I couldn’t come up with anything better than this “on the fly”…

Matthew has a few more, all more inspired than mine, guaranteed to tick off all wings of the Blogosphere. And Ryan at The Dead Parrot Society apparently isn’t a big Dauber fan either.

Built with the Church Sign Generator via Michele.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports that Rebel running back Ronald “Goldie” McLendon is being investigated for possible rules violations in connection with the purchase of an SUV last month. (Link via the SEC Fanblog.)

Last week, I was also perfect; so I’ll be continuing the “quickie picks” format.

• South Carolina over ARKANSAS (at Fayetteville, Thursday). [Ok, that one didn’t work out so well…]
• MIAMI over Tennessee. Now that the SEC East tiebreaker has changed, this game means even more than it did a few days ago.
• MISSISSIPPI STATE over Alabama. Just a gut feeling here; it’s probably State’s best remaining chance for a win.
• FLORIDA over Vanderbilt. The “Duh” pick of the week.
• Ole Miss over AUBURN. See my post on this game for the skinny.

I’ve updated this post a bit to elaborate on some points, but none of the predictions were changed.

Andrew Sullivan suggests that two decisions by judges in two different states refute the predictions of the “far right” that America will see a “wave of judge-imposed [gay] marriages.” (The states are Arizona and New Jersey.)

Unfortunately, Sullivan doesn’t give us any evidence to decide whether or not this behavior is typical of the judiciary as a whole. Both decisions were apparently made by state, not federal, courts, where most judges are directly elected by the people, or at least face retention elections. Now, if a federal judge sitting in the Northern District of California—or even a state judge sitting in New York City—had made one of these rulings, I’d see it as (perhaps weak) support for his thesis. But counterexamples from states like Arizona and New Jersey that lean moderate-to-conservative on social issues, and where judges are in genuine fear for their jobs if they adopt strongly countermajoritarian positions (at least on issues outside nonpartisan judicial norms like the treatment of criminal suspects), aren’t going to convince anyone that the “wave of judge-imposed marriages” that many conservatives fear hasn’t started.

John Cole of Balloon Juice is, shall we say, rather unimpressed with the latest application of the PATRIOT Act: gathering evidence against the owner of a Las Vegas titty bar in a political corruption probe, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Read their oped too, while you’re at it. There’s more at Rick Henderson’s blog.

Kate isn’t happy either.

Lee Corso writes the following at ESPN.com in his “Lee-mail” column about the Rebels’ upcoming game with Auburn:

How do you see this weekend’s SEC West matchup between Auburn and Ole Miss?—Mike, Phoenix, Ari.

The biggest question is whether Mississippi can stop the Auburn running game. The Rebels are near the bottom of the SEC in rushing defense while the Tigers have shown they can run against anyone when they’re hot. Throw in quarterback Jason Campbell hitting some play action and Auburn can be dangerous. But Eli Manning and the Ole Miss offense can put up some numbers, too, but this will be the toughest test Mississippi encounters for the remainder of the year. [emphasis added]

Only one problem with this statement: the Rebels are #13 in the country and #3 in the SEC in rushing defense, conceding just 90.1 ypg on the ground. (Auburn is #14/#4, giving up 92.0 ypg rushing.) They can stop the run. The area where the Rebels are inconsistent—and vulnerable—is in pass defense (#115 nationally and dead last in the SEC, with 307.9 ypg), particularly against the “deep ball,” which Texas Tech and Memphis successfully exploited in their wins and which helped South Carolina back into the game this past weekend.

I agree that if Campbell can pull off the play action pass, Auburn probably has a good shot. But Campbell is a woefully inconsistent passer (4 TDs and 8 INTs on the season) who could easily get burned if he tries to go with the deep ball—ask Chris Leak, who threw 3 INTs to the Rebel secondary in Gainesville; this will require Carnell Williams and Auburn’s Brandon Jacobs (not to be confused with Ole Miss’ Brandon Jacobs, who plays the same position) to both be effective on the run and to catch short passes from Campbell. I’d expect them to have some success on the ground—I’ll be surprised if the Rebels can keep Auburn under 150 yards rushing, excluding sacks—but I don’t see Campbell passing for big numbers (the numbers he will put up will be largely due to yards after the catch) and I expect him to take at least a couple of sacks and to throw a costly pick.

On the other side of the ball, though, the only people who can beat the Rebels’ offense are themselves. The South Carolina game could—and should—have been 44-14 at halftime, if not for two silly turnovers in the red zone, and the Rebels have essentially been able to execute at-will against every defense they’ve faced this year except in the season opener at Vanderbilt and at Florida.

I also think that, overall, LSU is a tougher test for the Rebels: they have a more effective passer, better balance overall, and a smarter coach. However, the Rebs will be at home facing LSU and coming off an off-week, so arguably the difficulty level of the challenges balances out.

My sketch of a prediction for Saturday is that Ole Miss wins a nailbiter, probably with a score in the 27-21 range.

Also on Corso’s page, I’m inclined to agree that if Florida beats FSU, they should probably get the SEC East bid (if there’s a tiebreaker). My guess though is that the ADs will vote for the team with the highest poll ranking, unless there’s a convoluted scenario that permits the conference to secure a second bid to a BCS bowl.

I’m not a huge fan these days of the Nolan chart and similar quiz-based ideology measures; however, Tim Lambert has been compiling bloggers’ results on the Political Compass test. As he points out, it’s hardly a scientific sample of bloggers, so take it with a grain of salt.

An interesting outstanding question is whether the Compass is a particularly valid measure of ideology. Their FAQ seems to preclude any independent test of this proposition, as they claim copyright on the items—and I believe that such a copyight is valid, given the widespread use of copyrighted scale questions in psychometry.

I wonder if my committee will accept this Jay Manifold post in lieu of the conclusions chapter of my dissertation. After all, it basically says what I want to say, although far more succinctly and without the obligatory citations to seventeen billion political scientists. Quoth Jay:

The Scrappleface material aside, I rise to the defense of my fellow citizens on this one. Like many other polls, it can be made to look very bad. The lessons we should be drawing, however, are not the usual people-are-stupid, everybody-should-have-to-know-this-stuff sort of thing, but are more related to simple common sense:

1. Suppose the poll had instead taken the form of a true/false test with a list of, say, 40 possible names of Cabinet departments. How different would the results have been? I’m sure that only a small percentage would have gotten them all correct; but I surmise that most respondents would have gotten most of them right, a far different result than the one presented.
2. Also, I like to apply the body-count test. Are we stepping over bodies in the streets every morning as a result of [insert failing of American public here]? No? Then maybe, just maybe, it’s not a big deal.
3. According to the poll, if you can name more than 11 Cabinet departments, you are in a minority of 1%; if you can name them all, you’re probably a solid 3σ away from the statistical mean. In other words, you are a weirdo.
4. In fact, if you’re complaining about public ignorance about almost any political data, while demonstrating your familiarity with such data, you’re not only a weirdo, you’re a control freak whose idea of a healthier polity is one with a whole bunch of weird little copies of you in it.

Needless to say, the above describes almost all current-events bloggers.

Or, as I put it in the current iteration of my draft conclusions chapter:

It is also possible that what matters isn’t what voters know about politics, but rather what they understand about politics. Knowledge may simply be a byproduct of understanding among those citizens most exposed to political information; in other words, knowledge is only important to the extent that higher levels of knowledge about politics—as measured by, for example, answers to the notorious “trivia questions” about politics that are regularly used as evidence that the public has insufficient levels of civic education—generally reflect greater understanding of politics. If that is the case, civic education efforts may improve voters’ reasoning processes even if they don’t lead to greater retention of the minutiae of politics by citizens over the long term.

I resisted the urge, however, to accuse Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter of wanting to build clone armies of themselves.

As Steven Taylor notes, GOP candidate Ernie Fletcher has won Kentucky’s open gubernatorial seat, and Haley Barbour has a fairly robust lead in Mississippi—so robust, in fact, that Barbour made a victory speech just after midnight, despite the slim remaining chance that he will not receive the absolute majority of the vote required to avoid the legislature deciding the election (as they did in Ronnie Musgrove’s victory over Mike Parker in 1999).

John Cole credits the successes of Fletcher and Barbour to DNC head Terry MacAuliffe. However, I’d probably chalk it up to something more fundamental: in the mass media and Internet age, the Democratic and Republican parties have become increasingly nationalized, with little scope for state parties to tack too far from the national party’s position. Even in Mississippi, a state where “yellow dog Democrats” have had a lot of sway, that’s slowly fading as Democrats retire or change parties. Take, for example, one political scientist’s observations on the election*:

John Bruce, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi, said though Musgrove and Barbour ran a tough campaign with ads criticizing each other, the two candidates took similar positions on many issues.

Bruce said he took statements about gun ownership, abortion and other issues off campaign Web sites and quizzed his students about which candidate had made the statements. He said many thought the statements came from Barbour — but all the positions came from Musgrove.

“They’re both conservative,” Bruce said. “They’re almost identical on a lot of issues.”

And “almost identical” southern Democrats are increasingly finding that southern voters will choose the real thing—Republicans—over conservative Democrats who increasingly have to rely on the support of groups—like African-Americans, state employees, and transplanted Northern liberals—who aren’t conservative at all.

That isn’t to say that parties can’t field successful candidates in states where their national ideology isn’t competitive—the most obvious case in point would be the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. But they’re going to be in an uphill struggle, without the ability to bring in “name” fellow partisans to support them, and they’re going to need to work much harder than they’d have had to in the past to convince local voters that they are truly “independent” of the national party. Ronnie Musgrove couldn’t do either, and ultimately that is what cost him this election.

PhotoDude has more on this theme, tying it into the whole Dean flag flap (via InstaPundit), and Stephen Green notes the GOP surge, but encourages Republicans not to get cocky.

Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel, telling the story of a rebellious teenage girl growing up during the 1979 Iranian revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq war. Marjane Satrapi is the great-granddaughter of Ahmad Mirza, the last Persian emperor of the Qajar dynasty, who was overthrown by Reza Shah in 1925. Her parents, however, along with her uncles, were Marxist revolutionaries, who got more than they bargained for after the Shah was overthrown.

The stark black and white art is reminiscent of Maus, and, like Maus, the story alternates between comedy, such as the fourteen-year Marjane telling a “Guardian of the Revolution” that the picture on her Michael Jackson button is Malcolm X, and tragedy, such as a sequence on the propaganda told to the boys destined to die in the bloody war with Iraq.

If you’re my age, you probably don’t remember much about the Iranian revolution apart from the American hostages, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s face on the cover of Time magazine. Read Persepolis for an insider’s perspective on the making of an Islamic theocracy.

It seems that Cori Dauber has rapidly become everyone’s least favorite Volokh Conspirator. In addition to my criticism of her excessive use of rhetorical questions, here’s what other bloggers are saying about her:

• “A poor grasp of how rational numbers work” – Kevin Drum
  
• “Bad math” – Matthew Yglesias
  
• “Shallow and abrasive” – Amy Lamboley
  
• “Glib and facile” – Cori Dauber

Okay, that last quote is taken out of context. But why let context get in the way of a good snark?

And damning with faint praise, Will Baude agrees with Chris that Cori Dauber is not as bad as Clayton Cramer was. Will has also done us the favor of adding a link to the Dauber-free version of the Volokh Conspiracy to the Crescat blogroll, listed as "Purer Volokh".

I should make that "almost everyone's least favorite Volokh Conspirator." Lest it seem like everyone hates Prof. Dauber’s blogging, I note that Glenn Reynolds likes her. Heh.

And just to clear up a bit of confusion on the part and Will Baude and me, this picture indicates that Prof. Dauber is in fact a woman.

[Chris here: I’d add “Purer Volokh” to the blogroll, but it would end up off in Den Beste-land along with the people who don’t do pings. So our readers will just have to deal with Cori, or bookmark the link above.]

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal has an election results page up on its website covering northeast Mississippi, including Oxford and Lafayette County. So far, it’s all zeros; polls closed about 45 minutes ago, so some results should start trickling out soon.

Dan Drezner has been blogging up a storm (also here) on the Center for Public Integrity study and the Iraq reconstruction contracts issue. I’ve added what little I can in his comments, so just go forth and read the posts.

Howie Dean’s latest gaffe has sparked a substantial discussion in the blogosphere about the so-called “Southern Strategy”; Steven Taylor has something close to the post I’d write if I had more time.

From the scholarly perspective, I think most political scientists have attributed the maybe-realignment of the 1960s to racial issues (see, for example, the book-length treatments by Carmines and Stimson and Huckfeldt and Sprague), but Abramowitz (1992 AJPS, I think; might have been JOP) makes a strong case that those issues weren’t driving Republican success in the 1980s—although he leaves the question of the 1960s aside, and I don’t think people in political science were particularly enamoured with his use of exploratory factor analysis to demonstrate his point. However, I think there’s a paper to be written either trying to apply Abramowitz’s methodology to the 1960s-era data or looking at it over the history of the ANES using the Cumulative file; unfortunately, from a publication standpoint, I think realignment is no longer the sexy topic it was in the late 80s and early 90s.

I wrapped up* the final substantive chapter of my dissertation Saturday evening, then spent a few hours down at the Square downing a few $1 PBRs. Once I’ve given a copy to my committee chair sometime today, I’ll probably post a link to a PDF of it here in the blog.

For the morbidly curious, it currently weighs in at 123 printed pages, not including about 10 pages of front matter—the title page, acknowledgements, dedication, abstract, table of contents, and lists of figures and tables—and the yet-to-be-written conclusions chapter. It is typeset entirely using the gatech-thesis class in pdflatex in 12-point Palatino, with the included Trellis graphs generated by R’s pdf graphics driver.

More evidence that Howie Dean is moving right after securing the support of the Atrios fringe: he’s daring to say that just maybe all Southerners who fly the Confederate battle flag aren’t necessarily racists—an article of common sense that nonetheless escapes most national Democrats, who apparently don’t bother talking to their fellow partisans—except the ones who wear the Quixotic “I’m a progressive” label like some sort of pathetic badge of honor—in states like Mississippi and Georgia.

Oh yes, Dean’s now flirting with the DLC wing of the party:

Yesterday, Dean said he wants to create a biracial coalition in the South. “For my fellow Democratic opponents to sink to this level is really tragic,” he said. “The only way we’re going to beat George Bush is if southern white working families and African American working families come together under the Democratic tent.”

I still think the “Dean is a moderate” meme is a load of flaming crap, and his idea of national security policy is worse than a joke. I think he’d roll over for the gun controllers in Congress in a heartbeat (not that I’m hugely invested in that issue). And I generally believe that anyone who can excite large numbers of college undergrads about his campaign is prima facie unsuitable for high office. But if he keeps saying sensible things like this I might actually have to reconsider my overall assessment of the guy.

Mind you, I’m still voting for Sharpton in the primary, because I’d love nothing more than to see the Democratic Party have to deal with the consequences of spending years coddling this race-baiting fool.

Rick Henderson is puzzled by the “Libertarians for Dean” phenomenon, including its backing by some of his former colleagues at Reason.

Brock noted Cori Dauber’s inauspicious start at the Conspiracy yesterday, and I agree that her blogging has been a bit uneven. However, her critique of the San Francisco Chronicle’s fawning piece on Robert Fisk is spot-on. But I think the key paragraph in the article is on Fisk’s attitude toward objective reporting:

Fisk doesn’t believe in the concept, calling it a specious idea that, as practiced by American reporters, produces dull and predictable writing weighed down by obfuscating comments from official government sources.

Of course, a lot of critics of the American media—on both the left and right—would argue that American reporters don’t practice “objective reporting” either.

My recommended reading for this month, The Adventures of Amos and Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon, holds a special place in my heart—it’s the first real scholarly book I ever read, at the tender age of 15, while I was otherwise bored out of my mind at a family reunion in Richmond. It was written by Melvin Patrick Ely, a cousin of mine (first cousin, once removed, to be precise). I think that book, more than anything else, is what set me on the path to an academic career. The least I can do in return is hopefully steer a few bucks in royalties his way…

Someone needs to tell Cori Dauber, current guest blogger over at the Volokh Conspiracy, to take it easy on the rhetorical questions.

This seven sentence post contains five rhetorical questions. And this twelve sentence post contains seven rhetorical questions.

I’m not saying there’s never a place for rhetorical questions, but, like exclamation points and all-caps they should be used very sparingly.

Overall, Cori’s blogging style gives me the impression that he’s about to blow an artery. So it doesn’t surprise me that he links to Little Green Footballs here, in a post that consists of four rhetorical questions out of eight sentences.

Sorry Eugene, this guy is your worst guest blogger since Clayton Cramer.

Glenn Reynolds links to a Lynxx Pherrett dissection of the alleged ‘pay-for-play’ nature of Iraqi reconstruction contracts. The key graf, I think, is:

How do I know CPI is dealing from a stacked-deck? As Marshall Brodien said, "It's easy, once you know the secret!" CPI only looked at companies that were awarded contracts, then examined the companies' political contribution history and any connections to current or former government officials. What CPI never looked at, and according to their methodology never attempted to look at, was the political contribution and governmental connection histories of the losing submitters. In other words, there is nothing against which their results can be compared. Businesses make political contributions — we know that. People leave government service and go to work in the private sector — we know that. Thus, no matter what major company wins a contract, it is likely that they have 1) made political donations in the past—CPI researched contributions all the way back to 1990—and 2) employ some former government officials. Unless CPI can show that the contract winners made larger political contributions and employed more or higher-level ex-government officials, their report cannot support Lewis' charge of "a stench of political favoritism and cronyism."

In other words, CPI selected on the dependent variable. Quality social science here, folks…

Dan Drezner has more.

Quite a yawner of a weekend ahead in the conference, except the Ole Miss-USC and Florida-Georgia games. Since I went 6-0 last week, I’ll try this format again…

• OLE MISS over South Carolina. Apparently it’s trendy to pick the Gamecocks for the upset, but I just don’t see it.
• AUBURN over Louisiana-Monroe. I think…
• Florida over Georgia (in Jacksonville). It’s the trendy pick, but I think it’s right.
• TENNESSEE over Duke. The official “duh” pick of the week.
• Arkansas over KENTUCKY. Not really sure why; the Sagarin ratings at least agree with me.
• LOUSIANA STATE over Louisiana Tech. Unless the Tech team that beat Michigan State (Nick Saban’s old squad) comes calling, that is…

Next week, things get a little more interesting as the Rebels travel to Auburn and UT takes a trip to Coral Gables to face now-#2 Miami.

Robert Garcia Tagorda (Boomshock), in response to Matthew Yglesias, tries to figure out why he prefers InstaPundit to Atrios, in comparison to Matt’s stated reason why he prefers Atrios to Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit):

Quoth Matthew (via Robert):

Now Josh [Chafetz] is right, Atrios isn’t exactly your source for civil discourse. On the other hand, neither is InstaPundit which Josh doesn’t seem to mind so much and which earns a permalink on his sidebar. Let me suggest that the problem Josh has with Atrios has less to do with civility than with the fact that they disagree regarding the main subjects of Josh’s interests. Personally, I like Atrios a great deal, though he’s uncivil, and I like InstaPundit a little, too, though he’s also uncivil. The secret here is that I agree with Atrios about most things, and I agree with Glenn Reynolds about a few things.

Robert argues there’s another reason:

But Matt overlooks one thing: partisanship. Atrios and Glenn both have biases, but the former’s confrontational style comes under the Democratic banner. ...

Partisanship gives things a different twist. It exacerbates ideological biases, because it introduces an element of “us-versus-them.” It’s much harder to debate somebody who fights not simply for a set of principles and ideas but also for a particular team. Partisanship, in and of itself, is not necessarily reprehensible. However, when you fuse it with an in-your-face attitude, as Atrios does, the entire package becomes very hard to consume.

I think there’s a third reason: Glenn doesn’t have comments. A lot of people seem to like comment sections on blogs—and sometimes they do add some value. But if you go to a site like Atrios, CalPundit, Balloon Juice, or LGF, you’ll find that the comments are generally filled with two groups: the trolls and the “amen corner.” And I think comment sections are just naturally polarizing that way; I’ve caught myself trolling at times, even though generally speaking I’m not a huge fan of trolls. Occasionally a comment thread does add a lot of value—indeed, if it weren’t for that occasional value, I’d probably never bother reading the comments at some of these sites (well, CalPundit and Balloon Juice; I don’t read either Atrios or LGF), and I’d probably enjoy the experience of reading them more on balance.

Now, I realize I probably open myself up to a charge of hypocrisy here; after all, I often post in other peoples’ comment sections. 95% of the time, it’s because I just don’t feel like what I have to say is worth a proper post here at SN, or you’d need the context of the original comment thread to understand it anyway.

All this, I suppose, is a long-winded way of saying “don’t expect a comments section here anytime soon.” But, if you have posted something relevant to something I’ve said, feel free to use the TrackBack feature to let SN’s readers—and me—know. If you don’t use a TrackBack-capable blogging tool, you can use the linked manual trackback form; thanks to Kevin of Wizbang for that.

Glenn Reynolds weighs in.

For those who are interested in such things, here’s a new graph from my dissertation. More on this topic soon…

Brock is stumped by the fact that politicians get a lot of speeding tickets but don’t get in a lot of accidents. I don’t find that entirely confusing, as politicians probably drive a lot more than the average person—going back and forth to the state capital, for example—and do more of that driving on safer roads—like interstates—than the average person does (the highest accident rates are typically on two-lane roads). Since interstates are both safer and more heavily patrolled than other roads, people who use them are likely to both have more speeding tickets and less accidents than the average person.

According to this CNNMoney story, politicians as a profession are some of the worst drivers, and some of the best drivers, depending on how you measure driving ability. Politicians rank in the top five professions by number of speeding tickets, but in the bottom five professions by number of accidents.

A few days ago, I came up with plausible explanations for the fact that December is the worst month for falling deaths, and November the worst month for shooting deaths.

But this one has me stumped.