Robert Prather is retiring from the blog scene, due to him having a pretty full plate and losing the will to blog. Hopefully the blogging bug will bite again in the near future; if not, he’s certainly had a good run and most assuredly will be missed.

Thanks to Mark Turnage, I’ve got a Gmail account now (sorry, they haven’t given me any invites yet…).

Just for kicks, I’ve added a procmail rule that forwards a copy of all my email (except detected viruses) to my Gmail account, and it seems to cope pretty well with spam--almost as well as my SpamAssassin 3.0 config does (thus I strongly suspect Gmail uses SpamAssassin under the hood). Overall it seems to be a pretty capable email tool, and I’ll probably use it quite a bit when I’m away from home, although I find non-graphical clients (like mutt) more efficient for day-to-day use, and the lack of true folders takes some getting used to.

By the way, for a more comprehensive look at Gmail, see Eric Janssen’s review at Plug In.

Steve Verdon links a working paper (an updated version of which will be presented at APSA in September) by political scientists Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo that attempts to quantify the partisan leanings of various media outlets on the basis of their reliance on think tanks for “neutral” information in straight-news stories. Estimated ADA scores for the think tanks are derived from their citations by politicians in the Congressional Record, which are then used to estimate ADA scores for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Drudge Report, Fox News’ Special Report, and the three broadcast network evening newscasts.

I’ve only skimmed the paper so far, but this seems like a fairly sound approach to the problem. As for the results… well, unless your name is Eric Alterman, I doubt you’ll be very surprised.

I’ve been remiss in not thanking Mike Hollihan of Half-Bakered for assembling the second successful Memphis Area Blogger’s Bash. While turnout was slightly lower than the last meet, some new folks turned out, which more than compensated for the slight decrease in attendance:

• The thoughtful AlphaPatriot, who somewhat reminds me of a younger version of Ole Miss criminal justice prof Chester Quarles.
• The lovely and intelligent Rachel in the City, who has some ill-defined off-camera job at WMC Channel 5.
• The vivacious Peggy Phillip, news director of WMC Channel 5.
• Birthday boy Mark Richens of The Memphis Scene.

Also present were Eric of the CA web team, WebRaw and Plug In (among other stops in his blogging empire), Len Cleavelin, Mr. Mike, and (briefly, as his D&D group was meeting Wednesday night too) Brock.

It was fun to see everyone out; it almost—but not quite (after all, I need to make enough money to eat)—makes me wish I wasn’t off to Jackson for the next year or so. I guess the social scientist in me was on display; Mike says I was “laid-back and watchful again.” I guess since my “day job” is to be the expert, I generally find it more pleasant to watch and observe than to be the center of attention.

More reviews: Len, Mike, Peggy, Rachel, and Eric.

Should I be available for the next bash, I second the suggestion that we should try to blog the next event in progress; Eric suggests Cafe Francisco in the Pinch.

I know I’m a fan of Condorcet voting, but this is a ridiculously confusing vote, even by Debian standards.

I guess I’ll vote 2145376, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to explain 2145376 to anyone else on the planet.

As expected, Paul Johnson just became the latest victim in the “terrorism by beheading” campaign operated by al-Qaeda.

Reaction: Moe Lane said it best. As far as I’m concerned, the Saudi government’s response should be to immediately execute every single person whose release was demanded by the terrorists. My moral qualms about such a policy in general (I would actively oppose the U.S. engaging in such a policy, for example) don’t extend to actions by the Saudi regime, who routinely show less mercy to Saudis, guest workers, and western ex-pats accused of dubious crimes under their rule. We already know the Saudis have zero respect for human rights; such a policy seems like an excellent complement to a-Qaeda’s policy of zero respect for human life.

Both Alex Knapp and James Joyner (writing at Tech Central Station, so feel free to dismiss accordingly) think the 9/11 commission’s standard of proof for al-Qaeda involvement in, well, anything might be just a tad too high.

As for Saddam himself:

Saddam’s government was never the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism. Iran and Saudi Arabia far outstripped him in that regard. Nonetheless, the fact that Saddam Hussein actively supported Islamic terrorists has been an article of faith since the Carter Administration. Indeed, Iraq was one of the original five states (along with Iran, Libya, Syria, and Cuba) on the original “Patterns of Global Terrorism” list compiled by the State Department in 1979. Saddam was a major sponsor of various terrorist groups, including the PLO, Hamas, and the Abu Nidal Organization.

Read the whole things.

I went to the downtown Walgreens today to purchase some Wal-phed (Walgreens’ generic version of Sudafed). I walked back to the aisle where it is normally kept, and there were lots of little yellow signs, telling me that tall products that contain pseudoephedrine are now kept behind the pharmacy counter.

I went back to the pharmacy counter to buy some, and while I was there, asked the salesperson (I don’t know whether he was an actual “pharmacist” or not) about the change. “They make methamphetamine out of it.” Yes, I know. But they can’t make it from the liquid caps that also contain guaifenesin. (Which is what I was purchasing.) Was this a government requirement or was this just a new Walgreens policy? “It’s not a government requirement. We’ve got to do something bout it.” Yeah, I said. Legalize it.

We can’t stop people from making it and selling it, so there’s no reason to make it inconvenient for me to buy decongestants.

Steven Taylor:

Can we say “matching funds are dead”? I bet we can. There can be no doubt that after Bush in 2000 (and ‘04) and Kerry and Dean this time, that the presidential primary matching-fund process created by the FECA is essentially dead. At best it is campaign welfare for medium-to-low wattage candidates.

While we spend a while hashing out what we’re going to do about this travesty, Congress and the Federal Election Commission might do well to heed the words of baseball guru Bill James, on a completely unrelated topic, the balk rule:

Q: Can you elaborate on how/why the balk rule doesn’t work? Thanks

Bill James: The rule manifestly fails to achieve its goals. It’s one of those rules that, when it didn’t work, they tried to fix it. When that didn’t work, they fixed it again, and they fixed it again, and they fixed it again.

At some point they should have stopped and tried something else, but they didn’t, so they stuck history with a rule which (a) is almost totally unintelligible, and (b) is arbitrary in its enforcement.

In principle, trying to prevent one player from decoying another is a dumb idea. The balk rule is like a rule in basketball that says (a rule that would say… theoretical example) that if you fake a shot, you have to take the shot; otherwise it is travelling. That would be a dumb rule. The balk rule is basically the same thing, only applied to baseball. [emphasis mine]

I think the bolded passage pretty much sums up the state of campaign finance law in the United States in 2004.

Mark A.R. Kleiman:

So now we have a choice, as voters: Are we going to ratify the decision to make torture (described in various weaselly ways) part of the policy of the United States, or are we going to reject it by replacing those responsible?

Great idea, but what’s our guarantee that a Kerry administration wouldn’t engage in the exact same behavior, if not worse? Where are Kerry’s condemnations of Gitmo? (Everyone’s condemned Abu Gharib, so that doesn’t count.) Mrs. Kerry (the ex-Republican) seems rather more forceful than Sen. Kerry. And, if Kerry is going to try to outflank Bush on terror, is it plausible that he can simultaneously promise to get tougher on al-Qaeda while renouncing the current means by which the U.S. is getting tough on terror?

Throwing the bums out is a great idea… so long as we’re not bringing in new bums that are equally bad, if not worse.

Collin May has a capsule review of tonight’s English-language debate among the major party leaders in Canada; by all accounts, nobody really stood out or got bloodied.

Reminder: the second Memphis Bloggers’ Bash is tomorrow at the Blue Monkey on Madison (in the heart of Midtown Is Memphis), starting at 6:30 p.m. Be there, or, er, be somewhere else.

Jeff Jarvis asks:

Now it’s time that a social scientist or a pollster to measure the passion of our opinions—and an issue better come out pretty high on that passion scale before any reporter can say it’s deeply divisive.

Jon Krosnick at Ohio State (a social psychologist/political scientist) has published at least a half-dozen papers on attitude importance (e.g. “the passion of our opinions”) over the past 15 years. So, my suggestion to the pollsters would be: go forth and read Krosnick.

I’d also suggest that they go back and read Converse on attitudes and nonattitudes and “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” but I suspect they read—and forgot—such things long ago; they certainly don’t need me reminding them.

The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

There’s a petition drive is underway in Colorado to allocate the state’s electors in proportion to candidates’ popular vote. All I can find is the title as it will be presented to voters; I can’t find the actual text of the proposal (including any minumum threshold requirement or whether there will be “bonus” electors for the plurality winner), so it’s hard to judge what the impact of the plan will be.

I suspect the substantive effect of such provisions, if adopted in every state, would be minimal across the board; while candidates might arguably be more inclined to focus on the most populous states, I’m not sure that the actual benefit of such a strategy would be very large. Instead, the sensible strategy would be to focus on states where you’re close (say within 100,000 votes) to gaining an additional elector, and it’s not at all apparent that these states would be more likely to be large.

At the individual level, I suspect PR for the electoral college would somewhat increase turnout in relatively lopsided states like Massachusetts and Mississippi, and somewhat decrease it in perennial “swing states” like Florida and Ohio, but I think that would have more to do with campaign effects than any sort of utility calculus by voters.

Incidentally, there’s probably a good undergraduate or first-year graduate student paper in an analysis of the effects of various electoral college allocation systems (PR, bonus PR, congressional district, plurality), with particular focus on elections with relatively large third-party voting (1948, 1968, 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2000).

More from Daniel Geffen, James Joyner, DavidNYC, and Jane Galt.

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Over at Fafblog, Giblets explains the god of ceremonial deism, the god we invoke in pledges, in oaths, and on currency:

This God is a fitting adornment for oaths and flags and coins. Especially coins! Ceremonial God blesses your divine use of a slot machine with every quarter you feverishly insert. He marks His glory upon every dollar bill you stuff into the g-string of an aging lap dancer. He is the God of Coke and Pepsi, the all-embracing deity of McDonalds and Wal-Mart. All are one in His commercial bounty.

Giblets longs for a day when God will proudly stand out not just on money, monuments, plaques, greeting cards, university mottos, bumper stickers, action figures and gun shows, but on everything from hamburger wrappers to beer to car insurance. Giblets had a Big Mac dripping with special sauce yesterday, and he thought “Is this special sauce godless, commie special sauce? Or is it All-American, True-Blue, Under God special sauce?” And the sad thing is my friends that Giblets did not know, because it did not say on the box.

Eugene Volokh gives the legalist’s reasoning as to why the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Newdow v. Elk Grove; I still believe the original plan of the justices who voted for cert was to also reach a substantive conclusion on the constitutionality of the pledge requirement (perhaps in line with Thomas’ concurrence), but Scalia’s recusal threw a wrench in the works of that happening.

Meanwhile, Alex Knapp agrees with Dahlia Lithwick that the more important issue settled in the case may relate to the majority’s newfound respect for the principle of federalism, at least in the area of family law.

Prof. David Chalmers of the University of Arizona has put together a list of philosophical weblogs.

Many conservatives like to bash the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, pointing out that in recent years it has had more decisions overturned by the Supreme Court than any other Court of Appeals. I’m no legal expert, but I’ve long suspected that this is because the Ninth Circuit has been faithfully applying precedents that the Supreme Court has been in the process of overturning over the past two decades. Which is exactly what a lower court is supposed to do. Other Courts of Appeals have, to a greater extent than the Ninth Circuit, been instead playing a game of “guess what the Supreme Court will say.” To the extent other Courts have been right in their guesses, they have been overturned fewer times.

Some support for this thesis is contained in today’s concurring opinion in the Newdow case by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court’s most conservative Justice. Thomas, who would have overturned Newdow on the merits, writes: “I conclude that, as a matter of our precedent, the Pledge policy is unconstitutional.” (Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

News like this makes me happy I decided to get an apartment in Belhaven rather than living in Ridgeland or northeast Jackson.

Of course, knowing my luck, this coming year will be the year Jackson finally decides to fix Fortification Street (which drives like it was last resurfaced during the Nixon administration) and they find the cash to stick in all the speed humps and roundabouts they want to put in the neighborhood.

Contrary to my expressed preference in the case, the Supreme Court decided to duck the case by pretending that Michael Newdow lacked standing to bring the case in the first place, a decision that essentially concedes (at least in the mind of this attitudinalist) that the Court couldn’t muster five votes to keep “under God” in the pledge without using the bogus “standing” issue. Indeed, Stevens’ justification for the 8–0 ruling (Scalia recused himself) amounts to a non sequitor:

When hard questions of domestic relations are sure to affect the outcome, the prudent course is for the federal court to stay its hand rather than reach out to resolve a weighty question of federal constitutional law.

How, exactly, does the question of who has custody over Mr. Newdow’s daughter affect whether or not the pledge of alliegance is constitutional? Whether or not the child’s mother approves of the pledge is irrelevant to the legal issue at hand.

One suspects, however, that this holding action won’t settle the argument for good, as I’d imagine Mr. Newdow will find another athiest parent with uncontested custody, or a high-school student of majority age, to bring a similar case in the near future.

Update: Stephen Green, Eugene Volokh (via Anti-Climacus), Jacob Levy, Mark of Memphis Red Blogs, Steven Taylor, and Spencer of Mediocrity’s Co-Pilot also have posts on the decision.

I think the interesting political question here is why the Supremes granted certiorari in the case; the standing issue certainly could have been decided without an oral argument, and perhaps even without briefs (the case simply could have been reversed and remanded). I don’t want to post too much about my thoughts, because I think this might be a good discussion topic in Con Law in the fall when we talk about the structure and powers of the Court, even though the content of the semester focuses on topics other than civil liberties (except economic regulation, which is covered).

Since it’s Flag Day, it must also be my “half-birthday,” a useful modern invention for those of us with December birthdays who got cheated by fate out of a proper commemoration of our actual birthdays. (Interestingly enough, both of my parents and my first cousin also have December birthdays, and my birthday is exactly between my parents’ birthdays. Numerologists would have a field day with all this, of course.)

Dan Drezner discusses a Chronicle article ($) on the newspaper clippings that academics post on and around their doors. When I had an office door, my postings were on the mundane side: office hours, a Wall Street Journal editorial on eminent domain abuse in Mississippi, and a couple of forgettable political cartoons. After 9/11 they were joined by a printed U.S. flag that the university administration sent out en masse. Perhaps I will be more creative at Millsaps.

Laura of Apartment 11D’s art discussion goes after ‘performance artist’ Andrea Fraser, who’s blazing a trail only previously trod by the likes of Linda Lovelace, Traci Lords, and Ron Jeremy.