Jeff Quinton notes that an investigation shows that around 60,000 voters appear on the voter rolls in both North Carolina and South Carolina.

One thing that always strikes me about the “double registration” stories is that most of the issues are clerical ones; for example, I registered to vote down here when I moved to Jackson, and I don’t have the faintest clue whether or not the county clerk bothered to tell the folks up in Oxford to invalidate my registration there. For that matter, I might still be on the voting books in Florida or Tennessee.

The University of Florida has fired the entire Gator coaching staff, effective at the end of this season. I knew the Zookster wasn’t exactly popular, but I’m somewhat surprised that he is getting the boot only halfway through the season.

Radley Balko and Tyler Cowen both explain why they won’t be voting for Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. Balko:

I’m sorry, but I’m just not convinced that either Badnarik or the LP speaking on behalf of libertarianism to a national audience with limited exposure to the ideology would ultimately be good for libertarianism, the philosophy.

This is a guy who gives seminars advocating that the federal income tax is optional, who refuses to use zip codes, who says he’d blow up the UN building “after giving occupants a week to vacate,” who has equated FDR to Hitler, and who suggested we chain convicted felons to their beds until their muscles atrophy.

It gets worse. For more, check here and here.

I’ll gladly cast my ballot with the LP when the LP offers a candidate who isn’t an embarassment to libertarianism.

Cowen:

Nonetheless I must offer p = 0 when I ponder the chance that I vote for Badnarik. If I don’t like a picture, I’m not going to hang it on my wall. I gladly supported Ed Clark in 1980, let’s hope that the LP once again puts up a serious candidate.

The National Weather Service has a point forecast service that works for any location in the United States. It’s quite slick, and the best part: there are no ads.

Eric Muller notes that Michelle Malkin doesn’t talk to David Neiwart (who generally strike me as white-collar versions of LGF and Atrios, respectively).

In other news, I hear John Kerry doesn’t have George Bush on speed dial. Go figure.

From the Miami Herald:

Authorities are seeking to extradite a Tennessee man - wanted for failing to pay child support - after learning that he underwent surgery in Colorado to donate his kidney to someone he met on the Internet.

Rob Smitty, 32, faces charges of failing to pay his ex-wife $8,100 in child support and medical payments, and a warrant is out for his arrest. He was recovering in a Denver hospital following surgery Wednesday to donate his kidney.

Smitty’s ex-wife apparently wishes that Mr. Smitty had not donated a kidney and saved a man’s life:

But Angie McCoy, Smitty's ex-wife, said she didn't think Smitty was acting out of altruism.

“It’s unethical, and it’s not right,” she said.

Others are also accusing Mr. Smitty of having non-altruistic motives, according to this Knoxville News-Sentinel story (registration or BugMeNot required).

In 1992, Smitty was sentenced to 12 years in prison for possession and conspiracy to distribute LSD. He served less than six months at a boot camp before being put on probation.

The criminal background only raises ethical questions surrounding the exchange, including worries that Smitty was paid for giving up a kidney.

“Why would someone give up a kidney to a stranger?” said Cathy Paykin, transplant programs director for the National Kidney Foundation in New York. “To get a sentence reduced? To look better in the eyes of the law? To get money? It’s so hard to manage motivation even under the best of circumstances.”

My take: let’s set aside the question of whether a free and open market for live organ donations would be a good thing. (See Tyler Cowen's thoughts on ths matter.) Mr. Smitty gave up a kidney and saved another man’s life. Whether his motives were altruistic or mercenary are irrelevant to assessing the morality of his action. At worst, his kidney donation was unwise from the perspective of self-interest.

If indeed he was paid for the kidney, I doubt that Ms McCoy will be complaining if she gets her cut.

A pointed non-endorsement of two candidates for president of the United States, and an announcement of the slate of electors for president this half of Signifying Nothing will—despite grave reservations—be voting for. And, perhaps most importantly, a disclaimer that should be attached to all serious scholars’ endorsements or non-endorsements of candidates for political office.

The only thing the letters NSF meant when I was in grad school were “non-sufficient funds.”

Just got back from an enjoyable evening downtown at the Buffalo Nickel album release party; the band’s style is an interesting blend of country and rock-and-roll, fitting in either “urban country” or “southern rock” depending on your preferred nomenclature, and I got to meet a few new people and unwind a bit with good company.

I echo BigJim’s magnanimity on the occasion of A&M’s win over Florida… but, if all you Bulldog fans think this means you’re not still due for your annual whoopin’ in the Egg Bowl, you’re sorely mistaken.

In other news, the Millsaps Majors just got pummelled 38–7 by DePauw at Homecoming; somehow, the unseasonal 80+ degree heat didn’t even seem to bother the visitors from Indiana. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all, and one of my con law students was crowned Homecoming Queen, so that was cool too.

Since when have Methodists decided to take up the mantle of papal excommunication? The mind boggles.

I had to reinstall Windows XP on my laptop this morning after nothing else would work. And I still haven’t reinstalled GRUB on the boot sector yet, so it’s “all XP, all the time” until I bother to fix that. Grr…

In re this post:

For Brad DeLong (who frankly should know better) and the other dipshits operating ShrillBlog: disagreeing with George W. Bush does not make one “shrill.” Going five years without criticizing someone in one’s own party, however, might well do so.

Brian Leiter posts an interesting email exchange between himself and philosopher Jerry Fodor.

Leiter asks “So what in the world is ‘analytic’ philosophy these days?” Fodor replies that analytic philosophers share a thesis, “semantic pragmatism,” and a methodological presumption, “semantic ascent.” Fodor claims to reject both the thesis and the methodological presumtion, and so by his own lights, is not an analytic philosopher!

Fodor may be right about analytic philosophers sharing this thesis and methodological presumption, but he is wrong to look at analytic philosophy as being defined by this thesis or presumption.

Analytic philosophy is best understood historically. Analytic philosophers are the intellectual descendants of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein (FRMW). They are those who work on the same set of problems as FRMW, or work on problems that arose while working on the first set of problems, or problems that arose while working on the second set of problems, and so on. They are those (such as Quine and Carnap) who read and drew inspiration from FRMW, or those (such as Davidson and Lewis) who read and drew inspiration from Quine and Carnap, or those who read and drew inspiration from Davidson and Lewis, and so on.

By this understanding, Fodor is certainly an analytic philosopher.

(þ Crooked Timber.)

Stuart Benjamin has the goods. Interestingly, Kull et al. omit one very plausible explanation why Kerry supporters are more “correct” than Bush supporters: Kerry simply, by sheer coincidence (or deliberate plotting—nobody fields am opinion poll in which they don’t have some expectation of the marginals), shares the perceived positions of the poll majorities, and there really isn’t much between-group variance on those points.

One might also point out that the question selection seems deliberately designed to elicit “known false” perceptions by Bush supporters and that some of the definitions—for example, “a major WMD program”—are in the eye of the beholder. Indeed, Iraq did have a major WMD program in the 1980s and 1990s, all credible intelligence information suggested that program continued underground in some capacity after UN inspectors left in 1998, there is at least some evidence that elements of that WMD program were transferred to Syria during the 2003 conflict, and it is crystal-clear that Saddam Hussein’s ambitions to have “a major WMD program” were just on hold until the Franco-Russian alliance was able to dismantle the remaining sanctions on Iraq.

Finally, it’s entirely possible the whole exercise captures non-attitudes galore. My 2004 MPSA paper suggests (admittedly, using a model that needs some additional work, once I learn how to do latent class analysis) that perceptions of threat from the Saddam Hussein regime were largely the product of partisan attitudes, rather than having an independent origin.

Pieter Dorsman returns to the theme of US-Canadian relations and counterterrorism, and—as always—makes some very good points worth reading.

Dan Drezner and that terrorist group that keeps beheading people in Iraq have both come out for John Kerry. Meanwhile, Scipio voted for “moonbat lunatic” Michael Badnarik.

Eric Muller is speechless. I think it could be worse: “One Nation Not Under The U.N.”

Incidentally, photoshops welcome...

Taegan Goddard wonders if voters are stupid; Andrew Cline replies:

I do not believe that citizens are lazy or stupid. The problems of the electorate are multiple and complex. But let me suggest one possibility among many why Americans appear to know so little about their own government and fail to participate in its running: We are fat and happy.

There are a number of different perspectives on the importance of political knowledge; in particular, the “rational public” perspective of Samuel Popkin and the “affective intelligence” perspective advanced by a number of scholars suggest that political knowledge is relatively unimportant, although there are many scholars who challenge both theses. That said, I reach a roughly similar conclusion to Andrew’s on the last page of my dissertation:

[T]he desirability of a society in which political issues are so critically important that they require the attentiveness of large segments of the public seems relatively low; consider highly polarized societies like contemporary Israel and Venezuela, where it is unlikely there are any voters without opinions on the Palestinian peace process or on the soft-authoritarian Chávez regime, respectively, where the outcome of elections is literally a question of life or death in many voters’ minds. Perhaps we should count our blessings that the most salient mainstream debates in the United States today are over the future of entitlement programs for the elderly, the level of restriction that will be placed on abortion, and where and under what conditions same-sex relationships will be acknowledged by the government—and that our pluralist system permits voters to focus their interests on particular policies that directly interest them. This suggests that rather than creating institutions that might lead to a more conflicted or polarized society, the interest of democracy would be best served by giving citizens the tools to participate in public debate, but leaving it up to them whether their participation is strictly necessary. (132)

This also is another excellent opportunity to pimp the Signifying Nothing book of the month.

Today’s Clarion-Ledger drops some quotes from Republican ex-presidents on us compiled by Richard W. Dortch. Identifying the glaring problem with his article is left as an exercise for the reader.

If you dropped by in the past 30 minutes or so, you may have noticed a brief flashback to July. I just brought back up the old box that the blog was hosted on, and it decided to take over the IP address for the blog. Things should be back to (near) normal now…

Messrs. Baude and Dilts seem to have the better of their argument with Josh Chafetz over whether or not voting for non-viable candidates in plurality elections is, in fact, voting; that behavior may not be rational qua Downs, but it is nonetheless casting a vote—albeit, perhaps, not a decisive one in the two-party contest. I also tend to think that expressive ballots may, nonetheless, have instrumental effects; one suspects Bill Clinton and Congress might have cared quite a bit less about balancing the budget in the mid-90s had not Ross Perot received approximately 20% of the vote in the 1992 presidential election.

And, for those who are missing it, there’s a lively debate over same-sex marriage going on in comments below.

Matt Stinson kindly gives a detailed exegesis of the Democratic corrollary to Lawrence’s Cardinal Rule of Evaluation of the Bush Administration, which begins thusly:

If there is a single phenomenon that links together political rhetoric from Bush critics this election, it’s their willingness—dare I say obsession—to find in any and all events disadvantageous to Democratic fortunes the hand of Karl Rove.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

David Adesnik asks:

Why not give one electoral vote to the candidate with the most votes in each congressional district (plus two electoral votes for the state-wide front-runner)?

Because I don’t think America needs yet another incentive for state legislatures and courts to engage in partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.

For what it’s worth, I favor (if there needs to be anything at all, a point I’m somewhat dubious on) “proportional-lite”; allocate the representative-based electors based on proportional representation, and give the two Senate-based electors to the plurality winner. This has the nice bonus of retaining the psychological effect of Duverger’s Law, as winning the plurality is guaranteed to gain a big bonus.

Of course, I think it’d be fun to run unpledged electors and get back to the system the Framers intended, just to see everyone whine about it. (There seem to be provisions permitting separate slates of unpledged electors in Mississippi law, at least, but it’s unclear how you’d qualify such a slate.)