James Joyner, Dan Drezner and John Cole are among those who note that the United States and United Kingdom have reached an agreement with Libya on dismantling the latter’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. Fancy that.

Of course, we all know it was really just Tony’s doing.

I was going to write a long rant about lawyers’ obsessions with such whimsical notions as stare decisis and legalistic reasoning, in connection with the Padilla and Gitmo cases. Thankfully, Will Baude points out a book review by Richard Posner that—while dealing with the seemingly completely different issue of gay marriage—makes a basic point about the judicial construction of rights that seems to escape everyone else who’s ever attended law school:

It should be apparent by now what the problem with Gerstmann’s approach is. Though he is a political scientist as well as a lawyer, his approach to the question of homosexual marriage is legalistic. Find a precedent…, and analogize it to the present case, and use the analogy to put an impossible burden of proof on your opponent, and limit the scope of your rule by rejecting further analogies on however arbitrary a ground, so that the right of a prison inmate to marry is deemed analogous to a right of homosexual marriage but not to a right of polygamous marriage, because the polygamist, unlike the homosexual, is not denied the right to marry the person of his (first) choice.

This is what is called “legal reasoning,” and it is hard to take seriously. For one thing, there is nothing sacrosanct about precedent, especially in the Supreme Court. In Lawrence, the Court overruled a precedent that was not merely analogous to the case at hand, as Turner and Zablocki might be thought analogous to a case involving homosexual marriage, but identical to it. (The case was the notorious Bowers v. Hardwick, which had upheld the validity of criminalizing homosexual sodomy.) For another, it would be child’s play, as a matter of legal casuistry, to limit those two cases to conventional, monogamous, non-incestuous, heterosexual marriage.

Judges like to pretend that their decisions are dictated by “logic,” or by an authoritative text or precedent, because it downplays the element of judicial discretion, which worries people. The pretense wears particularly thin in constitutional cases about marriage and sex, because the Constitution does not say anything about these subjects, and the framers of the Constitution, and of the major amendments, in particular the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the principal source of constitutional rights against the states, were not thinking about marriage, sex, homosexuality, or related topics when they drafted these founding documents. (Neither were the ratifiers.) Decisions such as the four that I have mentioned, together with the Supreme Court’s other well-known sex-related decisions, such as Griswold v. Connecticut (holding that a state cannot forbid married couples to use contraceptives) and Roe v. Wade, are all “political” decisions—not in the narrow Democratic versus Republican sense, but in the sense of being motivated by values not dictated by the orthodox materials of judicial decision-making. Precedent and analogy operate as fig leaves in such cases.

Fundamentally, I don’t think it matters whether or not there’s a legal precedent for Padilla’s detention or the indefinite limbo of detainees at Gitmo. What matters is whether or not they are the right things for the government to be doing, and in my opinion, neither are consistent with American values. Belittle popular punching bag Stephen Reinhardt all you want for saying that—god knows I think he’s an idiot at least half the time—but don’t pretend that your cites are any better than his, because fundamentally they aren’t. It’s all politics, and those who dabble in constitutional law would be well-advised to keep that in mind when discussing the judiciary.

Meanwhile, PG of En Banc gets to the heart of the substance of my uneasiness with Eugene Volokh’s position on the Gitmo detainees. Eugene’s position may (or may not) be legally correct, but it strikes me as morally wrong. Elsewhere: Robert Prather agrees on Padilla and disagrees on Gitmo.

This is my entry in the OTB Beltway Traffic Jam for today.

I broke down and went to see The Return of the King (the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for those who reside under rocks) last night. It was very good, despite the air of inevitability that hung over the piece—even someone whose Tolkien is half-remembered and based mostly on cultural osmosis can figure out where the story’s going. And I could have done without the 20 minutes of commercials and trailers before the film.

Anyway, for those into such things, Jacob Levy has more, with spoilers.

It’s been a busy day for wanna-be terrorists in the courts; as James Joyner and One Fine Jay note, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the release of alleged dirty bomber José Padilla, a decision both agree with, while the 9th Circuit’s decision that detainees at Guantanamo Bay deserve access to counsel and the normal judiciary, contradicting a decision of the D.C. Circuit, has met with a tepid reaction from Glenn Reynolds and outright disagreement from Professor Bainbridge.

Not being a lawyer—or playing one on TV—myself, my gut instinct is that both decisions are correct, and while there may be some (as yet unclear) value to holding the Guantanamo detainees, I don’t think that value is sufficient to justify the ongoing diplomatic fiasco attached to them—even if countries like Britain and Canada, whose citizens are among the detainees, would probably prefer that the U.S. deal with them at Gitmo rather than dealing with them themselves, even if they won’t say so publically.

Jacob Levy says pretty much everything I had to say about the French government’s decision to go ahead with efforts to ban the display of religious symbols by students in public schools.

Russell Fox is none to impressed by the proposal either.

James Joyner has some thoughts on a Mickey Kaus blog entry exploring the possibility of a third party run by Howard Dean if he doesn’t win the nomination. I honestly don’t think that is likely, or even logistically possible. The two major parties, while at their institutionally weakest state in modern history, still serve an important gatekeeping function in our system; while it’s arguably harder to win a major-party nomination than to gain ballot access on a third-party ticket, the reward of the major-party nomination is the virtually automatic vote of more than 30% of the electorate.

That is not to say that to win the nomination, candidates have to appeal directly to the party base. Registration rules in most states are now weak to nonexistent (part of a 100-year trend started by the “progressive” reforms that reflected a belief in a Tocquevillian ideal of a well-informed rational public rather than the reality of widespread political ignorance) and increased soft money regulations have meant an end to the financial ties between parties and candidates. Instead, the successful candidate in a large field can simply recruit disaffected apartisan ideologues* to his cause and use their support to create an air of inevitability around his campaign to recruit the support of institutional loyalists—the “true partisans,” if you will.

However, Kaus’ belief that we’ll see a breakdown of the two existing parties, at least on the ballot, is at best misguided. There are thousands of Democratic and Republican state legislators who would have to be convinced to remove the existing institutional advantages of their own parties to open the door for a new third party, while the idea of separate parties competing at the presidential level than in other elections seems a tad absurd (I could see separate parties at the state and national levels, but that’s not the same thing, really). There’s enough value attached to the Republican and Democratic labels that it’s likely we’ll see candidates fight over them long after the institutions they represent have been further eviscerated by further campaign finance “reform” and the continued march of the “progressive” legacy.

By the way, I hope some political scientist out there is doing a study of Dean activists, if only so I can steal borrow their data and test some of the hypotheses floating around in my head about them…

Mike of Half-Bakered is soliciting suggestions for a location and date for the first Memphis-area bloggers’ bash. Go forth and comment accordingly.

My (quite possibly now-irrelevant) thoughts on the SciFi Battlestar Galactica mini-series produced by Ron Moore (warning, no spoiler protection):

• As others have noted, the pacing was a tad too slow in Part One. Part of the problem is that you’ve got to set up this BG universe and let us know how it’s similar to—and different from—the BG universe we vaguely recall Lorne Greene having something to do with. Part Two worked much better.
• I think making the BG society seem a lot like ours except the higher technology is pretty sound. It certainly beats the “everyone wears lycra” approach of Trek.
• The “Number Six kills a baby” bit was completely gratuitous. Plus, it was distracting in this scene that the Capricans seemed to have taken over Tollana. The obvious conclusion is that the twelve colonies are populated by Gou‘ald. (Sorry, Stargate SG-1 joke.)
• It’d have been nice to see some of the colonies other than Caprica. Some of the exposition could have been handled that way, too.
• I’ve seen the criticism that a society that is spacefaring should have eliminated cancer. The logic of this statement escapes me completely. Curing cancer and traveling faster than the speed of light seem to be rather orthogonal problems to solve.
• FTL travel in the BG universe is seems similar to how true FTL travel works in Asimov’s Foundation/Empire/Nemesis universe; however, there seems to be some spatial (or temporal?) distortion attached to it, if the camera foreshortening effect is to be believed as a representation of the reality perceived inside the ship.

Now, the open questions file:

• What happened to Kobol that made humans settle the twelve colonies? There was a (not entirely satisfactory) answer in the original BG universe.
• Does Earth actually exist? If so, is it really the 13th colony, or something different? (If life began “out there,” perhaps humans from Earth settled Kobol. This gets around the silly “Earth was settled by spacemen” concept. Plus it means that if they find Earth, it might actually be a useful ally against the Cylons.)
• Are there alien species? The original BG universe said yes, but never showed them: the creators of the Cylons were alien, as were some species the Cylons had killed off—the planet in “Living Legend” was originally home to a non-human species.
• Interestingly, everyone who is obsessed with sex turns out to be a Cylon, while the people who aren’t getting any are human. Is this deliberate?
• Is the “Number Six” in Baltar’s head real? Judging from the evidence, I think not; rather, it seems to be an “anti-conscience” of a sort. The real Number Six probably wouldn’t have allowed Baltar to pick out Aaron Doral, the PR guy (who for some reason reminded me of Mollem from SG-1, but isn’t the same actor) who is a Cylon; would have known what the “personal organizer” was; and would have impeded the investigation of the dead Cylon (Leoben Conoy) from the space station more thoroughly. Plus, she probably couldn’t have communicated with Baltar in the storm at Ragnar Anchorage, and on Colonial One she seems to indirectly call Baltar “God,” which makes more sense in terms of Baltar’s ego than Cylon religious beliefs.
• Are Cylons really reincarnated when they die in new bodies? Number Six and Conoy apparently think so, but if the Number Six in Baltar’s head isn’t real we have zero evidence of this. Is this just a religious belief?
• Are there really just 12 designs of humanoid Cylon? If so, why? There are obviously more than 12 individual humanoid Cylons. (We’ve seen 4 designs: Six, Leoben, Aaron, and Boomer.) How do they tell each other apart? And does the 12 number only include humanoids, or do the metal ones count too? And why did the Cylons decide to make humanoid models?
• Did Baltar really figure out Aaron’s complicity in the Cylon attack? He turns out to be right, but why? The “Cylon detector” was apparently bullshit, if we believe Baltar’s mannerisms and “Number Six.” There’s no way Baltar knew that Adama already somewhat distrusted Aaron because of his interest in getting the Galactica outfitted with a computer network.
• The shielding on the Galactica seems to protect Cylons from the Ragnar radiation; the ship was apparently in the radiation field for hours, yet Boomer showed no ill effects and Aaron only was affected after he got ditched on the station.
• Who left the “there are only twelve models” note for Adama? Baltar is the only human with the knowledge that we know of. But there might be others. There might also be Cylons working against the Cylon plans. Then again, Baltar may not want to explain how he knows there are only 12 models.

Overall, I think it was a very good outing by Moore. Hopefully he’ll have the chance to make it into a series starting in the not-too-distant future.

Matt Stinson posted his thoughts more contemporaneously.

Michael Totten has compiled a round-up of a number of doctored Saddam Hussein photos for your amusement.

Randy Barnett, in writing of his clients’ victory in Raich v. Ashcroft, clings to hopes of legalistic reasoning by the Supreme Court.

It is supremely ironic that the Ninth Circuit is the court of appeals that is taking the Supreme Court’s new Commerce Clause jurisprudence the most seriously. This case illustrates that Federalism is not just for political conservatives, and is a doctrine that provides benefits across ideological lines. If this case does go to the Supreme Court we will learn whether the conservative justices who developed this doctrine have the courage of their convictions when it applies to activities of which they may disapprove, and whether the liberal justices will put their disdain for Lopez and Morrison above the commitment to stare decisis, which would let them do justice in this case.

Excuse me while I snort derisively at the thought of either of these hypothetical scenarios (liberals supporting stare decisis or conservatives sticking up for the principle behind Lopez) coming to pass.

Link via Unlearned Hand at En Banc, who “would love to see the Fab Four grant cert.” I assume that the Fab Four is either the set of liberal or conservative justices, and does not include the notoriously fickle Sandra Day O‘Connor, but I’m at a loss as to which set (the conservative Scalia/Thomas/Kennedy/Rehnquist or liberal Breyer/Souter/Ginsberg/Stevens) is particularly “fab.”

Laurence Simon, in the midst of a rant about a Houston affiliate’s attempts to pump up its ratings, exposes the bad statistics peddled by AC Nielsen:

The samples are ridulously small and unstable, absolutely abysmal when it comes to tracking democraphics other that Yuppie Whitey because of tweeser-sized samples, the numbers are cooked twice, and then the exceptions and loopholes in reporting the results are downright shameful.

The Nielsen sample might be reliable as a national sample, but it’s absolutely hideous once you try to subdivide it for over 300 local markets. Even as a national sample, they should be intellectually honest enough to attach a giant confidence interval (which, based on reports of their sample size, is probably on the order of several ratings points at 95% confidence) to their estimates. It’s a miracle their numbers correspond at all with reality.

Amazing how all the news seems to happen while we’re down. (The appropriate parties have been executed for their roles in our period of downtime, in case you were wondering.)

To review:

• I got rid of about half the beer in the house at a grad student party on Friday night. Less crap to move. Yipee! (Thanks to Brooke and Lindsey for organizing the gathering.)
• I turned 28-going-on-60 on Sunday.
• Someone actually wants to cite part of my dissertation in a book. I’m stunned.
• Steven Taylor had the latest Toast-O-Meter update, with Howard Dean widening his lead over the pack despite increased attacks from the trailing candidates.
• The presumptive Democratic nominee made a speech on foreign policy that somehow failed to mention North Korea.
• Everyone’s favorite Dixiecrat apparently didn’t mind dipping his pen in different-colored ink, so to speak.
• Signifying Nothing went down to ignominious defeat in the Wizbang 2003 Weblog Awards balloting. I blame the butterfly ballot and the use of a first-past-the-post system.
• And, last but not least, coalition forces arrested a biker dude near Tikrit and gave him a lovely shave and a fight to Qatar at taxpayers’ expense.

This is today’s entry in the Beltway Traffic Jam, in case you were wondering about such things.

Keith Burgess-Jackson claims to have refuted consequentialism:

Consider an example: My neighbors are having a pleasant meal. I can easily disrupt it, but choose not to. I am therefore morally responsible for the pleasure of my neighbors. Generalize: I can spend my entire day preventing good deeds from being performed by others. If I choose not to do so, I am morally responsible for all the good that is done. It turns out that I’m morally responsible for a great deal of good, just by sitting in my study!

I agree that Prof. Burgess-Jackson has refuted a certain thesis: the thesis that whether one is “responsible” for an state of affairs is solely dependant on whether one’s action or inaction causally contributed to that state of affairs.

However, that thesis is not consequentialism.

Consequentialism is the thesis that the rightness or wrongness of a possible action, and which of all possible actions at a given time an agent should do, is solely a function of that possible action’s consequences. Consequentialism by itself does not have anything to say about whether an action is praiseworthy or blameworthy, or whether an agent is “responsible” for that action’s outcome.

Let’s look at another example:

Smith and Jones are standing near a swimming pool. Smith is an excellent swimmer, but Jones cannot swim at all. A small child falls into the pool. There is no way for the child to be saved unless Smith jumps in to save him. Smith does just this: jumps in and saves the child. Jones refrains from doing anything that would hinder Smith in her rescue attempt.

In conjunction with an axiology (theory of value) that entails that a drowned child is the worst outcome of all of Smith and Jones possible actions at the time, consequentialism entails that each of their actions, Smith’s rescuing the child, and Jones refraining from hindering Smith, were the right things to do. Consequentialism entails that nothing other than the possible outcomes of their action was relevant. It would not be relevant if the owner of the pool had forbidden Smith to swim in it. It would not be relevant if Jones had promised the owner of the pool to prevent Smith from swimming in it. It would not be relevant if Smith had made a deathbed promise to her mother to never go swimming.

Smith, of course, is a hero. And Jones is not. But consequentialism does not entail this. Nor does it contradict it. All it entails is that Smith and Jones both did the right thing. Consequentialism lays silent on the praiseworthiness of Smith's and Jones's actions.

Why bother going through the whole pretense of a campaign? I already know how I’m going to vote in 2004, more or less.

On Saturday, Eugene Volokh noted a poll conducted by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics that showed that 78% of respondents believe the media would have leaked news of President Bush’s Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad—a belief that is essentially identical among Republicans and Democrats, though perhaps even more strongly held by Independents.

As someone whose research interest is in public opinion, I have to wonder how this opinion came about, and it’d be a fascinating case study. It’s a shame Fox doesn’t contribute polling data to ICPSR like the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS and ABC do…

Dan Drezner and Steven Taylor are among those to note the reports that my favorite fake Tennessean, Al Gore, is about to endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination.

Is the primary process now effectively over? The part of me that’s been avoiding rereading Larry Bartels’ Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice hopes so (no insult to Prof. Bartels, who’s a smart guy—I just don’t have the time to reread it now), but as Lee Corso says, “not so fast my friend!” Why?

Well, for starters, nobody’s going to drop out until New Hampshire at least, and—more than likely—everyone will last through South Carolina. By March, the process may be effectively over, but there’s three months in which the unexpected can happen.

One potential response is that this will have a catalyzing effect on the “Anybody But Dean” faction. The ABD crowd is going to have to decide whether their mutual differences are sufficient to let them hand the nomination to Dean. Bear in mind that under the PR rules, candidates have to get 15 percent of the vote in a congressional district to get delegates; for example, if all the ABD guys are hovering at 10% in a district, but Dean gets 25%, Dean gets all of the delegates from that district. A promise that any one candidate’s delegates will support the ABD frontrunner at the convention is insufficient—because they won’t have enough delegates between them to make a difference. Plus, the more clearly Dean is the frontrunner, the more support he’s going to get in later primaries—such is the virtuous cycle that insiders call “the big mo.”

Especially with Sharpton likely to capture the support of a majority of the African-American primary voters, the ABD candidates are effectively screwed unless they get whittled down. Some of the candidates will figure this out on their own. The question is whether the credible ABD faction goes down from being five to two. (One alternative that might be effective is if the ABD faction executed a regional strategy: everyone but the best-positioned alternative to Dean stops campaigning in a particular state.)

The primary also still matters because it will largely decide who gets floor time at the convention. The more the ABD faction divides the vote, the more delegates are going to be gained by Dean and Sharpton under the 15% rule. Karl Rove must be salivating at the thought of Sharpton in primetime or seeing a procession of anti-war activists to the podium. Ironically, the better Dean does in the primaries, the less favorable the convention is going to be for his general election campaign—to be effective, he’s going to have to distance himself from the “anger” that brought him to the nomination, most fundamentally because most Americans are a lot angrier at Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein than they are at George Bush.

So, while Dean may be the presumptive nominee, the primary process is going to be an important factor nonetheless—both in how the convention is structured and, ultimately, how effective a bounce Dean can get from it in the general election.

You guessed it; this is my entry in the Beltway Traffic Jam. And, Matt Stinson thinks it’s payback for Gore’s being shafted by being in Clinton’s shadow.

Congratulations to Virginia Postrel, whose book The Substance of Style was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Notable Books of 2003.

One of these decades (actually, hopefully later this week, once I’ve accomplished something on the job application and “sending the stupid impeachment paper out for review again” fronts), I’ll actually get around to writing up my thoughts on TSOS.

Today’s big exercise—besides watching the Indianapolis Colts defeat the Nashville Carpetbaggers—has been dealing with job applications. I’ve divided the pile of job listings, representing about 30 jobs, into four stacks based on the sort of packet they’ll get (Research/American, Research/Methodology, Teaching, and Post-Doc), updated and polished the vita, and printed out my old teaching evaluations.

One of the more peculiar requirements of many academic job applications, particularly in the “Teaching” stack, is that they require a statement of teaching philosophy—sometimes coupled with a statement of research interests. I have a broad idea of what I’d like to write, but these exercises, like the related need to write cover letters, always seem to call for a degree of introspection that makes me uncomfortable—I’ve never been a huge fan of the “self-marketing” exercise. I’ll get through it, but it still bugs me.

James Joyner is right that, if things play out the way they look, the BCS is in big trouble. However, the hidden story in this is why the BCS is in trouble. Let’s look at the ESPN/USA Today top five (i.e. the Coaches’ poll):

1. USC: 37 first-place votes, 1542 points.
2. LSU: 18 first-place votes, 1516 points.
3. Oklahoma: 8 first-place votes, 1449 points.
4. Michigan: 0 first-place votes, 1393 points.
5. Texas: 0 first-place votes, 1272 points.

As I’ve mentioned before, the major polls are compiled using a Borda count. The media poll (AP) has 65 voters, while the coaches’ poll has 63 voters. The Borda count procedure is fairly simplistic: the #1 team on each ballot gets 25 points, #2 gets 24… all the way down to #25, which gets 1 point. (In math terms, the points added for each team are 26 minus the ranking.) The Borda count, incidentally, happens to be a very rotten way of aggregating preferences, but it has the benefit over other methods (like Condorcet voting) of not requiring a lot of thought to apply.

With that aside out of the way, let’s stare at the numbers. The full ballots aren’t released (a glaring oversight in the system), but we do know that 8 people ranked Oklahoma #1. Assume, for the sake of argument, the “objectively correct” ranking of Oklahoma is no higher than #3; in other words, no voter should have ranked OU #1 or #2.* Oklahoma thus recieved 8×2 or 16 more points than it should have, reducing its total to 1433 points.

Let’s also assume that these 8 poll voters all ranked LSU, USC, and Michigan (a fair assumption); we don’t even need to know which team was ranked #2 on these ballots. Bumping Oklahoma to #4 bumps each of these teams up by 8×1 points. This gives USC 1550, LSU 1524, OU 1433 (per above), and Michigan 1393. Now, Michigan is within 40 points of being #3 (down from 56).

Now, let’s return to the original numbers. We know that some voters ranked OU above #3. Why? Well, for starters, they got 8 first-place votes. It also turns out that OU’s total of 1449 is exactly the total that they would have received had they been ranked #3 on all 63 ballots (63×(26-3)=1449). Now we have an interesting problem: reconstructing the position of OU on the ballots.

We know OU was #1 on eight ballots. They received 1249 points from 55 other ballots. Let’s assume the only reasonable rankings for OU on those ballots is 2, 3, 4, and 5. So we have an integer programming problem: (26-2)a+(26-3)b+(26-4)c+(26-5)d=24a+23b+22c+21d=1249, where a–d are all non-negative integers, and a+b+c+d=55.

Solving this problem iteratively, there are two possible ballot configurations: 17 second-place votes, 15 third-place votes, 13 fourth-place votes, and 10 fifth-place votes; or 18 second-place, 14 third-place, 12 fourth-place, and 11 fifth-place. Now, let’s also drop OU to third on these ballots.

Assuming there are 17 second-place votes for OU, dropping them to third will reduce their point total by 17. Assuming Michigan was ranked third or below on all of these ballots (a trivial assumption; we know they never were ranked #1, and we know they couldn’t have been #2 because OU was), OU loses 17 and Michigan gains 17. This makes the point totals: USC 1550, LSU 1524, OU 1416, and Michigan 1410.

If there were 18 second-place votes for OU, the “correct” point totals—if they’d actually ranked OU third—would have been USC 1550, LSU 1524, OU 1415, and Michigan 1411.

Now, we can broaden the analysis a little. Assume that some voters ranked OU as low as 6th. If that is the case, more than 18 voters must have voted OU #2 for them to get 1449 points. If 20 voters ranked OU #2, when they should have been #3, OU and Michigan would have been tied. And it’s possible, although unlikely, that as many as 24 voters ranked OU #2.

The moral of the story: the Borda count sucks. And so do the coaches.

James Joyner notes the upcoming Charlie-Foxtrot in the BCS standings resulting from Oklahoma’s drubbing by Kansas State in the Big XII title game and the convincing wins by LSU (over Georgia) and USC (over Oregon State). If I had a ballot, here’s how I’d rank the teams:

1. Southern Cal (11-1). Their only loss was in overtime, which—given the funky OT rules in college—is understandable.
2. LSU (12-1). Really, only three teams have even given LSU problems this year: Florida, Georgia (in the first game), and Ole Miss. Everyone else, LSU has basically destroyed.
3. Michigan (10-2). Probably the scariest team in the country today, even if John Navarre isn’t your prototypical great quarterback. Then again, he doesn’t have to be; he’s got Chris Perry in the backfield.
4. Oklahoma (12-1). The team folded like a cheap kite at the first sign of real adversity this season (the 5-8 Crimson Tide—with losses to NIU and Hawaii, along with practically everyone in the SEC—don’t count as “adversity” in this discussion). They’re lucky I haven’t dropped them below the TCU Horned Frogs or the Blue Turf Warriors of Boise State.
5. Texas (10-2). Really, just the best of a bunch of two-loss teams lurking below Michigan.

Mike Hollihan at Half-Bakered has a post on discriminiation against atheists in the Tennessee Constitution. The relevant paragraph is Article IX, Section 2, which reads

No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.

Earlier, however, in Article I, Section 4, the Tennessee Constitution declares

That no political or religious test, other than an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and of this State, shall never be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this State.

Now how exactly can requiring that someone not deny the existence of God, or “future state of rewards and punishments,” not amount to a religious test? It would seem to even exclude Christian Universalists, who hold that everyone will be saved and no one will go to Hell.

And I wonder how broad the phrase “any office in the civil department of this State” is supposed to be. Are atheists not allowed to be Tennessee State Troopers?

The brain trusts at ABC and CBS have decided to put the Big XII and SEC title games up against each other in prime time. Idiots. Thank God for DirecTV with TiVo.

• Lousiana State over Georgia (at Atlanta). The trendy pick is Georgia. I think they’re in serious trouble unless David Greene can figure out LSU’s blitz packages—something even Unitas Award winner Eli Manning couldn’t do consistently. LSU by 10.
• Oklahoma over Kansas State (at Kansas City). Ell Roberson and K-State will probably keep it close for a while, but Oklahoma has a stifling defense and too many receivers to cover. Sooners by 9.

The rampant BCS speculation is that LSU goes to the Sugar Bowl if both USC and LSU win. That, of course, assumes the pollsters don’t play dirty pool with the polls—something I wouldn’t put past the voters, particularly the AP voters who’ve never really signed on to this whole BCS thing (hell hath no fury like a journalist scorned: ask “major league asshole” Adam Clymer). You read it here first: the fix is in, and it’s gonna be Oklahoma–USC in N'Orleans.

For some reason (probably because Matt Stinson nominated us…), Signifying Nothing is nominated in the Wizbang! 2003 Weblog Awards. As the stereotypical “they” say, VEVO—although considering that we’re nominated in the same category as professional writer Roger L. Simon, I think we’re definitely in the #16 seed position at this point.

All the usual caveats about Internet polling apply. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself to try to block out the absolute drubbing we’re receiving…

The following IP addresses will no longer have access to Signifying Nothing; they almost certainly host spam crawlers:

66.98.208.4
207.207.48.165

Thanks,

The Management

I agree with Ryan of the Dead Parrots that the idea of replacing FDR with Ronald Reagan on the dime is true, unadulterated idiocy, which—given some Republicans’ worship of all that is Reagan—borders on idolatry. Besides, any good libertarian (or political scientist, for that matter) knows that the man whose face should be on the dime is James Madison…