me? Maybe. BTW, Allah might want to reconsider that lottery win.

(þ: The Professor.)