I just got back from Oxford after the 20–3 rout by the Rebels of Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl. It was cold and dreary for almost the entire game, although thankfully the rain was never heavy. Freshman QB Robert Lane saw most of the action under center for the Rebels, and racked up over 200 yards of combined offense, leading the team in both rushing (97) and passing (108) yardage; Ethan Flatt saw limited action after throwing a pick on the first play from scrimmage, Micheal Spurlock didn’t see the any game time, and scout team QB Johnny Wickham came on for mop-up duty with less than two minutes left with a lot of the other seniors. If Lane can improve his passing, and if the coaching staff can give him some different option plays (like some double and triple options), I think he will be an effective starter for the next three years.

On the other side of the ball, a combination of somewhat-improved defense and Bulldog offensive ineptitude led to an embarrassing Mississippi State performance. Star RB Jerious Norwood was contained to 11 rushes for 24 yards, State passed for zero yards in the first half (and only made one first down before the halftime break), and QB Omarr Conner seemed to spend more time on the turf than in the pocket.

Speculation now abounds over the future of the coaching staff; a housecleaning at the coordinator positions seems almost certain, and it’s still possible Cutcliffe will get the axe, particularly if Pete Boone thinks he can upgrade to someone like UTEP’s Mike Price or Memphis’ Tommy West. Allegedly such things are to be discussed at a meeting between Boone and Cutcliffe on Monday.

I guess congratulations are in order for my co-blogger, and host, Chris. He’s an Ole Miss alum and his team just whipped mine in the Egg Bowl. Even if State wins every Egg Bowl until I die there’s no way we’ll get a winning record against the evil ones.

On the bright side, Nebraska just finished its first losing season in 43 years.

Second link þ PoliBlog.

Tim Sandefur has a reader who doubts the continuing existence of the Federated group of department stores. They seem to be very much alive and are apparently consolidating most of their brands, such as the Memphis-based Goldsmith’s chain, under the more famous Macy’s banner.

Today’s Clarion-Ledger possibly engages in a bit of agenda setting by suggesting the state flag issue will return from the dead during the 2005 regular session. While I have to say I’m not particularly enamored of the existing state flag, and was one of those who voted to change it back in 2001 (even though the alternative wasn’t exactly the best state flag ever designed either), if anyone seriously thinks a change will stick they’re going to have to make a lot more of an effort than they did during the previous referendum campaign, which was generally spearheaded by a group of has-beens and never-wases.

Why didn’t I think of this?

Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.

The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the vast majority of bananas. Its other features include multiple small perforations to facilitate ventilation thereby preventing premature ripening and a sturdy locking mechanism to keep the Banana Guard closed. The Banana Guard is of course dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

(þ Boing Boing.)

Well, maybe they do: they should have secured the royalties agreement in advance. I guess it was just a matter of time.

A group of former London state school children who sang on Pink Floyd’s 1979 classic “Another Brick In The Wall” have lodged a claim for unpaid royalties.

Twenty-three teenage pupils from Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals for the track, which became an anthem for children with the chorus “We don’t need no education.”

On hearing the song, the headmistress banned the pupils from appearing on television or video—leaving them no evidence and making it harder for them to claim royalties—and the local school authority described the lyrics as “scandalous.”

Jeralyn has a great discussion going on at her place regarding the ICC. I am almost inalterably opposed to it—it’s an abomination and an attempt to alter our form of government outside the amendment process—and here’s what I had to add:

My hostility to the ICC is pretty well known from a few weeks ago when we had a massive thread on the subject. I loath the idea and see it as inconsistent with self-government. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of the UN itself.

One point we didn’t touch on: how could such a court ever be considered constitutional? Wouldn’t we be, in effect, creating a court higher than our own supreme court? Yeah, yeah, I know all about the “if your country fails to act” stuff attached to the ICC, but if the supreme court refuses to act that doesn’t mean they haven’t answered. They’ve answered and the answer is no.

Besides, there is only one punishement for a president carrying out his duties while in office: impeachment. He can still be prosecuted for violating laws we recognize, but does international law qualify? I doubt it.

It’s pretty much a non-issue anyway. There’s no way we’ll ever ratify that treaty and Congress has already passed the Invade The Hague Act to allow the President to use the military if they nab our soldiers or officials.

She’s frequently wrong, sometimes embarrassing and even lies on occasion, but this time Dowd is right and The Professor has taken an unnecessary swipe at her:

Somebody tell me what quantity of explosive material they have found through these strip searches, because I’ve got a hunch it’s zero. How many billions are they wasting on this?

Maybe we’re not at the Philip K. Dick level of technology yet. But how about some positive profiling? If airport security can have a watch list for the bad guys, why can’t it develop a watch list for the good guys? Can’t there be a database of trustworthy American frequent travelers who are not going to secrete things in their bras? After all, no one is going to sneak anything in there without our knowledge. Can they at least get a screen?

True, there’s nothing in her column that’s original—the good guy list was proposed a couple of years ago when I was traveling all the time and actually cared—but it is being brought up at a good time (which is, all the time) and it does succinctly describe several current problems with airline security. It also describes security deficiencies elsewhere. I want to retain the credibility to criticize her in the future, so I’ll skip poking her on this one.

There’s been a good deal of speculation around the blogosphere that North Korea is somehow on the ropes. I will be thrilled if this is actually the case, but, as in the title to this post, it’s hard to know what’s going on due to people’s motivation. Why would Mr. Kim order his own portraits removed? It’s counterintuitive, but he could be doing it to give a false impression of weakness or a false impression of instability. Perception matters in negotiations, as does perception of motive.

If the countries that are allied against North Korea re-enter the negotiations with too much self-confidence—an increased perception of success—they might act in ways that help make those expectations true. For instance, they might give in to previously failed strategies, like bribing the Norks to get rid of their nukes. It would give Mr. Kim a little breathing room at home by alleviating some starvation and would give us the hope that he might dismantle his nukes, in spite of his past behavior.

I’m really hoping that North Korea is near collapse—it would be a gift to the world and the North Korean people—but I won’t hold my breath. We’ve been at a standoff with them for more than 50 years; I don’t expect it to change soon. I’ll believe it when it happens.

I’m afraid I don’t have any great expertise to offer in the realm of Ukranian politics, so I’ve not really had anything to say about the ongoing crisis there. That said, I tend to agree with Dan Drezner that the internal dynamics of Ukranian politics suggest that the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, is unlikely to succeed in his effort to get the (apparently fraudulent) poll results overturned.

I do note, however, that the world press seems to be taking concerns about this election much more seriously than concerns about the Hugo Chávez recall referendum—where similarly large gaps between exit poll results and the actual tallies appeared. I also regret that the combination of occasionally-incompetent election officials, opaque electronic voting equipment, and conspiracy-mongering by people who should know better have coincided to leave the U.S. in a weaker position to contest suspect elections elsewhere in the world.

ThinkGeek is selling “infectiously cute” plush microbes. Collect them all! There’s flesh-eating streptococcus, ebola, mono, and my favorite, beer yeast.

I’m now most of the way through (with some help from a few students) entering the data from our exit poll three weeks ago. Based on 632 respondents, there are a few things that jump out at me:

• Never ask people if they consider themselves born-again Christians, because apparently they don’t understand that question. Ditto asking them to figure out if they are “Protestant.”
• People who don’t have friends or family members who are gay were 2.5 times (!) more likely to vote for the same-sex marriage ban than those who do have gay friends or family members. This suggests that a compelling political strategy for gay people who support same-sex marriage is to come out.
• Younger people were significantly less likely to support the amendment than other people. This suggests that (combined with the strategy above) all people who support same-sex marriage should wait for a lot of old people to die off.
• Black voters are much more likely than white voters to believe Clarence Thomas is the chief justice of the United States.

There’s other fun stuff in the poll that I’ll get to once our last precinct is entered and the data is properly cleaned up.

By the way, if you need to enter a lot of data, I cannot say enough good things about EpiData. It’s very slick and the price is right.

that The Guardian sees the last election as a vote against the Enlightenment or that they think the Enlightenment’s a product of leftism.

And, on the other side of the pond, through Europe. We don’t have so many Christian fundamentalists any more. Compared with the American religious right, Rocco Buttiglione, the withdrawn Italian Catholic candidate for European commissioner, is a dangerous liberal. But we do have Islamic fundamentalists, in growing numbers. And, I would say, we have secular fundamentalists: people who believe that to live by the tenets of Islam, or other religions, is incompatible with what it is to be fully human, and want citizens to be educated and the state to legislate accordingly. While I have been in America, the possible consequences have been played out on the streets of prosperous, pacific, tolerant Holland, with the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the counter-attack on an Islamic school. If America has its culture wars, its Kulturkampf, so do we. And ours could be bloodier.

So the expressions of European solidarity after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks ( “Nous sommes tous Américains” ) should acquire a new meaning and a new context after the November 2 2004 elections. Hands need to be joined across the sea in an old cause: the defence of the Enlightenment. We are all blue Americans now.

(þ Political Theory Daily Review)

I read an article, which I received via Google News, about Gmail. When I finished reading I was surprised to find that it came from a high school paper in Maryland. Very well done.

Alex Tabarrok has an excellent post that explains the reason that the cost for most medical procedures skyrockets: third-party payers, including both government and private insurance.

Why the price decline in this market and not others?  Could it have something to do with the fact that laser eye surgery is not covered by insurance, not covered by Medicaid or Medicare, and not heavily regulated?  Laser eye surgery is one of the few health procedures sold in a free market with price advertising, competition and consumer driven purchases.  I’m seeing things more clearly already.

I’ve been a Steelers fan since childhood and still follow them to this day, though not as intensely as in the past. That’s starting to change, especially now that the election is over.

By the mid-80s I was wishing that Chuck Noll would disappear from Pittsburgh. He did some really great things, including creating the best football team of the 1970s. He was a phenomenal coach; he just overstayed his welcome.

Bill Cowher, at an unbelievably young 47, is not even near his prime and has shown a good ability to adapt that Noll didn’t have. Once the Steelers hit the skids in the early 80s he was unable to change with the times. Cowher has already proven he can adapt and I hope to see him on the Steelers’ sidelines for a long time to come:

Cowher’s career seems certain to end where it began, in his home town, where he and his wife, Kaye, have raised their three daughters, but with a contract extension and a team on a roll, that day isn’t likely to come soon.

“I don’t ever want to lose my passion for the game,” he said. “I love competing on Sundays. The losses are still agonizing. That never changes. But I still enjoy doing the work every day. I feel blessed to be doing something I love to do. I’ve got a great balance in my life right now, and I’m too young to stop. Anyway, they tell me retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Two former professors of mine from the University of Rochester, Ted Sider and Earl Conee, are collaborating on an introductory metaphysics text, Riddles of Existence.

The introduction and two chapters, “Personal Identity over Time” and “Why Not Nothing?” are online.

(þ Brian Weatherson.)

I’ve been reading about the weak dollar for more than two years and yet we have somehow managed to avoid economic armageddon. In fact, what’s concerned me more is the weird insistence on the part of China to peg their currency to ours at a very low value. Over the short term it hurts us by making China’s imports cheap and destroying jobs. Over the long term it causes China to destabilize their banking system by trying to maintain the peg against the dollar as it drops.

As I understand it (monetary theory is not my bag, man) the process involves printing additional yuan (or renmimbi) and simultaneously issuing new debt to soak up the new currency. I’ve heard these referred to as “wash transactions” or something similar. The additional debt that China must issue becomes untenable and destabilizes their banking system. Asset prices collapse, bank failures abound (because many debts are tied to asset prices) and the country enters a deflationary spiral, not unlike Japan in the 1980s. A spiral they have yet to recover from fully.

China raised interest rates for the first time since 1995 or 1996 a few weeks ago, so I was still under the impression that we were seeing 1980s Japan play itself out, only this time with China. Now, though, Robert Samuelson (and many, many others) is harping on it and I generally trust his judgment:

First, the American economy has grown faster than other advanced economies. Since 1990 U.S. economic growth has averaged 3 percent annually, compared with 2 percent for the European Union and 1.7 percent for Japan. America’s higher growth sucks in imports; Europe’s and Japan’s slower growth hurts U.S. exports.

Second, the global demand for dollars props up its exchange rate, making U.S. exports more expensive and U.S. imports cheaper. Indeed, many countries, particularly in Asia, fix their currencies to keep their exports competitive in the U.S. market. Instead of allowing surplus dollars to be sold on foreign exchange markets—lowering the dollar’s value—government central banks in Japan, China and other Asian countries have purchased more than $1 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities. Private investors have also bought lots of U.S. stocks and bonds. All told, foreigners own about 13 percent of U.S. stocks, 24 percent of corporate bonds and 43 percent of U.S. Treasury securities.

Up to a point, this arrangement benefits everyone. The world gets needed dollars; Americans get more imports, from cars to clothes. But we may now have passed that point. Hazards may outweigh benefits. The world may be receiving more dollars than it wants. A sell-off could spill over into the stock and bond markets and cause a deep global recession. Here’s how.

An interesting development in college football today as Fox Sports has won the bidding for the next BCS contract for 2007–10, including three of the four “plus one” title games. ABC retains its contract through 2014 for the Rose Bowl games, including the national title game in 2010 (to be played in Pasadena).

Is this a sign that Fox is planning to get serious about college football more generally? To date, Fox’s involvement in the sport has been limited to a schedule of second-tier Big XII and Pac-10 matchups on its cable outlets (along with some Division I-AA matchups) and broadcast rights to the Cotton Bowl. It’s likely that at least one major conference, like the Pac-10, would be interested in a national Saturday afternoon slot to compete with the SEC-CBS contract—thus avoiding the limited 3:30 coverage associated with ABC’s programming. Plus, Fox would be hard-pressed to come up with an exclusive announce team that works four days a year, suggesting that regular season college football on Fox is coming sooner rather than later.

Throughout the anglosphere the word “liberal” has been used scornfully for the past few decades and, interestingly, it’s used the same way in Europe, though for a different reason. We all know that it’s used as a proxy term for socialist, panty-waist, etc. in the U.S. However, in the rest of the world the left uses it in its original meaning as a term of scorn; globalization (capitalism) is known as neoliberalism and has been known to spark riots from time to time.

“Liberal” is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well—even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government—in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that “there is no such thing as society.”

Yet there ought to be a word—not to mention, here and there, a political party—to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government—but, crucially, it viewed a government’s efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.

Will Wilkinson has a great post on negative liberty and the welfare state that I largely agree with:

However, I think that among the best argument for robust negative or liberty rights, i.e., for institutionalized constraints on coercion, is that a reliable system of negative rights over time creates more abilities, opens more paths of feasible possibility for individual lives, than most alternative systems of rights. Like Friedman and Hayek, I’m in favor of a modest and well-designed social safety net. However, political systems built around positive rights tend toward sclerosis, thereby reducing rates of economic growth, and a high rate of economic growth, along with (negative) liberty and stability, is part of the trinity of primary political goods (says me). Furthermore, a system of positive rights, conceived as a system of guarantees, is often self-defeating, because it cannot overcome systemic moral hazard problems that, independently of growth problems, turn out foreclose many of the possibilities for life that the system of guarantees was meant to open.

I’m now listeneing to AC/DC. Not exactly 80s, but still good.

To begin with, thanks to Chris for inviting me along as a co-blogger. We share a lot of the same points of view, though I’m more of a statist than him, I suppose.

I’m still in school and time is scarce, but I’m going to try this group blog thing and see how it works. I think it’ll be fine and certainly beats maintaining a site of my own.

One of the things I’ve missed the most about blogging is seeing things of interest and not being able to tell people about it. Take, for instance, this post over at Volokh. I read that yesterday—follow the links, it’s a parody of a leftist / humanist denial of objective reality (it’s from academia, of course)—and was dying to blog about it.

Well, enough nostalgia. Thanks to Jeff for the early link and to James Joyner for the kind words of encouragement.

Speaking of Jeff Goldstein, I’m listening to Journey right now. How 80s am I? Ok, so I wasn’t done with the nostalgia…

Is amending the constitution to permit naturalized citizens to run for president gathering momentum? Both Kriston of Begging to Differ and Robert Tagorda take note of the group Amend for Arnold and Jen (referring to the governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm, respectively), spotlighted in today’s New York Times by William Safire.

Interestingly, three proposed constitutional amendments have been introduced during the 108th Congress to do just that:

• U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder of Arizona Arkansas (and 6 co-sponsors) introduced H.J.Res 59, which would provide that “[a] person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 35 years and who has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years shall be eligible to hold the office of President or Vice President.”
• U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California introduced H.J.Res 104, which would provide that “[a] person who is a citizen of the United States, who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 20 years, and who is otherwise eligible to hold the Office of the President, is not ineligible to hold that Office by reason of not being a native born citizen of the United States.”
• U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced S.J. Res 15, which would provide that “[a] person who is a citizen of the United States, who has been for 20 years a citizen of the United States, and who is otherwise eligible to the Office of President, is not ineligible to that Office by reason of not being a native born citizen of the United States” and include a seven-year limit on the ratification period. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proposed amendment last month.

As a matter of general principle (leaving aside the merits of Schwarzenegger and/or Granholm candidacies, which seem to me to be rather tangential) I think any of these proposed amendments would be sound, and I hope Congress will seriously consider passing such an amendment in the coming months.

The more I read about the state legislature’s shenanigans, the more I am compelled to conclude that referring to extraordinary sessions of that body as “special” seems oddly appropriate.

Ole Miss AD Pete Boone isn’t even bothering with the fake “we’re 100% behind Coach Cutcliffe” spiel, according to Sunday’s Clarion-Ledger:

“Obviously, this season has been disappointing, but the important thing is for Coach Cutcliffe and I to get together soon after the final game and… not only to look at the season but also the program,” Boone said prior to Saturday’s Ole Miss-LSU game. “And then make whatever adjustments need to be made, whether it’s policy issues or procedure issues or human resource (staffing) issues.”

Mind you, I continue to believe, absent a large suitcase full of unmarked bills being delivered to Steve Spurrier from Dickie Scruggs, that Cutcliffe’s job is safe through next fall, simply because there’s nobody obviously better on the market who the Rebs have a shot at—while it’d be entertaining to see Mike Price get the job after his comeback at UTEP, the Rebel alumni are even less likely to be forgiving of Price’s alleged indiscretions than Bama’s were. Expect nothing more than some house-cleaning at the offensive and defensive coordinator slots and an “Independence Bowl or else” edict from Boone’s office.