C.D. Harris (Ipse Dixit) rightly takes the administration to task for inserting an operational readiness testing exemption for the national missile defense system in the FY2004 budget proposal. C.D.'s more interesting comment is:

I have never understood - and I have tried - the Left's deep-seated loathing of missile defense. Why a purely defensive system - one which would exist for no purpose other than to protect American cities from nuclear annihilation - engenders such a consistent and emotional rejection from the peace, love and u-u-understanding set is, frankly, beyond me.

Me, I'm pretty agnostic on national missile defense. A 100%-effective NMD system (capable of stopping a large strategic missile attack) would be incredibly destabilizing to the nuclear balance of power, because it would effectively neutralize the threat of mutual assured destruction; at some level, this is probably the origin of the left's opposition (although it being a cornerstone of Ronald Reagan's defense policy probably didn't hurt). Of course, this isn't what the administration is planning; they want something that would stop a limited attack (say, no more than a dozen missiles), in essence to neutralize the first-strike threat by a minor nuclear power (say, North Korea).

Bret, from C.D.'s comments, makes two arguments against NMD:

1. It doesn't work. Scientists have said for years that the technology is barely even in its infancy, and won't be mature for at least 10 years.

2. It's incredibly expensive. I can't give you the exact numbers right now, but it's in the hundreds of billions.

To point 1: the technology won't even be developed if there isn't an impetus for it. So if we decide in 2010 or 2100 or 3000 that we want national missile defense, we still need to wait 10 years to develop it.

To point 2: it is incredibly expensive. Is it worth, say, $200 billion to ensure that Kim Jong Il can't nuke Honululu, Seattle, or Los Angeles? Or to ensure that a nuclear-armed fundamentalist Islamic state (say Pakistan or Iran) can't wipe out Diego Garcia or London?

Now, I don't know the answer to those questions. It's fundamentally a risk analysis.

On the other hand, there are far less expensive, but equally effective, delivery systems for nuclear weapons; for example, one could be loaded in the hold of a container ship or commercial jetliner, for example. National missile defense would be ineffective against the former, and there are other, cheaper methods (traditional SAMs, fighter jets) for dealing with the latter, if they are detected in time.

The bottom line: NMD alone would be an ineffective strategy. But, NMD might be a part of an effective overall strategy (also including improved human intelligence and signals intelligence) against WMD, if it can be developed cost-effectively, and there might be some civilian side-benefits to developing NMD (such as improved pattern-recognition systems, more efficient lasers, and better geolocation capabilities).

The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and CNN, among others, report that Ariel Sharon has secured a 61-seat minimum winning coalition consisting of the Likud (and the remnants of Yisrael Ba'aliya which joined it last month), the National Religious Party (NRP), and Shinui. Talks are apparently underway to possibly bring in other parties to bolster the size of the coalition, including the National Union. Nobody seems to really know what the coalition's positions on the peace process or settlements are; most of the discussion (as always) is about internal Israeli politics.

Strangely enough, the Independent runs with an AP report with a headline calling this a “hard-line coalition”; one wonders how they'd have described a Shas-NRP-NU-Likud coalition.

Matthew Yglesias has some new comments as well; I basically agree with him that we're looking at an interim coalition until events (i.e. war in Iraq or some obvious incident of bad faith on the part of the Palestinians) force Labor to abandon its “no coalition with Sharon” pledge, especially since some reports note that Sharon is updating Mitzna on the progress of the coalition talks (which seems rather odd since Mitzna isn't leading Labor into the coalition).

Previous discussion here.

Part two of an ongoing series...

Patrick Carver has assembled some additional captions of his own.

Donald Sensing reflects on that question in response to his experience on a Nashville morning radio show on Friday. Donald makes two interesting statements:

• Journalism is a job, not a profession. In fact, I have extensive formal journalism training, and I can tell you that there is no particular skill to it that is particularly difficult or unobtainable by average people.

• There is no "accountability" of journalists in any meaningful sense. There is no equivalent of a bar exam for journalists. There is no licensing procedure for journalists. There is no minimum education level required, nor any particular special kind of training at all. Fill out an employment application, get hired at minimum wage or better, and presto, you're a journalist. Or just take a pad and pencil, call some folks on the phone and do some interviews, and you're a journalist, too.

I've wandered in and out of journalism in my life — I started a short-lived student newspaper in school in Britain, spent two years writing and copy editing for the teen section of the Ocala Star-Banner, and wrote for The Rose Thorn. But, I've never taken a formal journalism class in my life, and I'm not sure one would need to take a journalism class to be a good journalist. The key qualification is the ability to write clearly; the rest can be learned with a copy of the AP Stylebook and by paying attention to a copy editor — in essence, learning on the job.

The bigger question is: is this journalism? It's not reporting; it's more like the opinion page, or perhaps what the New York Times might call “news analysis” (which increasingly look quite similar). There is some first-person reportage here, most notably in the Roadgeekery category, but that's in the distinct minority. Rather, this weblog (and most weblogs) leverage traditional journalism mostly to have something to talk about, rather than engaging in reporting. But, consider this definition, from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):

1. The keeping of a journal or diary. [Obs.]

2. The periodical collection and publication of current news; the business of managing, editing, or writing for, journals or newspapers; as, political journalism.

Clearly, this blog, like many others, engages in the “periodical collection and publication of current news,” regardless of whether that news is on the conduct of university professors at USF or how Moxie's blind date went on Friday night (after all, newspapers have “society” pages). So I guess blogging is journalism. Sort of.

Bill Hobbs has some worthwhile thoughts on the subject, and he should know.

I discovered L.T. Smash today in my browsings; it's the weblog of a U.S. Army reserve officer at a very insecure undisclosed location surrounded by lots and lots of sand. Betweem L.T. and Salam Pax in Baghdad, it looks like we've got Iraq covered. Now if we could just get a North Korean blogger to explain what the heck Kim Jong Il is up to…

Tacitus reports on Florida's reaction to the indictment of Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who was suspended by USF while he was under investigation (see USF's archives on the Al-Arian case).

On a seemingly unrelated note (at least, at first glance), InstaPundit links to this New York Post piece by Byron York looking at the financial underpinnings of “Not in Our Name”, the celebrity-driven anti-war movement, seemingly written before the weekend's events. Dig down and you'll find this astounding revelation:

FOR its fund raising, the Not In Our Name Project is allied with another foundation, this one called the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. Founded by several New Left leaders in 1967 to "advance the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination," IFCO was originally created to serve as the fundraising arm of a variety of activist organizations that lacked the resources to raise money for themselves.

In recent years, IFCO served as fiscal sponsor for an organization called the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (their partnership ended when the coalition formed its own tax-exempt foundation). Founded in 1997 as a reaction to the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, the coalition says its function is to oppose the use of secret evidence in terrorism prosecutions.

Until recently, the group's president was Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer-science professor who has been suspended for alleged ties to terrorism. (He is still a member of the coalition's board.) According to a New York Times report last year, Al-Arian is accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised by another charity he runs, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times also reported that FBI investigators "suspected Mr. Al-Arian operated 'a fund-raising front' for the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine from the late 1980s to 1995." Al-Arian also brought a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah to the University of South Florida to raise money for one of Al-Arian's foundations - a job Shallah held until he later became the head of Islamic Jihad.

Of course, the conspiracy theorists will argue that Al-Arian was indicted to silence and discredit the anti-war movement (never mind that large chunks of it have managed to do that on their own, with no help from the government). But it's an interesting development nonetheless, and one that shouldn't be lost on those who ignored the underpinnings of ANSWER.

Meanwhile, you can read the indictment for yourself (via Martin Kramer, who has some pointed commentary on the academic community's past defense of Al-Arian).

Christopher Johnson of the Midwest Conservative Journal notes the recent use of the “S word” — secession — by Alberta premier Ralph Klein. Christopher's analysis seems spot-on:

Assuming British Columbia decided to stay put, could Alberta go it alone? It would be difficult; Alberta would have no port facilities and would have to arrange something with Vancouver or get real chummy with Seattle. But independence would not be impossible. Money would not be a problem; the United States would quite happily buy as much Albertan oil as Edmonton was willing to sell and its transport south could be facilitated with as much American capital as Alberta desired.

Would Alberta become the 51st American state? It probably wouldn't have to. Relations between Alberta and states like Montana and Idaho would be extremely intimate regardless of what Washington thought about it. Indeed, an independent Alberta or Western Canada would be a powerful attraction to many western American states during their periodic outbreaks of anti-Washingtonism. Theoretically, Edmonton could have all the benefits of close association with the United States without the burden of bureaucratic oversight from Washington.

As a practical matter, an independent Western Canada (or just Alberta on its own) would probably be a more functional solution for post-breakup Alberta: there would be no need to conform legal systems, or interminable debate about whether a parliamentary legislature is compatible with the Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government. Unlike Québec, Alberta is a net financial contributor to Canada's federal government, so financing the needs fulfilled by Ottawa would not be difficult (although disentanglement with the rump Canada might lead to some short-term problems).

Should they do it? Beats me. But it would probably be less painful than even the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, generally regarded as the most amicable national divorce on record, and clearly a lot of Albertans are fed up with their isolation from, and lack of input to, federal decision-making.

Hit & Run passes on word that the Pacific island-state of Nauru (population approximately 12,000; area 1/10th that of the District of Columbia) has apparently dropped off the face of the earth. Sounds like someone needs to airdrop a few Iridium satellite phones or something.

The latest craze in the blogosphere is apparently to make fun of READY.GOV, the Department of Homeland Security's website where you too can learn how to save your ass in the event of a WMD attack.

While I agree at some level with The Fat Guy's critique of the craze (the site does seem to have some moderately useful information, in contrast with the downright creepy main DHS site), you've got to admit that the free graphics are providing a field day for the artistically-impaired; take, for example Kieran Healy's storyboard of the Iraq crisis, Amish Tech Support's “The Adventures of... THE FLAMING FART!”, Michele's captioning series, a two-parter at The Short Strange Trip, and general humor from Davezilla, among others. And, since I'm nothing if not artistically-impaired, here's my contribution to the genre:

Thanks to Jeff Jarvis and the others who have linked (some of whom are listed in the TrackBack link below). If it's your first visit, feel free to look around. And don't miss the continuation of the series…

One of the more reasoned (and reasonable) arguments against a war in Iraq is that Iraq can be effectively contained. In the short term, containment is a viable option; however, beyond the short term, containment solves relatively few problems:

• Effective containment requires the inspection process to continue. Without the imminent threat of U.S. and allied military action, the Iraqi regime is unlikely to continue to cooperate (and I use that term loosely) with inspectors.

• Effective containment requires a long-term U.S. commitment to maintain an imminent threat of military action. The U.S. cannot afford to station a large permanent force in the region for years, perhaps decades. “Friendly” states like Saudi Arabia cannot host a large permanent force for domestic political reasons, at least under their current regimes.

• Effective containment requires the sanctions regime to remain in place. France, China, and Russia are on record as wanting to loosen the sanctions or eliminate the sanctions regime altogether.

• Effective containment does nothing to hasten the end of the Iraqi regime. Twelve years of sanctions, enforced about as well as one can reasonably expect, have given Saddam Hussein a pretext to impoverish and starve the Iraqi people but otherwise have had little impact on his ability to enrich himself or consolidate his hold on power.

The only realistic long-term alternative to war in Iraq, or regime change accomplished by some other (unspecified) means, is a complete dismantling of the sanctions regime and an end to any pretense of containment. So, the big question is: in 2020, do we want a different regime in Iraq, or do we want Saddam or Uday still running the show with a rebuilt military and large quantities of WMD at their disposal?

E. Nough has some additional thoughts on Iraqi exceptionalism (or, why we're not planning invasions of Venezuela and Zimbabwe). Meanwhile, here's one for the “those who don't learn history” file. Neville Chamberlain would be proud.

Mindles H. Dreck, the less-fair half of Asymmetrical Information, brings us the ultimate cultural exegesis of the role of the two-by-four in modern American culture, including a link to this bizarre photo essay obviously produced by drunk college students.

Domenico Bettinelli passes on word that Middle Earthers have been holding a peace protest against the war on Mordor. (Link via Josh Chafetz @ OxBlog.)

For the full details on my trip last weekend, see this misc.transport.road post.

Michael Jackson, who hasn't done anything of consequence in the past decade, continues to be the center of media attention this week — apparently, we're just 30 minutes away from another two hours of Jacko. At this rate, we could have a whole cable network devoted to rerunning footage from Jackson interviews.

I've now added support for the ThreadTrack feature in Janes' Blogosphere; the » links will show other blogs that are talking about the same links (hopefully!).

Apologies for the downtime today; blog.lordsutch.com has migrated to a new server.

The good news is that during the downtime I added an automatic ping to weblogs.com in LSblog's posting code, so now tools that leverage data from weblogs.com will see what's happening here. (The oft-promised public release of LSblog is still a little while off, though.)

According to the Daily Mississippian, Mid-South megaplex operator Malco has taken over the local movie theater (the ignorantly-punctuated “Cine’ 4”) and will turn the former Stage department store in the Oxford Mall into a new, modern eightplex.

Thursday's Oxford Eagle reports, in an article by Lucy Schultze (that won't stay online for more than a day, so I'm not going to bother with a link) that an additional ten screens are planned to be built by another developer at a new shopping center at Highway 7 and Sisk Avenue on the east side of town. The developer originally planned to work with Malco, but their purchase of the “Cine’ 4” (mercifully renamed “Cinema 4” on Malco's website) has apparently thrown a wrench into those plans.

Jacob Sullum @ Hit & Run notes that Congress is finally reading the fine print of the monstrosity known as the McCain-Feingold “Campaign Finance Reform” bill, and the results aren't pretty.

On a related note, the blog.lordsutch.com word of the day is schadenfreude. But then again, that's our word of the day every day...

Via the InstaMan.

Glenn Reynolds writes today on Howard Kurtz's observation that the media thinks we're more terrified than we actually are:

And yet, most people are going about their daily business. They have lived through so many stretches of media shrillness – abducted women, missing children, killer sharks – that it has become background noise. Repeated warnings about terrorism, and all the false alarms, have diluted their effectiveness. An orange alert becomes like a snow alert, just another fact of life.

Yes. Every time I see some anchor talk about how "frightened" and "jittery" we are, it just reminds me how out of touch Big Media people are.

We're not "jittery." Americans are determined, and angry. Spoiled media bigshots, used to living in a cocoon of bodyguards and obsequious staffers, are the ones who are "jittery." We saw this in the overwrought reaction to the anthrax attacks last year, and we're seeing it again.

The good news is that their shrillness, as Kurtz notes, actually works against the terrorists. They've managed to make terrorism boring.

The interesting question here is: What are the likely effects of this exaggeration on public opinion?

Diana Mutz and Joe Soss, in their article “Reading Public Opinion: The Influence of News Coverage on Perceptions of Public Sentiment” (Public Opinion Quarterly vol. 61 [1997]) looked at the effect of a “public journalism” effort in Madison, Wisconsin, where one local newspaper highlighted an alleged lack of affordable housing and the other didn't. While they found that the public journalism effort didn't really affect how readers perceived the issue (readers of both newspapers had approximately equal opinions about the problem), those who read the paper that emphasized the issue were more likely to think that their fellow citizens thought the issue was important. (This is termed a “third-person effect.”)

So, what does this have to do with media hysteria about terror? What it suggests is that while people won't individually feel less secure, they will feel like their communities believe they are less secure. This could lead to more widespread support for anti-terrorism measures that otherwise would exist — undermining traditional support for civil liberties by media elites. In other words, “terror exaggeration” is likely to erode public support for values that most of the media (and indeed, most Americans) find desirable: freedom of expression and association and the right to privacy.

I'm going to be in the car all day, so the usual diet of misanthropy will be limited. The good news is: I have links!

• Bitter considers a new career option and notes her cohort's investment in duct tape is paying off.

• VodkaPundit lays down a brutal Fisking on an unsuspecting commenter.

• Dan Drezner speculates that Weaseldom may be overwhelmed by the evidence sooner rather than later.

• Ryan McGee has a brutal two-parter on relationships.

• Michele has lost her patience with Hollywood's weasel entertainers.

• Virginia Postrel has lots of great new stuff up that I'd post direct links to if I felt like picking the anchors out of the page source. Notably, the book's now The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness; apparently, Look and Feel was too risqué for the publishers. Or maybe they were just concerned that the jacket photo would lead to readers mistaking the title as an imperative. [Grammar humor. Cute. —ed. Aaagh, I've caught the dreaded ed meme!]

As an aside, I was brutally disappointed when I turned on C-SPAN late last night and there was no evidence of Robert Byrd reading the phone book. I thought we were supposed to be having a good old-fashioned filibuster? Meanwhile, Howard Bashman suggests the possibility of a double-whammy filibuster; I, too, have never heard of a committee meeting being filibustered. No word yet either on whether this will hold up final passage of the four-month-overdue Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which I can hopefully pore over in detail by tonight (assuming the GPO is on the ball).

Bill Hobbs is reporting that several state legislators have introduced legislation calling for a constitutional convention to propose a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) amendment to the Tennessee constitution.

As Bill notes, it's the first step in a long battle — but an important one. Tennesseans should encourage their state representatives and senators to support this legislation; while it may not pass this year, with sufficient support it could pass eventually.

David Janes, of Janes' Blogosphere fame, is working on some specifications for weblog metadata to improve the life of aggregators and others who are trying to get useful information out of weblogs' content.

At Critical Mass, Erin O'Connor reports on yet another blackface incident, this time at the University of Texas. Leaving aside the legal questions (I tend to agree with critics like O'Connor who think the real harm in these incidents is often vastly overstated), the larger question is: why do fraternities seem to choose this particular meme? I've never had the urge to go out in blackface, and I honestly can't say I understand the appeal. Surely one can make social commentary about rappers, or even African Americans in general, without covering one's face with shoe polish. Plus, you'd think after the publicity surrounding other fraternities getting in trouble for it (not only with public university administrators, where there's a clear First Amendment issue, but also with national fraternity officials, where there normally isn't one), eventually frats would get the message that doing stuff in blackface is just asking for trouble.

Jacob T. Levy has the scoop on the latest discussions in blog-world (from Iain Murray and Michael Jennings) on the abject failure of Lords reform in Britain to get anywhere. (I meant to post on it earlier but got distracted by bright, shiny objects.) The telling sentence:

Now that the traditional British constitution has been abolished, with astonishingly little debate and no clear sense of what to replace it with, that's proving to be a real disadvantage.

Incidentally, upper houses in general have proved themselves rather pointless without either federalism or feudalism as a justification. Take U.S. states for example, post-Baker v. Carr (369 U.S. 186)*: one state (Nebraska) has abolished its upper house, while the rest just plod along with an upper house that's smaller but otherwise elected on the same basis of representation (single member districts, first-past-the-post) as the lower house. While this arrangement does preserve the check of requiring both bodies to agree, it's not clear how much of a check this is as a practical matter (free grad student paper idea: compare the rate of passage of legislation in the Nebraska legislature to a bicameral state).

It seems to me that proportional representation (either pure PR, or the “top-off” form used in Britain's subnational legislatures that still allows some districts) is the ideal solution for making upper houses more relevant: it also has the bonus (if you go for pure PR) of not requiring redistricting fights. Even regional PR might be a good idea — states like Mississippi and Tennessee that have notable sub-state regions (the three Supreme Court districts of Mississippi and Tennessee's Grand Divisions) could use them as the basis for regional lists, apportioning the seats by population.

The downside is that it would probably lead to more partisan state legislatures, so PR Senates may only be desirable in states that already have strongly partisan legislatures — so Tennessee would probably be a reasonable case, while Mississippi may not be.

Previous discussion here.

* Baker v. Carr and its successors invalidated the apportionment of legislative chambers in the United States on any basis other than population under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, with the sole exception of the U.S. Senate (whose apportionment is specified in the Constitution in a particularly airtight fashion).

To elaborate some from the announcement, here are some of the themes I hope to bring up during the campaign (some of which will make little sense if you live outside the district):

Limiting state spending

This year, Mississippi will spend $3.6 billion, most of which comes directly from citizens' pockets. In the past few weeks, our legislators have passed a $236 million budget increase for education, an increase of over 11% above what was planned for 2003, and they don't have a clue where the extra money is going to come from in the long term — the tobacco trust fund and casino taxes aren't a bottomless well of revenue, despite popular belief to the contrary.

To keep state spending on an even keel, and to help ensure Mississippi remains a business-friendly, low-tax state, we need additional constraints on taxing and spending — specifically, we need a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) Amendment that limits state and local spending growth without voters' approval. It's worked well in Colorado and it can work in Mississippi. (For more details on how Colorado's TABOR works, see this white paper by Nashville journalist Bill Hobbs.)

Keeping the judiciary accountable

Much has been made over the past few years over the increasing cost and politicization of judicial campaigns in our state. Some legislators, including my opponent, argue that we should solve this perceived problem by having our governor appoint the Supreme Court. However, it is unlikely that the actual effect would be to depoliticize the court; rather, it would encourage governors to appoint justices who share their politics. Even though the system my opponent proposes would include a retention vote every eight years, replacing the competitive elections we have today, The open and vigorous campaigns we have today are essential for voters to make informed decisions; retention elections, by comparison, would put incumbent justices at a much greater advantage and remove their decisions further from public view and debate.

Ending “Jackpot Justice”

Our state has become widely perceived as a venue for “jackpot justice” — the use of frivolous or exaggerated legal claims to gain large settlements and jury awards against Mississippi and out-of-state businesses. While the tort reform package passed in 2002's special session is a good first step, we need more comprehensive tort reform efforts to discourage “venue shopping” by litigants and stronger rules on certification of class actions. At the same time, we need to make sure that citizens who have suffered real harm retain access to the court system.

Improving Transportation

Mississippi is working with federal officials to designate two new Interstate highways through our state: Interstate 69 through the Delta, passing through Clarksdale, and Interstate 22 across the northern part of our state, passing through Tupelo. Connecting those two highways is Mississippi 6, the main artery through this district. If elected, I will work with MDOT and our federal officials to complete the four-laning of Highway 6 from Clarksdale to Tupelo, including a new southern bypass of Batesville, upgrading the West Jackson intersection in Oxford to an interchange, and improving the safety of Oxford's dangerous Highway 7 interchange.

I will also work with federal and state transportation officials to complete the northwest loop of Oxford to improve access to Highway 6 and Jackson Avenue from Old Sardis Road and College Hill. Also, I will pursue additional funding to repair and replace rural bridges in Lafayette, Panola and Tallahatchie counties.

This listing is preliminary and subject to later revision.