Miles & Sunstein, The Real World of Arbitrariness Review (“This study, based on an extensive data set, finds that … Democratic appointees are far more likely to vote to invalidate, as arbitrary, conservative agency decisions than liberal agency decisions. Republican appointees are far more likely to invalidate, as arbitrary, liberal agency decisions than conservative agency decisions. Significant panel effects are also observed. Democratic appointees show especially liberal voting patterns on all-Democratic panels; Republican appointees show especially conservative voting patterns on all-Republican panels. Our central findings do not show that judicial votes are dominated by political considerations, but they do raise grave doubts about the claim that hard look review is operating as a neutral safeguard against the errors and biases of federal agencies. Because judicial policy commitments are playing a large role, there is a strong argument for reducing the role of those commitments, and perhaps for softening hard look review.”)
Florida Freezes Fund Withdrawals. (“Florida halted withdrawals from a $15 billion local-government fund Thursday after concerns over losses … prompted investors to pull roughly $10 billion out of the fund in recent weeks.”) I wonder how much Miami-Dade County lost here.
2) History of Religious Geography in 90 seconds. No theology nor social history — just a nice set of spreading blobs showing the geographical spread of five major world religions.
LAT, U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports — residents of Baghdad now get 1-2 hours of electricity a day instead of 5-6 like they used to; in order to keep the bad news from Congress, the administration stopped reporting the statistic a few months ago. But the surge is working! Or will work in just a few more years!
Boing boing: “If you only watch one YouTube movie today featuring dancing country farmer’s daughters contortionists singing about potato salad, it should be this one.” (OK. I’ll keep that in mind.)
Unfortunately, it’s big — and welcome — news when a high-ranking general is held accountable for something, in this case the Tillman Case. It’s not anywhere near the maximum punishment, and the greatest penalty falls on a retired general so don’t get too excited. But it’s real.
My view that administration officials risk war crimes trials after they leave office is gradually becoming mainstream — in part because the administration keeps writing new rules justifying war crimes.
The US government sure loves its lawless, secret CIA prisons — those would be the black sites where there’s water boarding and other torture or near-torture, and people seem to vanish and die. Is there any hope that our next President will end this shameful system? I am not optimistic about most of the candidates, although the worst abuses may be curbed.
Flablog writes about two surprisingly smart appointments announced by Florida Governor-Elect Charlie Crist. I agree they're good, especially Bob Butterworth for the cesspool at the Dept. of Children and Families. But I'm slightly more cynical than Flablog here: part of DCF's problem is criminal mis-management by far-right wingers. But another part of it is that DCF has been starved for resources. Putting a heavyweight honest Democrat in charge may fix the first problem (if he's given a free hand with personnel), but that appointment alone will not fix the second. And meanwhile, the appointment conveniently hangs the albatross one of Florida's biggest problems around the Democratic party -- or at least away from the GOP. Smart politics, absolutely. Potential for good outcomes -- amazingly so. But far from in the bag.
As Lifehacker notes, This one rates a high on the geek scale, but it's still sort of interesting to learn what you get if you have an eight-page-long URI: A graphic! Got to wonder how sp*mmers will use that one...
Independent Counsel found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Robert Gates with a crime for his role in the Iran/contra affair. Like those of many other Iran/contra figures, the statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless, given the complex nature of the activities and Gates's apparent lack of direct participation, a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.
Presumably the confirmation hearing will be rushed to have it happen in the lame-duck Senate, not one with a Democratic Armed Services Committee chair. If you want even more about Gates, have a look at the Senate debate on Gates's previous appointment in 1991.
The DLC gets tactical: if the Democrats win, it's because of Dean's 50-state strategy, because of insurgents like Tester in Montana, and because the electorate treated this as a parliamentary referendum on Bush. How weird to have increasingly irrelevant DLC Democrats trying to spin the victory as theirs. Joe Lieberman is not the future of the Democratic party. Being a Republican is not the future of the Democratic party. Populism -- with a strong dash of social libertarianism -- is much more likely to be the future of the Democratic party.
Brad DeLong has been reading the news and it makes him shrill. You will be too.
So far, I've spent the majority of this weekend asleep. I've been battling some sort of bug for well more than a week, and at best I was holding it to a draw. So this weekend I tried to sleep it off. When I do 14-hours of sleep in a day (two naps and a long night), that means not much blogging. So here are a collection of links to things that accumulated while I was in the land of nod.
One of the sleaziest strategies in this election has been the unsubtle use of the race card by the GOP in the Tennessee election. The Democratic candidate, Harold Ford, is black, his opponent is white, and time and again the Republicans have made a very big deal of Ford being around or dating white women. Thus, the big push early in the campaign about Ford being at some party (when single) that had (white!) Playboy bunnies. And national Republican party issued a press release about Ford having gone on a date with a (white) college sophomore when he was a single thirtysomething. The national Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee has paid for an entire web site just to push the Ford and white women angle -- while all the time saying it's a "values" issue (that a single man went on dates?)
And now, the TV commercial -- using at least some actors posing as voters -- that really lays on the sleaze:
He sounds like David Duke, and he’s coming to a Republican Presidential primary near you. If there were any moderate Republican candidates, you might expect this guy to suck air out of the right and open a space for a centrist. But do they exist? (Cf. Sadly No reads LGF so you don’t have to.)