A Republican Split?

Here's a useful post I'll rip off in full. From the TimeOnline's Daniel Finkelstein:

This was an important political moment.

Forget the Presidential election for a second. This was, politically, more important than that.

David Brooks captured it brilliantly in the New York Times. In an angry piece entitled "Revolt of the Nihilists", Brooks lays into Nancy Pelosi for using this hour of peril to make a Democratic fundraising speech.

But most of all he lays into conservative Republicans:

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.

Might this event begin to split the Republican party? The banking and establishment Republicans together with the moderates and reformers might go one way, with the populist, talk radio base going the other way.

Impending defeat (in Congressional elections at a minimum) means that the coming years will be difficult for the party and see a hard fight over its future. The vote last night shows that the conservative base does not easily come to heel. And has a real constituency.

So could last night see the end for the GOP?

This happened to the Democrats in the late 1960s when the south began to split from the rest of the party. Republicans are not immune from a similar fate.

On Social Conservatism

Could we be witnessing the end of a movement? Has social conservatism played itself out? This author not only claims it has, but points to a specific time, 1am March 21, 2005--when President Bush signed a law (alter to be overturned) preventing Terri Schiavo's live support form being turned off:

Terri Schiavo was allowed to die. And in opinion poll after opinion poll most Americans felt, with sadness but with conviction as well, that the courts had been right.

And something stirred. Americans are deeply religious but they are also deeply attached to the idea that folks can get on with their lives unmolested by government. When the two clashed, freedom won. The Strange Death of Social Conservatism as the driving force in US politics was under way. 2006 confirmed it: a thumping, the President called it, as the midterm election results returned Democrats to power in Congress, delivered the first-ever defeat to a state ballot initiative that would have banned gay marriage (in Arizona) and approved state funding of stem-cell research in, of all places, Missouri.

Nothing the voters decide this November will change this dynamic. Not even the fantastic Mrs Palin - the Iron Lady of Alaska - who is on the Republican ticket to serve a purpose but not, frankly, to serve in office. Mrs Palin's views are certainly of the hard-line Religious Right but the party is not intending that they become policy and the party would be destroyed if they did.

The idea (which Mrs Palin backs) that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest was tried out on the people of South Dakota recently. South Dakota is no friend of abortion but even these conservative voters nixed the plan.

No, America is changing and a new era is beginning: a post-Reagan era in which social conservatism (galvanising Republicans and terrifying Democrats) is replaced as the driving force in US politics by...

Well, we don't know.

Opinions on the Bailout

I'll slowly start posting links regarding the various aspects of the recent financial crisis. Here is a collection of opinions of economists on the proposed bailout--the one nixed by the house on Monday.

The End of American Dominance?

That seems to be the conclusion some global commentators are making following the recent financial nosedive. And it fits a pattern:

The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan's technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America's economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world's largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America's financial system.

Catching Up

Funny that the world didn't stop while we were recovering from the storm. There was a presidential debate and, oh yes, we came close to a financial meltdown.

I'll catch up on recent events slowly.

Now its Monday

Classes are set to start back up Monday. This is a good thing because as of today we still had no power in the classroom and its beginning to stink. Some water seems to have been driven in by the wind. Other than that my office and classroom suffered little damage.

Others classes did, so its important that you be there Monday or Tuesday so we can discuss some changes that will have to be made. It looks like I will have to share my classroom with others, so we will probably treat this class more like a hybrid--part online part lecture--than a regular lecture class. This is probably fine since we are already using online sources, but I need to make sure that everyone has the necessary connectivity to make this work.

We'll cover these changes in class next week. By then I expect to have all of the readings and written assignments up on the wiki.

By the way, I understand that the hurricane has set people back, so I will be very lenient with deadlines. As long as you get me all the assigned work in a reasonable time frame, I will accept it.

Week Four Assignments

I've added assignments to week four for both 2301 and 2302. Go to the following wiki pages:

- 2301
- 2302

You'll notice that these assignments are the same for my Internet and lecture students. Until we get back on track I'll continue to do the same. These will not be due until October 6/7th. I have no idea who has power and who does not, so I'll be flexible with this and other class matters. If you are getting these messages let me know and try knocking all this stuff out.

At the moment it looks like we will have classes beginning Thursday--but who knows?

Back to the Grind

Classes will resume--as far as I know--Wednesday September 24. I will make adjustments over the course of the next two days, but I want to cover the same material. Expect more out of class assignments. My power has been out so I'm a bit behind the material on the wiki, but I expect to be caught up by tomorrow--Monday the 22nd.

Don't stress now. They'll be time for that later in the semester. ;)

Clarification on Week Three Test for Lecture Classes

All of my lecture classes, MW and TTH, are to give me short answer questions--originally assigned to my Internet students--on the readings for week three. There will be no multiple choice test on September 15/16. This is in order to deal with the unusual circumstances associated with Hurricane Ike, and the real possibility that may not be able to make it back on Monday.

I want to continue to stay on track despite this situation.

The assignments are on the wiki pages:
- 2301
- 2302

In case the links do not work, here are the assignments. Remember that I want you to turn in full answers, shoot for 200 or so words on each, on September 22/23, depending on which class you have of course. Base each on the assigned readings for your respective classes

2301:
1. Read the introduction of Popular Basis of Political Authority and outline the advantages and disadvantages of resting political on the general population. Which founders trusted the people and which did not?
2. Read the introduction to Right of Revolution and any one of the documents in Chapter 3. Comment on when revolution might be justified and when it might not be.
3. Read the Introduction to Republican Government and describe what a republic is, how it is organized and how they are best maintained.

2302:
1. Why were the federalists dissatisfied with the Articles of Confederation? What changes in the Constitution addressed these dis-satisfactions?
2. Outline the differences between the Virginia Plan, Hamilton's Plan and the resulting Constitution.
3. What theories underlie the designs of each of the separated powers?
4. Describe each of the checks and balances listed above and discuss any controversies associated with them.

Take your time, we all have more important things to do at the moment.

Gibson Interview With Palin

A link from ABC news.

The Youth Vote

Will it really make a difference? Will young voters actually turn out in sufficient number (probably for Obama) and influence the election's outcome?

Slate thinks it might, and gives reasons why they may.

Your Opinion of the Sarah Palin Pick

64% --- great pick
28% --- are you nuts?
7% --- I like living under rocks

Again, help me out and explain your decision. What about her makes you like her or not like her?

Congressional Oversight: I'm in the Wrong Line of Work

For my 2302's getting comfortable with the concept of congressional oversight, there's this little tidbit:

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

...

Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

Based in suburban Denver and modeled to operate like a private sector energy company, the decade-old royalty-in-kind program sells oil and gas on the open market. Its employees are subject to government ethics rules, such as restrictions on taking gifts from people and companies with whom they conduct official business.

One of the reports says that the officials viewed themselves as exempt from those limits, indulging themselves in the expense-account-fueled world of oil and gas executives.

The reports provoked immediate outrage in Congress. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is chairman of the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee, accused the Minerals Management Service on the Senate floor Wednesday of “a pattern of abuses and mismanagement” that is costing taxpayers billions.

As said above, the oversight is being conducted by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.

Here is a link to relevant agency: the Mineral Management Service. Here's the wikipedia entry.

Texas Judicial Resignations

When discussing the Texas Judiciary, we talk about the consequences of the fact that they are elected to their positions: the need for campaign donations, the possibility of justice being "for sale," etc....

I usually only superficially point out that this process is often bypassed when judges resign before an election in order to allow the governor to appoint a replacement who then has the advantage of running as an incumbent. This way the governor can ensure that a judge that shares his or her ideology holds the position.

This might help explain the recent resignations of three Harris county judges: David Bernal, former judge of the civil Harris County 281st District Court; John Wooldridge, ex-judge of the civil Harris County 269th District Court; and Wanda Fowler, who sat on the Houston-based 14th Court of Appeals, which serves 10 counties including Harris.

There is suspicion that they did so in order to avoid losing to a Democrat, if the surge in Democratic voters in Harris County has the impact some predict, but the judges and Harris County Republican Party deny this.

It's interesting to note what these judges have decided to do next in their careers.

All three ex-judges have gone into private law practice at higher salaries.
- Bernal left for Apache Corp
- Fowler joined the law firm Wright, Brown & Close.
- Wooldridge joined Baker Hughes

I imagine that it's nice to be able to hire an ex-judge.

Change in Plans

As you probably know by now, the campus is closed due to Hurricane Ike.

My Thursday classes cannot meet, so this will put us all behind in our work. In order to stay on track, but also give you all the leeway necessary to deal with whatever you have to deal with, I'm changing the assignment due for week three's readings.

I want everyone, lecture classes included, to do the work assigned to the Internet students. This involves some short answer questions posted on the wiki. I'd like my lecture students to turn in hard copy. The original due date was September 15/16, but I will postpone that one week, September 22/23. We will stay on track for week four's assignments, and--assuming we don't have another hurricane after Ike--we will have a multiple choice test on the week four's reading on September 22/23.

I assume that there will be some confusions regarding all this, so ask me what you need to ask and I'll try to be clearer.

Good luck and stay as dry as you can.

When Lies Become Facts

Interesting--perhaps disappointing--story in today's Washington Post:

As the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. A number of fabrications about Palin's policies and personal life, for instance, have circulated on the Internet since she joined the Republican ticket.

Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies. Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000.

Fed up, the Obama campaign broke a taboo on Monday and used the "L-word" of politics to say that the McCain campaign was lying about the Bridge to Nowhere.

Nevertheless, with McCain's standing in the polls surging, aides say he is not about to back down from statements he believes are fundamentally true, such as the anecdote about the bridge.

It's going to get ugly out there.

So you are on Death Row . . .

. . . and it turns out that the district attorney who presented the case against you and the judge were having an affair.

Problem? Do you deserve a new trial? If so why?

A Texas death row inmate whose lawyers argued a secret romantic relationship between the judge and prosecutor at his trial tainted the proceedings 19 years ago won a reprieve Tuesday from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that blocked his lethal injection set for the following day.

The state's highest criminal court, however, stopped Charles Dean Hood's execution not because of the alleged affair between retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell, but because of what it said were "developments in the law regarding (jury) nullification instructions."

The Austin-based court, where Holland once served as a judge after her stint as a district judge in the suburban Dallas county, said it would be "prudent to reconsider the decision we issued" in previously dismissing Hood's appeal that challenged jury instructions.

At the same time, the court dismissed claims Hood's attorneys filed that he was denied a fair trial because of what would be a legally unethical relationship between Holland and O'Connell and arguments that Hood's execution set for Wednesday would twice put his life in jeopardy.

The affair does not matter apparently.

Do you agree? Was this an improper---consolidation--of the executive and judicial branches?

Inequality and Republican ID

David Frum writes:

As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican.

On Contraception and Abortion

63 people voted on whether contraception is a form of abortion and here is the breakdown:

Yes: 5
No: 48
Depends on the type of contraception: 10

Anyone want to volunteer a justification for their answer?

Week Three Assignments for Internet Students are Up

Go to the Wiki for the full info and links to the readings:

GOVT 2301 - Week 3

GOVT 2302 - Week 3

For GOVT 2301: Answer each of the following questions in at least 250 words (longer answers are both allowed and encouraged)

1. Read the introduction of Popular Basis of Political Authority and outline the advantages and disadvantages of resting political on the general population. Which founders trusted the people and which did not?
2. Read the introduction to Right of Revolution and any one of the documents in Chapter 3. Comment on when revolution might be justified and when it might not be.
3. Read the Introduction to Republican Government and describe what a republic is, how it is organized and how they are best maintained.

For GOVT 2302: Answer each of the following questions in at least 200 words, you may go over, and perhaps should.

1. Why were the federalists dissatisfied with the Articles of Confederation? What changes in the Constitution addressed these dis-satisfactions?
2. Outline the differences between the Virginia Plan, Hamilton's Plan and the resulting Constitution.
3. What theories underlie the designs of each of the separated powers?
4. Describe each of the checks and balances listed above and discuss any controversies associated with them.

I will want these turned in by September 15.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

From the New York Times:

The Treasury Department on Sunday seized control of the quasi-public mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and announced a four-part rescue plan that included an open-ended guarantee to provide as much capital as they need to stave off insolvency.

We'll follow up.

On the South and the Republicann Party

From the Atlantic in 1998.

McCain's up by 3 Percentage Points

According to Gallup it's now McCain 48% Obama 45%.

The poll shows how support breaks down according to various groups. We will begin looking these over this week .

Working Class Women

This is the demographic group that will determine who the next president is, apparently, and the one that Republicans are hoping Sarah Palin will pull to their side. Hillary Clinton had their support, but will they stay Democrat now that Obama is at the top of the ticket?

The Los Angeles Times argues that the Palin pick isn't quite luring them over, at least in one key battleground state, Pennsylvania:

Interviews with some two dozen women here after Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they were thinking about the price of milk -- nearly $5 a gallon -- or the healthcare coverage that many working families here cannot afford.

Even if they admire Palin's attempt to juggle political ambition, an infant son with Down syndrome and a pregnant unwed daughter, these women say that maternal grit is not enough to win their votes.

Waitress Judy Artice, "Miss Judy," as she is known at Glisan's roadside diner, declared Palin "the perfect candidate" after watching her Wednesday speech. That said, Artice had already decided that her vote would go to the first candidate who mentioned gasoline prices.

"And -- I'll be danged -- it was Obama," Artice, 46, said between servings of liver and onions during the lunch rush.

Both campaigns have signaled that these blue-collar hamlets could be where the election will be decided, an assessment made even more likely when the nation's unemployment rate hit a five-year high in August.

McCain dominates among white men, and Obama, who would be the first black president, is all but sweeping the black vote, most polls show. That leaves white women, the so-called Clinton base, as one of the most sought-after voting groups left on the table.

We will monitor this as the campaign proceeds.

Battleground States as of September 2008

The following states will decide out next president:

Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, all of which voted Republican in 2004, but Obama is competing in this year, and Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which voted Democrat in 2004, but McCain is competing in this year.

McCain has about a 10% lead in Texas, so don't expect much action here. But perhaps a few ads may run in Harris County since Democrats see county wide opportunities if voter turnout is high.

This little bit at the end of the story tells us something about how campaigns are run these days:

The [McCain] campaign is using technology to help identify likely voters, including having volunteers call supporters using Internet phones that can help collect data for the Republican National Committee.

“If the person you’re calling says, ‘Yes, I’m voting for Senator McCain,’ you push a button on the phone and it automatically goes back to the R.N.C. database,” Mr. DuHaime said. “If the person says it’s a wrong number, there’s another button and it wipes that number out, so that nobody ever calls that again.”

“You can take all that data,” he added, “and analyze it, figure out things that are working and things that are not and how to allocate resources.”

Sarah Palin and the Separation of Church and State

The New York Times reports on Sarah Palin's religious background. She has a literal approach to the Bible, which is her right as an individual, but I'd like to get some feedback about whether this could be problematic for an elected official. Could she make decisions biased in favor of a particular religious viewpoint, or could the country benefit from having someone in the vice presidency who reflects a biblically based value system?

From the NYT story:

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.
...

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. “Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer — let’s put it that way,” she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said.

Tracking the Election

We've been monitoring Gallup's tracking polls in class, and will continue to do so up to the election. I'll add others focused on House, Senate and state races as well, but be prepared to answer questions about the relative positions of the two candidates.

Here's a story on the most recent results: Obama's lead over McCain has shrunk--naturally enough--since the Republicans have dominated the spotlight. The full impact has yet to be measured though, so expect more posts on this prior to Monday's test. Know how much support each candidate is receiving and why.

Did the Blogosphere Drive the Palin Selection?

Maybe.

Here's a blog, started in February 2007, which has pushed her selection.

Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President.

What does this tell us about contemporary politics?

Attention: Week Three Readings are up

The pages for week three are up. Internet students will have to wait til Sunday or Monday for the assignments. There will be, probably, ten or so short answer questions on the readings. I advise that you stick to week two for the weekend--you do read during the weekend right?--but when ready, start on week three.

- 2301 week three.

- 2302 week three.

A Few Takes on Palin's Speech

She looked liked she belonged--liked she had been there before--and did not step on any of her lines, which is what she had to do. No mistakes. She threw red meat to the social conservatives and gave them something to be happy about, but I want to see what the polls tell us about how moderates react to her.

Here are takes from three people smarter than me:

- Fred Barnes
- James Fallows
- Gloria Steinem

What Can a President Really Do?

Charlie Cook says, not as much as you think, and its best to think small. The problem is that there's lots that needs doing:

A breathtaking array of problems will immediately demand the attention of the next president.

One of the smartest guys in Washington is political economist Tom Gallagher, who monitors the intersection of economics, policy, and politics for the ISI Group, a Wall Street advisory firm. On the subject of budget deficits,

Gallagher is fond of quoting the late economist Herb Stein, who said that the problem isn't that wolves are at the door, it's that termites are in the foundation. Some of our country's problems are termites, not wolves. Unfortunately, as Gallagher warns, our system is geared more toward dealing with wolves.

Many of the problems gnawing away at the United States are rooted in our "$53 trillion 'real' national debt," the term coined by former Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson and former Comptroller General David Walker to describe our actual national debt, including unfunded liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. Exacerbating these problems is a gradually retiring Baby Boom Generation twice the size of the current senior population. The crush of debt being passed on to future taxpayers is unconscionable, prompting Peterson, now chairman of the Blackstone Group, to hire Walker and commit $1 billion of his fortune to raising public awareness and prodding policy makers to find solutions.

Beyond Medicare, the constellation of health care problems includes funding Medicaid, covering the uninsured, and dealing with rising insurance costs that are increasingly hurting U.S. competitiveness.

Then there is energy--its cost and availability, and the implications of our dependence on foreign oil. Closely related is the need to shift to renewable-energy sources that don't exacerbate global warming or ravage the environment.

Both political parties are playing ostrich. Many Democrats are dragging their feet on responsible offshore drilling and on nuclear power. Republicans are resisting tougher fuel-efficiency standards and, in some cases, development of alternative-energy sources. Until we acknowledge that the solution to our energy problems is all of the above, we are unlikely to get out of the current mess.

Next on the list are the mounting U.S. trade imbalance, our lack of competitiveness, and our dependence on foreign investment to prop up our credit markets. Even as our global interdependence grows, schools continue to turn out too many students who are ill-equipped to compete in the international economy. And don't forget the entrenched underclass, enslaved in a cycle of poverty from which few escape, and immigration policies that bar some of the brightest minds in the world from American graduate schools.

This month's one-year anniversary of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis is a reminder of our national infrastructure crisis. In a recent meeting with editors and reporters at National Journal, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that his city's officials are afraid to shut off the water to allow close inspection of some fragile pipes because the water pressure might be the only thing keeping them from collapsing.

The list of national woes wouldn't be complete without mentioning the home mortgage debacle and the related credit crisis. These problems--which will take years to fix--are choking off the ability of businesses large and small to obtain credit to expand or hire workers, and they are making it difficult for people to buy homes and cars. When a credit-driven economy reduces access to credit, that is a real crisis.

A common denominator of many of these problems is government revenue, with the day growing closer when we will need to shift to some form of consumption tax, perhaps as a replacement for the personal and corporate income-tax structure. A consumption tax is a more efficient method of tax collection, and it would boost our trade competitiveness.

Finally, in the area of foreign policy, the United States faces threats posed by terrorism, a nuclear-armed Iran, and an increasingly belligerent Russia.

Clearly, a host of complex challenges will demand our next chief executive's time. But another of the really smart folks in Washington, ViaNovo lobbyist and policy strategist Billy Moore, argues, "History shows that new presidents can usually only accomplish three or four big things in their first term, and that reaching beyond this number results in fewer, not more, achievements."

So, John McCain and Barack Obama, don't say we didn't warn you.

Overview of the Election from Gallup

The Gallup Poll provides a brief overview of the election. Key points:

- Democrats have a "structural" election advantage.
- Turnout will be a key factor.
- Pattern of candidate support is similar to 2000 and 2004 elections.
- Top voter issue this year is the economy. Gas prices, Iraq, healthcare, and terrorism remain important.

Poll Question: Is Contraception Abortion?

The New York Times reports that the Bush Administration is considering changes to rules for programs run with funding from the Health and Human Services Department that would protect health providers who are opposed to abortion, and wish to act accordingly.

The rules however broaden the definition of abortion to include methods generally considered to be simply contraception.

The proposal defines abortion as follows: “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”

So here's a poll question, answer it on the poll to the right. Is contraception abortion?

Google "contraception" and "abortion" and you'll get tons of links to pages on the subject. There's quite the anti-contraception movement underway.

A New Link: Political Glossary

Here's another reason why only use online sources: The Washington Post's Political Glossary.

Not sure what a political term means? Check it out.

I linked to in on the general online resources section. We will be using it frequently.

No Bounces

Generally presidential candidates get bounces in public opinion polls (brief increases in support) after they are nominated by their party in the national convention and after they announce their vice presidential selections.

Neither candidate got much of one. The Moderate Voice explains:

A new Gallup Daily tracking poll taken after the Democratic convention and after Republican Senator John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate shows Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s lead down two points. Obama now has a 6 point lead.

Both Gallup and a website that analyzes polls suggest this means (1) Obama didn’t get much of a convention bounce but its hard to judge given the rapidity of McCain’s Veep announcement, (2)McCain’s Palin pick didn’t give him an out of the ordinary Vice Presidential pick bounce, and (3) if the Palin pick is factored in Democrats shouldn’t be too upset because Obama seemingly held up fairly well.

Spinning the Palin Selection

Now that John McCain has made his selection of a Vice Presidential candidate, pundits are figuring out what this says about McCain. Here's input from McCain's hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, summary below:

6 thing the Palin pick says about "maverick" McCain:

1- He's desperate
2- He's willing to gamble - big time
3- He's worried about the political implications of his age
4- He's not worried about the actuarial implications of his age
5- He's worried about his conservative base
6- At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain

Let's comment in class.

What is an Argument?

I'm reading through some of the submissions and it's becoming obvious that not all of you have a clear idea about what an argument is. An observation on your part that someone has done something that you do not like, or has said something misleading, is not a fallacy. A lie is a statement, not an argument. This assignment begins with your selection of an argument that someone has made about a candidate that takes the form of one of the fallacies listed in the page I linked you to.

Part of the assignment is to do the assigned readings and give me the assigned work, not something you have written for yourself. Half of my job--the most unpleasant half--is to figure out who has read the material and who has not. Some of this difficulty, again, might simply come from ignorance about what is and is not a logical argument. My bad for not going over this in class, but it is one of those subjects we tend to assume has been covered in high school. I'll not make that assumption again.

Let's figure out what an argument is. Again Monty Python helps clarify the issue much better than I can. For less silly content, here are some of the definitions or "argument" from dictionary.com:

- a discussion involving differing points of view; debate: They were deeply involved in an argument about inflation.- a process of reasoning; series of reasons: I couldn't follow his argument.
- an address or composition intended to convince or persuade; persuasive discourse.

There are other definitions--check them out--but let's stick to these. Notice that the second definition states that an argument is a process of reasoning, while the third states that an argument is meant to persuade. These aren't necessarily the same. A process of reasoning--let's call it a logical argument--may be unexciting and not persuade the listeners, while a non-logical--or fallacious--argument, might be very persuasive (Vote McCain and you'll lose 30 pounds in your sleep!). Often these can be more persuasive that logical arguments, which tend to make the brain hurt.

Let's look at a couple of more terms in order to clarify this further. The first term is "fallacy." The second is "valid."

Fallacy. Again here are three definitions from dictionary.com:

- a misleading or unsound argument.
- deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness.
- Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

Valid, again from dictionary.com:

- Producing the desired results; efficacious: valid methods.
- Containing premises from which the conclusion may logically be derived: a valid argument.
- Correctly inferred or deduced from a premise: a valid conclusion.
Notice the last two definitions especially. My apologies to the logicians, who won't find this summary adequate, but a valid argument is meant to retain the truth embedded in its premises. The classic example of such an argument is the syllogism (definition from--guess where):

- Logic. an argument the conclusion of which is supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term (middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical form is “All A is C; all B is A; therefore all B is C.”

A fallacy argument, by definition, loses the truth of its premises as the argument progresses--but that does not mean it can't be persuasive. Your job, again, is to look at the arguments you see being made about the candidate--not your personal assessments of them--and to test for their validity.

If you have not done the assignment as I have asked, I will ask that you do it again.

Once all these assignments are in, we can spend some time determining whether democratic politics are rational exercises or are purely driven by fallacy. This may prove depressing.

Attention Internet Students

Here is your next assignment (assignment 2):

2301: Using your email searching skills, do the following: Get comfortable with the way that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are used in contemporary discourse. Then look up the respective positions taken by the two principle presidential candidates on issues like the economy, social and moral issues, energy, immigration and more. What are the liberal positions on these issues and what are the conservative positions? Is there a key ideological distinction between the two candidates on these issues or do they take similar stands? On which side does the American public tend to stand? Which do you think is the winning side of the issue?

Email me 500 words on this subject by Monday September 8th.

2302: Read the three Federalist Papers assigned in your syllabus. You'll note that page on the wiki also contains the Anti-Federalist response (you are not responsible for reading them--but ought to anyway). Outline each of these and point out the way that each takes human nature into consideration in the design of the republic.

Email me 500 words on this subject by Monday September 8th.

Feel free to use the comments section below this post to ask questions. I do read them and will respond if necessary.

Out of Town Until Sunday

Note: I will be out of town until Sunday night. I will try to stay on top of my emails, but can't guarantee that. On Monday I will start adding material to the two wiki pages devoted to the readings and assignments for week two. Remember that we do not have class on Monday due to Labor Day.

2301 week two

2302 week two

Remember that I want one full page written on the fallacies assignment. When we get back in I want you to have hard copy with you so we can discuss it in class. Internet students, please email it to me.

A Note to Internet Students

Apparantly there are about 40 of you, but I've heard from maybe five. You need to get in touch--but how would you be able to read this if haven't touched base?

hmmmmm.

For those who are following along: In case I haven't been clear enough, please email me all your work to my ACC address: kjefferies@alvincollege.edu.

A Witch! May We Burn Her?

A classic exercise in logical analysis:

The Witch Scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

An Amazing Elections Website

Check it out:

Voting America.

It contains dynamic representation of American election results spannign over a century and a half.

Thanks to ACC Head Librarian Tom Bates for pointing this out to me.

Fallacies and Marketing

I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into the fallacies assignment. I've asked you to consider whether the messages we hear from and about the candidates are logical or fallacious, and to give me examples of fallacious arguments, but might also want to think about how successful logical arguments are.

Are simple messages that appeal to emotion or fear or whatever, more effective than logical arguments. A lot of the money pumped into campaigns is spent on determining what messages work best. Polls and focus groups are used to ensure that messages hit their targets.

Is there something in our DNA that makes us more receptive to emotional arguments than logical ones?

Links to follow

Blogging About Myself

Thanks To Rick Casey for my 15 seconds of fame.

Professor worries TAKS test breeds ignorant voters.

The comments are my favorite part. Here's this choice bit: Question. Why is it that most 4 year degrees in collage now take 5 years? Could it be because our kids are not prepared from high school and are taking courses the first year to get up to the level of ability required in collage?

It's so sad that we aren't preparing kids to excel in collage, or macrame either.

I need a drink.

The Bad News is that Gas Prices Went up to $4 a Gallon

The good news is that traffic fatalities haven't been this low in almost 50 years:

Experts who have studied motor vehicle fatality trends said one reason for the dramatic decline is that people are reducing their nonessential driving first, which is often leisure driving at night or on weekends. That also happens to be riskier than daylight commuting on congested highways at lower speeds.

Teenage and elderly drivers — who also have higher accident rates — are more likely to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, and thus may be cutting back more than other drivers. Federal data also shows that driving declines have been more dramatic on rural roads, which have higher accident rates than urban highways.

And, some drivers are simply trying to save on gas by slowing down, which also decreases risk. "It could be that the safety benefits of driving slower are proportionately greater than the fuel economy benefits," Sivak said.

The steepness of the fatality decline underscores a point several experts have made recently — that raising the price of gas is more effective than almost any other means of reducing fatalities.

So does this mean the rise has been worth it?

Warning--Don't Make a Fallacious Argument Yourself

After talking to a couple of you, I'm worried that this exercise might turn into a chance to whine about candidates you don]t like.

That's a great way to get a low grade, and bore me to tears. You'll note that at no point did I ask: "Tell me what you don't like about X." That's a great way to fall into a fallacious way of reasoning yourself. Your emotions about a candidate begin to govern your assessments of the truth.

Stick to the arguments made by others and make an objective analysis of that argument. When I want your opinions, I will ask for them.

Obama's Economic Agenda

The New York Times provides an overview of Barack Obama's economic plans.

Save this for when we discuss the contemporary state of ideology. Is this a liberal plan? Are there conservative aspects to it? How do we know?

About that Fallacy Assignment

If you are not sure how to start on the first assignment, here are a few links that should help search for arguments that may or may not be fallacious:

1--The McCain website has a nice "bad stuff about Joe Biden" page.
2--The Obama website has a page confronting McCain's accusations.
3--The Republican National Committee's research briefings site digs the dirt on Obama.
4--The Democratic National Committee's press release page has loads of negativity on McCain.

You might also like to check out the following site: FactCheck.org to get their assessment of the truth or falsity behind recent adds.

There's more out there, but this gives you a head start on the assignment.

Rulemaking: The Endangered Species Act

From today's Washington Post, word of administrative changes in how the Endangered Species Act will be implemented:

The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.

The new rules, which will be subject to a 30-day per comment period, would use administrative powers to make broad changes in the law that Congress has resisted for years. Under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.

This appears to be an additional attempt to expand executive powers at the expense of the legislature.

Is McCain's Strategy Working?

The Washinton Times indicates that it just might be. The story suggests that race may play a factor in a shift away from Obama.

State Republican Party leaders interviewed by The Washington Times said fear of a far-left Obama presidency is warming once-skeptical voters to Sen. John McCain, fueling growing enthusiasm among Republicans that Mr. McCain's more aggressive campaigning can lead to victory.

"It appears that the more that Obama speaks, the more afraid folks in South Carolina get," said Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltram. "We are seeing 'die-hard' Democrats tell us that Obama is not their man.

"We are expecting the white Democrats to be fleeing the Democratic ship when November 4 comes around - plus, the Democratic candidate [Bob Conley] that is running against Senator [Lindsey] Graham is also running away from the Democrats, and you can quote me on that," Mr. Beltram said.

In union-dominated Michigan, a state targeted by both major parties, state Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis said he is seeing signs that independents and Reagan Democrats are moving toward Mr. McCain.

"People who may have been apprehensive about McCain now see this race as potentially winnable," Mr. Anuzis said.

The latest daily tracking poll by Gallup shows the presidential contest in a statistical dead heat, with the Illinois Democrat three percentage points ahead of the Arizona Republican, 46 percent to 43 percent. National tracking polls of likely voters

Campaigning: Money Talks

If you want to know why River Oaks does as well as it does, it helps to understand just how much money flows from that neighborhood into the hands of Republican and Democratic office seekers.

Campaigning: Another peak inside the McCain Campaign

From today's NYT:

...Mr. McCain is called the White Tornado by some people who have worked for him over the years. Throughout his presidential campaign, he has been the overseer of a kingdom of dissenting camps, unclear lines of command and an unsettled atmosphere that keeps aides constantly on edge.

Even now, after a shake-up that aides said had brought an unusual degree of order to Mr. McCain’s disorderly world in the last month, two of his pollsters are at odds over parts of the campaign’s message, while past and current aides have been trading snippy exchanges debating the wisdom of attack advertisements he has aimed at Mr. Obama.

In an interview, Mr. McCain said he believed an organization consisting of sometimes colliding centers of power made sure that a candidate, or a president, reached fully informed decisions. “You’ve got to have competing opinions,” he said.

“I think a certain amount of tension is very healthy, and a certain amount of different views,” he said. “Because of the bubble that a president is in, and the bubble that a candidate is in, sometimes you find out afterwards something that — ‘Oh boy, I wish I had heard thus and such and so and so.’ So I appreciate and want some of the tension; I don’t want too much of it, obviously, because we have to have certain efficiencies. But I think there is a balance there.”

Mr. McCain hungers for information. He can regularly be seen reading newspapers from cover to cover, and aides say he embraces the briefing books given to him each night. His aides say he is especially studious when it comes to economic issues, an area in which he has admitted weakness. A former fighter pilot, Mr. McCain preaches the need to improvise under pressure, subscribing to the military maxim that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The bursts of temper fellow senators have endured are rarely directed at his underlings. Indeed Mr. McCain has a history of being surrounded by people who are intensely loyal to him — and remain so even after being pushed off his ship.

But if Mr. McCain’s management style has kept him well informed and flexible, its drawbacks have been especially evident in the many often turbulent months since he began his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. It offers a contrast to the more rigidly controlled and nearly corporate management style that has marked the campaign of Mr. Obama, his Democratic counterpart. If anything, it recalls the freewheeling ways of the last Republican senator to win his party’s presidential nomination, Bob Dole in 1996.

Agenda Setting: The Sherman Bus Cash

Behind most every regulation lies a tragedy. Today's Chron tells us that the bus crash in Sherman (17 dead at this moment) is likely to lead to bus safety reform:

...the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced its intention to do more testing aimed at developing standards for seat belts and safety glass in charter buses.

But the agency has stopped short of mandating the same for the large yellow school buses, making it optional. U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are sponsoring a bill that would bypass safety testing on charter buses by immediately requiring such protections. Brown became involved in the bill after seven baseball players from Bluffton University in his state died when their charter bus fell off an overpass in Atlanta on their way to a tournament.

Lack of seat belts was cited by the National Transportation Safety Board as one of the causes of the injuries. "It's all about cost, and we're looking for the money to help pay for bus safety," Forman said. Forman noted the most protected person on a charter bus is the driver, who has a seat belt and a laminated windshield.

Haven't we been through this before?

Enemy Deprivation Syndrome

This is a phrase I picked up from a Samantha Power essay on foreign policy. Presumably it refers to an ear when an enemy does not exist and interests that benefit from having a concentrated enemy suffer.

Democratic Platform circa 2008

Click here for comments on a preliminary version of the Democrat's 2008 platform, and here for background information on the platform writing process itself.

Creative Budgeting

Michael Granof, an accounting professor at the University of Texas writing in the New York Times, discusses the budgetary tricks that state government are going through in order to balance their books. It involves techniques where bonds are issued in order to finance the purchase of one part of government to another. The purchase is then entered into the books as revenue, which balances the books, without actually increasing revenue. All involve some way of ensuring that current obligations are passed onto the next generation:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California wants to reduce his state’s deficit by borrowing money from the future. His plan is to issue $15 billion in bonds that are backed by future lottery revenues. More than a third of that money would be used to ease California’s current-year deficit.

Borrowing from the future to pay for the present is, unfortunately, becoming routine. In 2006, Indiana leased a toll road to a foreign consortium from Australia and Spain. The state received $3.8 billion upfront by surrendering the next 75 years of toll revenues. Other states have sold tobacco bonds that provide one-time infusions of cash — in return for forgoing 25 years of payments from cigarette companies that were supposed to pay for health care related to tobacco-caused illnesses.

Another trick is to move up the due dates on merchant-collected sales taxes from early next year to late in the current year. These taxes then are counted as revenues for the current year.

Other states have moved employee paydays from the last day of the month to the first day of the next month. This enables them to eliminate an entire month of employee pay from the year’s budget, because for one year there are only 11 paydays instead of 12. In subsequent years, the budget includes 11 paydays from salaries earned in the current year and one payday for money earned the previous year.

States also transfer money from a “rainy day” reserve account to the general fund and then count the amount transferred as revenue. This is the equivalent of solving personal fiscal problems by moving money from a savings account to a checking account and calling it “income.”

Pensions are the ideal budget item for imaginative accounting. When pension expenditures are decreased, the consequences of the cuts may not show up for decades. States can simply fail to pay the amount that is actuarially sound into pension funds. The retirement checks that state employees eventually receive under a defined-benefit plan are determined by the promises incorporated into the plan, not by the timing of a state’s contributions. In effect, the state pays now or it pays later.

All this while investments in the future are cut for current economic gain. Sucks to be young.

Presidential Advising: Cheney and Addington on Bush

Here are a few q and a's in the New Republic which touch on how President Bush and VP Cheney used information in deciding whether and how to torture detainees:

Many have wondered what transformed Vice President Cheney into the Prince of Darkness. Why do you think he embraced Addington's radical legal vision so enthusiastically?

Of course, I don't really know; you can't get inside of his head. I wish I'd been able to interview him. I certainly think he had a pre-existing political agenda, which was to strengthen the executive branch. But people I've interviewed who know him well, including an old family friend who really likes him, said that he was altered in some profound way by 9/11. This particular friend said that he became steely, that he had seen something terrible that he could no longer talk about. And, of course, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief-of-staff to Colin Powell, actually comes out and says that he thinks Cheney became paranoid. Granted, that's a clinical term, and Lawrence Wilkerson is not a doctor. But there's more than ample evidence that he became obsessed with the terrorist threat, and you could question whether his judgment became skewed.

I think one of the interesting questions is whether after 9/11 the top people in the Bush administration didn't almost poison themselves with information. They removed all the filters on the kind of intelligence information that went to the president and vice president and other top people in the administration. Prior to 9/11, the CIA and the FBI screened out all the unreliable information about what kinds of threats were coming in. But after 9/11, Cheney in particular wanted to see everything. He no longer trusted that the CIA was able to screen it properly. So, according to one of the people I quote, Roger Cressey, who was at the National Security Council at the time, they started just bombarding themselves every morning with these reports filled with what Cressey describes as mostly garbage, but that were completely alarming. And so, in the words of Jim Comey again, he describes it as locking yourself in a room with Led Zeppelin every morning. You would just lose your mind.

Why did Bush turn over so much of his presidency to Cheney and Addington? Did he understand the radicalism of the positions taken in his name?

This is such a good question. I've interviewed people who are more moderate than Cheney in the administration, who like to think that if they had only been able to get more information to President Bush, he would have put the brakes on. And they blame Cheney and Addington and a small group of others around them for too radically narrowing the information that reached President Bush. Yet there were memos that did reach the president. He certainly had the basic outlines of what was going on. What I'm told is that Cheney really knew how to play him, and would say in meetings, If we don't continue to use the most extreme possible methods on terror suspects, if anything goes wrong, you'll be blamed. And nobody ever did a Plan B kind of analysis to see whether this radical course in fact was necessary for national security. The CIA never sent in a team to see whether they got better information out of torturing people or out of not torturing people. There was no alternative program that was ever given to the president about how to treat terrorist suspects.

What about Jack Goldsmith's thesis that Bush's excesses resulted from a failure to recognize that presidential power is the power to persuade. Was Bush's problem that he had contempt for politics?

No, I think that, again, what Cheney convinced Bush of was that if they did not go to the farthest possible regions of the law, the most outermost edges of what you could do to detainees, then they would be shirking their responsibility in terms of protecting the country. So rather than having a policy debate and a political debate on what the right thing to do was, and what the smartest thing to do was, they simply let the lawyers define policy by setting the outer limits of the law. You have John Yoo saying, "Well, I'm just a lawyer; I'm just telling you what you can do legally. It's above my pay grade to have a policy debate." But his judgments became the policy because they didn't have that debate.

Inherent Powers: Did Lincoln Have the Constitutional Power to Emancipate the Slaves in the South?

Yes, because it was during a civil war and he claimed it to fall under his war powers:

The Civil War transformed Lincoln from a president into the constitutional commander in chief of the army and navy. What that meant, exactly, was far from clear. But that status might also give him yet another route toward emancipation. International law recognized that, in time of war, military commanders had the authority to suspend the normal operations of civil law and rule by decree. Only one American general—Andrew Jackson—had actually ever done this on American soil. But there had also never been a civil war in America before. And so Lincoln began gradually flexing his “war powers”—he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, he called up armies of volunteers into federal service, and he imposed a blockade of the Confederacy.

Of course, at each point, Taney and the Supreme Court hotly contested Lincoln’s use of these “war powers.” And this made him leery of pressing the “war powers” to the point of emancipating the South’s slaves. But by the summer of 1862, the military aspect of the war was going very badly. Relying on the labor of its slaves, the Confederacy was able to field armies that could easily hold their own against Lincoln’s armies. And his own generals—chief among them George B. McClellan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac—were politically unsympathetic to emancipation and sulky in taking orders from Lincoln. And to make matters worse, Delaware turned down the buy-out plan. If Lincoln waited longer, he might have victorious rebel armies surrounding Washington; or he might have mutinous generals threatening to seize the government for themselves. We “must change our tactics or lose the game,” Lincoln announced, and on July 22, 1862, Lincoln read to his cabinet a draft of an emancipation proclamation, threatening to decree the freeing of the slaves as a “fit and necessary war measure for suppressing” the rebellion. When McClellan and his army finally defeated the Confederates at Antietam in September, Lincoln published the proclamation and gave the Confederates 100 days to end the rebellion or the emancipation would take effect. The 100 days came and went without any repenting on the part of the Confederates, and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law.

Into military law, that is. Lincoln had no more civil authority as president to emancipate slaves in 1863 than he had had at the beginning of the presidency, and every lawyer in the country knew it. This is why the proclamation did two very peculiar things: first, it based its emancipating authority strictly on Lincoln’s “power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief . . . in time of actual armed rebellion.” Second, it limited the reach of emancipation only to the slaves in “the States and parts of States . . . this day in rebellion against the United States.” The four slave states that had not joined the Confederacy (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) were not “in rebellion” and so Lincoln’s “war powers” had no reach over them.

Pardons: Is It's Necessary to Find Out the Truth About Torture?

Stuart Taylor, writing for Newsweek says so:

President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. (It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself, but the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway—galling as that may be to critics.) The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.

Pardons would further a truth commission's most important goals: to uncover all important facts, identify innocent victims to be compensated, foster a serious conversation about what U.S. interrogation rules should be, recommend legal reforms, pave the way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name. The goals should not include wrecking the lives of men and women who made grievous mistakes while doing dirty work—work they had been advised by administration lawyers was legal, and which they believed was necessary to prevent terrorist mass murder.

A criminal investigation would only hinder efforts to determine the truth, and preclude any apologies. It would spur those who know the most to take the Fifth. Any prosecutions would also touch off years of partisan warfare. The lesson for occupants of the toughest government jobs—if the next administration could find people willing to fill them—would be that saving innocent lives is less important than covering their posteriors. Any hope of a civil conversation about lessons we need to learn would be dead.

The need for truth outweighs the prosecution of criminal behavior. Ring true? Or does this simply allow an out for any administration to claim it is above the law and do as it chooses when in charge?

Elections: The Age of Helms

A great recent article in Salon outlines Jesse Helms' influence on politics. He gave the Southern oligarchy a quasi-populist face which allowed it to preserve its privileges:

Where Jesse Helms came from was the Third World, the American South between World War I and the civil rights revolution. In the generation before Helms was born the son of a police chief in 1921, the Southern oligarchy had been terrified by Populism. The greatest threat to the white elite was the revolt of white workers and farmers. To forestall that possibility, the Southern state governments, in the decade before World War I, used literacy tests, poll taxes and other measures to eliminate not only all blacks but half of the white Southern population from the electorate. In the election of 1936, voter turnout in Georgia was 16.1 percent, 13 percent in Mississippi, and only 10.7 percent in South Carolina. (It was higher, 42.7 percent, in Helms' North Carolina, where populists had abolished the poll tax.)

Having crushed the Republican and Populist parties, the oligarchs imposed a one-party dictatorship on the region, with secret state surveillance units and occasional collaboration between the police and the Ku Klux Klan. In its economy, the South was a banana republic, a commodity-exporting resource colony in which a "comprador bourgeoisie" of local landowners and local businessmen collaborated with investors in New York and elsewhere in fleecing the region.

To serve their interests, the old latifundist families and corporate elites hired "Dixie demagogues," who were to genuine populists like William Jennings Bryan what a Disney pirate is to a pirate. All of them were entertaining. Some began as entertainers, like musician-slash-flour miller W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel, who went from hosting the "Hillbilly Flour" radio show to the Texas governor's mansion in 1939. The "Dixie demagogues" denounced various supposed enemies of the white tribe, but with two exceptions -- Huey Long and George Wallace -- they never threatened the rule of the country clubs and courthouse gangs. Jesse Helms was one of these theatrical quasi-populists, an uncomplicated establishment conservative who parlayed a liberal-baiting radio show into a political career. Like other faux-homespun Southern conservatives, he employed rhetorical populism against blacks, homosexuals, liberals, professors, modern artists and "common-ists" in the service of his business backers, most noticeably North Carolina's tobacco industry.

Now after Helm's Republican Party has transformed the last three decades of politics, according to the author, the United States today, looks much like the South then:

So here's the real horror story. In every respect except white supremacy, contemporary America looks more and more like the South between the world wars that Jesse Helms wanted to preserve. We have growing inequality and concentration of wealth, and an elite economic strategy like that of the traditional South that focuses on importing cheap labor, outsourcing manufacturing and exporting commodities (we supply industrial Asia with timber and soybeans). Private-sector unions are all but dead, as in the South. The political parties, as organizations, are weak, as in the South. More and more elected officials are self-funded millionaires or billionaires. Contemporary American politics, like Southern politics past and present, pits elite business-class conservatives against feeble, housebroken elite progressives who are not real threats to entrenched privilege. When, inevitably, the occasional populist protest figure like Perot, Dobbs or Huckabee appears, the affluent progressives quickly close ranks with the corporate conservatives.

Jesse Helms is dead -- but his sinister influence lives on. If you seek his monument, look around.

Pardons: Some Recent News Items

Since we're covering the executive, and are coming to terms with the notion of an executive pardon, here are some recent news items on the subject. Recall that we can consider a pardon to be an executive check on judicial powers. It also can give a conservative minded judiciary a way out when it does not want to hear new evidence concerning a convicted person's innocence. This, they can say, is up to the executive, not the judiciary.

Felons are seeking pardons from President Bush as he leaves office.
Marion Jones wants a presidential pardon.
Bush may preemptively pardon many who might face various charges when they leave office.

Privitization: Can the Free Market Conquer Space?

Not yet. A privately funded rocket blew up with three satellites and the ashes of over 200 people, including Star Trek's Scotty, on board.

Is space travel too big for the private sector?

Partisanship and Activism on the Court

According to this study in the Washington Independent, Justice Thomas is the most partisan justice, and Scalia the most activist.

Executive Privilege: An Appellate Court Rules that White House Aides Must Testify Before Congress

From The New York Times:

President Bush’s top advisers cannot ignore subpoenas issued by Congress, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a case that involves the firings of several United States attorneys but has much wider constitutional implications for all three branches of government.

“The executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law,” Judge John D. Bates ruled in United States District Court here.

Unless overturned on appeal, a former White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, and the current White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, would be required to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating the controversial dismissal of the federal prosecutors in 2006.

While the ruling is the first in which a court has agreed to enforce a Congressional subpoena against the White House, Judge Bates called his 93-page decision “very limited” and emphasized that he could see the possibility of the dispute being resolved through political negotiations. The White House is almost certain to appeal the ruling.

The decision can be found here. The Judge in question was nominated to the bench by H.W. Bush.

The Latest on Political Correctness in College

Professors, it seems, still tend to be liberal at most campuses, but conservatives exist, and do pretty well for themselves.

There is less political correctness in community colleges than other types of colleges.

Here are the relevant reads:
- Defining Political Correctness and Its Non-Impact.
- The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate.
- The Social and Political Views of American Professors.

Since the whole PC thing is so 80s, a refresher might be in order. At its simplest, it simply refers to individuals who see racial and gender and racial discrimination as a real phenomenon that has an impact on society. Things get controversial when prescriptions are offered which include affirmative action and, at it's extreme, suppression of ideas that are seen to further suppression.

Critics of the counter movement argue that conservatives served up political correctness as a whipping boy to stir up support for their movement.

Given its state, its surprising to see references to it today. But these studies tell us interesting things about the current state of ideology on campus.

Campaigning: About McCain's Campaign Adviser

From The New Republic, a story about Steve Schmidt, post Rove guru:

Even in the hyper-competitive world of political media strategists--a line of work that tends to reward the studied deployment of affectation and outsized personality--Steve Schmidt, the tough-talking, shaven-headed, 37-year old former high school tight end from North Plainfield, New Jersey, who recently emerged from a scrum among John McCain's inner circle to become the head of day-to-day operations, arrived on the national stage trailing more colorful nicknames than most.

"He figured out pretty quickly that [a martial] reputation would work to his professional benefit," Dan Schnur, McCain's communications director in 2000, recently told me. "When he came on to the Schwarzenegger [2006 gubernatorial] campaign, I told his junior staffers: If you show up late to a meeting, Steve will waterboard you."

Schmidt's most recent promotion was announced on July 2. Campaign manager Rick Davis's duties were scaled back to fundraising, searching for a v.p., and making preparations for the national convention, while Schmidt was dispatched to the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, where he assumed "full operational control." In Republican circles it was hailed as a move in the right direction; the question was whether it had come too late.

Read on to get an inside look at the current state of the McCain campaign.

The American Aristocracy: Eileen Slocum

Yes there is a unofficial aristocracy in the US of A and one of it's leading figures died recently. From the NYT obituary:

Eileen G. Slocum, a doyenne of Newport, R.I., society who was a stalwart of the Republican Party both in Rhode Island and nationally and whose family history is dotted with connections to the most moneyed and powerful of the American aristocracy, died on Sunday in Newport. She was 92.

...The wife of a diplomat who served in Egypt and Germany, among other places, and a descendant of the Brown of Brown University, Mrs. Slocum came to be described as Newport’s “grande dame” — “that silly name,” Ms. Quinn said — after moving full time to the family estate she inherited from her aunt in the 1960s and becoming involved in politics.

The house, which was built in the 1890s on Bellevue Avenue, often called Millionaire’s Row, has two libraries and its own marble ballroom and was the site of many Republican fund-raisers for the likes of President Gerald R. Ford, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mrs. Slocum, who was vice chairman of the Republican State Central Committee for many years, was Rhode Island’s Republican national committeewoman from 1992 until earlier this year and a delegate to several Republican national conventions. She had hoped to be present at the convention next month in St. Paul, said her son, John J. Slocum Jr.

Eileen Gillespie was born on Dec. 21, 1915, in Manhattan. Her father, Lawrence Lewis Gillespie, was a banker. Her mother, Irene Muriel Sherman, was the granddaughter of John Carter Brown, the philanthropist and bibliophile whose book collection formed the basis of the John Carter Brown Library for research in history and humanities at Brown University. His father, Nicholas Brown Jr., was the benefactor for whom the university named itself, changing it from College of Rhode Island in 1804. Other Brown family members included slave traders and abolitionists.

Its a nice life I suppose, but can she cook squirrel in a popcorn popper?

ACC out of Pearland?

Outgoing Texas Rep Mike O'Day wants ACC to yield to SanJac and allow them to offer community college classes in the city. Beneath the conflict lies a reluctance of Pearland to vote itself into the taxing district of any community college system. And beneath that lies ongoing conflict between the two towns.

After being frustrated by attempts to increase the number of courses for college credit at a Pearland campus, a Texas legislator asked the Alvin Community College board of regents to give up its stake in the city.

State Rep. Mike O’Day,R-Pearland, told regents during a meeting Thursday night he would like to see the San Jacinto College District take over Pearland ISD’s “service area” to provide community college needs.Alvin Community College board members said though classes and enrollment have dropped at the Pearland location, they have crafted a new plan to bring Pearland ISD students back.

After O’Day spoke Thursday night to the regents, they did agree to appoint two board members and one administration official in the future to talk with O’Day and the newly created Northern Brazoria County Education Alliance to find a solution.

Stay tuned.

Campaigning: About McCain Going Negative

Here's a chunk of text from Slate's Today's Papers about McCain's decision to go negative on Obama:

. . . Obama's efforts to "portray himself as presidential … run the risk of appearing arrogant or presumptuous," says the LAT. That's exactly what the McCain campaign is hoping for as it released an advertisement yesterday that compares—"and not in a good way," the NYT helpfully specifies—Obama to celebrities like Britney Spears by showing pictures of his speech in Berlin last week. "Right now, both campaigns have to do the same thing, which is establish who Barack Obama is," a Republican pollster tells the LAT. "That's the real battle going on."

Something the LAT fails to mention but the NYT points out in its off-lead is that McCain's tactic comes straight out of the President George Bush playbook that seeks "to make campaigns referendums on its opponents." The WP goes one step further and directly states that McCain is "adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove." Everyone says that even some Republicans have been taken aback by the recent aggressiveness of McCain's attacks. Espousing such a persistent negative message about his opponent could easily evaporate one of the main aspects working in McCain's favor—his image as a politician who doesn't play by the normal rules of Washington. Still, it's clear that since much of the public is trying to make up its mind about Obama, McCain has a great opportunity to plant doubts about the Democrat that could persist until Election Day.

That is assuming he can stick to the message. In a front-page piece that almost (but not quite) implies that McCain's aides are thrusting this aggressive style on the candidate against his will, the Post notes that the senator from Arizona is unpredictable and dislikes parroting talking points over and over again. As a result, McCain's "advisers cringe" when he "keeps talking" and subsequently dilutes what could have been a good sound bite. McCain's campaign has been criticized for lacking a consistent message, but to some Republicans that failure has more to do with the candidate's shortcomings rather than the campaign's failures. And the NYT points out that there are those who believe that trying to "apply the Bush model" to McCain simply won't work. "It could be the Coca-Cola strategy of marketing that they're trying to apply to Dr Pepper," a former McCain strategist said.

In the Post's op-ed page, David Ignatius flat-out suggests that what we're seeing now isn't the real McCain. In a fawning piece that goes through McCain's biography, Ignatius says the presumptive Republican nominee needs to stop listening to advisers and start being himself. "What's damaging the McCain campaign now, I suspect, is that this fiercely independent man is trying to please other people," writes Ignatius. "He should give that up and be the person whose voice shines through the pages of his life story."

Not everyone agrees. In a piece that is bluntly (disrespectfully?) titled "Is John McCain Stupid?" the WSJ's Daniel Henninger writes that McCain is constantly making things harder for himself on the campaign trail by talking too much and failing to make things simple. "Someone in the McCain circle had better do some straight talking to the candidate," writes Henninger, who suggests that, essentially, the presumptive Republican nominee needs to be saved from himself. Instead of playing to win, McCain is "competing as if he expects the other side to lose it for him."

In the LAT, Jonathan Chait also essentially says that Obama needs to let go of his instincts, but in the other direction. Instead of just presenting himself as the better candidate, Obama must tell voters why they shouldn't vote for McCain. Just like McCain seems to be following Bush's playbook, Chait says Obama appears to have picked up John Kerry's strategy that worked so well in 2004. Now, instead of relying on his usual "weak-tea replies" that "express 'disappointment' with McCain," Obama needs to go on the offensive and start attacking. "Obama doesn't need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done," writes Chait. "All he needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait."