Unless Mike Easley joins Mark Warner to start a conga line of southern Democratic governors tripping all over themselves to avoid the appearance of being the “heavy,” lest they provoke the MoveOn.org wing of the national party, North Carolina will conduct the 1000th execution since the reinstatement of capital punishment tonight.

On the other hand, we’re still behind Singapore in the number of drug mules awaiting imminent execution. Woo-hoo.

Stephen Moore adds more fuel to Stephen Bainbridge’s discomfiture with John McCain. I’m not exactly a huge McCain fan either, but given the likely contenders on both sides of the aisle I’m hard-pressed to pick a better nominee—or, for that matter, a better president.

While we can’t explore the counterfactual universe, I suspect ABC News wouldn’t have bothered with this story on CIA interrogation techniques if the White House weren’t stonewalling the McCain anti-torture amendment—putting aside whatever merits or demerits the McCain amendment may have. (þ:Orin Kerr)

One of my students in my American government class dug up this odd article from the Washington Post about a machine that allegedly turns sewage and garbage into clean water and electricity that was on display in Washington this week; the more interesting part may be the sideshow involving ex-mayor and current city councilman Marion Barry and a local pastor:

On Wednesday, the church’s pastor, [Rev. Willie F.] Wilson, confronted Barry about placing the machine in a parking lot used by the church.

The confrontation between Barry and Wilson devolved into a yelling match so heated that police intervened.

Wilson called Barry a liar and told him to watch his mouth, according to footage of the fracas captured by WRC-TV (Channel 4). In return, Barry called Wilson “power hungry” and threatened to have the church’s nonprofit status “investigated.”

If the inventors have some spare time, I’d think a similar device that ran on Barry’s hot air might be very promising.

Charles Franklin applies Zaller to the public’s reaction to the Miers SCOTUS withdrawal. Meanwhile, the post-Miers speculation centers on Samuel Alito and Michael Luttig, two potential nominees who are, in the words of Steven Taylor, “radically more qualified than Miers.” Then again, pretty much everyone who’s ever cracked the spine of a con law textbook probably falls in that category…

Colby Cosh points out a poll showing that nearly 40% of Canadians would never vote for a candidate for public office with a history of alcoholism. Is it the prudes or the pollsters? Colby suspects the latter, and I am inclined to agree.

Political scientist Charles Franklin takes time out from the pretty graphs to reflect on the meaning of Rosa Parks’ role in history, echoing some themes of discussions I’ve had with Mike Munger and others who grew up in the segregated South.

Rosa Parks, the woman whose refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped catalyze the civil rights movement, passed away yesterday at the age of 92; there’s more from the Montgomery Advertiser.

I’ll leave the interpretation to someone who actually cares about Plamegate, like Tom Maguire, but offhand this New York Times report sounds like a big deal:

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Meanwhile, the GOP appears to be gearing up for a Ken Starr-reminiscent smear operation against special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, which isn’t making TigerHawk or Andy McCarthy very happy.

I’m not feeling particularly diplomatic these days (in part, because my visit to Target this evening came up with some cold medicine with some newfangled pseudophedrine substitute instead of the real thing, as if I was going to be making some crystal meth in the apartment while trying to recover from my cold)... so, here’s a definitive political stand: I oppose the Miers nomination—or, more accurately, I oppose her confirmation by the Senate.

And, for what it’s worth, “trust me” is a pretty lousy argument if you don’t trust the president’s judgment on other matters (in my mind, Gitmo first and foremost) either.

As they say, heh.

Or to put it another way, one man’s pork is another man’s necessary infrastructure project. After all, the good people of New Orleans could get along just dandy with a repaired 4-lane I-10 Lake Pontchartrain bridge for years to come (especially when you consider that the depopulation of the city is going to make a widened span unnecessary for the forseeable future, Mayor Nagin’s revitalization fantasies aside)... Katrina alone shouldn’t bump them to the head of the line for a fancy new 6-lane span. And, surely, a real “porkbuster” would favor letting the FHWA bureaucracy, not Congress, decide where the money would best be spent. Let’s see how many votes that Coburn amendment would get; my bet is pretty close to zero.

Incidentally, my lack of sympathy also goes for using emergency rebuilding funds to pay for decades-old wishlist items and “new urbanism” tripe on the Gulf Coast instead of sticking to the essentials.

The definitive history of the investigation into Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium from Africa—including how and why Joe Wilson found himself in Niger. þ: TigerHawk

Thus concludes my weekly lack of interest in Plamegate.

Bizarre parallelism thought of the day: ConfirmThem.com now has about as accurate a domain name as MoveOn.org (which hasn’t quite moved on from September 10, 2001 yet).

Thus ends the extent to which I care about the Miers nomination this week.

The University of Chicago’s decision to deny tenure to Dan Drezner has predictably led to quite a bit of discussion; the highlights (as far as I’ve seen):

• Steven Taylor expresses confidence that Dan will land on his feet and considers the question, “do we blame the blog?”
• Leopold Stotch emphatically says yes. Juan Non-Volokh is not so sure. Both (who are not tenured) will remain pseudonymous for now.
• Ann Althouse points out that ”[t]ime spent on a blog is visible in a way that time spent watching movies or talking with friends or reading mystery novels or engaging in physical exercise or playing with your kids or daydreaming is not.” (þ: PoliBlog)
• Matt Stinson reminds the gallery that Dan’s denial probably had nothing to do with his politics, as the U of C has historically been relatively friendly to conservatives and libertarians.
• Tom Smith extrapolates to the wider question of the value of tenure in the modern academy, and finds the case for tenure today to be wanting.

Stotch also raises an interesting point that is worth discussing at greater length:

Drezner made another huge mistake in trying to conflate blogging and scholarship, and I can only assume that his colleagues deemed this type of work unserious—a perspective with which I largely agree. Looking at his CV, however impressive, might have led his colleagues to believe that once granted tenure, his focus might shift away from his serious work toward more articles, books, conference papers, etc. about blogging—which I assume is hardly what they were looking for when they hired him.

I don’t necessarily believe that Dan’s primary area of expertise (international political economy) is any more “serious” than studying the role of weblogs in domestic political discourse, but it is quite definitely different, and to the extent that institutions hire people to “fill holes” (rather than based on their innate abilities or general competence) I think that could be an issue. Quite clearly, Dan was not hired by the U of C to be a political communications person. On the other hand, there’s no evidence that Dan has neglected scholarship in his primary field.

And I probably need not point out that plenty of tenured faculty take advantage of the security of tenure to spend more time with their families, stagnate scholastically, dodge professional responsibilities, and/or bed undergraduate and graduate students. Somehow the idea of Dan potentially doing research on blogs post-tenure seems like a de minimis concern compared to the other possibilities.

Ken Fisher of Ars Technica contributes further to my general level of skepticism about “intelligent design” proponents:

Intelligent Design backers spend no shortage of time trying to portray what they believe as science, but an embarrassing fact has come to light about the book that Dover would have the kids read, Of People and Pandas. As it turns out, the book was originally a work of Christian apologetics, and it explicitly promoted creationism. Indeed, the version published now is the largely the same, save one minor fact: they more or less did a search and replace, substituting Intelligent Design where Creationism once sat in the text.

More on this theme from this week’s Economist, courtesy of my ex-co-blogger Robert Prather, who’s now back and blogging up a storm at Insults Unpunished.

As anticipated, the Iraqi transitional assembly reversed its weekend rule change that critics (including yours truly) complained might rig the outcome of the vote on ratifying the Iraqi constitution next Saturday.

An Iraqi opinion poll reported by Reuters suggests that the constitution may meet with approval anyway, according to the director of the NGO that sponsored the poll:

Although support for the constitution was particularly high in the northern Kurdish areas and southern regions dominated by Shi’ites, [Mehdi] Hafedh said it topped 50 percent even in central provinces known as the heartland of Sunni unrest—a sign, he said, that the Sunni-Shi’ite split is not as wide as many fear.

“This is exaggerated by political elites who are seeking power and by Western media and analysts,” Mr. Hafedh said. “If you go down to the streets, you can’t tell who is Sunni and who is Shi’ite. We are all mixed.”

He said most opponents of the constitution cited reasons ranging from Iraq’s lack of sovereignty to poor security, while far fewer cited explicit political concerns over the document.

þ: InstaPundit for the latter article.

Nice to see the Iraqis learning how to play political language games in an effort to rig the outcome of the charter referendum next Saturday. The master himself, Bill Clinton, would be proud of these linguistic gymnastics:

Maryam Reyes, a member of the Shiite alliance that controls a majority of seats in the assembly, ... said the assembly members had not changed election law, but only clarified the meaning of the word “voters” in the relevant passage. The legal passage in question states: “The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.”

In their vote on Sunday, the Shiite and Kurdish members interpreted the law as follows: the constitution will pass if a majority of ballots are cast for it; it will fail if two-thirds of registered voters in three or more provinces vote against it. In other words, the lawmakers designated two different meanings for the word “voters” in one passage.

Neither the U.S. or the U.N. seems particularly happy with this change; both accounts suggest the decision will be “reconsidered” in the next day or two, as well it ought to be.

Steven Taylor notes that the disposition of the last seat in Germany’s parliamentary elections has now been resolved, giving the Christian Democrats a 226–222 edge over the Social Democrats in the new Bundestag; as a result, it appears that Gerhard Schröder is backing off his earlier insistence on remaining chancellor, although his SPD is not conceding the party’s claim to the chancellorship just yet.

On a semi-related note, today’s OpinionJournal featured article by Michael Greve argues that Germany’s election proves that proporational representation and cooperative federalism suck. I’m personally unconvinced that either is the case—indeed, the criticisms he levies against Germany’s use of transfer payments could just as easily apply to the United States. Rather, the problems Greve sees are in my mind largely the legacy of the CDU/CSU and SPD’s corporatist policies prior to reunification, which entrenched an inefficient welfare state and inflexible labor market, which have led to the need for reforms now, and effectively marginalized mass participation in politics, giving rise to both the Greens and the far right as important electoral forces.

I think I speak for all Americans when I say, “Who?” In other words, I’m not “less than thrilled”, I’m just very, very confused.

Then again, if the point of the exercise was to downgrade the Supreme Court (or at least its image) from an assembly of legal minds reviewing the most important legal cases of the day to a nine-member superlegislature, appointed for life, that arbitrarily and capriciously overrules the decisions of elected officials on a regular basis, I can sort of see the point.

Tom DeLay just got his ass indicted, and while that’s a far cry from him getting convicted (the old phrase about most prosecutors being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich springs to mind), it’s still not promising for his future political prospects. Otherwise, what I said nearly nine months ago still applies, so I’m not going to belabor those points again.

þ: PoliBlog and Scipio; James Joyner has a roundup from around the ‘sphere.

Stephen Karlson has some thoughts on the viability of intercity rail travel in response to Jeff Harrell’s skepticism over further Amtrak funding. My two cents:

Outside the Northeast Corridor and a few regional operations, Amtrak is a classic example of GNDN. I know exactly one person who has ever ridden the City of New Orleans, despite having lived in two cities that are served by the route. The only advantage of Amtrak over auto travel is that you don’t have to drive… and that one is largely negated if there’s hassle at either endpoint, such as inconvenient modal transfers, long layovers, etc. The only advantages over Amtrak over flying is that (a) you don’t have to deal with getting from the airport to the central business district (assuming the CBD is your destination) and (b) the security hassles are significantly reduced (but by no means nonexistent). And, the only advantages of Amtrak over riding Greyhound are (a) reduced travel times and (b) marginally better comfort.

It seems to me, then, that viable passenger rail needs to be designed to complement other modes of transportation. That means, for starters, more intermodal connections like at BWI and MKE airports, and direct connections to local mass transit (that means, when I get off the train in Chicago, I shouldn’t have to walk several blocks to get on the L). That also means making it easy for people to rent cars at train stations… many general aviation airports (in addition to every commercial airport in the country) have car rental counters, but good luck trying to find one at most Amtrak stations. While you’re at it, include safe, secure, long-term parking lots.

Amtrak probably hasn’t helped its case in “flyover country”—particularly with Republican politicians—by only operating its flagship Acela Express service in the Northeast Corridor. If other parts of the rail system had been upgraded to a similarly high standard (notwithstanding the problems Acela has had), the political case for continued Amtrak subsidies would probably be much better, even if the economic case for building high-speed rail in other areas is weak-to-nonexistent—the existence of Southwest Airlines, for example, makes a Houston–Dallas rail link a sure money-loser, even though tens of thousands of people make that trip daily. Ironically, because of Amtrak’s brief flirtation with economic rationality, Amtrak has virtually no constituency other than its employees outside the NEC states.

Nope, it’s not another weekly blog roundup… instead, it’s Matthew Stinson’s moniker for this weekend’s anti-war festivities, organized by the neo-Stalinists at International ANSWER and the anti-Jewish bigots at the Nation of Islam, and headlined by Mama Sheehan; the local branch office here at Duke decided to join in the festivities by making a 15-foot “missile” and sticking it in the middle of the West Quad on the pedastal where James Duke’s statue normally stands.

Matt proposes a drinking game for the C-SPAN coverage… which would be a nice idea, but I can’t afford that much liquor. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds thinks the press ought to stop whitewashing the anti-war movement; while I do actually believe there is a “authentic antiwar movement” in America (unlike, apparently, Glenn), and there are serious people I respect who disagree with me about the merits of the war in Iraq (Hi Scott! Hi Dad!), I’m not at all convinced that the “authentic” elements of the antiwar movement are doing themselves any favors by associating themselves with left-wing hate groups like the NoI and ANSWER.

More to the point, if (say) anti-immigration or anti-busing protests were being organized by the Klan or its front organizations, and “mainstream” folks were at risk of lending their support to those protests, I strongly suspect the media coverage would be deafening compared to the distinct lack of outrage that genuine public concern about Iraq has become a free recruiting tool for bigots and radical anti-capitalists. The sad thing is that a lot of Americans probably will join these protests because they don’t really know who’s behind them—and the press is doing these people a disservice.

The German elections have come and gone, and the results are Inconclusive; as expected, nobody got an outright majority, but less expected was the inability of the “natural” CDU–FDP coalition to gain a majority, thus leaving Germans with a series of rather unappetizing coalition possibilities:

• The rather-unlikely “red-red-green” coalition, combining the SPD (Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats) with his current coalition partners, the Greens, and the whole lot making nice with the Left Party splinter group (itself a motley collection of ex-Communists and malcontent Social Democrats, including Schröder’s main rival on the left, Oskar Lafontaine).
• The “traffic light” coalition including the SPD, FDP, and the Greens; also unlikely, as the FDP‘s leader has rejected it according to The Economist.
• The “Jamaica” coalition of the CDU (the Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, along with their Bavarian sister party, the CSU), the FDP (the Free Democrats, “liberals” in the European sense of the term), and the Greens. Somewhat plausible, if the Greens are willing to put aside their materialist values in favor of the postmaterialist ones they share with the Free Democrats.
• A “grand coalition” of the SPD and CDU, with either Schröder or Merkel as chancellor. As Pieter Dorsman and Matthew Shugart point out, this is probably the worst of all possible worlds, albeit the most likely outcome.

And, to top things off, things aren’t really settled yet since a neo-Nazi candidate in Dresden died, requiring a postponement of the vote in that constituency; under Germany’s version of the additional member system, this will probably affect the final seat tally for both the CDU and the SPD, even if neither wins the seat.

Where to next? Pieter Dorsman thinks holding another vote may be the most sensible course of action, although I’m not really sure it would change much. My guess is that Germany will try to muddle through, with the CDU and SPD advancing some rather half-assed reforms that please no one… which, more likely than not, will bring us back to this point with another inconclusive election sooner, rather than later.

The comparative angle is advanced by Stephen Karlson, who notes that America’s coalition building is rather less explicit than that of Germany—of course, the muddled result in Germany, I’d argue, is largely because the SPD has failed to maintain its internal coalition. All effective governing parties are coalitions of interests—even in Israel, with easy entry into parliament for any disgruntled splinter group, both major parties (and many of the smaller ones) represent a range of opinion, not a single point in policy space. Here, I think Betsy’s Page gets the causality backwards:

Can you imagine some situation in America when we would have to have a coalition government of Republicans and Democrats running the government together. I’m not talking about divided government between Congress and the president. I’m talking about running the executive branch together. It is just unimaginable. The reason we have two parties is because they disagree fundamentally on how the government should run. And thinking of some coalition between a major and minor party would just move that party more to the extremes. [emphasis mine]

Leaving aside whether Democrats and Republicans “disagree fundamentally” about the operation of government (they don’t… try distinguishing the last four years of Republican rule from the Great Society, and you’ll find remarkable overlap), the two parties don’t exist because of this disagreement—at best, voters disagree, and the two parties try to maximize their number of votes by appealing to likely winning coalitions of voters.

More formally, the U.S. has two parties because of two major factors: our plurality (first-past-the-post) electoral system, and the loose federalism of the party system. Plurality elections do not inevitably lead to two-party systems (ask Canada or the U.K.); however, the added factors of having a relatively nationalized, largely unidimensional policy space (the key issues in America don’t radically differ between New York City and Philadelphia, Mississippi, even if the political position of the median voter in those places does, and people tend to dispute politics on a “left-right” dimension that is just similar enough to that of continental Europe to confuse observers on both sides of the Atlantic) and substantial local and state party autonomy (allowing the NYC and Neshboa County GOP establishment to largely define “Republican” for themselves), effectively ensure a two-party system—even where the barriers to ballot entry are low for new parties.

If the incentives for a two party system melted away, more likely than not our existing Republican and Democratic parties would melt away with them (or at least be transformed beyond recognition). And if you think our parties are bad now, wait until you see the parties led by Maxine Waters and Pat Robertson (or their acolytes) and comprised solely of their true believers. You’ll be begging for a grand coalition then…

Go read Pieter Dorsman and Matthew Shugart.

For what it’s worth: a counterpoint to my cheap shot at Ray Nagin comes from Cobb (þ: Xrlq).