BatesLine

In 1980, Congressman Tom Steed was interviewed at Rose State College and had something very sensible to say about the way decreasing voter participation empowers pressure groups. (Found on the Democrats of Oklahoma Community Forum.)

Well, you really struck a nerve with me there because my pet-peeve is the fact that people won't vote. And I have studied it. I've talked to a lot of authorities and there's a lot of people concerned about it all over the nation. And so I've actually come to the conclusion that there's no more insidious enemy my country has than a person who will not vote.

Now, as the vote went down and down over these years, the pressure groups in Washington went up and up and up. Where there used to be a page of them in the telephone book in Washington, now there's many pages. Everybody has a pressure group.

Well, finally the Congressman who votes for what's right and antagonizes one or more of these pressure groups comes home and finds that most of the people that he represents and that he did that for won't even bother to vote. He has no protection. And off goes his head. Well Joe Doaks sees Bill Spivey get it in the neck, so the next time, he gets cautious. And it's a growing sickness.

I don't know how to make people vote. Now in the bicentennial year, we got together, we raised money, we put on a special drive. We had the help of all the media and everybody else. No one was against it. We finally got 55 percent of the eligible voters in Oklahoma to register and we got 94 percent of the 55 percent to vote. And we led the nation - in our bicentennial year. Number one in the nation - in citizenship! Did you hear anything about it? Any hats go up in the air? Have you seen any chamber of commerce slogans or anything? If we were number one in football, maybe we'd a heard a lot, but not on citizenship.

Now after that, I said, well, I don't know, I give up. If that won't set the state on fire, I don't know what you could do. But it's a sad thing and I never pass up an opportunity to scold people because they won't go vote.

When ordinary people don't pay attention and don't support officials who put their interests first, voters are swayed by the ads purchased by various pressure groups. Elected officials learn to fear the pressure groups rather than their own voters.

I think that goes a long way toward explaining how the current ill-conceived river tax increase found its way to the ballot.

Policy analysts have come out swinging on the topics of the Fair Tax (national sales tax) and public-private toll roads. The language goes beyond dry analysis. Here's Bruce Bartlett in the Wall Street Journal on the Fair Tax:

For those who never heard about it, the FairTax is a national retail sales tax that would replace the entire current federal tax system. It was originally devised by the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s as a way to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, with which the church was then at war (at the time the IRS refused to recognize it as a legitimate religion). The Scientologists' idea was that since almost all states have sales taxes, replacing federal taxes with the same sort of tax would allow them to collect the federal government's revenue and thereby get rid of their hated enemy, the IRS.

Holy Guilt by Association, Batman! The rest of the piece raises some reasonable questions about the numbers that Fair Tax advocates have been using and the problem with taxing some sales that aren't currently taxed (e.g., new home sales) and collecting sales taxes where there currently isn't a state sales tax (e.g. Delaware). I think, though, that he's off-base regarding the sales tax rebate included in the plan. Bartlett writes:

Since sales taxes are regressive--taking more in percentage terms from the incomes of the poor and middle class than the rich--some provision is needed to prevent a vast increase in taxation on the nonwealthy. The FairTax does this by sending monthly checks to every household based on income.

Aside from the incredible complexity and intrusiveness of tracking every American's monthly income--and creating a de facto national welfare program--the FairTax does not include the cost of this rebate in the tax rate. As noted earlier, the FairTax is designed only to match current revenues and does not cover any increased spending that it may require. Since the rebate will cost at least $600 billion the first year, either federal discretionary spending would have to be cut by 60% or the rate would have to be five percentage points higher than advertised.

It's my understanding that the rebate would be uniform and universal, effectively exempting the first X dollars of spending from this national sales tax. It still would require a federal taxing authority to determine who is entitled to the rebate, and I suppose it would vary by number of people in a household.

This seems a bit of a juvenile rhetorical overreach, too:

Perhaps the biggest deception in the FairTax, however, is its promise to relieve individuals from having to file income tax returns, keep extensive financial records and potentially suffer audits. Judging by the emphasis FairTax supporters place on the idea of making April 15 just another day, this seems to be a major selling point for their proposal.

Yet all but six states now have state income taxes. So unless one lives in one of those states, this promise is an empty one indeed. In short, the FairTax is too good to be true, and voters should not take seriously any candidate who supports it.

If the Fair Tax takes hold at the federal level, presumably voters will want to encourage it at the state level too.

I have my own doubts about the advantages of the Fair Tax -- there will still be wrangling about what is and isn't a taxable sale, what constitutes a valid business expense, and the distinction between wholesale and retail -- but I don't think Mr. Bartlett is being entirely fair.

The other rhetorical smackdown comes from Stephen Malanga in City Journal against opponents of public-private partnerships for the construction of roads and other infrastructure:

If the deals can overcome resistance from anti-privatization groups and from politicians who benefit from keeping a stranglehold on government assets, they could help make up for decades of underinvestment in infrastructure—and thereby renew America’s landscape....

The extraordinary breadth and scope of these deals places America on the verge of a financing revolution—that is, if it isn’t snuffed out by powerful politicians and anti-privatization advocates, who’re trying to turn a practical solution for governors and mayors into a partisan issue. There’s no reason that Democrats shouldn’t get behind privatization, as they did recently in big projects in Chicago and Virginia. Nevertheless, Democratic congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon, head of the powerful House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit, and Pipelines, accused the Republican Daniels of selling the Indiana Toll Road to make “an ideological point” about downsizing government....

Malanga seems oblivious to the concerns about public-private partnerships coming from conservative Republicans over foreign control of public assets, public entities "leasing" their power of eminent domain to private companies, the lack of competitive bidding when selecting a private partner, and the bizarre non-compete clauses insisted upon by the private "partners."

These two articles seem to be more about marginalizing a threatening alternative perspective than engaging in dialogue with otherwise like-minded people who disagree on these issues.

MORE: In the comments, Tyson Wynn notes that Fair Tax advocate Neal Boortz rebutted Bartlett's column on his radio show earlier this week. You can read what he had to say in Boortz's "Nealz Nuze" archives for August 26 and August 27.

Ron Coleman writes of Bill Clinton's latest whopper:

I use Bill Clinton in my work all the time. My work as a lawyer is in the field of litigation, and I frequently have to help witnesses prepare for their depositions. As part of that preparation, I always tell them this, more or less verbatim:

Don't even try lying. Who was the best liar in our lifetimes -- the world champ? Right, Bill Clinton. He was the greatest. And what happened to him? He got caught, hung up. Almost no one is a good enough liar to keep it going, so if your conscience doesn't prevent you from lying under oath, at least learn the lesson of Bill Clinton. Just tell the truth.

As the saying goes: "It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others."

In the U. S. House, fifty amendments have been offered to strip earmarks from appropriations bills. Club for Growth used votes on those amendments to compile a "RePORK Card" for House members.

None of Oklahoma's delegation was 100%, but District 1 Rep. John Sullivan came closest with 94%. Mary Fallin scored a 26%. The rest of the delegation was in single digits: Cole (8%), Lucas (6%), Boren (2%). The median score for all congressmen: 2%. Only 43 members scored 90% or better.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul, His Libertarian Majesty? Only 29%.

Only one pork-butchering amendment passed:

House Vote 593 - Bars funding of $129,000 for the Mitchell County Development Foundation for the home of the "perfect Christmas tree" project. Amendment passed, 249-174.

Some that sailed through:

• $1 million to the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). No congressional member could confirm the existence of the alleged Center. Amendment failed, 98-326.
• $2 million to establish the "Rangel Center for Public Service" at City College of New York, requested by none other then Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY). Amendment failed, 108-316.
• $34 million for the Alaska Native Education Equity program, requested by Rep. Don Young (R-AK). When Scott Garrett challenged Young's earmark, Rep. Young declared, "You want my money, my money!" Amendment failed, 74-352.

Nice: "My money! My money!" I guess being the target of a Federal corruption investigation has a way of setting your nerves on edge.

Republican Party officials at the national and state level ought to be praising the fact that 119 of the top 120 were GOP members -- Cooper (D-Tenn.) scored a 98% -- but condemning the fact that so many Republicans have been captured by the appropriations culture. The NRCC ought to be ought recruiting replacements for every one of the 24 Republicans who couldn't bear to vote against a single piece of pork.

In watching for Cal Thomas's column remembering Jerry Falwell, his erstwhile boss at the Moral Majority, I read through several of his recent columns and was reminded that I need to read him more often. Here's a sampling of a few recent columns.

On Tuesday, Thomas looked at Rudy Giuliani's problem with Republican voters on abortion and suggested one way forward for the former mayor:

If Giuliani really hates abortion, he will propose steps to reduce their number. If he wants to split the difference on this most contentious social issue — maintaining choice while reducing the number of abortions — he could favor "truth in labeling" legislation similar to a federal law that requires information on bottles, packages and cans. Sophisticated ultrasound machines have been shown to contribute to a sharp reduction in abortions for abortion-minded women. Such a proposal would allow him a rarity in politics: to have it both ways.

(He'd even have a model to follow: Oklahoma's informed consent legislation.)

Thomas is a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, a connection he made through Ulster native Ed Dobson, Thomas's colleague at Moral Majority and his coauthor on Blinded by Might. In April, following the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, Thomas spoke to the Rev. Ian Paisley, the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, about the unprecedented power-sharing agreement between Paisley's hardline Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army:

Thomas: You mentioned bitterness. For the last 30 years there has been a lot of that. More than 3,500 people have been killed. How long do you think it will take to heal the wounds? Can it occur quickly, or will it take many years?

Paisley:Oh, I think it will take many years because of the brave ones amongst us, and the shame of how the British government treated us by not dealing with terrorism the way they should have. There is a lot of bitterness. But what progress could we make by just sitting on the devastation and this sea of tears and just moaning and bemoaning our position? I think if we can get the people to move toward faith that will enable them to overcome (bitterness). It could be shorter, or it could be longer, depending on how things work out at the end of the day.

Thomas on Fred Thompson:

I have no idea whether Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee, will run for the Republican nomination for president, but he should....

Thompson conveys Middle American, common sense values. When he is asked a question, he doesn't sound as if he's giving a poll-tested pabulum answer. Agree or not, his statements spring from conviction.

Thomas goes on to quote approvingly from Thompson's interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

Thomas remembers Kitty Carlisle Hart:

We met by accident at a newspaper editor's convention in St. Paul, Minn., in 1989. She was to be one side in a debate over federal funding for the arts. She was for it. Her opponent was against it. Except, her debating partner's plane was delayed, and so the host editor called me....

I was somewhere else in town and had to come back to the convention site. By the time I arrived, she had begun her presentation. It was worse than I had anticipated - not her presentation, but the obstacles I faced. There she was with her half granny glasses and a little lamp on the podium, reading her notes. I was supposed to attack this grandmother twice my age? I should rather commit suicide!

An inspiration came to me. When it was my turn to respond, I began by saying how much I admired her husband, the late Broadway director Moss Hart, and how when I read his autobiography "Act One" in the early '60s, it had deepened my appreciation for the theater. I had her eating out of my hand!

I also found this, in Jewish World Review's eight-year archive of Thomas's columns, an April 2000 column about Falwell's re-entry into the political sphere:

At a time when the Christian world is focusing on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the meaning of those events, Rev. Jerry Falwell is again focusing on politics.

A decade ago, after disbanding the Moral Majority (for which I toiled for five years), Falwell announced he was going back to preaching. People who heard him said his preaching became more powerful when he returned to his first love. But he has again succumbed to the temptation of politics and its illusion of power. At a news conference last week in Washington and on his "People of Faith 2000'' Web page, Falwell announced a drive to register 10 million new voters in order to impose a moral code through government which most citizens, comfortable in their materialism, are not willing to impose on themselves.

The failure of Falwell's efforts to change culture through government was the subject of the aforementioned Blinded by Might, published in 1999. The book was wrongly reviled by James Dobson and others as a call for Christians to withdraw from political engagement. In fact, it was a call for Christians to be realistic about what could be accomplished in the political sphere, and to remember the distinction between what Augustine called the City of God and the City of Man.

Falwell's lasting legacy, Thomas says, will be Liberty University, principal among his efforts to engage and transform the culture by non-political means.

Thursday was election day across Britain, with voters picking local government councilors and members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

For the first time, Scotland will be choosing local authority councilors using the single transferable vote (STV) method, a form of instant runoff voting that is designed to produce a proportional outcome. Rather than having a single member per council ward, each ward will elect three or four members. Voters will rank the candidates in order of preference. This same system is used for parliamentary elections in the Republican of Ireland and local government and European Parliament elections in Northern Ireland.

The change was authorized by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Its passage was a condition set out by the Liberal Democrats for entering into a coalition government with Labour in the Scottish Parliament following the 2003 election.

Under the old system, with four or more parties competing in each ward, it was typical for the winning candidate to receive far less than 50% of the vote. The Vote Scotland website estimates that only 40% of the voters had the satisfaction of seeing their choice elected, but under STV, the number one choice of about 80% of the voters will wind up in office. (An Electoral Reform Society study on the most recent local election in Northern Ireland showed that 75% of first preferences went to candidates that were elected, and another 12% of first preferences were for a party that had at least one member elected from that constituency.)

Instead of doing a hand count, Scotland is using scanning machines which read and perform optical character recognition on hand-marked ballots. A company called DRS is providing the scanning technology, and the Electoral Reform Society, a non-partisan group that encourages adoption of STV, is helping to educate voters about the new system. If the voter's intent is uncertain, the scanner will capture an image of the ballot and transmit it to an election official, who will read and interpret it. In all cases, the paper ballot marked by the voter is preserved and available for hand-counting if necessary. (There ought to be a law against any automated counting or voting system that doesn't preserve a paper record which has been verified by the voter.)

The ERS study in Northern Ireland showed a high degree of voter satisfaction with the voting method and outcome. Spoiled ballot counts were nearly the same as in the last parliamentary election, which used the traditional X next to your candidate's name.

That same study also had some interesting notes on the strategies used by parties to maximize the number of seats they captured in a given constituency, with pictures of signs and handbills used by parties to instruct their voters. In Northern Ireland, each constituency had six seats up for election. The RTE website has detailed counts for each constituency, showing vote transfers as candidates were elected and eliminated. For example, here's the count for the North Antrim constituency, home turf for Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley. Despite the DUP's dominance, with 49% of first preferences, minority interests still were able to elect a representative. The DUP won three seats; Sinn Fein, the SDLP, and the Ulster Unionist Party won one each.

Things are a bit more complicated for Scottish voters. While the local elections are using STV, Scottish Parliament elections use a form of proportional representation called the additional member system. A voter votes for a specific candidate to represent his constituency, then casts a vote for a party's regional list of candidates. When all the votes are counted, a method is used to "top up" each party's number of seats in the region, so that the overall total is as close as possible to the proportion of votes cast for each party. The extra members for a party for a region are taken in order from a list of names supplied by party leadership, which means that these members aren't being elected by name by the public. You can see an example of both ballots and an attempt at an explanation from one of Scotland's local authorities, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles).

UPDATE 2007/05/04: Things did not go smoothly in Scotland. Three different votes with two different voting methods on two ballots caused some confusion, the scanners jammed on the paper ballots, and the software was having difficulty with "consolidating" the votes. That latter problem is surprising because it doesn't have anything to do with voter confusion or scanning problems. Consolidation is what's done once the ballots have been scanned and interpreted -- the process of counting first preferences and redistributing the surplus votes of elected candidates and the votes of eliminated candidates. That part should have already been perfected.

The good news, for those who believe in a United Kingdom, is that the Scottish Nationalists beat Labour but fell short of a majority of seats, and will have to solicit the support of parties that oppose secession in order to form a government. The other pleasant surprise is that the Conservatives, who have had their difficulties north of the Tweed in recent years, finished third, ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives had a great day south of the Tweed as well, taking about 40% of the vote in local elections and winning 50% of the more than 10,000 council seats up for election. Particular congratulations go to former MP Michael W. Bates, leader of the Tories' efforts to rebuild the party in the North of England. The Conservatives took control of several northern councils including Blackpool (gain from Labour), Chester, East Riding of Yorkshire, and South Ribble. I'll be interested in seeing the vote breakdown by region.

The map of England is increasingly blue, and that's a good thing. (I will never forgive USA Today for assigning red to the Republican Party in their famous county-by-county map of the 2000 presidential election. Red, the color of socialist parties everywhere, properly belongs to the Democrats.)

Here's what Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude had to say about the result:

Now that most of the results are in, it's clear that we've made a massive breakthrough. We now control over 200 councils across England - three times as many councils as Labour and the Lib Dems combined. What's more, we've made a great breakthrough in the North of England with more councils than Labour in the North West and Yorkshire.

We're now the only party that represents the whole of England. This is a great base on which we can build victory at the next election, taking our message of change, hope and optimism to more communities across the country.

Bill Whittle doesn't post often to his blog -- he started long before I did and is only up to entry number 140 -- but when he does he always knocks the ball out of the park. In his latest entry, he delves into the psychology of conspiracy theorists, those who believe we aren't being told the truth about the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or 9/11.

Of his encounter years ago with a moon landing conspiracy theorist, he writes:

Now it’s my turn to ask some questions, and here’s where it goes from the ridiculous to the sublime:

I was there at Cape Kennedy for the launch of Apollo 13. Is he saying I am lying about this whole moon mission conspiracy? I and millions of others who stood there and saw those Saturn V’s climb into the sky?

Of course not, says Joe. They actually launched. The astronauts just stayed in earth orbit the whole time.

I see. So we have the technical expertise to build a 40-story rocket that can produce millions of pounds of thrust. We can build capsules and lunar landers that function in zero-G. We have the means and the will to put these massive objects into Earth orbit, keep them up there for two weeks, but the additional 3-4% of the total launch energy needed to send this package to the moon is so obviously beyond our technical skill that the whole thing must be a hoax?

I’m sorry, that’s the thinking of someone who is mentally ill. There is something deeper at work there.

That “something” is different than someone who “believes” in UFO’s or the Loch Ness Monster. Such people may be short on critical reasoning, but the emotional force that drives them is a desire for wonder and the magical. Many have remarked that this is, indeed, almost a religious impulse. I’ve wanted to see a real-live flying saucer my entire life. Likewise, if Nessie really existed, what an incredible sight that would be…to look upon the last surviving dinosaur in the flesh! But a videotape of a standing wave shot from five miles away does not outweigh the whole air-breather / no fish evidence. It does not come close to outweighing it. And so I reluctantly throw Nessie back into the superstition bin from whence she came.

But these denialists – the Moon Hoaxers and the 9/11 “Truthers” – these are a different breed. And they are cut from precisely the same cloth. That is to say, they suffer from the same disease: an unwillingness to face reality and its consequences.

Regarding Rosie O'Donnell and her claim that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration:

I will make the point yet again because I believe it is the crux of the issue: what kind of moral universe do you have to inhabit to be able to believe that your own people – airline personnel, demolition experts, police and security forces, faked witnesses and all the rest – are capable of such a thing? How much hate for your own society do you have to carry in order to live in such a desolate and ridiculous mental hell? What psychoses must a mind be riddled with in order to negate what was perfectly obvious and instead believe a theory of such monumental fantasy? How much pure constant hatred does that take?

What, in short, is the miserable black hole of self-loathing that drives a person like Rosie O’Donnell and millions like her?

In the course of the essay, he debunks two of the key assertions of 9/11 "truthers" -- that a controlled demolition brought down the World Trade Center, and that there's something fishy about the lack of major aircraft debris. And I learned about a conspiracy theory that was previously unknown to me -- "chemtrails."

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first to adopt, in 1979, a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to illegal immigrants. That policy, known as Special Order 40, is being challenged in court as a violation of California state law. A separate lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch is challenging the policy as a violation of Federal law.

Here is a link to the policy, as issued by the LAPD's board of commissioners. The policy forbids arresting anyone under the illegal entry provisions of the U. S. Immigration Code, and it forbids "police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." It does require reporting to Federal immigration authorities when an undocumented alien is arrested on a felony, a "high grade" misdemeanor, multiple misdemeanors, or a repeat offense. There's nothing in the policy, however, that would allow the police to hold an arrestee on anything more than the non-immigration-related offense.

Federal law passed in 1996 makes LA's policy illegal:

…a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

The LA Times story mentions that many rank and file officers want to see the policy repealed, but they are afraid to speak out. The mayor and police chief both support Special Order 40.

The argument made in support of such a policy -- Tulsa has something very similar in place -- is that police depend on the cooperation of crime victims to do their work of protecting the public. If the police could report immigration status, some crime victims might not come forward for fear of being deported. Michael Williams offers a rebuttal:

[Illegal immigrants are] "living in the shadows" because they chose to break the law and come here illegally. All sorts of criminals "live in the shadows" because of their crimes. Drug dealers and pimps hesitate before calling the cops, too, but should we stop prosecuting them? Criminals shouldn't feel comfortable approaching the police.

When you put yourself beyond the reach of the law, you put yourself beyond the protection of the law.

UPDATE: In the comments, Roy asked for details about Tulsa's policy. MeeCiteeWurkor has a scan of the Tulsa Police Department's "sanctuary city" policy (PDF), which is even more friendly to illegal aliens than LA's Special Order 40. For example, if a citizen reports a likely illegal alien to the Tulsa Police Department, the citizen is simply to be given the number for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services enforcement office in Oklahoma City. Unlike LA's policy, there is no provision for TPD to report repeat or major offenders to the Feds. It appears that the policy was originally approved under Mayor Susan Savage in 1995, then updated in 2003 to reflect the renaming of the INS.

MeeCiteeWurkor has an extensive archive of items on illegal immigration and enforcement (or lack thereof) in Tulsa and Oklahoma.

Today's Vent at Hot Air is about the movie Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce's decades-long efforts to ban the slave trade in the British Empire.

I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and I enthusiastically encourage you to see it. One of the things I love about the movie is that it gets the politics right. Instead of the usual Hollywood treatment that sets up and neatly resolves a conflict with a quick victory for the good guys, you see Wilberforce's years of failed attempts to pass his bill. You see the power of public pressure and the limits of that power. You see the influence of financial interests, both direct and indirect. You see politicians justify a brutal and inhumane policy on the grounds that it's good for business.

The depiction of Pitt the Younger is particularly commendable. He was a friend of Wilberforce and an ally of the cause, but he had to be strategic about how openly he would support the cause, because of his responsibilities as Prime Minister. It's to the credit of the filmmakers that he wasn't depicted as a contemptible sellout.

Politicians who need a shot of political courage should see this film. Christians who feel a pull toward politics but wonder if one can truly serve God in that realm should see this film.

(I was amused by the resemblance between Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Pitt the Younger, and James Daughton, who played smarmy Omega House president Greg Marmalard in Animal House. Anyone else notice that?)

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn will be on ABC's 20/20 tonight (9 p.m. CDT) to talk about Congress's spending addiction:

But who in Congress really wants to end [wasteful spending]? After all, you can get re-elected by spending other Americans' money on people in your state.

Well, at least one senator wants to cut back on that spending — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

"The oath that we take has no mention of our state. The oath we take is to do what is in the best interest of the country as a whole," Coburn said....

And what's his response to other members of Congress who say that they're building useful things — necessary infrastructure in their districts?

"If you're building infrastructure and you're stealing it from your grandchildren, how's that moral?" asked Coburn. "The greatest moral issue of our time today isn't the war in Iraq, it isn't abortion, it isn't any of the other issues. It is, is it morally acceptable to steal opportunity and future from the next generation?"

They're stealing your money, he said, to spend it on things like a North Carolina Teapot Museum. Are those teapots crucial to the national interest? The museum is still not built, so the teapots are waiting in a warehouse.

"That's stealing," said Coburn. "It's also unconscionable that we would not be paying attention to that."

Also tonight on 20/20, they'll talk to State Rep. Dan Greenberg about his "Edifice Complex Prevention Act," which would prohibit naming public facilities after living people:

"This is a practice that's got to stop," Greenberg said. "For me, it just comes too close to using taxpayer money to build temples to living people."

"In the old days we had a tradition of waiting to judge a person's whole life before we named a building after them," Greenberg said. "Now we have this modern trend of … naming buildings after politicians while they're in the prime of life. And you know, that creates a problem. If we're gonna use taxpayer money to publicize ourselves, if we're gonna use taxpayer money to build temples to ourselves. … That's very dangerous."...

What made Greenberg say "enough" was when he discovered there was a park named after him and a bunch of other legislators.

"The worst thing was that another county legislator said, 'I appreciate you putting my name on this sign, but you did not put it in my campaign colors,'" Greenberg said. "And that was so distasteful. I just said to myself, 'Enough.'"

Greenberg's had to make some adjustments in his original proposal -- to allow someone who donates a building to a college to get his name on it, for example. But the main point -- keeping pols from honoring themselves antehumously -- is still intact.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Dan Greenberg is the son of Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, who writes one of the best syndicated columns anywhere -- literate, witty, filled with common sense.

Here's a video interview with Greenberg after he pulled his bill earlier this year, talking about his colleagues' reaction to the bill. (A fellow Republican told him that he shouldn't be bothered by the naming of buildings because Republicans were winning the building naming war in northwest Arkansas.)

You've got to like a state rep who can quote Cato the Elder or come up with a punny bill title.

A local story indicates the danger of honoring living persons with buildings.

There's a city park on 41st Street west of Red Fork. Originally it was named to honor Finis W. Smith, the State Senator for District 37 from 1965 to 1982. He spent four years as State Senate President Pro Tempore (1969-1973). He quit two years before his term expired, just as a controversy surrounding business he and his wife did with Tulsa County tag agencies began to erupt. Then in August 1984:

Former state Sen. Finis Smith and his wife were indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on mail fraud and tax evasion charges in connection with business dealings they had with four Tulsa County tag agents.

The 18-count indictment alleges the Smiths maintained several undisclosed foreign bank accounts and failed to report income from their business interests on their federal and state income tax forms.

According to the indictment, the Smiths held five certificate of deposit accounts, one savings account and one money market account in a bank in Tampico, Mexico.

Finis Smith arranged for three family members to be appointed as tag agents, then set up dummy corporations to "perform services" for these tag agencies. The money paid to these companies was diverted into the Smiths' personal bank accounts. Not only were Smith and his wife Doris subjected to Federal prosecution, several school districts sued them, because their actions misdirected funds that were due to the schools.

In November 1985, the two were convicted and sent to Federal prison. A month later, the Tulsa Parks and Recreation Board removed Smith's name from Finis Smith Park, renaming it Red Fork Tract. (In 1986, it was renamed Challenger 7 Park in honor of the crew of the space shuttle that exploded early that year.) His name was also taken off a teaching clinic at the Oklahoma College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery. To Smith's credit, he took the initiative to have his name removed; news stories indicate that the parks board and the OCOMS board complied regretfully.

(There's a whole 'nother story I could go into about the connection between the Smiths' conviction and the downfall of then-Mayor Terry Young. It's fascinating.)

Oh, and do you remember when Driller Stadium was named Sutton Stadium? And why it didn't stay named that for very long?

UPDATE: Thanks to Rep. Greenberg for stopping by! (See his comment below.) And on NRO, Deroy Murdock has photos of the edifice complex in action at the federal level:

It is tough for politicians to oppose projects named after their colleagues. It’s one thing to block questionable funds for the Johnstown Cambria County Airport. It’s quite another to turn thumb’s down on the John Murtha Airport when big, bad John himself is standing ten-feet away on the House floor, glowering at you.

An update on Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn's efforts in Washington:

On Monday, Bob Novak reported that the Bush Administration is blocking release of the pork-barrel database that has been championed by Coburn:

As part of "Sunshine Week" to promote transparent government, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last Monday was supposed to release a comprehensive database revealing the number and cost of earmarks since 2005. It did not. The word on Capitol Hill was that the OMB was muzzled by the White House for fear of offending powerful congressional appropriators....

But just as the OMB was prepared to put out this information, it sent word to Capitol Hill that -- over its protests -- it was being kept under wraps by the White House to appease the appropriators. With Congress in the midst of the budget process, President Bush's team did not want to stir up the Hill.

All that was released last Monday was a compilation of earmarks in 2005, with few details. [OMB Director Rob] Portman publicly called it "an important first step towards providing greater transparency." In private, however, he said last week: "My hands are tied." Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, the scourge of earmarks, told me: "I think the American people should be very disappointed."

Coburn has also introduced health-care reform legislation aimed at bringing choice and free-market discipline to bear on health costs. Here, from a press release from Coburn's office, are the key features of the proposal:

• Promoting prevention. The legislation will reform our rudderless and wasteful federal prevention programs and demand results and accountability. Five preventable chronic diseases – heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes – cause two-thirds of American deaths. Seventy five percent of total health expenditures are spent to treat these largely preventable chronic diseases. A sound prevention strategy will save countless lives and billions of dollars.
• MediChoice tax rebates that will shift tax breaks away from businesses to individuals. Giving Americans a rebate check ($2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for families) to buy their own insurance will foster competition, improve quality and drive down prices. This provision will help put individuals back in charge of the health care, and help restore the doctor-patient relationship that has been severed by third-party government and health insurance bureaucrats.
• Creation of a national market for health insurance. The bill would give Americans the right to shop for health insurance anywhere in America. Patients should not be forced to be pay for outrageously expensive health plans in states like New Jersey when they can save thousands by buying plans from companies in other states.
• Creating transparency of health care costs and services. This Act requires hospitals and providers receiving reimbursements from Medicare to disclose their estimated and actual charges for all patients as well as the rates they are reimbursed through Medicare and Medicaid. This provision could allow patients to “Google” their doctor and comparison-shop for health care the way that they do for cars, computers, or other products and services.
• Securing Medicare’s future by increasing choice and encouraging savings. The bill retains existing benefits but encourages true competition among private plans to hold down costs, a model already is working in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. The plan would give Medicare recipients similar health care options available to Members of Congress and employees of Fortune 500 companies.
• Keeping Medicaid on mission. The bill liberates the poor from substandard government care and offers states the option to provide their Medicaid beneficiaries the kind of health care coverage that wealthier Americans enjoy. The bill creates incentives for states to achieve private universal coverage for their population. The bill offers states the freedom to design the programs that serve their beneficiaries with the best care instead of the current, one-size-fits-all straitjacket.

Minimize red tape, increase consumer choice and transparency -- sounds like a good approach.

You can read more about the rationale for Coburn's medical reform bill here, where you'll find a link to a more detailed discussion of the proposal. An excerpt:

Have you ever wondered why is it that in America, patients can not choose their own doctor? Why, in the land of the free, do government bureaucrats, insurance companies and employers make your health care decisions instead of you? Why do health insurance costs increase faster than your income? Why are prescription drugs prices cheaper in every other country when the medical research is often funded with U.S tax dollars? And why does the U.S. spend over $2 trillion annually on health care, more than any other nation, and 45 million Americans do not have access to health insurance?

The answer is simple. Unlike every other aspect of American life, there is no free market in health care. Well intentioned, but shortsighted laws passed decades ago removed patients from their own health care decisions.

As part of the process of complying with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (2006) by the required date of January 2008, the anti-pork-barrel-spending bill championed by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, the federal Office of Management and Budget has set up a website called federalspending.gov. This site doesn't yet have the promised spending information available, but it does have the implementation timeline, a set of FAQs on the requirements of the law, aimed at both users of the information and the agencies who will have to report the information, and a place to collect comments on how best to make the database useful to the public. There are also links to existing websites with information on Federal spending.

The site makes mention of a pilot program for reporting subgrants and subcontracts. Hopefully, this would include things like recipients of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds -- a city or county government is the direct recipient of the grant from the Federal Government, but it would be interesting to see whether controversial organizations are receiving CDBG money as subgrants.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has declared war on Federal spending. He has announced that he will do everything in his power as a senator to block new spending. Here's the letter Coburn sent to his colleagues (via Club for Growth):

Dear Colleague:

I look forward to working with you over the next two years to confront the problems facing our nation.

Perhaps the greatest threat to our nation is our nearly insurmountable national debt which now exceeds $8.6 trillion. This ever growing red ink threatens both the long-term solvency of important programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as the future standard of living of our children and grandchildren.

Over the past two years, I have heard members on both sides of the aisle call for fiscal responsibility. While we may have different concepts of how to obtain this goal, balancing the budget is not a partisan issue.

We may have differences in opinions on the role of government, but those differences should not prevent us from working together to ensure our charity today does not come at the expense of future generations of Americans.

For too long, Congress has simply borrowed more and more money to pay for new spending. In the real world, families can not follow this example and must make difficult decisions and set priorities on how to spend their limited financial resources.

Paying for a child’s college education or the medical expenses of a loved one compete against purchasing a new car or taking a vacation. Americans want Congress to live within its means, using the same set of common sense rules and restraints they face everyday.

To this end, I wanted to communicate with you a list of principles I will use to evaluate new legislation in the 110th Congress. I also want to give you advance notice I intend to object to consideration of legislation that violates these common sense principles:

1) If a bill creates or authorizes a new federal program or activity, it must not duplicate an existing program or activity without de-authorizing the existing program;

2) If a bill authorizes new spending, it must be offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere;

3) If a program or activity currently receives funding from sources other than the federal government, a bill shall not increase the federal government’s proportion of the costs of the program or activity;

4) If a bill establishes a new foundation, museum, cultural or historical site, or other entity that is not an agency or a department, federal funding should be limited to the initial start-up costs and an endowment shall provide funding thereafter.

This is not an exhaustive list as I may also object to legislation that I believe oversteps the limited role of the federal government enshrined in our Constitution by our Founders or that violates my own deepest personal convictions.

I wanted to alert you, however, to the basic fiscal measurements that I will use to evaluate legislation. My intent is not to be an obstacle, but rather to give you the courtesy of knowing how we can work together now to advance our individual and collective goals.

I recognize that the Senate’s diversity is one of its strengths. I certainly appreciate that you might articulate a different set of core principles to evaluate legislation.

I would humbly suggest, however, that we are at a point in our history when the question of whether we should live within our means and prioritize spending is beyond debate.

Our nation’s unsustainable fiscal course, the impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, and our national security challenges leave us no option but to make the hard choices today that will secure the future for tomorrow.

Again, I look forward to working with you to address the challenges facing America in a fiscally responsible manner.

Sincerely,

Tom A. Coburn, M.D.
United States Senator

I'm glad Coburn is taking the bull by the horns. And make no mistake, he's liable to get tossed around by this bull.

Robert N. Going, who was set to run for a seat on the 1976 New York delegate slate as a Reagan supporter (and was a Reagan delegate in 1980; see his comment for explanation -- I've corrected this paragraph), says of the recently departed 38th president, de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.

Here's a selection of bona sententia in tributes to the Accidental President. The same three points frequently recur: a decent man, the right man for the hour, and, even if not a great president, certainly a good deal better than his predecessor and his successor:

• A National Review Online symposium: Steven Hayward writes: "Although Ford confronted the runaway Democratic Congress with his veto pen and behind the scenes took the first steps toward economic and regulatory reforms that reached full fruition under Reagan, he seemed rhetorically unequal to the challenge of standing up to liberalism."
• Larry Kudlow salutes Ford as a "good and gracious man," but was "one of a long line of American executives [from Johnson to Carter] who presided over the decline of the U.S. in both national security and economic terms."
• The editors of the Wall Street Journal: "He faced large liberal majorities in Congress that were emboldened by their ouster of Nixon and set to revive the Great Society. And he had to clean up the financial problems caused by a burst of inflation and wage and price controls. Ford navigated all of these traumas better than he gets credit for."
• Karol is grateful to Ford for pushing for the change in Soviet policy that allowed her family to emigrate.
• In a biographical sketch or Ford, John Steele Gordon writes that Ford left the White House better than he found it.
• Ford's gleeful firing of Secretary of Defence James Schlesinger displays a different facet of his character.
• Marvin Olasky has posted the text of Ford's speech to his son's graduating class at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
• See-Dubya's salute: "Best President of the 1970s."

(Also at Hot Air, Allahpundit posts video of the first thing (I sheepishly admit) that came to my mind when I heard the news on the radio. This sketch from Saturday Night Live in 1996 is really a satire about the network news business, not about Ford; his name was just a hook on which to hang the concept: Dana Carvey as Tom Brokaw prerecording several versions of breaking news of Ford's death, just in case something should happen while Brokaw is on vacation. In the event, Ford outlived Brokaw's career.)

My own reminiscence: The first political convention I ever attended was the 1976 Oklahoma 1st District Convention at Nathan Hale High School. My dad was there as Wagoner County's lone delegate (our precinct was the only one in the county in District 1), and he was a Ford man. He also served that day as convention secretary. Then as now, the state and district conventions selected who would go to the national convention as delegates. But prior to 1998, Oklahoma didn't have a presidential preference primary, and national delegates weren't bound to a candidate; instead candidates for national delegate would announce their preference and run as a slate. The Reagan slate won the 1st District by a large margin that day. I was sad that Ford fell short in that skirmish, happy to seem him win the nomination at Kansas City, but sad again to see him lose to Jimmy Carter by such a close margin. At age 12 I didn't understand all the ideological issues in the '76 primary campaign. (I didn't discover National Review until the following year in the high school library.) He was the Republican incumbent, he was a decent man in a difficult time, and that was reason enough to support his renomination.

MORE remembrances, but not so kind:

Paul Greenberg on "Gerald Ford: The In-between President":

There is much to be said for mediocrity, and surely it will be at the state funeral now in the offing. There are worse things. Certainly few things are more perilous than man's eternal striving for greatness and the hubris it engenders. Look what happened to Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, and is happening to George W. Bush.

At such times we are tempted to think, oh, yes, better someone who can wrap up an indecent defeat as decently as possible, the way Jerry Ford did in Vietnam. It wasn't his fault. He was just there in the White House at the time, like Zelig. Give us another Zelig, the people cry. A nice unknown quantity who will soothe things over - a Jerry Ford. (And now a Barack Obama?)

It's exhausting, always acting on principle, seeking to shape history rather than be shaped by it. There comes a time when the country just wants it all to be over, and that is the time when a Gerald R. Ford earns our gratitude, or at least gets it. And let it be noted that Mr. Ford was a good citizen even if he was First Citizen - no easy thing.

Much like Gerald Ford himself, most of us want to do the decent thing and overlook some other things in the interest of a little peace and quiet for now, whatever whirlwind we are sowing for later. Let it be said that Gerald Rudolph Ford was just the man for his time - a time not unlike this discouraging one, a time yearning for a return to a normalcy that never was.

Christopher Hitchens at Slate: "Our Short National Nightmare: How President Ford managed to go soft on Iraqi Baathists, Indonesian fascists, Soviet Communists, and the shah … in just two years":

Ford's refusal to meet with Solzhenitsyn, when the great dissident historian came to America, was consistent with his general style of making excuses for power. As Timothy Noah has suggested lately, there seems to have been a confusion in Ford's mind as to whether the Helsinki Treaty was intended to stabilize, recognize, or challenge the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. However that may be, the great moral component of the Helsinki agreement—that it placed the United States on the side of the repressed populations—was ridiculed by Ford's repudiation of Solzhenitsyn, as well as by his later fatuities on the nature of Soviet domination. To have been soft on Republican crime, soft on Baathism, soft on the shah, soft on Indonesian fascism, and soft on Communism, all in one brief and transient presidency, argues for the sort of sportsmanlike Midwestern geniality that we do not ever need to see again.

A press release from Sen. Coburn's office:

Tonight, Friday at 9:06 p.m. ET C-SPAN will air a panel discussion entitled “Where Do Conservatives Go From Here?” that featured U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Paul Weyrich and others.

The event was taped today at the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C.

That's 8:06 Oklahoma time. It should be worth watching, especially since Blunt's position in Republican leadership was confirmed today, despite the concerns of fiscal conservatives in the Republican caucus.

Too late to make a difference in the election, but we're learning that the Culture of Corruption™ wasn't limited to the party in power:

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.

Sources close to the investigation say Abramoff has provided information on his dealings with and campaign contributions and gifts to "dozens of members of Congress and staff," including what Abramoff has reportedly described as "six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators."

(Via Hot Air.)

On the House side of the Capitol, we are reminded that John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi's pick for Majority Leader, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM bribery investigation, and there's videotape of him leaving the door open for future bribes. Here's a summary of Murtha's involvement in ABSCAM on Wikipedia. (The videos are on YouTube, which is down for scheduled maintenance at the moment.) (UPDATE: Here is the entire, unedited video on Google.)

Clean 'em all out.

UPDATE: For those who believe this blogstorm about Murtha is the activity of mind-numbed Rovian robots, please note that the left-leaning Talking Points Memo Muckraker website is all over Murtha. Presumably they are as embarrassed at the prospect of Majority Leader Murtha we are about Trent Lott, once-and-future Minority Whip. Here's their explanation of how Murtha managed not to get prosecuted or disciplined for ABSCAM. And here's Murtha quoted as saying a Democratic-sponsored lobbying reform bill is "total crap".

For some reason, the results of Tuesday's election have increased the amount of chatter in support of a Newt Gingrich run for the presidency in 2008.

Newt Gingrich is a brilliant thinker. He deserves credit for helping to get the House majority for the Republican Party in 1994. But he wasn't an effective Speaker.

And there's this: He trades in an old wife for a newer model as often as some folks trade in their cars. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think that may indicate a character flaw that will cause some problems for a Gingrich presidential campaign and administration.

There may be a more effective place for Mr. Newt to serve.

Chuck Colson responds to the conclusion of Tempting Faith, by David Kuo, the disillusioned former staffer in President Bush's office of faith-based initiatives.

But Kuo is dead wrong to suggest that that Christians ought to enter into a time of "fasting" from politics. These words, which I wrote in 1987, that so influenced David are true today: "Christians need to influence politics for justice and righteousness." But we must do so "with eyes open, aware of the snares . . . Today Christians may find themselves suspect — I have experienced this myself — to the very people on whose side they are fighting. But that is the price they must pay to preserve their independence and not be beholden to any political ideological alignment." That's what I wrote in 1987; that's what I mean today.

Fasting from politics is the exact opposite of what I taught David Kuo, however. Only by continuing to fight for our beliefs, regardless of the temptations, compromises, or being called "nuts," can we achieve the kind of moral reform and protection of human rights that Christians throughout the centuries and in every culture work for.

This is why Christians must never "fast" from politics. And it's why Christians, of all citizens, ought to be lining up to vote on Tuesday. Do your civic duty because you'll do your duty to God in the process.

And to abandon the battle on behalf of the sick and the suffering, the prisoner and the unborn: That would be a true sin.

RELATED: Democrats are making a strong pitch for the support of Values Voters, particularly in the South. Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. is calling himself pro-life, but Kathryn Jean Lopez says that as a congressman he hasn't voted that way:

According to the National Right to Life Committee, Ford’s claim to be pro-life “is radically at odds with Ford’s 10-year voting record in the U.S. House. Overall, Ford has voted against the pro-life side 87 percent of the time.”

Among his most notable votes cast on this front, Ford voted against “Laci and Conner’s Law,” which recognizes an unborn child who is injured or killed in the commission of a federal crime as a child and crime victim. Even though the bill was not explicitly about abortion, abortion groups considered its implications and thought long term — if we give in here, will it hurt us later? They knew it could very well, and so they opposed the bill, despite Conner Peterson. And so did Harold Ford, even though all but one member of the Tennessee congressional delegation voted for it.

The latest advertiser on BatesLine is a website (gopsenators.com) run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and they appear to have video of every TV commercial being run by a Republican candidate for senator in the 18 states (of 33 with races) that the NRSC is targeting. (Florida, New York, and Massachusetts aren't among them.)

It's interesting to see the different approaches being used across the country.

In Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, the RINO that the RNC and NRSC propped up against a conservative primary challenger, is running on a platform of opposition to the war in Iraq, pork barrel for Rhode Island, and embryonic stem cell research. (Polls show he's losing, by the way. The voters of Providence Plantation evidently prefer a real liberal Democrat to one with an R after his name.)

In Maryland, Michael Steele is running as an agent of change: "Ready for change? Ready for Steele." In this long-form video he sets out his proposals for lobbying reform (no gifts at all, four-year wait before a congressman or staffer can become a lobbyist), and we hear excerpts from several speeches as he talks about his background and his stands on various issues, and comments from supporters. As you'd expect in a blue state, the word "Republican" never comes up, and he says he wants to be a bridge between the parties. Blocky metallic lettering and the sound of lug nuts being driven help the viewer to remember the name Steele.

Here's a negative Steele ad against Democrat Ben Cardin, in which Cardin's statements that he stood up to various interest groups are split by text showing how much campaign money he took from each. The message: Cardin won't change Washington; he'll fit right in. And here's Steele's reply to attacks from Cardin, delivered with a light touch, using garbage cans as a prop to remind voters that Cardin staffers pled guilty to hacking into Steele's financial records.

This NRSC ad, from Tennessee, is just video of Congressman Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic nominee, crashing a press conference by the Republican nominee, Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker. And here's a clever one, featuring "man-on-the-street" (all right, "actor-on-the-street") comments about Ford's upbringing in Washington DC as a congressman's son, his lack of connection with Tennessee, and his lack of experience outside of politics.

For students of campaigns and elections, this is pretty interesting stuff. Please click on the ad to your right, and check it out for yourself.

UPDATE: Here's the Tennessee Senate ad that everyone has been talking about; it's an RNC ad, not from the NRSC or Corker's campaign. It's a funny use of man-on-the-street (funnier than the one above) to contrast Ford's congressional record with the views of Tennessee voters. Not that I'm obliged to provide equal time, but here's a Ford ad attacking Corker for being wealthy.

On Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter looks at seven votes in the U. S. House of special concern to social conservatives, then compares the voting records of the current Republican House committee chairmen with those who would replace them if the Democrats win a majority of seats in November. While not all the Republican chairmen have stellar records on this set of votes, all but two are over 50% (Jim Leach of Iowa and Howard Coble of N. C. only voted the right way on 3 of 7), and 8 of the 13 chairmen voted the right way on at least six of the seven votes. Meanwhile, most of their Democratic counterparts scored a big fat zero. (Three exceptions: One chairman voted the right way once, another voted the right way twice, and Ike Skelton of Missouri, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who scored a 71.)

I've heard politically-active evangelicals around here say that "the lesser of two evils is still evil." Carter leads off with a quote from Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ: "Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen." To choose otherwise is to let the greater evil prevail. Refusing to choose, waiting instead for some ideal to fall from the heavens, is to make a choice for the greater evil.

Overall, under Republican leadership in the House, the desired result for social conservatives was attained in five of these seven measures. (A sixth, regarding embryonic stem cell research, was stopped by President Bush's veto.) Looking at the scores of these current and potential committee chairmen, I have no doubt that under Democratic leadership, legislation that protects the sanctity of human life and the traditional definition of marriage would never make it out of committee.

We've seen exactly that situation here in Oklahoma, where, despite a professed pro-life majority in both houses, a Democratic Senate committee chairman, supported by the Democratic Senate majority leadership, blocked pro-life bills from being debated on the Senate floor. The lead story October 2006 issue of the Oklahomans for Life newsletter (PDF) tells how this year's landmark pro-life legislation nearly didn't make it to the Governor's desk:

Senate Democrats were determined to prevent any pro-life legislation from being enacted this year. Senate Democrats facilitated the killing of seven (7) prolife bills that had passed the House this session. The bills were killed by a Democrat committee chairman, serving at the pleasure of the Democrat Senate Leader, who, in turn, serves at the pleasure of the Senate’s Democrat members.

When the Republican House of Representatives reinserted five of those bills in another piece of legislation which had already passed the Senate (and, therefore, did not have to go through committee in the Senate again), the Senate Democrats resisted as forcefully and as long as they possibly could. They were fully prepared to ignore the rules of the Senate by refusing to allow the Republican author of SB 1742 to present the bill for a Senate vote.

The Democrat Leader of the Senate told the bill’s author as late as May 17, the day before the bill ultimately passed, that the bill would not be granted a vote on the Senate floor. It was only when Republicans made it clear that they would attempt to force the issue through a procedural
motion (which would have been voted on in public) that the Democrats relented and agreed to let the vote occur.

With great reluctance, the Democrat Leadership of the Senate allowed the bill to be voted on when the political pressure had built to such an extent that they could no longer contain it.

Once the bill was allowed to come to a vote, SB 1742 passed the Oklahoma Senate 38-8.

At the state level and at the federal level, which party will have control of the chamber is as important as which individual will represent your district.

Here's the conclusion Joe Carter draws:

Social conservatives have reason to be disappointed in the Republicans in Congress. As these scores indicate, though, we will be even more disappointed should the Democrats gain majority control. The GOP doesn't deserve to win; but if the Democrats regain power, it will be society that loses.

RELATED: Paul Weyrich points to the Bush Administration's solid record on judicial appointments and says you can expect strict-constructionist nominees like Samuel Alito never to get a hearing in a Democrat-controlled Senate. "I understand, and am sympathetic to, the reasons not to retain the current crowd in office. But there are two very big reasons why they should be re-elected. If they do not improve their performance in the 110th Congress, recruit primary candidates and replace them."

AND THIS: Are social conservative voters budding theocrats? Bill Rusher hits the nail on the head:

What has happened is that, in the past thirty years, a large number of Americans whose deepest beliefs and concerns are not political but religious have concluded that they have no choice but to gird themselves for participation in the nation's political wars. There are quite enough such people to influence the election returns, and they have been doing so.

But -- and this distinction is crucial -- their posture is essentially defensive. They are not seeking to turn America into a theocracy. They are simply trying to preserve, and where necessary restore, the politico-religious balance that has been traditional in this country. It is the intellectuals, with the critical support of the courts, and above all the Supreme Court, that have successfully eroded that balance, seeking to marginalize religion and convert the entire civic framework of the nation into a purely secular arena, on the pretense that this is required by the First Amendment's supposed erection of a high "wall" between church and state.

Those who imagine that it is religion's defenders who are the aggressors here are simply not paying attention to the increasingly sharp attacks on religious faith that can be found today in such influential places as The New York Times.

In the Examiner, Robert Cox points to the recent banning of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin at YouTube for "objectionable content" as an example of something he's been warning about for some time -- left-wing dominance of major Web 2.0 sites may push conservative ideas out of the 21st century equivalent of the public square:

Last week [Malkin] received notice from YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service, that her video had been deemed “offensive.” The result? Her account was terminated and her videos deleted.

YouTube refused to say why her videos were “offensive” and there was no avenue available to challenge the decision. Today, her videos are gone and her voice is suppressed on the most important video “node” on the Internet.

So? She can just show her videos somewhere else, can't she?

Of course she can, but that would fail to understand the powerful forces of “network externalities” at play online. There is no Avis to eBay’s Hertz for good reason: Once an online network is fully catalyzed, there is no reason to join an alternative network. If you want to get the most money for your Beanie Baby collection, you are going to want access to the most potential bidders — and that means eBay.

YouTube is poised to become the eBay of video file sharing. If you want the biggest audience for your video, you want access to the most potential viewers — and that means YouTube.

I'm less worried about YouTube, because you could still find Malkin's material on the web if it were being hosted by another site. But I am worried about the infrastructure that helps us find our way around the web. We are very dependent on Google, Technorati, del.icio.us, and those companies' willingness to be evenhanded in their treatment of web content. There's reason to be concerned: We already know that Google will alter search results to avoid giving offense in authoritarian and totalitarian countries.

What if these sites began to shun conservative content? While it would be possible to set up an alternative set of web search, blog search, and social bookmarking websites, we'd only be creating a conversation that is disconnected from the broader discussion about the issues. How would Google users, for example, realize that they aren't getting the best or most complete search results, and that they really should be using multiple search tools? Conservatives would wind up talking to each other -- to the rest of the world it would look like no one holds to conservative ideas anymore.

I don't know what the solution is, but as Robert Cox says, it's time to pay attention to the problem.

This ad about foreign policy, featuring Madeline Albright and Kim Jong-Il impersonators, was written and directed by David Zucker of Airplane!, Kentucky Fried Movie, and Naked Gun fame. It is funny, and it makes its point brilliantly. Some bozo at YouTube flagged it as possibly objectionable, which it isn't, except for a brief glimpse of the Albright impersonator's knickers.

I suppose veterans of the Clinton administration might object to it:

Allen at Acorns from an Okie explains why you can't deal effectively with the greedy b*stards in the corporate world by making the Government more powerful:

Greedy Bastards are Greedy Bastards. Being greedy, they will gravitate to where the power is. They will be draw, like patchouli stenched peaceniks to a Chomsky book signing, to the seats of power and position. And being bastards, they will start back-stabbing and finagling their way into those positions of power.

And then those greedy bastards will be running the whole show, not just their company.

Read the whole thing.

At the heart of conservative philosophy is the insistence on seeing human nature as the stubborn thing it is, and designing government to harness its qualities for good, rather than trying foolishly to transform human nature.

In the comments to a post about yet another Republican congressman in hot water:

And yet you continue to blindly support this party, regardless of the number of times that items like this surface.

Borderline brainwashed. Facts don't matter anymore...
Posted by: New York Hotlist at October 5, 2006 03:47 PM

Ok, I'll go slow for you: I'M A CONSERVATIVE. The Republican party best represents my interests. There is NO WAY that the Democrats can represent me better. NONE.

What part do you need me to explain again? And, seriously, I'd cut the brainwashed crap out right now. Previous idiots who made similar comments were made to feel very, very small.
Posted by: Karol at October 5, 2006 03:52 PM

Am I proud that Mark Foley and Don Sherwood are Republicans? No. Do I have questions about the way the House leadership handled the Foley case? Yes. But in the battle for control of the Congress (and the State Legislature here in Oklahoma), it matters which party wins, which party controls the committee chairmanships.

Although we have Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and in the Oklahoma State House, we don't have a conservative majority in any of those bodies yet. That means that some conservative ideas don't get as far as they ought to. But if the Ds are in charge, conservative ideas won't even get a hearing. (Neither will conservative judicial nominees.)

Although passage of Sen. Tom Coburn's anti-pork Federal Spending Database bill had bipartisan support, it wouldn't have gotten off the ground if it weren't for the fact that Coburn holds a subcommittee chairmanship. Even in the Senate (much more in the House), a freshman member in the minority party isn't going to wield much influence. Keeping the Republicans in control gives solid conservatives a chance at making a difference on our behalf.

James Webb, the Democrat challenging U. S. Senator George Allen of Virginia, wrote an article in the November 1979 issue of The Washingtonian magazine, called "Women Can't Fight." A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, he served four years in combat in Vietnam. The article argues against women at the military academies, on the grounds that the academies exist to train combat leaders, and women do not belong in combat:

Lest I be understood too quickly, I should say that I believe most of what has happened over the past decade in the name of sexual equality has been good. It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman President. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.

The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously, reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command. All of the other accomplishments that Naval Academy or West Point or Air Force Academy graduates may claim in government or business or diplomacy are incidental to that clearly defined combat mission.

An entry on George Allen's newly-minted blog cites this article as part of Webb's "legacy of misogyny."

Did I miss something? Since when is it the conservative position to support women in combat? Since when do conservatives consider it misogynistic to recognize that in certain spheres of life there ought to be differences in the roles played by men and women?

I do want Allen to be re-elected, because I want the Republicans to retain control of the U. S. Senate and of its committees. And I'm not endorsing everything Webb said in the article and certainly not endorsing the other comments quote by Allen, or Webb's position on Iraq, but it's wrong for a Republican candidate to trash a conservative position on an issue for the sake of political advantage.

This seems to be another example where alleged conservatives are trying to run to the left of liberal candidates who happen to be conservative (or have been conservative in the past) on a certain issue, probably because they see the conservative position as out of step with the media. In Britain, the new Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, is running to the left of Tony Blair's position on the global war on terror.

Allen is said to be a leading candidate for president in '08. If this is any indication of the stuff he's made of, I'm not impressed.

So you have a Republican U. S. Senator who is facing a challenge from another Republican. The senator is out of step with the Republican party platform in every respect -- on social issues, fiscal issues, national defense, and foreign policy.

But, you say, the senator is a loyal Republican. If he backs the President, a Republican, and supports the Republican leadership in the Senate, surely that loyalty, that reliable vote, can compensate for ideological differences. It might, but this guy isn't loyal. He didn't vote for the President's re-election, and he's actively working to block the President's nominee to be UN ambassador.

But instead of treating this Republican in Name Only as an outcast, instead of backing a primary challenger who will be in step with the platform and cooperative with his fellow Republicans in government, the Republican National Committee mobilized its forces to prop up the RINO. The RNC paid for party interns to fly in and campaign for the RINO incumbent. The RNC mobilized the 72-hour task force -- the strategy designed to boost turnout and defeat Democrats in the general election -- but this time it was used to prop up the RINO incumbent.

The RNC succeeded in propping up RINO incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee and defeating conservative Cranston, R.I., mayor Steve Laffey by about 4,000 votes.

This is nothing new, just one more reason I urge you not to give money to the RNC, the NRSC, or the NRCC. If you want to help real conservative Republicans to win office, you should contribute directly to the campaigns of those real conservative Republicans.

Part of the problem, as I noted back during the 2004 Republican National Convention, is that the Republican National Committee -- the board of directors for the national party organization -- is structured to overrepresent small states with small, ineffective state Republican organizations. The big and growing Sunbelt states where Republicans have gained dominance are underrepresented. Every state (and each of several U. S. territories) has three votes on the RNC -- the state chairman, the national committeeman, and the national committeewoman.

Even so, there are still more red states than blue states, and if the national committee members from the conservative states banded together, they could stop the inappropriate actions that the RNC staff took in a primary in support of a RINO.

But for that to happen, grassroots conservative Republicans in those red states have to be sure their RNC members are conservative. And that those RNC members are willing to rock the boat, to come together in a coalition and to stop the RNC staff from putting its resources into a primary in support of a RINO.

The fact that there was no outcry from the RNC members, that no heads have rolled at the RNC, ought to tell every grassroots activist that he needs to pay closer attention to his state's national committee members. Are they not paying attention? Are they not conservative? Is it time to replace them?

RELATED: Scott Sala urged New York Republicans to take advantage of the rare opportunity to vote today in a primary. Party rules in New York encourage nominees to be chosen behind closed doors and anointed at conventions. Contested primaries are rare, but this year there was one in the race to challenge Hillary Clinton for re-election to the U. S. Senate.

Remember the claim that term limits would give lobbyists more power? From John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, on efforts to repeal term limits:

Mark Petracca, a liberal who chairs the political science department at the University of California at Irvine, notes that lobbyists actually dislike term limits because they have less influence with a steady influx of unpredictable new legislators. "It's no surprise that business and labor interests have long been reliable opponents of term limits," he notes. "There is no systematic evidence that lobbyist power has swelled under term limits."

Other groups have obvious self-interested reasons to oppose term limits. "Journalists who cover politics hate term limits," says columnist Jill Stewart, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "They must cozy up to a new bunch of lawmakers every time the old bunch is forced out. They have to develop new sources and--Horrors!--update their Rolodexes."

Term limits mean there is less time for a legislator to build a stronger sense of identity with bureaucrats, lobbyists, journalists, and fellow legislators than he has with his own constituents. He's less likely to start thinking of the Capitol Gang as "us" and his constituents as "them," less likely to become assimilated into the culture.

And the more new members there are at any given time, the less likely new members will feel intimidated by the institution, and the more likely they will trust their own intelligence and judgment and will be open to change.

Here are a couple of interesting items on the intersection between faith and politics.

On RedState, Erick Erickson, a political consultant in Georgia, has an explanation for the defeat of Ralph Reed and an evangelical legislative candidate in Tuesday's Georgia Republican primaries, and it's not that voters are rejecting religious values:

Ralph Reed and Kay Goodwin lost, not because they were the evangelical candidate, but because they were poseurs....

For some reason, there are always candidates who think that to run as a social conservative they have to play up to evangelicals on issues that only evangelicals care about. They rally the faithful and pack the churches. But in doing this they expose their achilles heel.

All an opponent has to do is cast reasonable doubt on the character of the evangelical candidate and that candidate's base will stay home. You convince a strong Christian that his preferred candidate has serious character flaws and the Christian is not going to vote for a man shown to be of morally poor character. And that's what happened in Georgia.

Erickson quotes Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column: "Is [Ralph Reed] a Christian who went into politics, or a politician who went into Christianity?"

Erickson's advice:

The moral of all of this for an evangelical running for office is to run as a conservative, not an evangelical. Talk about conservative issues and let your values shine through. Be humble and don't make your values the issue. After all, in a race of multiple conservatives, it is a lot easier to tear down the guy who is running as the super Christian than it is to out Christian him.

Here's the context of that Peggy Noonan quote, and a bit more:

I always thought the question about Mr. Reed is: Is he a Christian who went into politics, or a politician who went into Christianity? Was he sincere and driven by a desire to have a positive impact on public policy, or a mover driven by a desire to get a piece of the action as American Christians, disaffected from a Democratic Party that had grown wildly insensitive to, and in fact disdainful of, their values, started to become a force in the Republican Party? Maybe one or the other, maybe both, maybe both but to different degrees....

When I read some of the emails he'd sent to lobbyist friends--"I need some corporations, I need some moolah," that kind of thing--I thought: Ick. This is a man suffering from a case of advanced insiderism. This is a guy who thinks it's cool to be cynical.

Anyway, his defeat this week came at the hands not of "them," of the left, but of conservative voters on the ground in Georgia. His loss seems to me another sign of one of those quiet changing of the guards in professional politics. Quietly an older generation recedes, quietly a newer one rises.

Good. We need new.

Not sure why, but Reed has always given me the creeps from his initial emergence as head of the Christian Coalition. My respect for him grew during his service as Georgia Republican Party chairman. He put himself in the background in 2002 and used his organizational skills to mobilize the grass roots. As a result, Republicans won the legislature and several statewide races, some that Republicans hadn't won since Reconstruction. What he did in Georgia became a model for the national Republican get-out-the-vote effort in 2004. In Oklahoma, it won all 77 counties for Bush and swept Tom Coburn into the Senate with a commanding margin.

As impressive as he is as a strategist, Reed doesn't come across well as a person. There's not even the kind of sarcastic wit that humanized Bob Dole. I'm not surprised Georgia voters passed him by.

Now for a bigger-picture lok at the intersection between faith and politics: Last weekend over at Junkyard Blog, See-Dubya posted a brilliant piece explaining the similar outlooks of traditional Christianity and modern American conservatism:

One of the greatest things about Christianity�one of its most powerful, if most cynical and unappealing, insights�is the fallen nature of man. This is, I think, one of the reasons for its worldly success: most people can understand and acknowledge that there is an evil and selfish element in even the most saintly of us.

This is one reason Christianity and modern American-style conservatism are so closely related. Both reject the notion that humans may perfect themselves. The first sin in the Garden was committed on the false promise that �ye shall be as gods�; but likewise the false promise of Marxism was that we might pull ourselves by our own bootstraps out of misery and into a terrestrial paradise. Millions and millions of deaths later, we see that�s not the case and that it was hubris to think that we could ignore those realistic assessments of human nature offered by Christianity�and by Chesterton, and by public-choice economics. The safest bet is that people will do what is in their interest. Anything else, any act of kindness or virtue, is a mitzvah, but it�s nothing to bet the farm on, or build a society on.

If you have always depended on the kindness of strangers, you have probably lived a miserable life.

He goes on to say that there are those within Christianity -- in the liberal denominations, but also in evangelicalism and Catholicism -- who want to move away from the centrality of man's depravity and need for divine redemption, not a self-improvement program. He explains why these intramural Christian debates should matter even to people who aren't Christians:

...[W]ithout a notion that redemption of our flawed natures is the exclusive province of God, then a license is granted for unlimited social experimentation in pursuit of the perfection of man.

Speaking only as a political commentator, this is a naive and dangerous direction for the largest religion in the most powerful nation in the world to take. Speaking as a Christian, it�s blasphemous.

It was hard not to quote the whole thing -- I left out some very pithy lines -- so go read the whole thing.

Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute write that Americans shouldn't get their knickers in a twist over the price of fuel:

In truth, gasoline prices today are taking less of a bite from our pocketbooks than has been the norm since World War II.

For instance, let�s look at 1955, a year most of us associate with big cars, big engines, and cheap fuel � automotive glory days, as it were. Gasoline sold for 29 cents per gallon. But one dollar in 1955 was worth more than one dollar today. If we were using today�s dollars, gasoline would have cost $1.76 per gallon in 1955.

Gasoline now costs around $3.00, so we are worse off than in 1955, right? No. Because we were poorer in 1955 than we are today, $1.76 then had a bigger impact on the pocketbook (that is, it represented a larger fraction of income) than $1.76 today. If we adjust gasoline prices not only for inflation but also changes in disposable per capita income (defined as income minus taxes), gasoline today would have to cost $5.17 per gallon to have the same impact as 29 cents in 1955.

But what they don't adjust for is the amount of driving we do today compared to 50 years ago. While the post-war suburban building spree had begun, cities and towns were still fairly compact, families made do with one car, most shopping was done at neighborhood stores or shopping centers, children walked to school, and stores still made deliveries.

Although our vehicles are more fuel-efficient today, we do a lot more driving just to go about our daily business. We've had 50 years of construction based on the premise that everyone has a car and distance is no barrier in the search for more selection and lower prices.

For example, even 20 years ago, Wal-Mart had stores in towns like Pawhuska and Nowata, both about 30 miles away from the next nearest stores in Ponca City and Bartlesville. Wal-Mart believed that customers would be willing to drive that extra 30 miles to shop at a Supercenter, so they closed the stores in Pawhuska and Nowata.

Here in Tulsa, supermarkets, gas stations, and pharmacies have all trended away from smaller, ubiquitous outlets to fewer but larger locations spread further apart.

It may yet be that transportation costs for a typical family are a smaller percentage of after-tax income than in 1955, but Taylor and Van Doren haven't established that as a fact in their article.

A recent photo of me with Congressman John Sullivan, taken when he spoke at the Kiwanis Club luncheon on April 17:

The photo was taken by Sullivan's communications director, John Tidwell, who is an excellent amateur photographer. From this photo and some of his other work that I've seen, it's apparent he has a knack for catching people and places at just the right moment in just the right light.

When I filed this week's column Monday morning, I had no way of knowing the final result, but I felt certain that whoever won the Republican nomination for Mayor would win without a majority of the vote. I thought that was the optimum time to write about the advantages of instant runoff voting without drawing complaints that it was an exercise in sour grapes.

For what it's worth, I've proposed instant runoff voting at least twice during the City Council's charter review process held every two years.

You'll find more information about instant runoff voting at FairVote, which reports that Burlington, Vermont, used IRV to elect their mayor this last Tuesday.

And here's the Burlington Votes website, with a helpful and thorough set of answers to frequently-asked questions, the results of the two rounds of the mayoral election, a sample ballot, and, for election nerds, a text representation of each ballot and the open-source software used to count the ballots.

Also, this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has a story by Ginger Shepherd about Maurice Kanbar and Henry Kaufman's plans for downtown Tulsa. And Gretchen Collins talks to the two Portland-based investors who hope to convert the Towerview Apartments into lofts.

That latter story is very encouraging, but the most discouraging note is that city officials and the head of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited tried to talk them out of doing anything with the building. It's a shame our local yokels don't seem to understand that good, urban downtowns are built, renovated, and redeveloped one lot, one building at a time. When you start talking about whole blocks or superblocks or (heaven forbid) acres devoted to a single use, you're not talking about an urban streetscape any more, but transplanted suburbia.

The Towerview is the building that city officials have targeted for condemnation to make way for a hotel across the street from the arena. There's no reason that a hotel can't coexist with a restored Towerview and other new buildings besides. The Crowne Plaza takes up about a half-block, the Mayo a quarter-block, the old Holiday Inn/Ramada about a third of a block. Even the Doubletree, able to sprawl a bit because it's built on urban renewal land, would fit in less than a full block.

Here are a couple TulsaNow forum topics about the Towerview:

Towerview photos

Discussion of LaFortune's plan to condemn the Towerview

Talk radio host and blogger Kevin McCullough watched Ted Kennedy's performance during last week's Judiciary Committee hearing for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Kevin thinks Ted needs straightening out:

"Ted Kennedy needs a beating."

Let me be clear, I don't mean some "pansy slap" on the wrist. I mean a bona fide beating!

This was supposed to have been Kevin's latest column for World Net Daily, but it was spiked as too extreme. I read it, and I don't think so -- but you have to read the whole thing. Go see for yourself. Kevin invites your comments.

UPDATE: Just in case you've not bothered to click the link and read the article, Kevin isn't calling for physical violence against the senior senator from Massachusetts.

This item by Karol about NY Governor George Pataki's presidential ambitions is brilliant for a couple of reasons.

First, there's this observation:

New York Governor George Pataki mentioned ethanol in his State of the State speech last week. Of course, that means he's running for president.

She links "running for president" to a Google search for ethanol+subsidies+Iowa. The only reason a pol from outside Iowa would boost ethanol is to lay groundwork for a good showing in the Iowa caucuses.

Karol goes on to wonder why Pataki's advisers don't tell him he's a no-hoper, and some of her commenters have it pegged. Sean writes:

He won't win, he hasn't got a shot, but that doesn't mean that his "advisers" and "consultants" won't sign contracts for $16,000/month in the process of failing miserably.

Commenter Jay comes close to nailing it:

The "Producers" motivation for running for president. Raise a lot of campaign funds, tank miserably, pocket the remainder.

That's a reference to the 1968 Mel Brooks film, in which a failed theatrical impresario and his accountant realize there's a pile of money to be made in a play that closes on opening night. As Karol points out, though, candidates can't pocket any remaining campaign funds.

But Pataki isn't Bialystock or Bloom, as Jay and others seem to suggest. Pataki is "Springtime for Hitler" -- the sure-fire flop -- and his political consultants are the producers. They'll butter him up, appeal to his vanity, and convince him to run. They'll get him to raise a pile of money, which won't be tough for the governor of a large and wealthy state, and they'll spend it for him over the course of '07 and early '08. They can make all sorts of promises in the course of raising money, because they know the candidate will never be in a position to keep those commitments. They'll setup fundraisers, mass mailings, and media buys, and add a percentage to each one, in addition to their monthly consulting fees. When the campaign falters, no one will blame the consultants, who, after all, didn't have much to work with, and they will live to consult again.

There is no shortage of unscrupulous political consultants who will flatter a candidate into running, preferably a candidate who is wealthy enough to self-finance. For this sort of consultant, a successful campaign is one in which the check clears.

So from henceforth, let's refer to consultant-driven no-hope election bids as "Springtime for Hitler" campaigns. We've seen plenty at the state and local level, and there are sure to be more before 2008 comes along.

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican from California, resigned today and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion. (Here's the AP story. Hat tip to Dan Lovejoy.) Cunningham took $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for steering defense contracts to certain contractors. (I haven't been able to find out yet how he, as an individual congressman, was able to make that happen, but if he was, that needs to be fixed.)

What I find interesting is the method used for one of the larger bribes. Mitchell Wade, head of a defense contractor called MZM, purchased a home from Cunningham for $1.675 million, then sold it a year later for $975,000. The Realtor who set the price for the sale by Cunningham to Wade was a campaign contributor to Cunningham. That amounts to $700,000 in Cunningham's pocket that wouldn't show up as a payment or a gift, even though that's exactly what it was.

Remember Speaker of the House Jim Wright? As a source of extra income, he compiled and published a vanity book of speeches and notes called Reflections of a Public Man, and to help him get around limits on outside income, groups would buy crates of the thing, and then warehouse them or throw them away. If I recall correctly, there were no limits on book royalties for House members, but there were limits on speaking fees and other sources of income, intended to prevent the use of such fees as a way to influence a congressman. Wright resigned as Speaker and from Congress in 1989 under that ethical cloud.

Two points to make:

(1) The more power is concentrated in any one individual to direct public money for private profit, the more likely bribery becomes. Procurement procedures with checks and balances may take more time and cost more money, but they discourage this kind of abuse.

(2) Bribes aren't given as bundles of cash in a brown paper bag anymore. If you see a government official consistently steering business to a handful of close associates, and you're looking for a quo to go along with a quid, you ought to look at any opportunity to render payment to a public official (home sales, salaries, services rendered) and see if that payment is in excess of market prices or customary rates.

Over at Alarming News, guest blogger Candace (another brilliant Republican blogger I had the privilege of meeting during last year's Republican National Convention) tells a story of a party, and how the guests respond when they learn that one among them is Different. Be sure to read the whole thing, and the comments, too.

Also on Alarming News, Karol has a great post on how Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's support for his colleague, Republican but social liberal Arlen Specter, is costing him support from conservatives as he faces reelection next year: "But the Santorum lesson is one that should be heeded by conservatives abandoning their principles to make nice with the party. Yes, conservatives will most often vote Republican but all it takes is a pro-life Democrat and a Republican seen as lacking a backbone, and the conservative vote can not be assured."

New York City Democrats narrowly avoided having to go back to the polls for a runoff in their mayoral primary. Early counts showed Freddy Ferrer just shy of the 40% required to win the primary outright. The second-place finisher, Anthony Weiner, got about 29%, with the remaining 31% split among four candidates. Weiner conceded defeat and endorsed Ferrer, but apparently NYC requires the runoff to go forward regardless. Tulsans will recall the December 2001 primary to replace Congressman Steve Largent: When John Sullivan finished first, well ahead of First Lady Cathy Keating, but shy of Oklahoma's 50% runoff threshold, Mrs. Keating graciously withdrew and the runoff was cancelled.

In the event, final returns gave Ferrer the necessary 40%. (NY1.com had the results, but a big chunk of that site is currently offline.) Still, the close shave with a pointless election has some New Yorkers talking about alternatives, like Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). And it's interesting that, while some criticize IRV for encouraging fringe candidates by eliminating the worry of "wasting" your vote on someone with no chance of winning, the voices advocating IRV say it will force candidates to make a broader appeal, rather than simply try to put together the biggest of the tiny slivers of the electorate.

Daily Gotham:

A candidate must appeal to his rivals' supporters for their second and third place votes in order to prevail in multiple rounds of counting. Divisiveness doesn't work if you're simply a plurality, nor does painting certain candidates (the wild ones, with the kooky lefty ideas) as "spoilers." Voters could finally vote their conscience and their true preference, and candidates would have to emphasize common ground and areas of agreement.

Doug Israel and Amy Ngai of the Citizens Union Foundation add their support and offer this explanation of the system:

Other jurisdictions have conducted runoffs while managing to avoid these shortcomings through a system called Instant Runoff Voting. In this system, the voters rank their preferences when they vote in the primaries. If no clear majority is achieved on first-choice votes, the candidate with the minimum amount of votes is eliminated, with his or her votes reallocated to the voters� second choice. If there is still no victor, election officials go through the count again with voters� third choices, and so on, until a candidate reaches the threshold for victory.

That entry links to a Mark Green op-ed from earlier this year. He argues that IRV saves money and empowers voters:

Instant runoffs encourage candidates to run high-minded races, because they need to simultaneously court voters for their second- and third-choice votes. So instead of seeking a plurality by only working their respective racial, religious or community niches, candidates have to seek votes outside their own particular constituency. That avoids the scenario of a winner who gets elected by a sliver of voters only because the majority was divided among more generally favored candidates.

Instant runoffs also can level the general election playing field when the challenger's party has an additional - and often divisive - runoff contest while the incumbent saves money, face and energy. On Election Day, IRV frees voters to vote their consciences without the worry of wasting their vote on a long-shot spoiler candidate like a Ralph Nader since their ballots will be recast for their next choices if their first loses.

Sean Gleeson is a genius. You must click this link. Biden reminds me of a certain "Kids in the Hall" recurring character.

And here are some questions Sean wants asked of Judge Roberts.

I was amused by this article about the facial hair of U. S. Sen. Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, in today's Asbury Park Press. Corzine, the only member of the U. S. Senate with a beard, will become the only sitting governor with a beard if he wins New Jersey's gubernatorial election this fall.

While facial hair hasn't been a problem for Corzine to date, some say it could still cost him points with voters. There are persistent, negative connotations underlying the taboo, according to political consultants, image experts and others.

"The problem with beards is the association with the '60s and '70s � the beatnik and hippie movement, the anti-establishment attitudes that were communicated by people in those years by people wearing beards. It's guilt by association, regardless of whether they were part of that," said Judith Rasband, a professional image management specialist.

I have often heard Oklahoma political consultant Fount Holland say that a beard will cost a candidate 4% of the vote. The only thing worse than a beard: A mustache by itself will cost you 6%. I don't have any numbers, but I suspect the electorate is even harder on men with a C. Everett Koop / Amish look (full beard, no mustache), a Fu Manchu mustache, a soul patch, mutton chops, or anything resembling Robert Bork's wispy chin fuzz. (The Organization for the Advancement of Facial Hair has a page of illustrations of beard types.)

Reid Buckley, younger brother of William F., writes in Speaking in Public:

[T]he heavily bearded speaker tends to look like a wooly caterpillar with lips. Most of the expressiveness in the face emanates from the thousands of tiny muscles surrounding the area of the mouth. When this is shrouded, what the audience discerns of the speaker's mug is precious little; what it gathers of expression is nada. Rubbery lips in their hairy casements... writhe, like sea anemones....

Bearded men, moreover, unless they are blond or redhead, tend to look dour, grouchy, even menacing; like Frederic March's Mr. Hyde.

Buckley's advice to public speakers: Shave it off, or at least trim it close.

I have twice run for office, and I was told before both campaigns that I had to shave. During my 2002 campaign for Tulsa City Council, I received a phone call from a voter who had received a campaign postcard with my photo on it. He felt compelled to inform me that under no circumstances would he or his wife vote for anyone with a beard. I informed the gentleman that I had two small children who were used to Daddy having a beard, and that they would be puzzled to see Daddy clean-shaven. I also told him that my wife liked me with a beard, and when it came to my appearance the opinion of my wife and children mattered most. The voter was unmoved.

I later looked up the gentleman's name in the voter registration database and found that he was rather advanced in years. I suspect that for those whose working life was mainly in the '40s and '50s and into the '60s, beards represent a rejection of authority and society. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, and (of course) Che had beards. For boomers and younger, beards are more commonplace, and they're more likely to have positive associations: fatherly, avuncular, professorial, venerable. Burl Ives had a beard and sang folk songs in Disney movies. Ernest Hemingway had a beard. Santa Claus has a beard, for that matter.

I lost my council race by slightly more than the beard penalty, and my opponent (Tom Baker) subsequently grew a beard of his own, although I think he had shaved it before the 2004 campaign.

I have not been fully clean-shaven since 1985. I first grew a beard as a junior in college, during an extended stay in the infirmary. It was weedy and scraggly, and I shaved it off before job hunting the following summer, then grew it back the next winter, during another extended illness. When I went job hunting as I neared graduation, I didn't shave. I figured that if a company didn't want me, beard and all, I didn't want to work for them. That may not have been the best job-hunting strategy in Tulsa in 1986, but I had a good job within two months anyway.

I trim my beard closer now, and I shave more of my cheeks and neck than I did back then, but other than that (and other than a growing number of white whiskers), it's the same beard as 20 years ago, and I'm given to believe it suits me. The first time I met my wife, I was clean-shaven and wore glasses; the following year we met again, and I had a beard and wore contact lenses. This time we clicked in a way we hadn't the first year, and I always suspected the beard made a difference. An erstwhile friend told me she didn't like facial hair and had urged plenty of men to shave, in brutally frank terms, but in my case, the beard was a part of who I am, and she couldn't possibly be more attracted to me. (There are at least two ways you could take that last phrase, one of which is complimentary.)

When your beard is part of who you are, shedding it before a campaign is likely to come across as an act of political expediency as cynical as shedding a long-held principle. Jon Corzine seems to take the same view:

"It's staying," he said when asked about the beard in a July interview. "When you've had something for 25 years, why would you reshape yourself to get into public life? And I haven't tried to."

I don't share the man's politics, but I hope his success opens doors for his bearded brethren everywhere.

The final word on the matter belongs to Minnie Pearl:

Kissing a feller with a beard is like a picnic. You don't mind going through a little brush to get there.

TRACKBACK: Kyle at Neumatikos chimes in: "[My wife] insisted I not shave for our wedding, which was a great relief. Later generations would have wasted considerable effort wondering who mommy�s first husband was, and why we insisted on putting out pictures of that wedding, instead of ours." (Found via Google's new Blog Search.)

Karol isn't predicting who the Republican nominee will be in '08, but, blogger enthusiasm notwithstanding, she says it won't be Rudy or Condi. Go read why, and read her insightful list of the eventual nominee's defining characteristics.

Karol links to Patrick Ruffini's latest straw poll. He's added two twists to the previous poll. In addition to a ballot of likely candidates, there's a second ballot, with some unlikely but popular choices -- Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Fred Thompson. You indicate whether you'd vote for one of the four over your initial pick, if you had the chance. He's also asking for your state and is presenting results by state. Patrick is also tracking results by referring blog, but I notice that neither BatesLine nor Karol's Alarming News show up in the stats for the previous straw poll, even though we both had it linked. Ruffini has posted his analysis of the initial results for the new straw poll.

Patrick also has been analyzing detailed presidential results, and has a map showing the change in the Bush vote between 2000 and 2004 in each municipality in New Jersey. The cool thing is that he overlaid the map on Google Earth, so you can see aerial view colored with the results, and get a sense of the types of places where Bush gained and lost. The most interesting trend: The wealthier a township, the more likely a swing away from Bush from 2000 to 2004.

Political analyst Michael Barone is now a blogger, and he's categorized the congressional districts where Bush gained and lost the most between '00 and '04. Barone calls Oklahoma's rural 2nd, 3rd, and 4th districts, where Bush did much better in '04, "Zell Miller districts."

One of the darkhorses in the Ruffini straw poll is Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who got a favorable mention here a while back. A couple of weeks ago Fayetteville, Arkansas, blog Overtaken by Events reported that Huckabee, along with many other Arkansas pols, protested loudly against an immigration raid at a poultry plant in Arkadelphia. Huckabee said the calls to his office were running a thousand to one against his position, but does it take more courage to defy popular opinion or the interests of the state's biggest business interests?

... is this.

Christopher Walken, the actor, plans to run for President in 2008, and he has launched a campaign website. Is this a self-indulgent publicity bid? Is there some depth to his political thinking, or is he just another celebrity with an inflated sense of self-importance? This quote from his bio may be a clue:

Having residences both in rural Connecticut and upper-west Manhattan, he sees that all walks of life are becoming disgruntled and apathetic towards the American government, and feels a duty, as a child of the American public, to restore the peace, prosperity, and greatness of the United States.

Yes, you'll meet all walks of life in the Upper West Side and among the Connecticut country estates of the wealthy. He forgot to mention that he sometimes travels to Los Angeles and flies over the great heartland of our country, occasionally looking out the window for a second or two.

He stakes out positions (pretty much the mainstream media consensus positions) on only three issues (campaign finance reform, stem cell research, and military spending), but Ace has gleaned some additional platform planks from the characters he's played in the movies.

One of the names that should have been on Patrick Ruffini's 2008 Republican Presidential Straw Poll was that of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. I hadn't really thought of him as a contender until our recent visit to Little Rock, where I heard him speak at a banquet honoring community volunteers (including my mother-in-law). He's a social and fiscal conservative and has a solid record over nine years as governor.

I was impressed by his ease addressing the audience. I suppose after nine years as governor and many years before that as a Baptist preacher, public speaking wouldn't be a problem, but I've seen plenty of veteran politicians who never learn to deliver a speech in a comfortable, natural way. I was surprised at how mild his accent was -- much less noticeable than Bill Clinton's.

Someone else thinks Mike Huckabee deserves a look as a presidential contender. Someone calling him/herself "Blue State Republican" has started the Mike Huckabee President 2008 blog. He's got an extensive excerpt from a recent column by David Broder, who also enthuses over Huckabee, calling him the most intriguing candidate present at the recent National Governors' Association conference.

Someone to watch.

Patrick Ruffini is running a straw poll for the 2008 Presidential nomination. He's missing a few potential candidates that ought to be on the list, and at least three of five are no-hopers, but he's added an interesting twist that makes it worth your while to participate: He's sorting the results by referring blog, which means we'll be able to see how results among BatesLine readers compare to the overall result. So click on through, and cast your vote.

(Hat tip: Karol at Alarming News.)

President Bush has announced the nomination of U. S. Court of Appeals Judge John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U. S. Supreme Court.

I don't have time to write a reaction (or even have one yet), but you'll find plenty of commentary in the newly-established section on the sidebar to the right of the BatesLine home page. Just below the Blog Oklahoma button, you'll find "News blogs, frequently updated," with a selection of right-leaning individual blogs and group blogs that focus on national and world news and (with one exception) are frequently updated. (The exception is the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," which is nevertheless worth your attention if you're keeping up with the world at large.)

The Discoshaman/TulipGirl family is celebrating Independence Day in America this year for the first time in several years. Discoshaman writes about how they celebrated, and TulipGirl has pictures.

I love the fact that they wanted to include in their observances a viewing of the movie "Red Dawn" -- a film we referred to at the time as the official movie of the 1984 Republican National Convention. In the film, Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell (fresh from gang battles on the mean streets of Tulsa) take on a Soviet/Cuban invasion of small-town America. My favorite moment in the movie is when the Cuban commander orders his men to round up all the gun owners in the county. How does he know who these gun owners are? From the registration records collected by an American government that didn't respect the Second Amendment. (The hamhandedness of that plot point shouldn't distract from the fact that invading tyrants would do exactly that.)

Discoshaman also lets us know how the lefty intellectualoids are observing the holiday and uses a unique illustration, no doubt meaningful to his four boys, to teach the relationship between rights and responsibilities.

One test of a good voting system is whether it effectively prevents a candidate to enter the race as a "spoiler." There is probably a technical term for this, but there ought to be a stability of results. If A would beat B in a two-candidate race, the addition of C to the list of candidates shouldn't result in a victory for B. By extension, adding a candidate to an n-candidate race shouldn't hand the election to someone who would have lost the n-candidate race.

Because many jurisdictions don't have any sort of runoff at all, and only a handful use instant runoff voting, we often see elections where the winner is someone who might not have won with fewer candidates in the race. Sometimes the winner is someone who might have lost head-to-head with several of the other candidates, but wins the multi-candidate race because the other candidates split a common core constituency.

Here are two more recent examples.

Yesterday there was a special primary election in Ohio's 2nd congressional district, a seat previously held by Rob Portman, who is now U. S. Trade Representative in President Bush's cabinet.

Here's the final result (PDF) in the Republican primary:

JEAN SCHMIDT 14232 31.35%
BOB MCEWEN 11565 25.48%
TOM BRINKMAN, JR. 9211 20.29%
PAT DEWINE 5455 12.02%
ERIC MINAMYER 2111 4.65%
PETER A. FOSSETT 1026 2.26%
TOM BEMMES 695 1.53%
JEFF MORGAN 400 0.88%
DAVID R. SMITH 374 0.82%
STEVE AUSTIN 221 0.49%
DOUGLAS E. MINK 100 0.22%

Ohio has no primary runoff, so Schmidt wins the primary despite the 69% of the vote against her.

Had the 4th through 11th place candidates not been in the race, the distribution of their votes to the top three could have put any of the top three in first place. Even an Oklahoma-style primary runoff wouldn't fix the problem, as the top three were close enough that we can't know which of them would have finished 1-2 if the other eight candidates had not been in the race. Instant runoff voting would have produced a winner with the support of a majority of the voters. The beauty of instant runoff voting is that you eliminate the spoiler effect of an additional candidate.

We had another example in last week's Republican primary for New Jersey governor.

Doug Forrester 108,090 35.94%
Bret Schundler 93,926 31.23%
John Murphy 33,662 11.19%
Steven Lonegan 24,346 8.10%
Robert Schroeder 16,691 5.55%
Paul DiGaetano 16,551 5.50%
Todd Caliguire 7,472 2.48%

It's been argued that Steven Lonegan acted as a spoiler for Bret Schundler, peeling off enough conservative support to keep him from once again winning the GOP nomination. The counter-argument is that if the other minor candidates had not been in the race, most of their votes would have gone to Forrester. A runoff is the only way to know for sure.

A simple two-candidate runoff probably would have been sufficient to provide a clear outcome, but theoretically Murphy could have finished second in a three-way race -- the bottom four candidates had enough combined votes that if they had been out of the race and all their votes had gone to Murphy, Murphy would have finished second.

Today is primary day in Virginia. Virginia has a one-term limit for governor, so Democrat Mark Warner will be stepping down (rumored to be planning a run for Senate next year against incumbent Republican George Allen). Jerry Kilgore is expected to defeat George Fitch in the race for the Republican nomination for Governor; the winner will go on to face Democrat Tim Kaine, unopposed for his party's nomination.

The most hotly contested races are for the lower house of the legislature. Last year, a number of Republican delegates supported a tax increase to address a budget crisis, and many of them have drawn primary challengers this year.

Unlike Oklahoma, Virginia has an open primary system. You don't register by party. Instead, at each primary you ask for the ballot of one party or the other. An incumbent facing a primary challenge might try to win renomination by luring voters who usually vote in the other party's primary.

Last week when I was digging for info on the New Jersey primary, I was surprised not to find any blogs devoted to Garden State politics, and only a few with even a mention of the contestants in the main race, but a quick search today found several conservative blogs devoted to Virginia politics. One blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, contacted me before the Oklahoma Republican Convention to write about George Allen's speech there and how he was received by the delegates. A district attorney blogs about politics under the pseudonym John Behan at Commonwealth Conservative. One Man's Trash is covering the governor's race extensively.

Bacon's Rebellion is a biweekly Virginia public policy e-zine. It's covering the election, but it also covers government efficiency, taxation, and transportation and land use. There's a blog, updated daily, and a special blog on transportation, urban design, and land use, called The Road to Ruin.

Polls close at 7 local time, and you can see results from 7:30 on via the Virginia State Board of Elections.

Yesterday afternoon Chelan County, Washington, Superior Court Judge John Bridges ruled against Republican gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi, affirming that Democrat Christine Gregoire won last November's election. There were over a thousand invalid ballots cast, far greater than the margin of victory. As I understand it, Rossi's team tried to make a statistical case, based on where the irregular votes were cast, that enough of the invalid votes were cast for Gregoire that Rossi would have won if those votes weren't counted. The judge ruled that it couldn't be determined with certainty which candidate received the benefit of those invalid ballots, therefore the result stands. Michelle Malkin live-blogged the judge's press conference. She links to Seattle-area political blog SoundPolitics, which has been covering the situation in great depth since last November when the recounts began.

This result is puzzling. Under Oklahoma law, if the number of irregular or fraudulent votes is greater than the margin of victory, so that the result cannot be mathematically determined, the election is voided and a new election is held. This happened in Tulsa in 2004, in a Democratic primary for City Council. Incumbent David Patrick received three votes more than former incumbent Roscoe Turner, but in one precinct, 255 votes were cast, but only 207 Democrat voters signed in. Evidently, 48 Republicans who showed up to vote in the presidential primary were also given Democrat city primary ballots. After Turner contested the election and presented evidence of the irregularities, a judge ordered a re-vote, which Turner won handily. I'm surprised a similar provision doesn't exist in Washington law.

Jim Miller, one of the bloggers at SoundPolitics, appears to have coined a new term to describe what seems to have happened in Washington -- distributed vote fraud. Rather than a coordinated effort to stuff the ballot boxes in a few precincts, handfuls of ineligible voters cast ballots in each precinct -- maybe only 1 in every 1000 voters, maybe as high as 1 in 100, but more than enough to affect the outcome of very close elections, like Oklahoma's 2002 governor's race, which was decided by three votes per precinct.

Miller's disclaimer on the topic explains what it would take to determine the extent of the problem. He also observes that Democrats tend to favor policies (like the Federal "Motor Voter" act) that make fraud easier to commit and to oppose policies (like showing photo ID when you vote) that make fraud easier to detect or deter. He writes, "Perhaps all these Democrats are wrong to think that there is an advantage for their party in what I call distributed vote fraud, but I doubt it." You'll find a longer treatment of the problem here.

One of two states with a statewide election this year, New Jersey holds its primary today for offices from governor all the way down to township officials. (Virginia has a primary next Tuesday. Louisiana and Kentucky are the other two odd-year states; they'll vote in '07.)

There are seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination for Governor -- leading the pack are former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, the 2001 nominee, and Doug Forrester, who lost the 2002 Senate race after Frank Lautenberg tagged in for the damaged-goods incumbent, Bob Torricelli.

Kevin McCullough has posted his assessment of the two candidates. The latest Quinnipiac University poll has Forrester leading Schundler 35-33, within the margin of error. (HT for the poll to The Hedgehog Report.)

On the Democrat ballot, Sen. Jon Corzine is expected to win handily over two other candidates.

Here's the official list of candidates. Each candidate has an official slogan in each county, which I assume appears on the ballot. Forrester's slogan in each county has some variation on "Regular Republican," but in some cases it's clear that he has the endorsement of the county party organization, e.g. the slogan "Middlesex County Republican Party." Schundler uses "Bret 2005" unless a specific organization has endorsed him -- he was endorsed by the confusingly-named "Middlesex County Republican Organization." The idea of county organizations making an endorsement seems strange -- here in Oklahoma, it's against state party rules. I rather like the idea of having a slogan on the ballot; it could make it easier for voters to remember which candidate is running on which issue.

One more New Jersey oddity: You vote for two candidates for your district in the General Assembly (the lower house of the legislature). Same thing applies in the primary election.

This is the official page for 2005 election results, but it isn't clear if live results will be available. Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Why does an Oklahoma blogger care about the result in New Jersey's primary? It's partly job-related -- more than that I won't say. Mostly, it's for the same reason that some people bother to look at box scores in April. It's politics, and today it's the only game scheduled -- that's reason enough.

UPDATE: NJ.com has results from the Associated Press updated at 10 minute intervals.

It's time for the annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting, and Fayetteville-based blogger Matt of Overtaken by Events has photos of a pathetic little protest march down Dickson Street.

Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now (I.R.O.N.), a group pushing for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, is having its monthly meeting this Thursday, June 2, 6:30 p.m., at Hardesty Library in the Oak Room. Undersheriff Edwards will be the speaker. You can learn more about the organization at its website, www.okiron.org.

It was interesting to read Karol Sheinin's comments today on illegal immigration on her blog, Alarming News. Karol is a legal immigrant to the US from Russia. About the illegal immigration summit in Las Vegas and the protesters who called the summitteers racist, she writes:

What is racist about thinking that illegal immigration is wrong? What is racist about worrying about the security of your nation's borders, at a time when your country is at war with a shadowy enemy who is trying to infiltrate your country to destroy it from within? Minuteman organizer Chris Simcox spoke at the conference and, mentioning recent deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, said 'There is no reason human beings, regardless of where they come from, should die horrible deaths.' What's racist about that?

Scott Sala of Slant Point links to a City Journal article by Stephen Malanga about the political engine that drives politics in America's "bluest" cities. Malanga calls it the "New New Left," or "the tax eaters' party," a coalition of government-employee unions, social service agencies funded by government, and workers in the health care industry, which is increasingly funded and controlled by government. He sketches the history and growth of each component of the New New Left and its influence over municipal politics in many cities:

Increasingly in U.S. cities, the road to electoral success passes through the public- employee/health-care/social-services sector. In New York, for instance, more than two-thirds of city council members are former government employees or ex-workers in health care or social services....

One reason that these politicians have succeeded electorally is that those who work in the public sector have different voting priorities from private-sector workers or business owners. An exit poll conducted by City Journal of the 2001 New York mayoral election found that private-sector workers heavily backed Michael Bloomberg, the businessman candidate who had been endorsed by Rudy Giuliani and had run on a pledge of no new taxes (which he broke after his first year in office), while those who worked in the public/health-care/social-services sectors favored his Democratic opponent, who ran on a promise of raising taxes to fund further services. In the race, Bloomberg won among private-sector voters by 17 percentage points, while the Democrat won by 15 points among those who worked in the public/nonprofit sectors.

And of course public-sector workers, who know they are going to the polls to elect their bosses, make sure to remember to vote. Though they make up about one-third of New York City�s workforce, public/nonprofit-sector voters made up 37 percent of the electorate in the 2001 mayoral race.

His analysis is interesting, but maybe a bit alarmist. 37% of the electorate vs. 33% of the workforce doesn't seem terribly disproportionate, and if the Democrat had only a 15 point win among public-sector voters, it suggests that not all public-sector voters vote for whoever promises to increase public funding. It would be interesting to know what motivated the public-sector voters who picked Mike Bloomberg over Mark Green four years ago.

Still public employee unions have become very influential, especially in Democratic politics -- you won't get far without their endorsements and the help of their footsoldiers. I've heard that it's the only growing sector of the labor union movement. While I appreciate the complaints of Tulsa's city workers, who have borne most of the city's belt-tightening, I think it was a mistake for the City Council to approve unionization, even in a limited way. It will be difficult to say no to the next department that seeks unionization. A unionized city workforce will make it more difficult for the city's elected officials to make adjustments in order to cope with tight finances, and a city employee union would be an organized political force always pushing for expansion of city government.

That's in New York City, where it's even more remarkable. Thomas Ognibene is challenging incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Republican primary for this November's New York municipal elections. Scott Sala of Slant Point has been providing thorough coverage of the local New York political scene, and he's posted an interview with Ognibene, the first of several he plans to do with NYC candidates. Ognibene is pro-life and opposes the redefinition of marriage, positions that may win crossover votes from evangelical Democrats who can't find candidates in their own party who share their values. In the interview, Ognibene refutes the idea that only a liberal Republican can be elected Mayor, pointing out that Rudy Giuliani, while a social liberal, ran and governed as a conservative, cracking down on crime, reducing City Hall bureaucracy, trimming the welfare rolls, and cutting burdensome taxes and fees. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg, a RINO, has focused on banning smoking everywhere, promoting a new Manhattan stadium for the New York Jets, and wants to spend $3 million from the city budget to promote the "morning after pill."

This should be a fascinating election to watch. Thanks, Scott, for giving us a front row seat.

Finally found the magic Google phrase to locate something I've been trying to find for some time now: A chart showing the number of Republicans and Democrats in each state legislative chamber in the United States. Here it is, on the website of the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of earlier this month.

If you want counts from further back in history, visit their Partisan Composition and Control page.

It's Wictory Wednesday, when hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to contribute to a Republican candidate somewhere in the USA. Today's target of opportunity is Mark Kennedy, running for Senate from Minnesota. Here's Kennedy's website, and here's where you can make a contribution. Minnesota is one of the GOP's best shots at picking up a Senate seat in '06. Early contributions to Kennedy will help discourage Democrat candidates from getting into the race.

You'll find the list of blogs supporting the Wictory Wednesday in the sidebar on the BatesLine homepage.

Last Saturday was Tulsa County Republican Convention and the election of party officers for the next two years, the culmination of a process that began over a month ago with precinct meetings in homes all over the county.

The same process for the Tulsa County Democratic Party begins this Thursday night, March 10, at 7:00 p.m. Elections will be held for chairman, vice chairman, and secretary for each precinct. The Democrats will have 20 regional meetings around the county, each of which will host several precinct meetings. As I understand it, these newly-elected precinct officials will then gather to elect a chairman and other county party officials.

If you're registered to vote as a Democrat, you can participate in the precinct elections. Visit the website of the Tulsa County Democratic Party, or phone party headquarters at 742-2457, to find out where your precinct election will be held. If you need to find out your precinct number, try the Tulsa County Election Board's precinct locator on the web, or call the election board at 596-5780.

I'll be putting up several posts about Saturday's Tulsa County Republican Convention -- you'll see "TCRC 2005" in the title. The convention meets every odd-numbered year to elect party officials and to approve a party platform. There is also a county convention in every presidential election year.

The usual order of business is to hear speeches from Republican officials in the morning then after lunch to elect party officers and vote on the platform.

The party officers elected for 2005-07 are

Chairman: Jerry Buchanan
Vice Chairman: Joy Pittman
State Committeeman: Michael Bates
State Committeewoman: Charlotte Harer
1st District Committeeman: Jeremy Bradford
1st District Committeewoman: Erin Patrick

The 1st District Committeeman race was the only contested race -- 2002 mayoral candidate Ray McCollum was the other candidate. It was clear that Jeremy Bradford, president of the Young Republicans chapter, had the support of a broader cross-section of party leaders.

Jerry and Joy are going to make a great team. Jerry took a leap into politics a little over a year ago when he decided to run in the special election for House District 67. He didn't win, but he ran an honorable race, and rather than sulk, he volunteered to help build the party organization. He will do a great job with the nuts and bolts of the party. He's also a man of principle, evidenced by his role as a lay leader of the Church of the Holy Spirit, an Episcopal parish at odds with the national church over the ordination of homosexuals. As a spokesman for the congregation, he's demonstrated firmness without vitriol.

Joy was a fellow delegate to the Republican National Convention and served on the RNC platform committee. She's also a heck of a dancer. (Shockwave required, click on DAY 3, then click on DELEGATE DANCE-OFF. That's Joy on the right as the video begins and ends.)

As I was unopposed, I was allowed to make a two-minute acceptance speech, in which I called the delegates' attention to three crucial elections coming in the next few months. (1) The City of Tulsa has a general obligation bond issue for basic infrastructure on the ballot in April, and it needs to pass. It's all about the basic duties of city government. (2) In order to hold on to the District 5 council seat, it's crucial for only one of the seven Republicans who have expressed interest in the seat to go ahead and file for the special election. The election has no primary and no runoff -- it's first-past-the-post. I urged the candidates and precinct leaders in the district to caucus and agree as to which of the seven should be the Republican standard-bearer. (3) We've got to defeat the recall attempts and keep Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino in office. It would be a violation of democratic principles if duly elected officials were replaced in midterm by the appointment of the candidates who lost the last election.

The six elected officials together form the Central Committee of the county party. It's a good team, and I'm proud to be part of it once again.

File this under "Oh, what a giveaway":

THE BBC�s reputation for fair and balanced reporting was at risk last night after top broadcaster James Naughtie blurted out his pro-Labour sympathies.

In a live chat with ex-Treasury chief Ed Balls � weeks before the May 5 election � he asked: �If WE win the election, does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor?�

He struggled to recover, saying: �If YOU win the election.�

The blunder came on Radio 4�s flagship Today programme. Mr Naughtie has frequently given Conservatives a rough ride in interviews while apparently giving Labour frontmen an easy time.

The veteran anchorman is author of a biography of Gordon Brown and is close to Tony Blair and other Cabinet ministers.

But he surprised his own colleagues yesterday by blurting out his true colours on prime time radio.

I find blatant bias rather refreshing, much nicer than bias concealed beneath a veneer of objectivity. Go ahead, James, purge yourself. Let it all out. We'll all feel much better.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Dan Lovejoy has been all over this story: The Federal Department of Homeland Security has put veterans of some of the most invasive software and Internet companies in responsible positions overseeing the department's privacy issues. Nuala O'Connor Kelly, formerly Chief Privacy Officer for DoubleClick, is now Chief Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security. And an executive from Claria (neé Gator) is on a Homeland Security privacy board. Many websurfers, myself included, installed Gator because it promised to help us more easily manage all the different usernames and passwords one acquires in the course of registering for this newspaper's website and that online banking service. It also would hijack your browser and pop up windows for its advertisers based on the site you were currently browsing. Dan reminds that Gator has been the subject of a number of lawsuits.

Dan has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out all he can. If the Cornyn-Leahy OPEN Government Act (S. 394) gets through Congress quickly enough, the FOIA request might not be too expensive:

A while back I noted that the Democrats' vacillating response to Islamofascism was driving otherwise liberal voters to become "9/11 Republicans". I wondered if these new Republicans would follow in the footsteps of the neo-conservatives of the 1960s:

In the 1960s, certain liberals were appalled at the weak-kneed, apologetic response of some of the their fellow liberals to oppressive, imperialistic Soviet Communism. Over time this core group of "neo-conservatives," which had broken with the mainstream of liberalism over foreign policy, began to question liberal orthodoxy on domestic policy. Their movement away from liberalism was accelerated by the left's hysterical response to their "apostasy" from the true liberal faith. Time will tell if today's "9/11 Republicans" become tomorrow's "neo-neo-cons".

Wizbang's Paul links to a recent indication that War on Terror Republicans are re-examining conservative views on other issues. In an op-ed on SFGate.com, Cinnamon Stillwell, who grew up in far-left Marin County, tells about the shift in her views, from being a Nader voter in 2000 to voting for George W. Bush in 2004.

Randy Barnett, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, urges libertarians to refocus on getting libertarian candidates to succeed within the two-party system:

Libertarians should stop thinking of parties as teams and think of them instead as the playoffs. In NFL football terms, The Democrats are the AFC and the Republicans the NFC. To get into the Superbowl, you have to survive the season and the playoffs in your respective conference. In effect, Libertarians want to form their own league which no one but themselves is interested in watching. And they assure themselves of never making the playoffs much less the Superbowl.

The analogy is apt, especially because of ballot access laws that institutionalize the two parties in many states (Oklahoma, particularly), the way legislative bodies organize themselves into majority and minority caucuses, and a voting system that penalizes third-party votes -- vote for a third-party candidate in our first-past-the-post system and you probably help your least favorite candidate.

In another post, he points out that the existence of the Libertarian Party drains libertarian activists from the two major parties, giving them less influence.

The same message applies to conservatives who are tempted to leave the Republican Party for, say, a minor party like the Constitution Party.

Speaking of ballot access, I'm proud to see that Owasso Senator Randy Brogdon is the Senate sponsor of a ballot access reform bill for Oklahoma. Sen. Brogdon has frequently demonstrated the courage of his convictions, and I predict bigger and better things for him down the road. At least I hope so.

A breath of fresh air from Karol:

Isn't there something to be said for politicians taking a side of an issue, us voting for them based on where they stand, and then them representing our interests in elected office?

We are forever being told that some issue is too important to be left to the politicians, too important to allow it to become politicized. And some folks are just unnerved by vigorous debate.

There are indeed those fundamental, inalienable, absolute rights which should not be subject to the whims of politics. Those genuine rights aren't in competition -- my exercise of my freedom of speech doesn't require anything of you. All that is required is for the government not to infringe on those rights.

Beyond those basic freedoms, we enter the realm of trade-offs and competing interests, where what I seek may very well undermine your aims and vice versa. Politics is our way of arbitrating between those interests and setting the rules of the game. I much prefer deciding such matters through politics; the alternatives are tyranny and revolution. When the really important matters are removed from the realm of politics, ordinary people lose hope of change, opposition goes underground and becomes extreme, and government moves from openness to hidden, often corrupt, influence.

We shouldn't be ashamed of politics.

RedState.org has the full list of Republican Senate committee assignments from the leadership, subject to confirmation by the Senate Republican caucus. Sen.-elect Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas have been assigned to Judiciary, replacing Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Larry Craig of Idaho. This is great news, a bit of compensation for having to put up with Arlen Specter in the chair. Coburn has also been assigned to Homeland Security / Government Affairs.

Our senior Senator, Jim Inhofe continues as chairman of Environment and Public Works and will be third-ranking Republican on Armed Services, behind John Warner and John McCain.

Thanks to Adam, an editor for RedState.org, who is also a native Tulsan, for the tip. Adam is a self-described social moderate, and when asked by a commenter why he most wanted to see social conservatives on the Judiciary Committee, he replied:

My preference for judges is for ones that will not make law from the bench. For example, I support most gay rights initiatives, but I don't want a judiciary to impose those rights. I support a higher level of environmentalism than the Bush administration, but I don't want judges imposing it. And on and on.

Furthermore, I think Roe v. Wade is a flawed ruling (regardless of my view on the legality of abortion) and should be overruled or at least curtailed. These two will definitely side with me on that one.

I appreciate Adam's respect for the Constitution.

Way too often for my liking, elected Republicans do something to justify being called "the Stupid Party." (For the record, people who call the GOP "the Stupid Party" call the Democrats "the Evil Party.")

Yesterday, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to recommend Arlen Specter to be the committee's new chairman, despite a long and loud outcry from grassroots conservatives who believe, with good reason, that Specter will be an obstacle to needed legal reforms and to the nominations of judges who believe in interpreting the law, rather than legislating from the bench. The other committee members are crowing about the "concessions" they extracted from Specter before endorsing his chairmanship. Specter issued a statement defending his record on judicial nominations and pledging that he would not apply a litmus test against pro-life nominees, that he would hold quick hearings and early votes on the President's judicial nominees, that he will use his "best efforts to stop any future filibusters." He has also pledged not to bottle up legislation and constitutional amendments in committee, even when he is personally opposed.

Let's look at the bargain that was struck: Specter gets what he wants right away in exchange for a promise. What are the consequences if he breaks his promise? There are none. The Republicans have said they could deprive him of his chairmanship if he goes back on his word, but doing so for policy reasons would be unprecedented, and they won't be willing to withstand the condemnation from the mainstream media. And even if the Republicans do respond to a betrayal, the damage will have already been done -- a fine legal mind will have been publicly trashed and blocked from taking a seat on the Federal bench, and the President will have been forced to name someone with views more like Specter's to get him through the Senate.

Maybe Republicans are just too merciful or sentimental or trusting or tradition-bound to press their advantage. The point of winning elections is to accomplish the agenda you set out during your campaign. If you have the power, use it to make the system work to enact your agenda. We have handed a victory to the forces of judicial lunacy in exchange for mere words from someone who has proven himself to be untrustworthy.

Here's a tip for Republican officials: When you're negotiating with someone you don't trust, he should be required to fulfill his part of the bargain before or at the same time that you fulfill your end of the deal. If neither party trusts each other -- that's why there's escrow. Please note that someone issuing a statement promising to fulfill his part of the bargain is not equivalent to actually fulfilling it.

At the very least the Republicans should have put his chairmanship in escrow for two years -- if he supports the President's judicial nominees and works to end the practice of judicial filibustering, he gets to take over as chairman in 2007.

The battle to stop Specter did at least shake things up a bit. Maybe it will make a difference when a controversial judicial nominee is before the committee. We'll see. Until then Arlen Specter's trustworthiness is "not proven."

Although the Senate Judiciary Committee will not formally make a recommendation and the Republican caucus won't vote until January, today may be when the decision is made whether Arlen Specter will assume the chairmanship or not. The Senate is back in Washington for its lame duck session, and Specter will be meeting this morning with his colleagues on Judiciary and with the Senate Republican leadership, according to Roll Call.

If you care about 2nd Amendment rights, lawsuit reform, the defense of traditional marriage, the sanctity of human life -- if you just believe that judges should uphold the law, not rewrite it -- you want someone other than Arlen Specter to hold the reins of the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can find links to all you need to know here. He's on the wrong side of nearly every legal issue that conservatives care about.

Please take a few minutes to call members of the Senate leadership and the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can find e-mail links and phone numbers here. You can send a blast fax here. Do it this morning.

The bottom line is this: Specter plays nice with the conservatives just before an election, then abandons them once he's safely back for another six years. At age 74, he may not run for re-election in 2010, and even if he does, he won't swing back into "be nice to conservatives" mode until late 2008 at the earliest, just as President Bush is leaving office. With two or three retirements on the Supreme Court opening up, we need someone solid in charge of that committee right now.

It will only take you a few minutes to make a difference. Get on the phones!

Oklahoma Senator-elect Tom Coburn is quoted in today's Whirled as saying he won't take a public position on whether Sen. Arlen Specter should be elected as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, even though Coburn's philosophy of government and the judicial branch is completely at odds with that of Specter. According to the Whirled (PDF here, jump page here):

"I am not going to get into that," Coburn said. "I don't want to stake out any territory right now publicly." ...

Coburn, who is scheduled to be in Washington over the next few days to attend orientation sessions for new senators, said he has not sat down and looked at the controversy surrounding Specter.

"I am the senator-elect, not the senator," he said.

Coburn, who continues to work out of his Muskogee medical office, said he has not received calls from conservatives on the controversy.

Well, we can fix that! He doesn't have a Senate office yet, but for now you can call his main campaign office in Muskogee at 918-684-4308. The fax number for the campaign office is 918-684-4309. His Muskogee medical office number appears to be 918-682-4318.

Here's what Coburn says on his website about judicial nominations:

Dr. Coburn will actively work to confirm federal judges who respect the Constitution and the original intent of the Founding Fathers. He will oppose activist judges who use the bench to advance political agendas whether liberal or conservative. Dr. Coburn will seek to impeach and limit the jurisdiction of activist judges who abuse their judicial power.

Democrat senators have damaged the confirmation process by their endless and baseless political attacks on well-qualified, well-seasoned Bush judicial nominees.

Dr. Coburn's previous congressional experience will assist him in endeavoring to stabilize the confirmation process and will allow qualified judges the opportunity to receive an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Arlen Specter, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will work to thwart everyone of those admirable goals. The Chairman has only one vote, but a lot of power as to when and how hearings on nominees are conducted. The Chairman controls the staff and the staff has a lot to say about how the issues are presented.

The same Whirled story quoted Sen. Jim Inhofe as saying that he's not happy about Specter as chairman, but he has no plans to oppose him. Inhofe suggested that if Specter breaks his promises he could be removed. That would almost certainly not happen. If a Senate majority, fresh from a triumphant election in which judicial restraint was an important issue, is so bound up in tradition and seniority that they are unwilling to insist on putting someone consistent with party philosophy in charge of an important committee, there is no way they will have the gumption to remove someone once he's already in office.

The controversy over Specter isn't just about abortion. It's about democracy. A bad decision by the Supreme Court 31 years ago removed that controversial subject from the realm of public deliberation. It's not just that Arlen Specter believes abortion should be legal -- it's that he believes that judges should be able to invalidate laws they disagree with, whether or not they have a sound constitutional basis for so doing. Andrew McCarthy got to the heart of the issue in a recent column for National Review Online:

The judiciary-committee controversy is not about abortion. It is about whether there is any meaningful limiting principle that compels judges, regardless of their predilections and the trendy pieties of any particular era, to stay their hands so that Americans are free to live as they choose � including in 50 different ways if that is the judgment of the people in 50 different states.

There are, essentially, two competing visions of judicial philosophy. The first, the one that is regnant at this time (and to which it appears Senator Specter subscribes), is that the Constitution � with its many pliable terms � is as manipulable as necessary to place beyond democracy any issue that may be said to reflect a "value" the American people revere at a given time. The problem here is that this camouflages a brute power reality.

In truth, the American people have very few values which enjoy such broad consensus that, given the choice, our society would enshrine them in our Constitution and render them immune from further popular consideration, regardless of evolving attitudes or changed circumstances. Constitutional protection, we must admit, is a forbidding carapace � one need look no further than the contortions engaged in by would-be reformers when values incontestably engraved in the Constitution, like free speech and bearing arms, collide with innovative schemes like campaign finance and gun control.

It is a commonplace for judicial opinions to couch various concerns in extravagant rhetoric about values claimed to be venerated by all Americans. Yet, at bottom, this reflects nothing more or less than the subjective preferences of a majority (often a bare, fractious majority) of judges � whose views about social issues, even if they masquerade as legal issues, should be of no greater moment than what the people of, say, Bayonne or Des Moines think about abortion, or gay marriage, or stem-cell research.

The second school of thought holds merely this: that judges are not supreme. It contends that there are firm, objective limits to the areas of life that jurists may remove from the democratic self-determination of the American people. They are found in the text of the Constitution as it was originally understood at the time its provisions were adopted. They do not change over time or with passing fancies. This philosophy is erected on an unchanging premise: In a democracy, it is to be presumed that great social conflicts will be resolved democratically. That presumption is not beyond rebuttal, but for it to be overcome there must be unmistakable proof that the dispute at issue was removed from democratic consideration by the Constitution.

So let Sen.-elect Coburn know how you feel on this issue, and you might remind Sen. Inhofe that you are watching how Specter is handled to see whether the Republican majority will follow through on its stated priorities.

MORE: Steve Moore, head of Club for Growth, lays out the case against Specter on National Review Online. And you can learn more about the controversy, why it matters, and what you can do to help here.

If you're not happy about the possibility of America's Worst Senator being in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee, NotSpecter.com -- a project of RedState.org -- has the tools to help you communicate your views to those who will make the decisions, including an easy way, for a nominal fee, to send faxes to judiciary committee members and the entire GOP Senate caucus. Check it out.

Dear Senator Frist:

Congratulations on Tuesday's results. As a Republican State Committeeman and a volunteer for the 72-hour Task Force here in Tulsa, I was thrilled to see the huge turnout of Republicans, sweeping President Bush into office and giving you four more seats in the Senate. Tom Coburn's big win here was heartening for all of us who care about fiscal responsibility and the sanctity of human life.

It was heartening to see the high turnout by religious conservatives. Across the nation, millions of voters supported Republican candidates because of their concerns about moral issues and about the activist judges who seek to overrule the will of the people on moral issues.

I am writing to ask that you do whatever you can to ensure that someone other than Arlen Specter be elected Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Allowing Sen. Specter to assume the chairmanship would damage the Republican Party's credibility with those millions who were motivated by moral issues. It would be breaking faith with these voters to give control over the judicial nomination process to a senator who is not committed to judicial restraint. Sen. Specter has blocked and would block judges who are committed to applying the Constitution and laws as they are.

What will happen if conservative nominees are blocked by Sen. Specter? How will conservative voters respond if the President is forced to nominate squishy centrists and judicial activists in order to get any nominees out of committee?

In this election, we saw the Democrats trying to blur the distinction between them and the Republicans on the sanctity of human life. They tried to convince pro-life voters that voting Republican wouldn't advance their cause -- for example, Chris Matthews' assertion that President Bush isn't really pro-life. Here in Oklahoma, Brad Carson, the pro-abortion candidate tried to pose as a pro-life candidate, while smearing Tom Coburn as an abortionist because he performed life-saving surgeries on two women with ectopic pregnancies. The Democrats' hope was that those who are passionate about the sanctity of human life would stay at home.

We were able to rebut this by pointing to President Bush's record of accomplishments and Tom Coburn's clear pro-life voting record in the House. We alerted these voters to the danger that Democrats might regain control of the Senate, at a time when at least three Supreme Court justices are ready to step down and countless lower court seats remain vacant. No matter how conservative the Democratic nominee for Senate might seem, the question boiled down to this: "Do you want a Vermont liberal controlling who becomes a Federal judge?" That concern brought pro-life and pro-traditional-values voters home for the GOP and gave you a stronger majority to lead.

Think ahead to 2006. What will happen if a Pennsylvania liberal Republican spends two years blocking good judicial nominees because they are conservatives? "Values voters" will wonder if the Democrats were right -- does it really matter who controls the Senate? Expect religious conservative turn out to drop and Republicans to lose seats in 2006 as a result.

I am sure that Sen. Specter is promising to be a good boy and a team player, but I don't believe that he will. He is too vain, too fond of the praise he receives from the mainstream media when he betrays his own party. When we really need him, he isn't there for us. Wouldn't it be better to give the Judiciary chairmanship to someone who really believes in his core what your Platform Committee wrote? "The sound principle of judicial review has turned into an intolerable presumption of judicial supremacy. A Republican Congress, working with a Republican president, will restore the separation of powers and re-establish a government of law." A senator with Specter's views, so out of sync with the mainstream of the Republican Party, should be a backbencher, not chairman of one of the most powerful committees.

For the sake of the "values voters", for the sake of traditional values, traditional marriage, and the sanctity of human life, please don't let Arlen Specter be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Bates

Jay Cost's Horserace Blog has a fascinating review of the major polling companies and what each says publicly about the methodology used to select a sample and weight results.

Another issue that has come to my attention is the problem of methodological publicity. As a person involved in academia, I cannot tell you how important it is for academics to make their methods available to the public at large. Most academic articles go to great lengths to explain their method before they actually provide you their results. The reason for this is that method matters. Unfortunately, a surprising number of polling firms do not make their methods available.

In addition to my own snooping on the internet, this evening I found an article written by incredible DJ Drummond that gives a superb summary of the methods and openness of each of the major polling firms in this election. I have relied on him for much of this piece. I believe many of these results will surprise you.

Cost summarizes Drummond's findings (click that link for Drummond's detailed and link-rich discussion of the major polling firms) and adds his own perspective. He considers Time, Battleground, and Gallup to be the only reliable polls -- the others weight too heavily toward Democrats or use questionable methodology.

Of course, polls can't tell you who really will turn out on election day, and in a close race it comes down to which side does a better job of getting their voters to the polls. That's why your involvement in Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts are crucial. In the Tulsa area, you can stop by Coburn for Senate HQ at 61st and Memorial (between Jason's Deli and Atlantic Sea Grill), the Republican election office at 52nd and Harvard (in front of Mardel's), at the Republican County Headquarters at 15th and Denver, and at 2191 E. Kenosha in Broken Arrow (on 71st west of 193rd East Ave aka County Line Road). They'll be calling through this evening and tomorrow, and tomorrow at 9, they'll be sending out precinct walkers from the 52nd and Harvard location. There will be more going on Monday and Tuesday until the polls close.

It will take a lot of volunteers to counteract all the paid workers the Democrats are using. This is a crucial election, especially for U. S. Senate and state legislature, so jettison your plans and make yourself available to help. It matters.

Karol calls attention to The Horserace Blog, a great blog focusing on polls, and analyzing what they really mean, with a lot of information about how the different polling organizations do their work and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Jay Cost, the author of the site, is looking for about 45 people to watch and help analyze county-by-county results in battleground states as they come in. He points to the Florida situation in 2000 as an example:

In 2000, I attended an election party at my alma mater. My friend -- who, at our conservative newspaper, went by the name "Hawk" -- and I (and a few others) were keeping tabs on the vote totals in Florida. I gave up on this after the MSM called the state for Gore. But Hawk tenaciously kept his eyes on the county-by-county returns. While I was busy formulating a contingency strategy for Dubya to get to 270 ("if he wins IA, WV, TN, AR and WI..."), Hawk kept telling me, in his wonderfully understated southern drawl, "I don't know, Cost. I think they called Florida wrong!" I told him he was crazy, but sure enough...they called it back. Hawk was ahead of the curve by about 2 hours because he kept his eyes on the vote totals and knew what to expect in every county.

He lists a number of requirements to make this effort work. It looks pretty interesting, and I think his site will be worth watching on election night.

It's still (barely) Wictory Wednesday, the final one before what we hope will be a real victory celebration in seven days' time.

The polls are all over the place, especially in the presidential battleground states and here in Oklahoma's Senate race. Different pollsters have different ideas about which voters are likely to turn out. There are millions of new registrants -- will they show up at the polls? Which party's supporters are most motivated to show up on Tuesday?

Turnout is the key.

In Georgia in 2002, no one believed that the Republican Party could win the governor's mansion, take over the state legislature, and defeat incumbent Senator Max Cleland. But they did because a disciplined, focused turnout effort -- known as the 72-hour Task Force -- got Republican voters to the polls.

The Wictory Wednesday appeal this week is twofold. First, vote early, if you can, for President Bush and the Republican ticket. In Oklahoma, you can go to your county election board for in-person absentee voting from 9 to 6 on Friday, 9 to 1 on Saturday, and 9 to 6 on Monday. By voting early, you'll make sure you won't be too busy or forget on election day.

Second, volunteer for the 72-hour task force at www.72hour.com. There are roles for all sorts of volunteers. (They're even looking for attorneys to volunteer to help with any legal issues that may emerge.)

Signup for volunteers takes just a minute -- you provide contact information and when you're available to help from Friday morning through Tuesday evening. Do it now!

Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

I've been wondering when someone would point this out. Mark Steyn does it as an aside in his latest column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Speaking of which, if there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.

Well, duh. TANSTAAFL.

Monday morning on KFAQ, Michael DelGiorno, Gwen Freeman, and I were discussing the Electoral College, and the oft-forgotten reality that when you vote in the presidential race in Oklahoma, you're really voting for a slate of electors who will go to the State Capitol in December to cast the only votes that really matter for President and Vice President. Here's one of Tulsa County's sample ballots to illustrate the point (PDF format). Note that next to where you mark the ballot is a bracket containing the names of the seven electors nominated by the political party.

In most states, the political parties choose electors for their slate based on their years of service to the party and the expectation that the electors will remain faithful to their pledge to support the party's nominee. Oklahoma Republicans selected one elector nominee in each of our five congressional district conventions (which also selected three delegates and three alternates each), and then approved two electors, nominated by the state executive committee, at the state convention.

In some states, electors are bound by law to vote as pledged for their party's nominees. (Here are the state-by-state rules from 2000.) In Oklahoma, electors take an oath and are subject to fine if they violate that oath, but it is not known whether such penalties would be upheld by the Supreme Court. Here is an article, also from 2000, that looks at the legal issues, and past court rulings that might have a bearing on the question. In many states, electors are not bound by law or there are no legal penalties for voting contrary to pledge. (A defection would certainly mark the end of an elector's involvement in his political party, particularly if the defection mattered to the final result.)

West Virginia is such a state, and one of the five Republican nominees for elector has expressed his openness, if elected, to voting for someone other than President George W. Bush. Richie Robb is the mayor of South Charleston, West Virginia, and finished fourth in the Republican primary for Governor, which is apparently how he was chosen to be an elector. I can't find the reference, but I recall reading that the West Virginia Republican Party decided to nominate the five runners-up in the primary for Governor as the elector nominees. They didn't bother to find out whether all of them were Bush loyalists or not. Richie Robb is not a Bush loyalist.

It is often said that the presidential race is not one election, put 51 separate elections -- actually 56, when you add in the separate battles for individual congressional district electors in Maine and Nebraska. In 2000, there was talk of efforts to sway some of Bush's electors to vote for Gore out of respect for the popular vote result. If it's that close again, we may have a further 538 contests -- one each for the heart and mind and vote of each of the electors.

John Hospers, the founding father and first presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party back in 1972 (and the third-place Electoral College finisher with one vote, thanks to faithless elector Roger MacBride of Virginia) has endorsed the reelection of President Bush. His endorsement is worth quoting at length. All the complaints, however reasonable, about the growth of government during the Bush administration pale in comparison to the threat to life, liberty, and property posed by those who want to subject the United States to the rule of the speech-suppressors and money-grabbers of leftist fascism, and by the Islamo-Fascists who intend to subject the west to their laws or kill us all in the attempt.

Hospers believes that there is more than a "dime's worth of difference" between the two parties and that a John Kerry presidency poses a grave threat to civil liberties and national sovereignty:

The election of John Kerry would be, far more than is commonly realized, a catastrophe. Regardless of what he may say in current campaign speeches, his record is unmistakable: he belongs to the International Totalitarian Left in company with the Hillary and Bill Clintons, the Kofi Annans, the Ted Kennedys, and the Jesse Jacksons of the world. ...

The Democratic Party today is a haven for anti-Semites, racists, radical environmentalists, plundering trial lawyers, government employee unions, and numerous other self-serving elites who despise the Constitution and loathe private property. It is opposed to free speech: witness the mania for political correctness and intimidation on college campuses, and Kerry's threat to sue television stations that carry the Swift Boat ads. If given the power to do so, Democrats will use any possible means to suppress opposing viewpoints, particularly on talk radio and in the university system. They will attempt to enact "hate speech" and "hate crime" laws and re-institute the Fairness Doctrine, initiate lawsuits, and create new regulations designed to suppress freedom of speech and intimidate their political adversaries. They will call it "defending human rights." This sort of activity may well make up the core of a Kerry administration Justice Department that will have no truck with the rule of law except as a weapon to use against opponents.

"There's nothing wrong with a little indecision, as long as your job doesn't involve any responsibility."

David Zucker, director and writer of the "Naked Gun" series and "Airplane!", has directed a funny new ad for ClubForGrowth.net. Steve Moore, president of ClubForGrowth.net, would like you to take a look at it, and if you like it, to help fund its airing in key battleground states. Go here to view the ad (in Real Player, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime formats) and learn how you can help get it on the air.

There were rumors of bad news for John Kerry coming in the Washington Times this morning. Here it is (hat tip to Power Line). Kerry has repeatedly claimed that he conferred with the entire UN Security Council prior to his vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Not so. Read it for yourselves.

"The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid."

-- Arizona State University Professor Edward Prescott, 2004 Nobel Laureate in economics, in an interview in the Arizona Republic.

Maybe I should consider changing careers. The field of election law looks to become a booming industry.

Over at Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog, you'll find links to news stories around the country -- especially in swing states -- dealing with the nuts and bolts of administering elections. A sample:

• The butterfly punchcard ballots in use in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, are even more confusingly designed that the notorious Palm Beach County, Florida, butterfly ballots used in 2000.
• The U. S. Justice Department has filed a brief in support of Ohio's law requiring voters casting provisional ballots to do so in the correct precinct. A U. S. District Judge had thrown out the rule in response to a lawsuit from the state's Democrat Party. (Since the races on the ballot change from precinct to precinct, this seems only reasonable, but I guess not to the Democrats.)
• Voters in Florida don't have much confidence in the paperless balloting to be used in 15 counties. One Palm Beach County Commissioner is urging voters to submit paper absentee ballots instead of voting on election day.
• Four swing states allow voters to register when they come to the polls.
• Columbus, Ohio, residents are getting phony calls, claiming to be from the County Election Board, telling them that their polling place has changed.
• Colorado's proposition to allocate its electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote is slipping in the polls.

And much, much more. If nothing else, the 2000 election has alerted us to what can go wrong in an election. If we're honest about the problems, we're in a better position to fix them.

Kathryn Jean Lopez reports on NRO about Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle's attempts to reinvent himself as pro-life and pro-marriage, another example of the Democrats attempting to blur distinctions on issues that matter deeply to many voters. The article links to a blog that has been keeping a close watch on the South Dakota U. S. Senate race between Daschle and former Republican congressman John Thune: Daschle v. Thune.

(Daschle is also trying to reinvent himself as a South Dakotan, after claiming a homestead exemption on his house in DC, thereby declaring the DC house to be his domicile.)

Following up my entry about last night's edition of "Hardball", here's the relevant section of the transcript, an interchange between host Chris Matthews and William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:

MATTHEWS: Lets talk about the president�s position.

What is the president�s position on abortion rights, Bill?

DONOHUE: The president is a opposed to abortion. The president is a pro life person. The president understands and if a women is pregnant and carrying a child, then if you kill that woman, you�re also killing the child as well. John Kerry doesn�t understand that. The president understands that life begins at conception, as does John Kerry, except that the president is willing to take it a step further and say that is why you cannot destroy an embryo. Because if you destroy and embryo, your destroying life.

MATTHEWS: There are two ways�Bill�

DONOHUE: Kerry, is the one that is really the problem.

MATTHEWS: There are two ways, Bill, to outlaw abortion in this country. One is to have a constitutional amendment to change the constitution overturn Roe v. Wade. Well, you know this as well as I do, just reciting the obvious. And the second is that you appointment Supreme Court justices, a couple of them at least and that shifts it back against the Roe vs. Wade position, the Scalia position.

Very clearly, the president of the United States has not promised to do either of those. He�s not promoting a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, to overturn Roe v. Wade. He�s not saying he�s going to pick pro life judges. How can you say he�s pro life, then, I don�t get it.

He�s not pro life.

DONOHUE: Take a look at the judges he has appointed already. I don�t think there�s any question about it, Kerry�s the one says there�s a litmus test. You can�t be pro life to be on a bench.

MATTHEWS: The president has not said he�s going to outlaw abortion. You know that, he makes a point of saying that all the time. I�m not going to outlaw abortion, he said. The country is not attuned to right now. He says it all the time.

DONOHUE: But Christians know as well as I do, most Americans don�t want to go back to the Roe v. Wade day, but they also don�t like abortion on demand. There�s a consensus in this country which neither the conservatives or liberals are paying attention to.

MATTHEWS: Don�t call the president pro life�don�t call the president pro life if you mean it...

DONOHUE: He is.

MATTHEWS: But he doesn�t want to outlaw abortion.

DONOHUE: Look, there are a lot of�the pope himself has said, he has come out and said it�s OK for a legislature to vote for a law which doesn�t outlaw all abortion, provide that it�s more restrictive than the current law. He didn�t say you have to get all or nothing.

MATTHEWS: I just think. I�m only interested in the politics of this.

The president�s getting vote from pro lifers because he�s pro life.

I don�t think they should be voting for think he�s going to outlaw abortion if he gets another years. Bill, if the president gets another four years is he going to outlaw abortion, is he going to be pro life president?

(CROSSTALK)

DONOHUE: No, I don�t think he�s going to -- I don�t think he�s going to outlaw abortion. But what I think what he�s going to do is put people on the court who won�t have reflexive tendency to say that, if in fact, you�re pro life you�re not allowed to get on the bench. That�s what Kerry wants to do. It even gets into the question of anti-Catholicism.

MATTHEWS: You know, Bill, you bought that from Ronald Reagan. I think these guys are very clever at suggesting a philosophical agreement with your position, fair enough they never deliver.

We�ll be right back with upon Monsignor McSweeney and Bill Donahue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

"They never deliver." Read the whole transcript and you'll see that the point of the show was to persuade Catholics who are concerned about the abortion issue that they shouldn't make the issue a factor in their decision. In fact, the other guest during this segment, Monsignor Tom McSweeney of the Diocese of Erie, speaks of traveling around the diocese making that very case to the flock:

Chris, I�m speaking to you from Pennsylvania. I�m up in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. My diocese is the Erie Diocese, 13 counties. I�ve been around the diocese. I�m in charge of evangelization. Doing a lot of talking to people and getting a lot of counseling for this election because of some of the issues that are concerned here. And I tell you, the poll that you have quoted, the first one, not the one that bill Is referring to, resonates completely with the voices that I�m hearing here in Pennsylvania.

They want to know first of all, if they can vote for a candidate who clearly is, you know, pro choice and we talk about that. In talking with these people I�m finding that they are wanting to expand the conversation, the discourse to be all of the life issues, to develop a consistent ethic of life. And so some of them are liberating themselves from feeling badly about voting for Kerry, because they feel that, in fact, Kerry is offering offering more opportunities to expand the notions of life.

This is what I�m hearing. So the new polls that are indicating that there�s some success rate with Catholics seems to indicate that there�s a shift in the pro life movement in a way to expand that conversation to include all of the life issues. In other words, to connect violence of abortion with violence of poverty, violence of capital punishment, violence of war.

So Msgr. McSweeney offers a different definition of what it means to be pro-life, one by which John Kerry qualifies as pro-life, despite his consistent support for legal and federally-funded abortion, and by which the President presumably doesn't qualify.

But let's look at the specific issues raised by the monsignor:

The violence of abortion: Kerry will ensure that abortion remains legal on demand and will obstruct, either directly or through the judges he appoints, even marginal improvements in protections for the unborn. Bush will appoint strict constructionist judges and will continue to work, as he has in his first term, to do all that is politically possible to protect the unborn.

The violence of poverty: It's a stretch to treat this as a life issue -- being killed in the womb is a far more permanent disability than being poor -- but we'll do so for the sake of argument. President Bush wants government assistance to help people emerge from poverty into financial stability, rather than maintain people in a state of dependency, and Bush wants to involve faith-based organizations in helping the poor build new and better lives. Kerry has gone back and forth on the issue, supporting the failed "War on Poverty" approach for most of his career, but supporting welfare reform in 1996 when he faced a serious reelection challenge from Gov. William Weld.

The violence of capital punishment: This point confuses the punishment due to those who take innocent life with the murder of the innocent. The teaching of the Catholic Church does not demand the abolition of capital punishment. The Pope has written, in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, "punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society." Catholic doctrine notwithstanding, both the President and John Kerry support the use of the death penalty.

The violence of war: Here again, both candidates supported the war in Afghanistan, and both have supported the war in Iraq (at one time or another, in Kerry's case). And here again, there is an invalid moral equivalence drawn between those who murder the innocent and those who take up arms to defeat murderous tyrants. Whether you believe it was politically wise or not, discoveries like the mass graves in Iraq filled with the skeletons of children clutching their toys, provide a moral justification of the use of force to stop the continued slaughter.

George W. Bush stands for the defense of innocent human life from tyrants and butchers. John Kerry will do nothing to stop or even slow the slaughter of innocents in this country or to act decisively against terrorists and their state sponsors.

Here's another Kerry contradiction the Bush campaign would do well to exploit. John Kerry cannot try to wear the mantle of tough guy and maintain his claim to be more pro-life than Bush by this broader standard. In claiming that he will "hunt... down and kill" the terrorists, or subject them to the death penalty, he is just as out of step with the pacifist caricature of Catholic doctrine on these issues as President Bush is.

Welcome to all of you who found BatesLine through this morning's link in NRO's "The Corner". The post you seek is linked below, but while I have your attention, I want to urge you to help Tom Coburn, the Republican nominee for U. S. Senate in Oklahoma. Dr. Coburn is an obstetrician, a three-term congressman, and an eloquent advocate for the sanctity of human life. Coburn is in a tough race, against a slick, Clintonesque pro-abortion Democrat named Brad Carson, who has a ton of money, and is using it to remake himself as a pro-life conservative. Coburn is ahead, but the race is still close, and Carson will apparently do and say anything to win. The Senate could be won or lost right here, and Tom Coburn could really use your help. Click here to contribute.

And click here to read about Chris Matthews' claim that George W. Bush is not pro-life.

Working late tonight, and I took a late dinner break at the nearby McDonald's. It was recently given a complete makeover -- a style I'll call High Tech Googie for the sake of calling it something -- and it's got a couple of big screen TVs. I sat down next to the one showing MSNBC, and "Scarborough Country" was just ending.

Then "Hardball" started, and the subject was the Catholic vote and a dramatic jump in John Kerry's support among white Catholics, according to a Pew Research survey. Then, host Chris Matthews was talking to Bill Donahue of the Catholic Action League. Matthews, with an unusually calm tone and demeanor, insisted that George W. Bush is not pro-life, that he's unfairly getting credit for being pro-life, but he isn't because he isn't even promising to ban abortion in his second term. Matthews repeated his assertion several times. (As soon as the transcript is online, I'll link to it.) According to Matthews, to be pro-life, the President would have either to promise to work for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion or to promise to appoint to the courts only those judges who are committed to overturning Roe v. Wade.

So a pattern begins to emerge. We saw another example in Andrew Sullivan's promotion of bogus numbers purporting to show that the number of abortions have been on the rise since Bush took office.

There was a study -- about the time of the 2000 election, if I recall correctly -- that said that abortion was a decisive issue for about 15% of voters. 9% of voters nationwide would vote only for a pro-life candidate, 6% would vote only for a pro-choice candidate. That's a 3-point advantage for the pro-life candidate in a race with a clear distinction between candidates on the abortion issue. And that's why the Democrats are so desperate to take the issue off the table by blurring the clear distinction between Bush and Kerry, and, in theOklahoma senate race, between liberal, pro-abortion Democrat Brad Carson and conservative, pro-life Republican Tom Coburn.

Chris Matthews surely understands that there is not the political will in this country to support a full-on effort to ban abortion. A "Human Life Amendment" to the Constitution would not pass Congress, and even if it did, it would probably fall short of the required number of states for ratification. If the President were to announce a policy of only nominating judges committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, he'd be accused of trying to overturn the Constitution. There is not a pro-life majority in the Senate, and Bush has had a hard enough time getting his judicial nominees confirmed even without an explicit "litmus test." Bush has said he will appoint only judges committed to interpreting the law, not making it, a stance which implies rejection of the "emanations and penumbras" approach taken by the court in Roe v. Wade.

In the current political climate, there is not a popular consensus for banning abortion, but there is a consensus for restricting abortion at the margins -- banning barbaric practices like partial-birth abortion, insisting on parental notification when a minor has an abortion, requiring a woman to give informed consent before an abortion. There is also a consensus that government shouldn't be funding abortion services or the promotion of abortion, here or abroad, and that clinics and hospitals should not be required to provide abortions as a condition of receiving federal funds for other services. All of these incremental changes help to save lives, and President Bush has promoted and supported these changes, while Senator Kerry has opposed them.

See for yourself: The National Right to Life Committee has fact sheets (in PDF format -- handy for printing and handing out at church) comparing the records of the presidential candidates and Senate candidates in key states. (Here's the one for the Coburn-Carson race.) And here's another PDF factsheet with detail on Bush's pro-life record.

It looks like there is a coordinated effort, with the cooperation of the mainstream media, to blur distinctions on issues where the Democrats are out of step with the majority of Americans. It will take concerted grass-roots efforts to get the truth out that there is a clear difference on issues that matter.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO has an interview with a pro-life obstetrician on the specific things Bush has done to aid the cause of the unborn and what Kerry has done to hurt that same cause.

I missed posting on Wictory Wednesday, so I'm going to make it up today:

This week's spotlight race is on South Carolina and Jim DeMint. The Club for Growth has made electing Jim DeMint one of their highest priorities (just behind electing Tom Coburn). Here's what Club for Growth President Steve Moore has to say:

Jim is one of the most free-market and principled men in Congress. Columnist George Will was exactly right when he wrote that if DeMint wins �the Senate will acquire a distinctive voice.� He has been a leading advocate of the key economic growth issues of our time, and has a rock solid voting record, earning �A� grades from the National Taxpayers Union four times.

His liberal opponent, Inez Tenenbaum, has been plastering Jim for his support of replacing the income tax with a fair and simple tax system. Her TV ads are a complete distortion of his position. What a surprise . . . liberal lies against a free-market champion.

Tenenbaum favors retaining the dreadful Death Tax. In her post as State Superintendent of Education, she supported massive statewide tax hikes and opposed school choice. With all her backing from lawyers, it�s no surprise she opposes tort reform, too.

The latest poll shows Jim�s lead at just three points.

You can donate to the DeMint campaign here, or through Club for Growth here.

Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race:

Republican Congressman Jim DeMint is slightly ahead of his Democrat opponent in the race for South Carolina�s open Senate seat. But he needs one last push to close the deal. If you don�t want to see more Democrats in the Senate, you can help DeMint by donating to his campaign.

Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

Andrew Sullivan appears to be in the terminal stages of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Once a mighty warblogger, now a single-issue zealot (in support of gay marriage), he's adopting the Brad Carson technique of trying to make pro-life voters think the pro-life candidate really isn't. The hope is at least to plant the seed of doubt so that pro-life voters aren't as motivated to turn out. Little Boy Brad has done this in the Oklahoma Senate race by turning the fact that Tom Coburn has performed two surgeries to save a pregnant woman's life by removing an ectopic pregnancy into a blatantly false accusation that "Tom Coburn is an abortionist."

So now Andrew Sullivan (no relation to any of Tulsa's political Sullivans, who are not at all related to each other) wants pro-life voters to believe that abortions are on the rise in the Bush years. Dawn Eden has the straight scoop here and a pithy conclusion, too.

Each week our church runs a one-minute promotional spot on the local Christian radio station. In last week's minute, Pastor David O'Dowd provides a sixty-second Christian voter guide. He makes no mention of parties or candidates, but urges Christians not to vote based on outward appearance or tradition or self-interest. Instead, we're to vote biblically, and Pastor O'Dowd lists a few questions for a voter to consider as he casts his vote. Here's the spot in MP3 format.

The previous week's spot talks about the importance of judges and voting for officials who will restrain the judiciary from becoming an unaccountable oligarchy as Thomas Jefferson warned. "We need the rule of law and not judges who become the law."

These spots are fine examples of being direct and thought-provoking about key issues without making the church serve either party or any particular candidate.

NYC Republican blogger Scott Sala tells of his day knocking doors in Philadelphia for President Bush:

In that first hour of waiting for people to arrive, I was struck by three amazing facts that left me extremely optimistic for Bush. First, the simple numbers. 25 or so New York City residents traveled on their own dime, paid for their own hotels and were about to put in their own volunteer effort for Bush. In PA. Second, the sheer diversity of the group. I expected all young people ready to walk the streets for hours, but we had people of walks of life - kids, seniors, Jews, Christians, Chinese, Greek, White, you name it. And last, probably most significant, I think I met at least 3 people who were life-long Democrats who were voting for Bush this year. All of them had become outcasts or were in hiding among their NYC friends, but none cared. Bush had to win for them....

The first door I knocked on was an elderly widow who was the quintessential undecided voters. We spoke for about 10 minutes, perhaps too long with the work ahead, but necessary nevertheless. She expressed concern for her grandchildren saying issues for her hardly mattered since she had little time left on this earth. I talked of education and taxes and security. We bonded well in a short time. Strangely, she started to mention the two candidates but couldn't quite get Kerry's name right. Something like John ____. She didn't know it. This led me to believe the undecided factor was all about Bush. She just needed convincing he was good enough to go it again. And I did convince her. We ended the conversation with her agreeing Bush deserved a chance to finish what he started, in Iraq and on the economy.

Here in Tulsa, there are plenty of opportunities for you to help between now and election day. Oklahoma has a crucial Senate race and a battle for control of the state legislature. Any time of day, for any length of time, there is something you can do to help the cause. You can be involved with calling voters or talking to them at their doors, or if you're shy, there are tasks to be done where you won't have to talk to anyone. Just call Tulsa County Republican Headquarters at 627-5702 and let them know what you can do to help.

A couple of weeks ago I sang the praises of electoral-vote.com, a website devoted to tracking state-by-state polling in the presidential race. It is a technically impressive site, making great use of maps and charts, and providing all the data for download if you want to do your own analysis.

Over the last couple of days, the webmaster has come to the conclusion that evil Republicans are trying to take his site down. I can't imagine why, as his presentation of the data has been very even-handed, even though he is a Kerry supporter. More likely his site has been deluged with visitors because it is the best at what it does.

Until a couple of days ago, he had a page showing a projected final result, based on applying statistical analysis to the poll results and projecting a trend in each state to November 2. The projected final consistently showed Bush with over 300 electoral votes, victorious everywhere except the Pacific coast, the Northeast, and a couple of Rust Belt states. As of yesterday, the projected final page is no longer linked from the home page, and may be down altogther. It just may be too depressing to put all that work into a beautiful website, only to show that your candidate is headed to certain defeat.

The webmaster, as I said, is a liberal, but has tried to be even-handed. He's bound to be overwhelmed by the success of his site and by the challenge of keeping up with the flood of state polls -- where they were once weeks apart, a battleground state may have four or five polls happening simultaneously. The webmaster has had to figure out how to account for overlapping polls in his methodology.

I'll bet he's exhausted as well as discouraged. If you appreciate his site as I do, you might drop him a note, thank him for his work, and give him permission to take a day off now and then to recharge the batteries.

It's Wictory Wednesday again, a weekly web reminder on dozens of blogs to support a Republican candidate in a key U. S. Senate race. Today's spotlight is on our own Tom Coburn, who is running neck and neck against liberal Democrat Brad Carson for the seat currently held by Don Nickles.

When I heard that Nickles planned to retired at the ripe young age of 54, the first name that came to mind, the person I most wanted to see in the U. S. Senate, was Tom Coburn. During his years in Congress, he was one of those "Class of '94" stalwarts who insisted that the Republican Party follow through on the promises it made for lower taxes, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility. That's why the Club for Growth has made electing Tom Coburn their number one priority. The Senate needs someone with his character and determination.

You can donate to the Coburn campaign here

Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race:

Coburn is the more talented candidate, but Carson is benefiting from a systematic campaign by Oklahoma media to boost his candidacy. Coburn needs our help to tip the scales. A few dollars can go a long way towards buying advertising that highlights Coburn�s conservatism and Carson�s liberalism.

Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

It's Wictory Wednesday again, a weekly spotlight on a Republican candidate in a key Senate race, hosted by dozens of blogs.

The spotlight race this week is in North Carolina, the open seat being vacated by Democrat VP candidate John Edwards, pitting Republican Congressman Richard Burr against former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. Bowles got off to an early lead, but Burr has closed the gap. Your contribution could help put him over the top. North Carolina is a solid state for W, but W needs the support of a solid Senate majority. Click here to contribute to the Richard Burr campaign. Every little bit helps.

Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

Scott Sala of Slant Point reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't willing to help Republicans get elected in local races, so New York Republicans need to band together and make it happen themselves:

One of the best opinion-shaping methods is endorsements. With a Republican mayor, you'd think he could help propel Republicans into a few offices this year, especially after a pretty decent term and a successful RNC Convention. But he refuses to do so.

Bloomberg is claiming to simply desire to keep his voting private. This is a load of crap. He chose to be a politician and courted the Republican Party to do so. He won, with our help. Now, Mr. Mayor, help us....

Well, Mr. Bloomberg, you are not a Republican. You wear our clothes, come to our parties and smile when we enter the room, but you offer sporadic help at best. Yes, thank you for helping put on an amazing convention. But that was not only supposed to get Bush re-elected, but also propel the Republican Party within New York City forward.

We were moving, but like the morning commute you and nearly every other New York takes every day, the train just jerked. You pulled the emergency brake and left us with coffee spilled on our clothes, sweat building up, tempers flaring, and ultimately our candidates will be late for their interviews.

And Republicans will not get the job.

Bloomberg's distance from the party is no surprise, but it is a momentum killer. The convention brought a lot of NYC Republicans up from the catacombs, and Bloomberg could have been part of mobilizing them to help local candidates. Instead, with no clear direction from party leaders and elected officials, talented and energetic young Republicans are headed elsewhere to try to make a difference. (E.g. Karol, who has gone to Colorado, and Jessica, who is heading to Iowa.)

On the drive to school this morning:

Joe: "I hope President Bush is going to win."

Dad: "I think he will. It's looking better all the time. But I'm not sure if Tom Coburn will beat Brad Carson. That race is really important."

Joe: "Brad Carson sure lies a lot."

Dad: "Yeah. He tells a lot of half-truths. Do you know what a half-truth is?"

Joe: "No."

Dad: "It's when you say something that's true, but you leave out some important information that would change the way people would think about what you told them. It's not giving them the whole picture."

Dad: "I'm trying to think of a good example...."

Joe: "The serpent in the garden?"

Heh.

Conservative Karol has a conversation with the liberal Dawn Summers about Kerry's strategy for the rest of the campaign. The punch line is precious, and I would spoil it if I post even an excerpt here, so just go read it for yourself.

BatesLine is now a part of the Wictory Wednesday effort, a weekly spotlight on a Republican candidate in a key Senate race, hosted by dozens of blogs.

The spotlight race this week is in Alaska, where incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican nominee, is up against Democrat Governor Tony Knowles. This race is currently rated by most observers as a toss-up. Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race. The scenario will sound very familiar to Oklahomans:

In Alaska, incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is locked in a tight race with former Democrat Governor Tony Knowles. The race is tight only because Knowles claims to be a �moderate.� You know what that means, don�t you? If he gets to the Senate, he�ll raise your taxes, cut defense spending, block President Bush�s judicial nominations, hug Michael Moore, and run for re-election every 6 years as a �moderate.�

Don�t let this happen! We don�t need one more �moderate� Democrat in the US Senate for the next 30 years. You can help Murkowski by donating to her campaign today.

After the jump is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit (a prolific political blogger) at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

A reader calls my attention to William Safire's latest New York Times column, in which Safire points out that the forged Texas Air National Guard documents which were used by Dan Rather as the basis for a "60 Minutes II" story aren't just a dirty trick, they constitute a felony violation of Federal law, namely:

Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. " U.S. Criminal Code, Chapter 63, Section 1343.

Pointing us back to the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate back in 1972, Safire says that we must not be satisfied with the political fallout -- like the Watergate burglary, this appears to be a violation of the law in an attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election:

What should CBS do now? First, release Rather's interview with Burkett in its entirety; viewers are entitled to the outtakes now. Next, let Mary Mapes, at the center of all this, speak to reporters. Third, expend some Viacom resources to track down the possible original sources, including the man whose name Burkett says he "threw out" to mislead CBS.

Appointing independent reviewers should not be a device to duck all others' questions; that's Kofi Annan's trick to stonewall his oil-for-food scandal. But lacking the power of a grand jury's subpoena or testimony under oath, victimized CBS cannot put real heat on the perpetrator or conspirators. We have hard evidence of crimes by low-level operatives here - from wire fraud to forgery - as well as the potential of high-level political involvement. Is no prosecutor prepared to enforce the law?

Conservatives should stop slavering over Dan Rather's scalp, and liberals should stop pretending that noble ends justify fake-evidence means. Both should focus on the lesson of the early 70's: from third-rate burglaries to fourth-rate forgeries, nobody gets away with trying to corrupt American elections.

Who would investigate and prosecute such a crime? As a violation of federal law, it would come under the Department of Justice, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U. S. Attorney's office. Charges would probably be brought in Texas, whence the forged documents were faxed. Congress couldn't do anything directly in this case, although they could bring some political pressure to bear on the Department of Justice to pursue the matter. A note to your congressman would be a way to ensure that the matter isn't ignored.

An interesting point from Roger L. Simon:

What Do the UN and CBS Have in Common?

They are both conducting internal investigations - the UN of Oil-for-Food and CBS of Rathergate.

Second question: What's the difference between an "internal investigation" and a "cover up"?

There are a couple of fascinating web efforts to track the polls in individual states, in order to put together a clearer picture of the presidential election as it is actually conducted, not as a single nationwide race, but as 53 separate contests. (That's 49 winner-take-all states, plus the District of Columbia, plus the state of Maine, where separate elections for elector are conducted in the state's two congressional districts, and two at-large electors awarded to the statewide winner.)

The Electoral Vote Predictor updates the electoral map daily with new state poll results. The "Votemaster" (I can't find anywhere on the site where he identifies himself) admits to being a Kerry supporter, but he seems pretty scrupulous about sticking with hard data. Right now he has Bush at 327, Kerry at 211.

The daily update includes analysis of the day's new polls, plus a lot of intelligent discussion of the challenges faced by pollsters, like today's update which deals with the impact of the increasing use of cell phones on phone polling. If you want to play around with the numbers yourself, you can download the raw data in Excel format. There's even a way to look only at the polls done by a particular pollster.

And the Votemaster has a projection of how the votes will come out on November 2nd, using linear regression to predict the outcome in each state. He cautions that the data is still pretty "noisy" and won't be very useful until October. At the moment, his model has Bush at 315, Kerry at 172, with 51 votes in states (New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico) that are projected to be exact ties. Again it's early, and his projection has Kerry winning Tennessee.

This site is an example of what the Internet can do so much better than the traditional news media -- provide a quick overview if that's all you want, but allow you to drill down as deep as you care to.

Election Projection is another site devoted to tracking individual state polls. Scott Elliott, the self-styled Blogging Caesar, is an unabashed Bush supporter. He updates his site's projection once a week, but you can subscribe to a daily update for $40. He also posts regularly to a blog on his homepage.

Electoral Vote Predictor links to a fascinating page on the comprehensive political website Politics1 which shows the ballot access status of all minor party candidates. Oklahoma has only one possible minor party ticket -- the Libertarians, if they win their court challenge to Oklahoma's very stringent ballot access law. The list of every known major and minor party and its nominees, with links to more detailed bios and analysis can be found here. The bottom of that page has links to many other useful and interesting political resources on the web.

I should also mention the site of University of Virginia polisci prof Larry Sabato, which covers races for Governor, Senate, and House, as well as the presidential election map.

And I can't close an entry on politics without reminding you of one of my daily reads: SoonerPolitics.com, by OU polisci professor Keith Gaddie. He is overseas and hasn't been updating lately, but if you haven't visited before, it's worth reading back through his archives.

Kevin McCullough has done some digging and may have a lead on the forger. The suspect is one Bill Burkett. And Scott Sala has some perspective from his time working for Kinkos, and links to other stories.

Meanwhile, Tim Blair sympathizes with Dan Rather's lament:

Life is so unfair. Dan tries to bring down a President with some fake documents, and all these stupid people want to do is talk about the fake documents when the real story is the crucial information contained ... in the fake documents.

Bill Dyer, a Texas attorney who once defended CBS against a libel suit, says that Dan Rather and CBS are no longer victims of fraud in the Memogate case but have become complicit in fraud:

On Thursday, September 9th, I wrote a post entitled, "Burden now on CBS to authenticate its documents lest it become a co-conspirator in fraud."

In hindsight, I was clearly wrong.

I gave CBS News and Dan Rather the benefit of the doubt � the presumption that they did not know the Killian memos were forgeries when they ran their hit piece on "60 Minutes II" on the previous evening. I argued that because of the doubts immediately raised about the authenticity of the memos, CBS ran the risk of becoming a co-conspirator in the fraud perpetrated by whoever forged them.

But Dan Rather and CBS News had become co-conspirators by the time of their broadcast. ABC News has revealed that two of the experts whom CBS News consulted before running the broadcast � Emily Will from North Carolina and Linda James of Plano, Texas � could not and would not authenticate the fraudulent Killian memos, and expressly told CBS that. ...

Dan Rather and everyone else at CBS News who had direct managerial authority over, and supervisory involvement in, the production of last Wednesday night's "60 Minutes II" broadcast about the Killian memos must be fired. Not retired. Not pensioned off. Not allowed to resign. Not given 30 days' or even three days' notice.

They must be fired � instantly, effective immediately, "for cause" and "with prejudice," forfeiting all unvested future benefits from their employment. They should be escorted by security personnel from the building, with their belongings sent to them in due course after they've been screened for relevant evidence. All of their computers, files, and other items of potential evidentiary value must be segregated immediately and secured under lock and key with a tight and explicit chain of custody. There must be no spoliation of evidence permitted.

This must be done publicly � before the close of business on Wednesday, September 15, 2004, and preferably before noon.

If it's not, then the executives who failed to do the firings should be fired before the close of business on Thursday, September 16, 2004.

He also calls for Congressional investigations. I have serious doubts about this, because of First Amendment concerns, and because it would recast the issue as a partisan squabble and take the focus off of CBS's credibility. There are remedies for fraud, and there is always the power of the free market to discipline any wrongdoing.

You'll find thorough detail and rationale on Bill Dyer's website. Hat tip to Charles G. Hill for the link.

Robin Juhl had the great idea of contacting Frank Abagnale, world's foremost expert on forgery and embezzlement, to ask his opinion on the alleged Texas Air National Guard memos presented by Dan Rather on CBS's 60 Minutes II. Abagnale's early career as a forger and embezzler was the subject of the movie, "Catch Me If You Can". The reply from Abagnale's firm contained this tidbit:

I can tell you that [Abagnale] sent an e-mail to Neil Cavuto of Your World on Fox News Network (he knows him personally) that stated: "If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been "Catch Me In Two Days".

(Hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the link.)

I'm enough of a contrarian to resist writing about something just because everyone else is. And I'm lazy enough and busy enough not to want to duplicate what others are handling in such a thorough fashion.

But I feel like I've been neglecting my responsibilities to you, dear reader, by not saying anything about this huge story that has been dominating the blogosphere since the middle of last week, and has now made the leap into print and broadcast media. At least a part of my readership comes straight to this site and perhaps never ventures beyond, despite the long blogroll on the right-hand side of the home page.

In a nutshell: CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented what it alleged were memos written in 1972 and 1973 by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, George W. Bush's superior, in the Texas Air National Guard, suggesting that pressure was applied to give Bush a more favorable evaluation than he deserved.

Some noticed that the memos had some odd features for documents banged out on a typewriter over 30 years ago -- a proportional-spaced font, unusual in typewriters, was the first clue that something was amiss. Then someone noticed a superscript 'th' in an ordinal number and curly single quotes, instead of straight apostrophes -- the sort of thing that happens automatically when typing a document in newer versions of Microsoft Word. Closer examination revealed that the vertical pitch (distance between lines) matched the default in Microsoft Word, but couldn't be produced by a typewriter.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs went so far as to open up Microsoft Word, and without changing the margins, tabs, font, font size, or any other setting, he typed one of the memos and found that everything lined up perfectly with the document CBS claimed was an authentic typewritten 1973 memo.

There's a lot more to the story. Some defended authenticity of the memos by trying to come up with scenarios under which such a memo could have been produced in the early '70s. In response, people who worked with early printer and word processor technology, forensic document analysts, and other experts came forward to answer speculation with the reality of the technology of the time. Bloggers provided a focal point for relaying expert testimony. doing original research, and exposing contradictions.

I encourage you to dig into the details. Here are some places to start:

The New York Sun has a story on how this story developed and the role played by blogs.

Power Line has been all over the story from the beginning. And there's some great analysis as well, such as this item about the apparently new willingness of the mainstream media (MSM) to sacrifice its credibility for political ends:

So we have entered a new era. We now know that our richest and most powerful news organizations are willing to blow themselves up--to destroy their own credibility, once considered a news organization's most precious possession--to achieve a political goal. The landscape will never look quite the same again. Those of us who still value truth must look at the mainstream media in a new, more skeptical and critical way, taking nothing for granted. Because, like suicide bombers, the mainstream news organs will go farther to achieve their political goals than we ever imagined.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has a summary of all of his entries on the memo scandal to that point, although he has since posted more.

Bill of INDC Journal sought out a forensic document examiner, Dr. Philip Bouffard, to render an opinion on the likelihood that the documents were authentic.

AllahPundit has a plethora of links, commentary, and detail.

Hugh Hewitt has been all over this. And John Fund summarizes the story in the Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer, an expert in electronic typesetting since its advent in the '70s, came forward with a detailed analysis of the memos, with everything you could want to know about fonts and spacing.

Old-media op-ed titan William Safire weighs in here (registration required).

On the lighter side, Scott Ott has uncovered a suspicious 1972 e-mail, and Frank J. thinks he's discovered another forgery.

And a friend sends along a link to a Shockwave animation that puts the whole thing in a nutshell.

Ever tried to explain the important socio-political concept of the Tragedy of the Commons to your toddler? The Internet comes to the rescue with a Macromedia Flash game called the "Tragedy of the Bunnies". When all the bunnies are owned in common, the bunnies all get caught and sold in the first round, because it's in everyone's interest to grab as many as they can, while they can, without regard for the future. Then there aren't any bunnies When everyone has a number of privately owned bunnies, protected against bunny-thieves, each bunny farmer has an incentive to sell a few, but keep most around to multiply.

Hat tip to Iain Murray for the link.

Dan and Angi (who have Something to Say) call our attention to an essay by another Democrat who is not only endorsing George W. Bush for re-election, but also endorsing a continued Republican majority in Congress (and citing conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in his rationale). The Democrat in question is science fiction writer Orson Scott Card:

Now, as a Democrat, what can I say to that except that, because my party has been taken over by an astonishingly self-destructive bunch of lunatics who are so dazzled by Hollywood that they think their ideas make sense, I have to agree that right now, any President but Bush and any Congress but a Republican-dominated one would be disastrous.

As a Democrat, I would hope that a solid trouncing of our fanatic-ruled party at the polls this November would serve as a wakeup call and remind Democrats that they only get to do the things that the Democrat Party exists to do if they get enough votes to control the White House and Congress. Which requires that you have serious candidates and embrace serious issues that most Americans, not just tiny pressure groups, care about.

Card goes on to make an interesting point about machine politics at the local level, and why he won't be voting straight party Republican all the way down the line:

For my KFAQ listeners, here's a link to the item I mentioned this morning:

Advice to a Just-Elected Conservative Friend by Morton C. Blackwell.

New York talk radio host and blogger Kevin McCullough caught another interesting discrepancy between John Kerry's memories of the '60s and what actually happened. Kevin 's got a sound bite from a Brit Hume report quoting a Kerry speech on Martin Luther King Jr's birthday last year. It's reminiscent of Bill Clinton's "vivid and painful memories" of the burnings of black churches in Arkansas during his childhood.

Go have a listen.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin for the nice mention. It was a real pleasure to get to meet him in person and talk politics. Kevin will be covering the convention from Radio Row and on his blog, and you can hear streamed audio of his latest show 24/7 by following this link.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be focusing a lot more here and in real life on the Republican National Convention. (Note to the Cockroach Caucus -- I will still be keeping an eye on City Hall, so don't try anything.)

Earlier today I sent the following e-mail to the chairmen of all the state delegations to the Republican National Convention, asking them to forward it on to their states' delegates and alternates. I will let you know what kind of feedback I receive.

Dear fellow delegates,

I'm an at-large delegate from Oklahoma, and I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to call your attention to an important issue.

In just over a week we'll be gathering in New York City to renominate President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and to celebrate our party's achievements at every level of government.

We will also be looking ahead to 2008 -- we as delegates will vote on the rules which will govern the Republican Party until the next convention, including the 2008 presidential nominating process. The decisions we make at this convention will shape the contest for our party's next standard-bearer, and it's important that we make the most of this once-every-four-years opportunity to reexamine our rules.

Going as far back at least 10 years, there has been a growing sense that the current system of front-loaded and plurality-take-all primaries does not serve our party well, and that the problem is only getting worse as more states move their primaries earlier. At best, we may well find ourselves in 2008 in the same awkward position that the Democrats are in this year. The nominating process would be effectively over eight months before the election, and the party would be stuck with a presumptive nominee who fails to inspire the grass roots of the party and fails to appeal to the American electorate as a whole. At worst, the shortened primary season may not give us enough time to learn about the candidates. Damaging information may emerge about the presumptive nominee during the many months between clinching the nomination and the convention. Under the current rules, if such a flawed candidate refused to step aside, the convention would have no choice but to go ahead and nominate him.

Leading up to the 2000 convention, the Brock Commission studied reforms and brought forward a recommendation known as the Delaware Plan, which would have addressed front-loading by putting the most delegate-rich states at the end of the primary calendar. The plan received the endorsement of the Republican National Committee, but in the Rules Committee it was killed as the result of lobbying by political operatives who were focused on short-term advantage rather than the long-term health of the Republican Party. You can read what happened by clicking this link.

Since 2000, the schedule has become even more front-loaded and the problem has only gotten worse. If we waste this opportunity and take a pass on the issue at this convention, it will be four years before there is another opportunity to reform the process, and changes won't take effect until the 2012 primary season.

The word from on high is that no substantive changes to the rules will be brought before the 2004 convention. But ultimately, that decision is up to us, the delegates.

As a grass roots party activist like you, I've worked on countless campaigns, attended countless caucuses and conventions, was the Republican nominee for a city council race, and currently serve as a state committeeman and member of my county's central committee. I don't have a candidate picked out for 2008 or any axe to grind. I'm not committed to any particular reform proposal. I'm just concerned that we have a process in place that will give us the strongest possible nominee as the standard-bearer for our Republican principles in 2008 and beyond.

We can make a difference. The future of the Republican Party has been entrusted to us as delegates to this year's convention. If you agree with me that this convention should address our broken presidential nominating system, if you agree that we can't wait until 2012, take action today:

1. Contact your state's delegates to the convention Rules Committee and urge them to consider and recommend primary reforms to the convention. Remind them that any Rules Committee member has the right to bring a reform plan up for consideration by moving to amend the proposed rules. Urge them to give the convention as a whole the chance to consider this important issue. Remind them, too, that it only takes 25% of the committee members to write a minority report, which would also come before the convention.
2. E-mail me at gopreform -at- batesline -dot- com and let me know of your interest in this issue. In order to bring about reform, we will have to be organized and in communication. When you e-mail, let me know the best way to get in touch with you in New York City. If there's sufficient interest, we may organize a meeting prior to the convention's opening.

If you would like more information, please write me at this e-mail address. A web search for Delaware Plan and primaries will lead you to many articles on the reforms proposed in 2000. This website presents nearly a dozen alternative plans for reforming the nominating process, listing the pros and cons of each. Whatever reform proposal you prefer, let's work together to address the problems in our broken nominating system.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Bates
Oklahoma at-large delegate

Scott Sala of Slant Point is one of the bloggers given official press credentials by the RNC for the Republican National Convention. One of his recent entries has an up-to-date list of credentialed bloggers. He also asks for ideas:

I still am soliciting ideas for angles to cover. Lots of people recommended issue that are getting sidelined - like choice, religion and others that may not portray such an Urban Republican message. Let me know any thoughts. Thanks.

Here's an angle for the convention bloggers: Any controversy likely to be associated with the convention will happen the preceding week, during the platform and rules committee meetings. Plan to attend and cover these meetings and talk to the delegates who are on the committees. I don't have a complete schedule, but I understand that Platform Committee sessions begin Tuesday, August 24, and will continue daily through the week. Rules Committee is only scheduled to have a single meeting on Friday, August 27.

The issues Scott mentions above, and many other contentious issues, will be discussed in the Platform Committee and its subcommittees. Committee members will be working with the 2000 platform, platforms submitted by the state Republican parties, and input provided to the convention website. The aim will be to keep the base happy while avoiding any public show of disunity during the convention proper. While a major challenge to the President's positions on the issues is not expected, any of the members of the committee (two from each state) could take the initiative on a pet issue.

One issue that may not be on your radar screen is immigration. There is a lot of grassroots discontent with the President's immigration policy. It was evident in resolutions submitted by precinct caucuses to the Tulsa County Republican Convention Platform Committee (which I headed this year) -- it was one of the three most often expressed sentiments, the other two being support for a strong pro-life plank in the platform and support for the President's execution of the War on Terror, including military action against Saddam Hussein. Oklahoma's state platform reflects the same concern about the consequences of Bush's immigration policy, which many consider an amnesty, for all practical purposes, which will encourage a surge in illegal immigration. Any disconnect between the President and the grassroots is where controversy is likeliest to erupt.

The Rules Committee will recommend a set of rules to govern this convention and the rules which will govern the party until the 2008 convention, including the rules for the presidential nominating process. At the 2000 convention, there was a detailed proposal for reforming the process which had been hammered out by a special task force over several years and was going to be recommended by the Republican National Committee's permanent Committee on Rules to the convention's Rules Committee. At the last minute, the Bush campaign pressured the committee to pull the proposed changes off of the table. I hear that the permanent Committee on Rules isn't making any recommendations for significant reforms this year, but that doesn't preclude a group of the convention's Rules Committee members from taking the initiative and making a proposal of their own. In my opinion, it would be a lost opportunity if the issue wasn't debated at all.

To prepare yourselves for covering these committee meetings, be sure to review the rules and platform adopted by the 2000 Convention. And feel free to e-mail this delegate and long-time party activist with any questions you may have. (And don't miss this entry on what being a delegate is all about.)

Scott Sala of Slant Point, one of the bloggers invited by the RNC to cover the Republican National Convention, caught my earlier entry about security and the situation that the media (including invited bloggers) may be afforded more liberty than the delegates, in terms of what we are permitted to bring with us into the convention hall. He wrote a sympathetic reply:

While I sympathize, especially since delagates are perhaps the most-enthusiastic Republicans in the country, and they merely want to be confortable and have fun and record a few memories for posterity, I understand security concerns as well. I guess I think of it as a sports event, with very much the same policies people are subject to every weekend around the country. Yeah, it sucks, but in many ways that's the world we live in - and it was this way long before 9/11.

But some of this delegate's concerns are due to his discovery that bloggers will be allowed to bring in the items listed above. This of course is due to the status of media being given to select bloggers.

What he says makes perfect sense if you start from the assumption that "delegate" is just a fancy way of saying "spectator," "fan," or "cheerleader." Scott's reference to delegates as "perhaps the most-enthusiastic Republicans in the country" suggests that he makes that assumption. Most people who watch these conventions on TV have never attended a precinct caucus, or a county, district or state convention, and probably haven't given much thought to how the delegates got there, or why they are there. It would be reasonable to assume that the only people who matter are the speakers and the media there to cover them.

The celebration will be fun, as will being there in person to hear the President and other leading lights of the Republican Party, but I'm sure people at home will be better able to see and hear the speeches. I am not going to New York, and spending money on airfare, hotel, and restaurants just to be a prop, a warm body in the stands, or a member of the cheering section. I am going for the same reason I attended the county, district, and state conventions -- to participate in setting the course of the Republican Party for the next four years. The delegates are there to vote on four items -- a presidential nominee, a vice presidential nominee, a platform, and the party rules for the next four years, including the rules governing the 2008 presidential nominating process. The first two items are foregone conclusions this year. The second two don't attract much attention, but they matter greatly.

The news that the founder of the American Muslim Council pled guilty today to engaging illegally in business with Libya, and last Thursday night's balloon deployment failure at the end of the Democrat National Convention brought back memories of 24 years ago, when Libyan connections overshadowed another Democrat convention, and the balloons wouldn't fall that year either.

You may recall that in 1980 Sen. Ted Kennedy had challenged President Carter for the nomination, and although Carter had the lead coming out of the primary season, Kennedy refused to drop out.

Toward the middle of July 1980, Billy Carter, presidential brother, acknowledged that he was being compensated by the government of Libya to serve as that country's agent. By the end of the month, the White House and the Attorney General had admitted to knowing about the connection, the Senate had announced plans to investigate, and a "dump Carter" movement began to build momentum. Democrat leaders could smell disaster and were afraid that Jimmy Carter would take down the whole party with him -- and they were right to be afraid.

Still, Carter had enough pledged delegates to assure his renomination. There were calls from Democratic congressmen and governors for Carter to release the delegates pledged to him, so that they could vote their consciences. The convention opened with a rules debate -- over Rule 16(c) if I recall correctly. A contemporaneous account by Rick Brookhiser was rerun on National Review Online this week:

At stake was a proposed rule requiring delegates to be bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses that chose them. It was of course the final consummation of the campaign reforms so zealously sought by the party's liberals, and the Carterites insisted righteously on enjoying the spoils of success at the polling booth. In the heat of the moment, Senator Ribicoff even declared "we can't take from a man what he has rightfully won" � an outburst that challenged fifty years of Democratic social policy, but never mind. Supporters of the "open" (that is, brokered) conventions were forced into equally contorted postures. By binding the delegates, warned Governor Carey, the Democrats would be forsaking a "tradition of 150 years," and somewhere in Heaven Burke smiled on his newest disciple. Senator McGovern challenged the rule on the grounds that it wasn't democratic enough � delegates committed to a previous decision could not carry out the "present convictions of the people." He did not say whether, moved by his own present conviction, he would now retract his vote against allowing the states the same privilege with regard to the ERA.

I learned today from the King of Fools, who attended the Texas Republican Convention as a delegate and with media credentials, that a number of bloggers (including Michele of "A Small Victory", SlantPoint, Wizbang, Captain's Quarters and Matt Margolis) have been offered credentials to the Republican National Convention. The King offers some good convention-blogging advice from his experience -- things like don't forget to eat.

Here's the part of the invite:

For the first time, bloggers will hold an on-site presence at the Republican National Convention called "Bloggers Corner." Positioned near Radio Row, credentialed bloggers will have the opportunity to connect with delegates, guests and other surrogates for interviews, and to provide original content, including multimedia, to their audiences. Through this behind-the-scenes look at the convention's proceedings and events, bloggers will play an important role in telling the story of the 2004 Republican Convention.

Bloggers Corner will be located in Madison Square Garden's Theater Lobby in the corridor adjacent to Radio Row. Electrical outlets, tabled work stations and necessary hook-ups for laptop and other portable computers will be available for high-speed Internet and Intranet access. Main TV monitors will also be accessible in all convention common areas including Bloggers Corner and will carry closed circuit coverage of all floor activities.

Bloggers will be credentialed to move about all media areas with access to the Media Center and the news conference center for briefings.

Now I am pleased to see that bloggers are being accorded this kind of recognition, but as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, I'm starting to feel like a second class citizen. Yesterday, I received a packet of info from the convention, which included a list of prohibited items. These are things we won't be permitted to carry within the security perimeter. Included in the list are laptop computers, camcorders, cameras with long lenses, bags for carrying cameras or binoculars, backpacks of any kind. So it appears that observers of this event -- members of the media, including bloggers -- will be accorded far more freedom and trust than actual participants in the event -- the delegates.

I had really hoped to be able to do some blogging of my own, and even e-mailed someone on the organizing committee asking about the availability of Wi-Fi in the convention hall. I've started to look into wireless web on my cellphone and using Azure or another PalmOS-based Movable Type client as an alternative to the laptop, but there's no guarantee that they won't decide to ban cellphones and PDAs -- the letter emphasized that the list of banned items is not exhaustive.

Most of the other banned items are the sorts of things you're not allowed to bring on airplanes, but the ban on laptops, camcorders, and camera bags strikes me as just not wanting to have to bother screening them, and who cares if the delegates are inconvenienced. It reminds me of the early days of TSA screenings when they were confiscating nail clippers. Umbrellas are banned, too, as are containers of any kind. Given that Madison Square Garden is about a mile from the hotel, I had planned to do what I used to do when I lived two miles off campus in college -- put anything I might need for the day in a small backpack and then plan not to return to the hotel until after the evening session. I suppose I might be able to fit my glasses and contact lens case, Kleenex pack, map and guidebooks, Oklahoma pins for trading with other delegates, business cards, my digital camera, the agenda, platform, rules, and any other bits of paper and ephemera they hand out, and a NY Post somewhere in the pockets of my pants or my official Oklahoma delegation blazer, but a little backpack would make life easier. I'd even settle for one of those transparent backpacks the students have to carry in dangerous schools. It would be nice to be allowed to bring in a bottle (plastic, of course) of Diet Coke and a bag of M&Ms or trail mix, but it looks like that would violate the "no container" rule.

Thanks to SlantPoint for posting the invitation letter, so now I know who at the convention to bug about bringing in my laptop.

David Szondy has been watching the Democratic National Convention and, in his August 1 entry, has concluded that the race is now Bush's to lose. Kerry can't embrace his Bush-hating base without alienating undecided voters, doesn't have the economy to run on, and is in an untenable position regarding the War on Terror:

What I came away with from in Kerry's speech is a man who would indeed defend his country, but only in extremis and for whom 9/11 is a tragedy rather than an atrocity. His strategy for the war on terror will likely be that he will continue to help Iraq, but will undertake no new military initiatives or stand up to the French. He will instead quickly and quietly relegate the war to the back burner. "War" will become a rhetorical word and it will be a matter for diplomacy and law enforcement. We will see the odd special forces raid; a missile strike or two; deference to Chirac; embracing of the UN; all sorts of new commissions, committees, and conferences; resolutions and treaties aplenty will be signed; but the end result will be a Munich Accord with the Axis in return for promises to behave so that the West can return to the status quo of the past five decades. Meanwhile, the terrorists and their sponsors will do as they please knowing that no one will seriously bother them.

What I see is basically this: assuming that nothing new happens in the next four years (no new strikes against the Axis or spontaneous regime changes), if George Bush is re-elected we will face a ten to one chance of a major terrorist strike against the west. By that I mean one where we lose 50,000 people in an WMD attack (If we take out Iran or North Korea the odds shoot to a hundred to one). If John Kerry is elected, we face even odds of getting hit. This is because, whatever his failings, Bush knows that we are in a real war with real villains who want us dead or enslaved and our enemies know that Bush will kill them. Kerry gives the impression that they are just a problem to be managed, and that is an impression that is one of dangerous folly.

With this in mind, all Bush has the initiative. All he has to do is speak honestly about what he believes, what he has done, and what he will do and the electorate will have a fair measure of the man. With Kerry you have a man who is without the support of his very antiwar supporters if he speaks true, will not fight if he is false, and would hit soft either way.

Read it all, then go enjoy some of the light-hearted stuff in the archives.

There's a teleconference for Republican National Convention delegates on Monday night. It's good timing: Watching this week's Democrat convention has got me thinking about our shindig in a month's time. Here's my wish list:

1. No lame pop music from the '70s (or any other decade). Aging boomer Democrats look awkward enough boogying on the convention floor -- imagine how goofy Republicans will look. Let's go for traditional upbeat patriotic music instead -- John Philip Sousa is timeless.

2. Get rid of all the milquetoast moderates they've got lined up for the prime time speeches, and give the podium to eloquent, passionate leaders who can make the case for the Republican platform. The supplemental list included some improvements, like Colorado Governor Bill Owens, but more could be added. Now that he's our Senate nominee, Tom Coburn would be a great choice. So would Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Herman Cain would be terrific; even though he didn't win his race, he's got a future in politics. Michelle Malkin offered some suggestions on her blog.

3. And why not show off our party's deep bench? Put the spotlight on up-and-coming stars now serving in state legislatures, county courthouses, and city halls. I'll bet the state chairmen would have some suggestions. From Oklahoma, I'd suggest Speaker-to-be Todd Hiett and State Rep. Pam Peterson.

4. Let's have at least one real debate -- a decision for the delegates to make where the outcome isn't predetermined. I suggest a debate about the 2008 nominating process. I believe the process is broken -- not counting incumbents running for reelection, we haven't had a nominee with the enthusiastic support of the grassroots of the party since 1980. (Counting incumbents only takes us up to 1984.) Republicans haven't won a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election since 1988, when we were helped immensely by an incompetent Democrat nominee running on a platform of "competence, not ideology". 1988 happens to be the year that Oklahoma and many other states switched from caucuses to primaries, as part of the push for Super Tuesday. The system we have gives all the delegates to a candidate who can manage the slimmest of margins in the early primaries, and the field is cleared within a week or two as everyone scrambles to jump on the bandwagon of the inevitable winner. I'd like to debate a national rule that would nullify any state rule binding a delegate to vote for a particular candidate. Whether or not there's agreement with my diagnosis, the debate is worth having. What better way to demonstrate that the Republican Party is responsive to the grass roots?

5. Highlight the War on Terror every night. Remind the delegates and the viewers what is at stake. Give people a vision for the long road ahead and why we must take it. Remind people what happened on September 11th, 2001, and also the terrorist strikes that led up to it -- the '93 WTC bombing, the bombing of the American embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, all the way back to Iran's seizure of American hostages in 1979. Help people understand that a strong defense is not enough; we must take the fight to the Islamofascists. We also need to emphasize the progress we're making. Maybe someone could arrange for Hopper Smith to speak to the convention via satellite from Afghanistan.
   

In a time of war, a time when so much is at stake, we don't need a big party choreographed to the music of Kool and the Gang.

As Tom Coburn heads for what could be an outright primary victory at the end of this month, another principled conservative in on the rise in Georgia. Herman Cain, former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, is rising in the polls in his race to succeed Zell Miller in Georgia and has front-runner Johnny Isakson running scared. Over on the Southern Appeal blog, there's a post that neatly captures why conservatives are so excited about his candidacy. He's a straight shooter, "a conservative 'Bullworth' candidate who tells voters... exactly what he believes." And what he believes is grounded solidly in conservative principles, on social issues as well as economic issues. The link will take you to a couple of extended quotes from Cain's speeches and website which will give you a flavor. Cain and Coburn will make a great team, and conservatives ought to do what they can to make sure both win their nominations this month and are elected in November. (Remember even if you can't vote or pass out flyers, you can give money through his website.)

Like the Oklahoma race, the conservative favorite started as an underdog. Unlike the Oklahoma race, the establishment favorite in Georgia is a social liberal, which should make the choice for Georgia voters even clearer.

Thanks to NRO's Corner for the link.

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas is hosting an exhibition from the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Called "The Living Room Candidate", it's a collection of TV ads for presidential campaigns going back to 1952. You don't have to go to New York or Dallas to see the exhibit. It's online here.

This past week National Review Online featured five excerpts from a new book by British authors about the distinctives of American conservatism -- The Right Nation by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. The authors are respectively the U.S. editor and Washington correspondent for the Economist.

From the fourth excerpt, "Right from the Beginning":

The life span of the American conservative movement is comparatively short. The life span of America's exceptional conservatism, on the other hand, stretches back to the country's birth. The United States has always had conservative instincts: suspicion of state power, enthusiasm about business and deep religiosity. But for most of its history America has been so comfortable with its innate conservatism that it has had no need of a political movement to articulate conservatism's principles or harass its enemies.

The article goes on to discuss the moderation of America's revolutionaries and to explain why the US has never had a potent socialist movement. And there's this interesting note illustrating that America isn't such a young country:

Galileo was offered a chair at Harvard University, which was founded in 1636, before Charles I had his head cut off.

Here's a comment that misses the mark, somewhat:

But because they conceive of themselves as a new nation, Americans don't feel any need to make a cult of newness in the way that some Britons and French do. They have not disfigured the center of Washington with aggressively new buildings, as modernists have felt the need to update London.

I'm not sure if they mean downtown Washington or the Mall. A couple of the Smithsonian Museums are aggressively modern. And a major battle in the War on Poverty involved the destruction of the old buildings where poor people lived and made a living and replacing them with modernist housing projects. (The places for these people to make a living were not replaced.) But in the authors' defense, the impulse to destroy came mainly from political elites enamored with European socialist solutions, not from ordinary Americans.

The other articles in the series are:

The Right Nation
A Different Conservatism
The Right Rules
Right Roots
Faith, Fortune, and the Frontier

A few more interesting quotes:

• "Not only has America produced a far more potent conservative movement than anything available in other rich countries; America as a whole is a more conservative place."
• "In no other country is the Right defined so much by values rather than class. The best predictor of whether a white American votes Republican is not his or her income but how often he or she goes to church.... Yet despite the importance of values, America has failed to produce a xenophobic "far Right" on anything like the same scale as Europe has. The closest equivalent to a European hard-Rightist is Pat Buchanan, and his political fortunes have waned rather than waxed.... In Colorado Springs, conservatives see immigrants mostly as potential recruits, rather than as diluters of the national spirit.

This week we say farewell to a man whose bold leadership reshaped our nation and the world. We mourn with his family at his passing, but it is also fitting to celebrate a long life well lived and recall happy memories. Many of us were inspired by Ronald Reagan to become actively involved in politics.

There's going to be an informal gathering tonight at 7:30 in Tulsa at Paddy's Irish Restaurant and Pub to toast the life and accomplishments of President Ronald Reagan. You're invited to join us -- bring along a favorite Reagan quote or anecdote to share. If you've got memorabilia from his campaigns or his administration, bring that along, too. We won't be doing a formal program, just sharing memories.

Paddy's is on the northwest corner of 81st & Memorial.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Gail Heriot challenges the notion that the initiative petition process has been subverted for the benefit of powerful special interests. She cites a soon-to-be-published article analyzing the subversion hypothesis:

It seems that there are real differences in the fiscal policies of initiative and non-initiative states. Initiative states spend less than non-initiative states. Initiative states concentrate more of their spending at the local level. And initiative states raise a greater portion of their revenue through fees rather than through taxes. The subversion hypothesis, however, gets no support from Matsusaka's research. In each case, the initiative states move public policy in a direction that it consistent rather than inconsistent with popular will. Voters tend to want their state governments to spend less money, etc. Hence, instead of subverting the true popular will, the initiative process appears to be giving that popular will a means with which to influence public policy.

I think that is certainly true here in Oklahoma. Initiatives are not often used -- most of the ballot questions we get are referenda from the legislature, required in order to approve constitutional amendments. Only 366 initiative petitions have even been submitted since statehood, and many if not most of those have been ruled legally or numerically insufficient. There appear to have been fewer than 10 over the last 10 years, and it looks like about half never made it to the ballot.

But initiatives gave us term limits, a ban on cockfighting, and set the bar higher for tax hikes -- all issues with popular support, where there was insufficient political will or clout to accomplish them in the legislature. One somewhat recent initiative was clearly the work of a special interest group -- that was the petition to legalize casino gambling, which went before the voters in February 1998. The original sponsors of the drive lost interest once it was on the ballot and it lost by a three to one margin. If, say, a company tried to use an initiative petition to give itself an indirect advantage over the competition, voters would pretty quickly see through the effort. The company would find it a lot more cost effective to lobby 149 legislators than a million voters.

The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Tom Coburn for Senate, has a blog, which I found through a trackback from ScrappleFace's obit for President Reagan.

The Club's blog has an entry about Citizens Against Government Waste's 2003 ratings of members of Congress. Tulsa's Congressman John Sullivan had the highest 2003 ranking of Oklahoma's U.S. House delegation. His lifetime rating of 83 is just behind Ernest Istook's 84. The House as a body got a 50 rating for 2003 -- in 19 of 38 votes "the taxpayers won."

The Club for Growth blog also has an entry with links to photos and audio clips of Ronald Reagan.

Sometimes you find the best insights in the comments on the best blogs. Found this comment on Samizdata, in response to this challenge from a British reader: "Is the US Constitution such a sacred cow that you lot in the US will be shocked at someone in the UK who questions its utility?"

It isn't that we mindlessly revere our constitution, or the utility of any written constitution. It's the particulars of our constitution that we treasure. Ours was basically written by a bunch of crabby, cynical, argumentative political junkies, dilettantes, cafe intellectuals, rabble-rousers and gentlemen farmers who disliked and distrusted government and people who seek power. There's some stupid stuff in there (it's been a while since we worried about having troops billetted in our homes), but it's held up remarkably well because it's not about particulars, it's about human nature. The checks and balances thing, for example, is a blueprint for pitting groups of vain ambitious men against each other in the hopes that none of them get much done.

How often do people who dislike government get to build one?

We began to disobey it before the ink was dry. So, as you point out, it's hardly an ironclad defense of liberty. But it helps. It's significant that when they want to break free of its restraints, our public figures are still compelled to pretend to see something in it that isn't there, and write heavily-footnoted rulings about how the thing that isn't there really is if you squint and turn your head on one side.

Posted by S. Weasel at June 2, 2004 11:37 PM

Spot on. "It's not about particulars, it's about human nature," is reminiscent of the conservative proverb, "Human nature has no history."

(That last bit about "the thing that isn't there really is if you squint" makes me think of conservative Presbyterian arguments for infant baptism, but, as with the judges and the Constitution, at least they feel obliged to pay their respects to the original authoritative document.)

Politics! Maps!! A new web toy from the folks at Opinion Journal gives you a clickable map to develop your own electoral college scenarios of the upcoming election. A click on a state rotates it from the Republican to the Democrat to the undecided column. (Alas, they insist on coloring Republican states red and Democrat states blue, following USA Today's 2000 county map, despite the fact that red, as the color of the socialist parties throughout the western world, properly belongs to the Democrats.) A shift-click on a state shows you the percentage outcomes for the last six presidential elections. You can use any of the last six elections as your starting point, or use their default, putting high-margin-of-victory states in one column or the other, and leaving the rest for you to sort out.

For more insight, you might want to read Slate's series on the swing states, which just began with a look at bellwether Missouri. See also Best of the Web Today from Thursday with a roundup of recent polls and Friday's edition, with the latest bookmakers' odds.

Larry Sabato has an interesting analysis, based on 2000 results plus trends apparent from mid-term elections.

There's a realistic scenario that could leave us deadlocked. (Click the image below to see the map.) If Kerry wins everything north of the Mason Dixon line, plus West Virginia, the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois), the west coast and Hawaii, plus New Mexico and Bush wins everything else, it's a 269-269 tie.

If there's a tie and we have no faithless electors, it goes to the House of Representatives as a state-by-state vote. If the current House makeup holds, Bush gets the votes of 29 states: AL, AK, AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MI, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, OK, PA, SC, UT, WY.

Four states are even-steven: MN, MS, TX, WI. Texas could go either way, as the new redistricting created several incumbent vs. incumbent battles. And several states have a one-congressman difference that could swing the other way. Note that several states are unlikely wins for Bush at the top of the ticket, but are heavily Republican in the Congressional delegation.

(My state-by-state evaluation of the partisan balance of each House delegation was done in a hurry, with info from Politics1 which features lists of likely candidates for each federal and state race, links to newspapers in each state, and images of buttons from campaigns past. (Oklahoma's entry has a picture of the Bud Wilkinson for Senate button. An article in Oklahoma Monthly suggested that if Bud hadn't run down the Rural Electric Administration during his campaign, he would have won that Senate race and would have been positioned to be Nixon's VP and ultimately President.)

Following the former veep's recent speech, Frank J. presented an assortment of "Fun Facts about Al Gore." Here's a selection:

* His programming was specifically for him to be a politician. Now that he no longer is one, he's gone rogue.

* If you turn on a microwave while Al Gore is near, he'll suddenly start singing showtunes.

* Al Gore spent most of his vice presidency trying to keep Clinton away from his daughters.

* The only way to destroy Al Gore is to get him to chase you under a hydraulic press. It's best to keep in memory all the nearest hydraulic presses before hand.

Go read it all. And here's Frank J.'s guide to his best stuff.

The King of Fools has been granted press credentials for the Texas Republican Convention. Congrats to the King and we'll look forward to experiencing another state's convention vicariously.

Here's his account of the senatorial district convention he attended back at the end of March.

I note that he is raising some money from his readers to offset the costs of traveling to the State Convention, in anticipation of the live-blogging he plans to do from the convention and he's gotten a good response so far. You suppose someone headed to the National Convention might ought to try that?

Instapundit links to a length and fascinating story by Jack Neely in the Knoxville Metro Pulse about Knoxville and its people in the Great War and the war's aftermath. A few excerpts:

Americans first regarded it as one of those stubborn, creaky old European conflicts that flared up in the Old World every now and then like the shingles, in which old men with peculiar hats and baroque motives would order slavish troops onto the field to whale away at each other for the old routine of glory and slaughter....

Knoxville's reaction to the war:

Patriotic optimism was overt; negative newspaper stories about the war effort were rare. But in some cases the war�s effects were disheartening. For more than half a century, Knoxville had been proud of its German population. Over the years, several German-born men were elected to City Council. A downtown Lutheran church conducted services in German. In the 1890s, the city had elected a German mayor, Peter Kern, of Heidelberg. The German society, Turn Verein, hosted popular dances and festivals.

But now the Germans were no longer the Germans; in newspaper headlines and in common conversation, they were the Huns. During the war, some East Tennesseans of German heritage changed their names to make them sound English. Knoxville�s German community has rarely gotten together to publicly celebrate itself since. ...

On Armistice Day:

It was a wild day. Most businesses were closed, and even the stoic farmers on Market Square shut down early. Max Finkelstein put up a sign on the front door of his clothing store: �Closed For Joy.� The newspapers published Extras, hawked in the crowded streets, where horns, gunfire, cowbells, and firecrackers made things noisier than some battles, and multiple effigies of Kaiser Bill and Crown Prince What�s-His-Name sustained all manner of insults. Reporters found it remarkable that even middle-aged women were openly cussing, shouting �Damn the Kaiser!� right on streetcorners. All over town, Wilhelm was wishfully dragged, burned, beheaded. Some 10,000 gathered at Wait Field to burn phony kaisers. The only live European known to be in Knoxville that day was one unaccountably errant French officer wearing the blue uniform of the 171st French Regiment. Local women mobbed him with kisses, as if he were liberating Knoxville itself.

Go read the whole thing. There's an interesting bit about the origins of Memorial Day which was started in Knoxville by a Union widow. Then there's this 1919 event, which puts Tulsa's own troubles two years later into perspective:

Knoxville�s postwar months also brought unexpected anti-black sentiment. For half a century, Knoxville had regarded itself a model city with regard to race relations.

The summer of 1919 would become known as Red Summer due to a rash of race riots, some of them provoked by the image of black veterans returning from war. Though the military was strictly segregated, and returning black troops were not feted nearly as extravagantly as returning whites, some were offended to see them wearing the same uniforms as whites, and to see them being hailed as heroes. Also, the Red Scare manifested itself in the South chiefly through rumors that the Bolsheviks were stirring up blacks into revolution.

Knoxville�s own crisis came late that summer, when a frustrated lynch mob and a confused detachment of guardsmen laid siege to a largely black downtown neighborhood. Several were killed, some of them by machine-gun fire with a new weapon developed for combat in Europe. The military enforcement of a post-riot curfew was disproportionately harsh on the black community.

Black historians cite World War I as the end of the years of prosperity and trust between blacks and whites in Knoxville. There followed a black exodus. The city had once been almost one-third black, but the minority percentage of the city�s population slipped below 20 percent.

Thanks again to Instapundit for the link.

A lot of chat the last few days about Sen. Jim Inhofe's outrage over the outrage [sic] over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. (For comments on National Review's "The Corner" start here, then scroll up for more.)

All this has reminded me how annoying it is to hear politicians claim, in reaction to some event, to have emotions that they obviously don't possess. Genuine emotion is accompanied by physiological phenomena -- your pulse races, your blood pressure goes up, you get goosebumps. But many politicians seem to have the same level of personal experience with emotion as Data from Star Trek. And just like Data, these pols seem to be programmed to mimic emotions as a way to set the humans at ease. Data's programming seems to be superior to that of these elected officials, who appear to be running beta versions of Genuine People Personalities.

So, Senator, are you really feeling the emotions you find it politically expedient to profess?

"appalled" -- Did all the color go out of your face?

"horrified" -- Did the hair stand up on the back of your neck?

"shocked" -- You sure seem talkative and coherent for someone in shock. Shouldn't you have mouth agape, drooling?

"angered" -- Face flushed? Vein in temple throbbing? Jaw clenched? No? Then you're not really, are you?

"saddened" -- I took a good look at your face, and it was impossible to trace the tracks of any tears. You haven't even had a good sniffle about it.

"disgusted" -- Show me the airsick bag.

The honest, all-purpose statement would be something like this:

Jaded cynic that I am, I am generally pretty numb, particularly when it comes to human suffering, but I confess to be inwardly gleeful at the discovery of the "silver bullet" that will bring down the Bush presidency. But so as not to offend against the quaint folkways of the American people, I will pull a frowny face and talk about how it makes me sad and angry.

There's a website devoted to concerns about electronic voting. BlackBoxVoting.com tracks news stories about the all-electronic voting systems that have been introduced in recent years. It's ironic that these systems, introduced in response to problems with paper ballots in the 2000 elections, may be even more susceptible to fraud and tampering. The website includes a free PDF version of a book on the subject. The introduction provides this definition of black box voting:

Black Box Voting: Any voting system in which the mechanism for recording and/or tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter, and/or the mechanism lacks a tangible record of the vote cast.

Oklahoma's voting problems have to do with who is allowed to cast a ballot, like the recent Tulsa City Council primaries in which hundreds of voters were given a primary ballot for the wrong party. Oklahoma's vote counting mechanism itself is very solid, particularly since there are physical ballots, which the voter personally marks and examines. If touchscreen voting is used it should produce some sort of marked paper, which the voter can examine and verify that it reflects his intent. This paper would be deposited in the ballot box and would be available for use in a recount.

A number of experts have called for states to require that voting machine vendors release the source code for the programs that control the machine, so that flaws, backdoors, and other vulnerabilities could be uncovered and corrected.

Website PoliticalBetting.com reports on an interesting little adjustment made by polling agency Populus, which signals a major shift in public attitudes toward the parties. The latest Populus poll of the British electorate puts the Conservatives ahead of Labour by 4% -- 36 to 32, Labour's lowest percentage in years, with 22% going to the Liberal Democrats, a party that runs to the left of Tony Blair's New Labour.

The raw numbers gave the Conservatives a 6-point advantage over Labour, but Populus adjusted Labour's numbers up by 2 points. Here's why:

Early last year, after a short period of neutrality, the spiral of silence reversed itself. Polls began to find that the proportion of former Labour voters saying that they didn�t know how they would vote next time began to climb, while the proportion of Labour supporters saying that they were sure to vote began to fall. Pollsters have been adjusting Labour�s poll support upwards to take account of this growing number because all empirical data tell us there is about a 60 per cent probability that, however reluctantly, if they vote at all they will end up voting Labour again. Without this adjustment the Conservative lead in today�s poll would have been 2 per cent higher. SO in place of Shy Tories we now have Bashful Blairites, people unwilling to admit to pollsters or their friends that they still support the Prime Minister. Once so fashionable, new Labour has now gone out of fashion. This is very difficult to reverse.

My guess is that this is due to Blair's support of the US position in the war on terror, which has been attacked fervently by the arbiters of popular culture. Backing Tony isn't cool any more. A few years ago, in the latter days of John Major's reign, voters supporting Conservative policies were embarassed into silence by sex and financial scandals involving Conservative MPs.

A question: Is the "spiral of silence" a factor in American politics? How would you adjust a poll result to account for it? I'm guessing that it varies state to state, but generally the effect would reduce stated preferences for Republicans.

All pollsters make adjustments, in part because people aren't always honest with pollsters, for various reasons, in part because a variety of factors (time of day, weather, age of respondent) can skew a voter's willingness to respond. The website for Populus has a frank and fascinating discussion of how they arrive at their adjustment factors.

3. The logical way to try to make sure a poll sample is politically representative is to ask those polled how they voted at the last election and compare what they say with the actual result � a known fact about the political views of the country as a whole that serves as a benchmark, so that if the voters who have been surveyed for the poll prove to be politically unrepresentative, the whole sample can be made representative by weighting it to the election result. For the first few months, Populus polls for The Times were, therefore weighted to the actual result of the last election.

4. But the detailed data of Populus polls bore out research at previous general elections, and surveys re-polling the same people during the course of a Parliament, all of which have shown that when asked after a general election how they voted, a lot of voters � possibly as many as one in five � don�t recall correctly: they may lie, or want to be seen to have backed the winner, or are correcting their past vote to match their future intention, or they may simply forget.

The likeliest date for the next British election is believed to be 05/05/05. Another interesting fact, cited in the PoliticalBetting.com report, is that the Tories will need a 7% popular vote edge over Labour in order to win more seats than Labour. It has mostly to do with the presence of a third major party, which tends to split opposition votes. This is another reversal from the '80s and '90s, when the same phenomenon worked in the Conservatives' favor.

Over on WSJ's "Best of the Web Today", James Taranto asks why Kerry isn't gaining ground on Bush despite "right track/wrong track" and approval numbers that would normally mean trouble for an incumbent.

Yesterday he found answers in some other poll numbers -- very low "strong support" numbers for Kerry among his own supporters (38% vs. 68% for Bush), and an indication that the Democrats are overplaying their hand (60% of voters think Rumsfeld should stay on the job). And there's a great Kerry quote that illustrates the personality problem he has with voters.

Today Taranto presents some readers' explanations for the phenomenon. Here's a sample from Ray Newton:

I think that you are missing one important point on the polls. If a pollster asked me if I approve of the job Bush is doing I would have to say no. Too apologetic, not strong enough.

Do I approve of his handling of Iraq? Again no. Need to get tougher.

Do I approve of his handling of the economy? Again no. Too much spending. Too much appeasing the Dems. Tax cuts must be permanent.

For all of these reasons Kerry is a much worse choice. That is why polling can be very confusing. When you disagree, they never ask if you tend more towards the right or the left.

Taranto breaks the last six elections involving an incumbent into two categories -- in 1972, 1984, and 1996, where the incumbent was a polarizing figure with strong opposition from the other party but solid support in his own party; in 1976, 1980, and 1992, where the incumbent was not as polarizing a figure, but had unenthusiastic support from his own party, and was challenged for the nomination. Incumbents in the first category won landslide victories, incumbents in the second category all lost. Taranto puts W. in the first category and says that this election comes down to Bush vs. anti-Bush, and if you're not already a Bush-hater, it's unlikely that anything is going to happen in the next six months to make you one.

Rich Lowry had a great piece a few days back on National Review Online about how congressional gerrymandering is eroding democracy by making more and more congressional races uncompetitive.

With the help of district lines sometimes so tortured that they look like works of abstract expressionism, incumbents have increased their reelection rate from 92 percent to 98 percent. That is a marginal-seeming but significant change. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato has a feature on his website tracking close congressional races. In 2002, it followed the "Nifty 50," the 50 most competitive races. This year it features the "Dirty 30." "And we had to stretch to get to 30," says Sabato.

Eighty-one incumbents ran unopposed in 2002, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy. In 350 of the 435 congressional races, the winner won by more than 20 percent. The center projects an even less competitive congressional cycle this year. This means representatives increasingly operate without the factor that tends to force them to be representative � the fear of defeat.

Lowry goes on to cite other advantages of incumbency, and the difficulty of finding challengers to go after incumbents with such strong built-in advantages. He also recalls the way Democrat majorities in most state legislatures used their power in the '80s and '90s to try to ensure that majority of support for Republican policies didn't translate into a majority in the House of Representatives. That may explain why Republicans were able to reclaim the Senate in 1980, long before they conquered the House -- you can't gerrymander state lines. The Republicans' 1994 victory was not only the result of Clinton's unpopularity, but interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that resulted in drawing snake-like "majority-minority" districts, putting blacks, the most reliably Democrat demographic, in concentrated districts, pulling them out of districts where they had combined with white Democrats to keep southern seats in the Democrat column.

Lowry's conclusion:

States should adopt objective criteria for the drawing of districts, including contiguity and compactness that will limit somewhat the ability of the parties to play games. Bipartisan commissions should be given a significant role in drawing district lines. In Washington state, such a commission has created generally competitive districts so even a speaker of the House (Tom Foley) has lost a race there in recent memory.

The goal should be to make it possible for most people to vote in a congressional election that matters. What a concept.

As we've seen in Oklahoma, the problem extends to the drawing of legislative boundaries. We have absurd gerrymanders like Senate District 18, which runs from Grand Lake to 21st & Sheridan in Tulsa, evidently drawn that way to help Kevin Easley build support for the GRDA job and to ensure that his mama would have a good shot at succeeding him in the State Senate. Another goofy district is House 41, which is 80 miles long and six miles wide, stretching from Enid to Oklahoma City.

It's important for legislatures to take up this issue now, long before it's time to redraw the lines in 2011.

Iowa's approach is worth a close look. They have detailed information on their redistricting website.

Their legislative service bureau uses computers to develop a plan, on which the legislature can only vote up or down. The Iowa redistricting process has certain features to avoid gerrymandering:

Today there's an election in Pennsylvania -- a Republican primary for U. S. Senate between incumbent Arlen Specter and Congressman Pat Toomey. Latest polls show the race even, so it's all down to which side will turn out their voters.

Conservatives everywhere have the chance act today to shape the future of the American judicial branch. If Specter is renominated today and reelected in November, he will become the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power to derail conservative, pro-life judicial nominations.

(Recalling that local political divisions don't fall along national partisan lines, I recognize that some of my Tulsa readers, who are allies on local issues, might think giving Specter the power to derail conservative judicial nominations is a good thing. It's nice that we can work together on areas of agreement, despite passionate differences on other important issues.)

Those of you who follow national politics will remember Specter's many betrayals of conservative principles. If you need reminders, follow this link for a list of National Review Online articles about the man. Or read this one from yesterday.

If you've got even a few minutes to make some calls, send an e-mail to electtoomey@yahoo.com and they will send you a script and a list of phone numbers. Polls in Pennsylvania close at 8 p.m. Eastern time (7 p.m. Tulsa time), and the Toomey campaign plans to call until the polls close.

Long distance calls are cheap, especially if your cell phone plan includes free long distance. My AT&T calling card from Sam's Club is less than 4 cents a minute -- for less than a meal at McDonald's I can encourage 100 voters to get out and vote for Pat Toomey.

That was the headline on this entry in National Review's "The Corner". I didn't imagine National Review would take note of a local story -- the absence of four Tulsa City Councilors from last night's meeting, the first one to be held under Randy Sullivan's chairmanship. Sure enough, it was about something else.

Four members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission walked out of the Commission's monthly meeting when the chairman refused to permit a discussion of the staff director's attempt to reorganize the agency, a move the dissenting members say was not authorized by the commission. The item goes on to present remarks from each of the four commissioners who walked out, explaining their rationale.

I suspect a similar motive -- the chairman's high-handed treatment of members -- was behind the absence of Jack Henderson, Jim Mautino, Chris Medlock, and Sam Roop from Thursday's City Council meeting. The Whirled story on the event mentioned a dispute at Tuesday's Council committee meeting over new Chairman Randy Sullivan's intent to appoint a permanent chairman over each committee, rather than share the chairmanship as had been done in the past.

The Whirled reported that Roop objected to the new policy, which would be a change from the Council's traditions. Roop voted to uphold Council tradition on Monday in allowing Sullivan to become chairman, despite questions about Sullivan's character and fairness, so Roop must have felt betrayed by Sullivan's rapid abandonment of settled practice.

Another possible motive -- an unwillingness to proceed with Council business until Roscoe Turner is officially seated and the Council's ranks are complete. This was the motive Jim Mautino cited, when asked by the Whirled about his vote against Sullivan for chairman -- he thought the Council should wait a week until the special election results were in, out of respect for the voters of District 3. Instead, not only was lame duck Councilor David Patrick allowed to vote in the selection of a chairman, he was allowed to preside, and he even nominated the vice chairman. Traditionally, the Council Secretary presides until a chairman is elected.

Whatever the rationale, the missing councilors owe the public some sort of explanation, otherwise they leave it to the rest of us to speculate, and they allow the Whirled to put its own unsympathetic construction on the situation. The dissenting members of the Civil Rights Commission set a good example to follow. If these Councilors want to issue statements, I will be happy to publish them in their entirety, unedited.

ScrappleFace is a wonderful news satire blog. Here's a bit from a recent entry:

"Just like Bush reversed conventional wisdom by proclaiming that Republicans actually care about people," said Mr. Kerry, "my agenda declares that it's okay to be a bleeding-heart liberal without the bleeding heart part."

Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said it's all part of the "New Aloofness," a Democrat sensibility that says "It's okay to be for big government and higher taxes without having to justify it by claiming to care about people who are many rungs below you on the economic ladder."

Please note that this is a parody, not a real news item, but like all satire, its punch is directly proportional to its proximity to the truth.

Oklahoma City blogger Charles G. Hill over at Dustbury linked to my item about scare quotes in the District 4 City Council race. His first paragraph links to an example of Reuters' use of scare quotes, and that article links to this Weekly Standard column by Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College Professor of English, about the use of scare quotes in coverage of the War on Terror, and how they are a ready substitute for serious analysis and debate.

(Scare quotes are also sometimes called "sneer quotes", which comes closer to conveying the attitude of the writer who uses them.)

Scare quotes have two functions, the first of which is quite straightforward: They allow their users very easily to express incredulity about, and often contempt for, the views of their political opponents. But they also allow those users to avoid the hard work of thinking up their own descriptions of events or people or ideas. And they're parasitic: They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

(I have a suspicion also that many journalists, even those most addicted to the scare quote, would say that it's their job merely to report, to describe--leave it to the editorialists and news analysts to offer positive explanations. But it is surely a curious understanding of reporting that allows the journalist merely, and just typographically, to cast doubt on the claims of others, without offering any reasons for that doubt or any alternatives to those claims.)

Read the whole thing, then go visit dustbury.com and get caught up on life at the other end of the Turner Turnpike.

For all that I write about Tulsa, the number one search phrase that leads to batesline.com is "howie carr", the Boston Herald columnist I saluted some time ago. And here's what I wrote about his February column about John Kerry's DYKWIA problem.

A friend who lived in Boston in '88 (and gave me a gift mail subscription to the Herald during that presidential campaign) is cleaning house and dropped off a few political newspaper clippings from yesteryear. I thought I might scan a few of the most interesting and post them here. The first one up is this Howie Carr column from Friday, October 21, 1988, "Endorsement gives Pee Wee the Willies". Here's how it starts:

How 'bout that Willie Horton guy?

Just when it looks like Pee Wee is taking the pipe, Willie gets a phone call from the Gannett News Service.

Does Willie say, "Tell them to call back in 20 to life"?

Does Willie say, "I'm too busy making license plates"?

No, Willie Horton takes the call and makes it clear where the murderer-rapist vote is going this year.

"Obviously, I am for Dukakis."

Obviously. Nice touch, Willie. Everyone reading that story in USA Today got a big kick out of that. Obviously.

Carr goes on to suggest several other Massachusetts criminals and disgraced government officials who would gladly give their endorsements to Dukakis for his kind treatment of them.

And here's a link to a recent column by Republican media consultant Jay Bryant reflecting on the Willie Horton furlough issue, its impact on the '88 campaign and lessons to be learned from it for 2004.

If the Whirled had a columnist as funny and hard-hitting as Howie Carr, the paper might actually be worth reading.

Oh, and here's a recent Howie Carr column on the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

When you see quotation marks around a single word or short phrase in a news story, what comes to mind? It's a signal that the writer of the story doesn't buy the phrase or word being used, and she doesn't want you to buy it either. It sends the reader a signal that they should think something is fishy.

(I can't think about this use of quotation marks without thinking of a Saturday Night Live character called Bennett Brauer -- played by Chris Farley -- who punctuated his remarks by making quote marks with his fingers. 'Well, maybe I'm not "the norm". I'm not "camera friendly". ')

Here's a bit from a good summary of the semantics of this use of quotation marks:

The use of quotation marks can be extended to cases which are not exactly direct quotations. Here is an example:

Linguists sometimes employ a technique they call "inverted reconstruction".

The phrase in quote marks is not a quotation from anyone in particular, but merely a term which is used by some people � in this case, linguists. What the writer is doing here is distancing himself from the term in quotes. That is, he's saying "Look, that's what they call it. I'm not responsible for this term." In this case, there is no suggestion that the writer disapproves of the phrase in quotes, but very often there is a suggestion of disapproval:

The Institute for Personal Knowledge is now offering a course in "self-awareness exercises".

Once again, the writer's quotes mean "this is their term, not mine", but this time there is definitely a hint of a sneer: the writer is implying that, although the Institute may call their course "self-awareness exercises", what they're really offering to do is to take your money in exchange for a lot of hot air.

Quotation marks used in this way are informally called scare quotes. Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase from which you, the writer, wish to distance yourself because you consider that word or phrase to be odd or inappropriate for some reason. Possibly you regard it as too colloquial for formal writing; possibly you think it's unfamiliar or mysterious; possibly you consider it to be inaccurate or misleading; possibly you believe it's just plain wrong. Quite often scare quotes are used to express irony or sarcasm:

The Serbs are closing in on the "safe haven" of Goražde.

The point here is that the town has been officially declared a safe haven by the UN, whereas in fact, as the quote marks make clear, it is anything but safe.

Reuters and the BBC are renowned for using scare quotes to distance themselves from Western Civilization's War against Islamist Terrorism -- this for example was a BBC web headline when Saddam Hussein's sons were killed:

U.S. celebrates 'good' Iraq news

Here in Tulsa we saw extensive use of scare quotes in coverage of the District 4 City Council. For some unexplained reason, the Whirled insisted on referring to the Republican nominee as Jason "Eric" Gomez. The man's full name is, in fact, Jason Eric Gomez. This is how he is listed in voter registration records. But like a lot of people (including my dad), he is known by his middle name. There is nothing shifty or unusual about this practice, but the scare quotes suggest that an alias is being used, or perhaps he is some sort of eccentric or "colorful character", like Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner or Cowboy "Pink" Williams.

When I first met him, he was introduced to me as Eric Gomez, and I only recently learned that Eric was not his first name. He uses his middle name in his business, on his website (eric4tulsa.com), on his campaign signs, and on the ballot. At one point I wondered if the Whirled was using that punctuation because that was the way Eric's name was to appear on the ballot. But the name on the ballot was Eric Gomez. (By the way, when you file for office, you get to pick how your name appears. Frequent candidate Virginia Jenner added "Blue Jeans" as her middle name on the ballot in later races, even though she is registered to vote as Dorothea Virginia Jenner. The two times I've run, I opted for my full first name, plus middle initial to differentiate myself from most of the other Michael Bateses in town, although I could have used Mike Bates.)

Note that the Whirled did not give the same treatment to Gomez's opponent, "Councilor" Thomas Lee "Tom" Baker. I do not know if this "decision" was made by City Hall reporter Pamela Jean "P.J." Lassek, or by "City Editor" Lewis "Wayne" Greene, or perhaps by Editorial Page "Editor" Kenneth W. "Ken" Neal. I just know the "newspaper" wasn't consistent in the application of whatever "style book rule" they used to justify "Jason 'Eric' Gomez."

You may think me silly to believe that this would make a difference in an election, but when a voter doesn't know much about the candidates or their stands on the issues, any minor thing may be enough to tip his decision one way or another. A voter can grasp at anything that would suggest one of the candidates is unreliable or just odd in some way. And in such a close race -- less than one vote per precinct -- it may have made the difference.

Jay Rosen was the author of the article about the role of journalists in a political campaign, which I linked to in the previous entry. He posted the article on his blog, and there are many interesting comments below it. Here's one from Dan McWiggins that speaks to an experience of cognitive dissonance that will be familiar to many readers of the Tulsa Whirled:

I once received a really stunning insight into press coverage. Someone who had suffered a particularly unpleasant bout of media exposure asked me to think about the following question: How many times had I, watching the press deal with a subject I was intimately familiar with, seen them come even close to getting the story right?

My response, after some thought, was "almost never." The fellow I was talking to then asked me why I would think they would do much better on any other topic. It was a very eye-opening moment for me, especially when I considered that most reporters are seriously left-leaning political partisans and, where politics are concerned, large amounts of power and money are at stake.

I've never trusted the press since. Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Andrew Gilligan just drove the point further home.

Instapundit points to an interesting column by Jay Rosen, from the Columbia Journalism Review, outlining how the true job description for a journalist covering an election has changed.

Whenever we re-describe what journalists do new problems arise in what they should be doing -- and perhaps quit doing. New questions of accountability spring up.

Over on Reason magazine's website, John Stossel of ABC lists a number of ways middle and lower class taxpayers are funding welfare for the comfortable.

Ronald Reagan memorably complained about "welfare queens," but he never told us that the biggest welfare queens are the already wealthy. Their lobbyists fawn over politicians, giving them little bits of money -- campaign contributions, plane trips, dinners, golf outings -- in exchange for huge chunks of taxpayers� money. Millionaires who own your favorite sports teams get subsidies, as do millionaire farmers, corporations, and well-connected plutocrats of every variety. Even successful, wealthy TV journalists.

That�s right, I got some of your money too.

In 1980 I built a wonderful beach house. Four bedrooms -- every room with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was an absurd place to build, right on the edge of the ocean. All that stood between my house and ruin was a hundred feet of sand. My father told me: "Don�t do it; it�s too risky. No one should build so close to an ocean."

But I built anyway.

Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one."

What? Why would the government do that? Why would it encourage people to build in such risky places? That would be insane.

Stossel goes on to cover farm subsidies and eminent domain abuse, including the famous case in Atlantic City involving a widow trying to keep her home against Donald Trump, who was trying to use city government to take it from her. It's worth reading. (Hat tip to Clayton Cramer for the link.)

Came across this while looking for the definition of the political phrase "stalking horse". Slate -- Microsoft's web magazine -- has a column called "The Explainer", which answers questions about the news. Interesting and, as far as I can tell, accurate. (Here's the Explainer's explanation of "stalking horse".) (Here's a better explanation from Wikipedia.)

An entry from four years ago answers the question, "Do delegates to the national political party conventions have free will?" In other words, are they allowed to deviate from the preferences expressed by the primaries or caucuses that chose them? The short answer is yes for Democrats, and for Republicans it depends on the state -- each state party sets its own rule in that regard. The Supreme Court struck down state laws controlling delegate allocation, according to this entry, which doesn't say why, but I imaging it's on freedom of association grounds.

Those of us on the right were looking forward to Howard Dean as the Democrat presidential nominee. National Review even put his picture on the cover with the caption, "Please nominate this man!" Doesn't look like that's going to work out, but the alternative could be just as much fun, because John Kerry is from Massachusetts, and Howie Carr of the Boston Herald has been watching him like a hawk since his days as Mike Dukakis's Lieutenant Governor.

In 1988, a friend gave me a mail subscription to the Boston Herald covering the run up to the presidential election. Two or three times a week, I got to read Howie Carr deflating the myth of Mike "Pee Wee" Dukakis and the "Massachusetts Miracle". Now that Kerry is the front runner, we get a foretaste of what we can expect if Kerry wins the nomination. From the New York Post last Thursday, here's Howie on Kerry and his dealings with hoi polloi:

ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress. ...

Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.

At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.

Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater. ...

In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."

Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.

The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.

Sadly, the Boston Herald keeps its columnists under online lock-and-key, so we have to hope that Howie's columns about Gigolo John are syndicated or otherwise made available on the web, like this one found on FreeRepublic.com.

The headline is a bit misleading. The Chamber of Commerce function I attended was sponsored by the East Aurora, NY, Chamber of Commerce. Thursday night was President Millard Fillmore's 204th Birthday Party, held at the historic Roycroft Inn. I'm in the area on business, and I met up with a friend and joined the festivities.

The event was graced with the presence of the birthday boy himself (bearing a startling resemblance to the editor of the local newspaper), fresh from his resting place at Forest Lawn in Buffalo. The 13th President delivered some choice remarks on local and national politics. For example, he recently visited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to see how he was settling in to his new job. The new governor reports that he has his hands full....

It was rather relaxing and amusing to hear about local political intrigue in which I have no involvement whatsoever. But local politics are the same everywhere -- developers and preservationists battle for control of the village council, governments face tough decisions on controlling spending, political rivalries mutate into personal vendettas.

So in this lovely hotel in this charming village east of Buffalo, we drank Teetotaler Cider, ate Know-Nothing Stew and Politically Correct Corn Bread ("nicely presented and easy to swallow," according to the menu), and sang the ballad of Millard Fillmore, by Carol Sturdevant, to the tune of "Davy Crockett":

Some folks wanted to invade Peru And make their forunes with rare bird doo. But they couldn't convince Millard Fillmore So he got credit for averting a war.

Millard, Millard Fillmore, least known prez of all!

Clayton Cramer links to an amazing speech by bestselling author Michael Crichton to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, on September 15, 2003. Crichton says that modern environmentalism is a religion, the "religion of choice for urban atheists". Here are a few choice quotes:

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden? ....

How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction....

Looking for some other stuff on the web, I came across something about Howie Carr.

Howie Carr is a favorite of mine. Howie is a columnist for the Boston Herald and a radio talk show host. Oddly, I don't remember reading him during my time in college. I became aware of him a couple of years later, during the 1988 presidential campaign. Howie was doing the rest of the country a great service by telling the truth about Michael Dukakis' maladministration of Massachusetts, at a time when PeeWee (as Howie calls him) was running on a platform of "competence, not ideology". Howie exposed the reality behind the "Massachusetts Miracle", called attention to the frantic financial fudging that was going on to avoid Massachusetts showing a deficit a month before the election. A friend bought me a mail subscription to the Herald, and I had a great time reading Howie's hilarious dissections of Bay State politics.

Howie's central focus is on government corruption and cozy deals, reporting things that the political "hacks" (a favorite word) would just as soon keep quiet. Howie doesn't just talk about what other people report. He does his own digging and comes up with the documentation. He regularly calls attention to ex-legislators and relatives of politicians who have landed cushy high paying jobs in the state bureaucracy, reporting their salaries and job "responsibilities". Many of Howie's columns feature info from the "hack hotline" -- whistle-blowing reports from government employees.

In case you hadn't heard, Oklahoma's election calendar, which has been more or less unchanged for decades, has undergone a makeover for 2004, moving the presidential preference primary, filing period, primary, and runoff about a month earlier each. The legislature approved the changes in this year's session. The earlier presidential primary date (a week after New Hampshire) has actually put Oklahoma on the radar for the Democratic presidential candidates. The earlier regular primary and runoff is designed to provide sufficient time for sending out and receiving overseas military absentee ballots between the runoff and the general election.

By the way, the ballot for the presidential primary is set, and you can see the list of candidates here. The only surprise entry on the Democrat side is Lyndon LaRouche, while someone named Bill Wyatt has filed to run against President Bush in the Republican primary. The primary coincides with Tulsa's municipal primary, normally a very low-turnout affair in non-mayoral years. The coincidence could have an impact on a couple of Council races in heavily-Democratic north Tulsa -- the race to replace Joe Williams in District 1, and the rematch between David Patrick and Roscoe Turner in District 3.

World Magazine -- the news-weekly that covers world news with wit and insight from a Biblical worldview -- started a blog about a week ago. The effort is headed by Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky. World had previously introduced a regular "BlogWatch" column, reporting on the blogosphere.

In introducing the blog, World makes the point that many of the main voices in the blogosphere are either left-leaning or libertarian, so in coming from a socially conservative perspective they'll be filling a niche.

They appear to be using Movable Type, which is good, and unlike most corporate media blogs, they have comments open -- we'll see how long that lasts.

(I have considered opening comments on this site, but I don't have the time to play comments policeman. Instead, I encourage discussions about Tulsa issues to head over to the forums at tulsanow.org.)

One of the items they cover that escaped my notice: Planned Parenthood has had trouble finding a general contractor for their new building in Austin. They got the story from WSJ's James Taranto's Best of the Web, but World linked to the current day's column, rather than to the permalink containing the story of interest. A common beginner's mistake.

My only gripe is that this appears to be a group blog, but there is no indication of authorship on the entries. Part of the fun of other group blogs, like National Review's The Corner and the Dallas Morning News editorial board blog, is the give and take between different perspectives. Hopefully we'll see some of that on World's blog as well.

Speaking of the Dallas Morning News blog, editorial board member Rod Dreher, formerly of National Review, is going on vacation, and Ann Coulter is taking his place as guest blogger. Should be worth watching.

Just to be clear, World Magazine has no connection with the Tulsa Whirled, and they don't share the Whirled editorial boards whirledview at all.

Had no idea comedian Jimmy Walker (JJ on "Good Times") was a conservative, but here he is, defending Rush Limbaugh's comments about Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb and citing other examples of racial politics in the NFL.

And here's a page of opinions on his website about the death penalty, the state of stand-up comedy, Trent Lott, reparations. Elsewhere on the site, it mentions that he's been hosting talk radio shows alongside his stand up work. Interesting.

Andrew Sullivan links to this fascinating map, showing the balance of contributions to Republican and Democrat presidential candidates by three-digit zip code region. You can also look at the same data by state and by county and see for each candidate where their money is coming from -- just use the pulldown menu to change candidates. Elsewhere on the site are rankings showing who's pulling money from the grassroots and the fat cats. Bush draws well from both grassroots -- measured by the number of small donations -- and fatcats. Lieberman and Kerry have the wealthiest donors on average.

So far most of the money donated from Oklahoma is going to Democrats, particularly Lieberman, Dean, and Edwards.

Lileks is unimpressed with the World's Greatest Deliberative Body^TM:

The spleen, she hurts. I think it had to do with listening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world�s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we�d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.

Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!

And I thought the City Council was bad enough.

Over on RightWingNews they've got selected quotes from this year's best interviews, with links to the interviews. The list includes Milton Friedman, David Horowitz, Walter Williams, and Mark Steyn, the "one man global content provider". A sample:

"When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I asked the local police chief (it's a one-man department) about what I should do in the event of an attempted break-in. He said, "Well, you could call me at home. But it'd be better if you dealt with it. You're there and I'm not." The British police would rather die than admit that. So, instead of prosecuting the burglar, they prosecute the homeowner for "disproportionate response". You're supposed to wait until the burglar has revealed his weapon before picking yours. "Ah, forgive me, old boy, for reaching for the kitchen knife. I see you've brought not a machete but a blunt instrument. Be a good sport and allow me a moment to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed, there's a good egg." This is insane, but, despite the visible deterioration of civic life in even the leafiest suburbs and villages, the British show no sign of rousing themselves to do anything about it." -- Mark Steyn

Jack Ganssle is an expert in embedded software -- the kind of software that runs not on a computer but as part of another device -- controlling your car's performance, your digital cable converter box, your pacemaker or hearing aid. He writes that the Federal Election Commission's standards aren't sufficient to guarantee that the software running in voting machines is trustworthy.

California's recall election will be tallied by a mix of voting machines, ranging from punched cards to the latest in high-tech wizardry. Anyone following the comp.risks forum knows of the furor over electronic voting machines.

They're junk.

That's a strong statement, but it applies to any product that does not fulfill its mission. In the case of voting, the only important feature is trust. And few computer scientists feel the devices deliver an accurate count.

Vendors claim their machines work correctly and are tamper-proof, citing the Federal Election Commission's standards. Well, check those standards out. Any computer jock with the faintest knowledge of building good code will be appalled.

Ganssle links to the FEC standard and delves into some technical detail, then proposes to replace the FEC standard with something more stringent and reliable:

The FEC's mandates are much too weak to eliminate miscounting machines. It's time for a different approach.

Let's get the mob involved.

Don Corleone would never tolerate gambling machines that might rip off the five families of New York. State lotteries and casinos won't tolerate rip-offs either. They know how to instill trust in their products, trust that though everyone loses, customers know by how much. Customers would flock to other casinos at the faintest hint of a cheating machine.

Outside contractors verify the integrity of all gaming machines, electronic or otherwise. They do this so thoroughly that granny hasn't a care in the world when she pulls the lever of the one-armed bandit.

One such outside auditor is Gaming Laboratories International (GLI). To certify a new device, or even a software upgrade, vendors send GLI all of the source code, all of the tools needed to build the code, maybe a development computer, and even an in-circuit emulator if that's how you debugged your code. Expensive? You bet. Accurate? It sure seems to be.

GLI tears the design apart, digs into the guts, finds back doors impossible to isolate via testing and ensures the customer will lose by exactly the amount specified. Tests check both functionality and threat resistance. Technicians zap every square inch of the gaming machine with a 27 KV prod - because cheaters often try to rip off the devices using ESD to confuse the electronics. GLI jimmies the coin box, and generally simulates all of the attacks observed by those hidden cameras in the casino's roof. That's regression testing of a whole new order. ...

Change the code -- even just one line -- and the whole process repeats. The FEC has no such requirement. ...

If a gaming auditor certified voting machines, elections wouldn't be so much of a, uh, crap-shoot.

I went to the monthly Tulsa County Republican Men's Club luncheon today. The group's name is a bit of a misnomer, since the crowd is close to half-female and there are regular attendees from other counties. The food is good, the speakers are usually interesting, and it's fun to catch up with the latest political gossip. With term limits going into effect next year, candidates are already lining up for next year's races. At today's lunch I saw Brian Crain, who is running for Senate 39 (incumbent Jerry Smith is term-limited); Pam Peterson, who is running for House 67 (incumbent Hopper Smith is leaving the House this year or next -- he plans to run for Senate 25, but he may be deployed overseas with the 45th Infantry, in which case he'll resign early, and a special election will be held); and Joan Hastings, former County Clerk and State Representative, who may be running for Senate 25 (incumbent Charles Ford is term-limited).

The topic of the day was education and the speakers were Union Schools Superintendent Cathy Burden, State Senator Charles Ford, and State Senator Scott Pruitt. Cathy Burden called for administrative consolidation of our more than 500 school districts and said it was hard to find teachers to meet the needs of that growing district. Sen. Ford gave a brief history of state funding for education, a system that has gone from locally-funded to one that is 75% state-funded, and which creates disincentives for local funding. Sen. Pruitt spoke of giving more control back to local districts, providing state funding and demanding results, but not dictating the methods to achieve results, thus empowering local administrators to make decisions.

Amidst all the talk of empowering administrators and tweaking funding formulae, talk of empowering taxpayers (or, in Educanto, "patrons" ) and parents was conspicuous by its absence, especially conspicuous in a Republican meeting. I got to ask the last question, and so I stood up, and said so.

We need patron empowerment. Our system of electing school boards is designed to discourage accountability to the voters. Board members in large districts like Tulsa serve four year terms, with one or two members elected each February. The filing period is in early December, during the Thanksgiving to Christmas rush; the election is the second Tuesday in February, which in even numbered years is one week after the municipal primary. Because of the staggered terms, there is no way for the electorate to dump the whole bunch at once, no matter how incompetent or unresponsive they are. The terms of office are far too long. Over time, a school board member tends to regard himself or herself as an ambassador representing the school administration to the community, rather than as the representative of taxpayers and parents, holding the administration accountable. An "us vs. them" mentality develops, with "us" being the administration and the board, and "them" being the unruly parents and taxpayers who have unreasonable expectations and are stingy, too.

My remedy is to have every district elect the entire school board every two years, during the normal election cycle. I didn't mention this, but I'd even favor partisan elections -- there are stark differences in educational philosophy and they generally fall along national party lines (something that isn't true with municipal issues). Sen. Ford said that the legislature voted to change the election dates back in the '80s, but the school districts applied pressure to change them back.

We also need parental empowerment, by which I mean genuine school choice -- the opportunity for more parents to choose private education for their children. I favor tuition tax credits and tax credits to donors to scholarship programs as ways to make alternative education affordable for more families without creating an entanglement between private schools and the state. Oklahoma is looking for ways to make itself attractive to energetic entrepreneurs, looking to attract and retain young people. As far as I am aware, no state has a statewide school choice program. Here is an opportunity for us to distinguish Oklahoma, make life better for families with school-aged children, and create a competitive environment that will help all schools improve.

I'm just amazed that none of the Republican legislators brought up the issue of school choice. It makes me worry that even if Republicans take over the legislature, they will content themselves with tinkering with this broken system, and placating the teachers' unions and the administrators' lobby. The point, after all, is not to prop up an existing way of doing things, but to educate children, whether in state-run schools, private schools, or at home.

Which presidential administration first raised the alarm that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to America? The Clinton Administration. Rich Lowry has them warning of the danger in their own words. (Thanks again to Dave Russ for the link.)

A bit of belated blogging: A week ago I attended the monthly luncheon of the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club (a misleading name, since probably half of our attendees are women). The guest speaker was Howard Barnett, former CEO of the late great Tulsa Tribune, and chief of staff for former Governor Frank Keating for most of Keating's two terms of office.

Barnett spoke about the current budget mess at the State Capitol. He said that the process is messed up because it was designed that way by Alfalfa Bill Murray. Oklahoma's founding fathers didn't trust big business and didn't trust the railroads, and made it difficult for companies to do business here. They also didn't trust government, so they hobbled the executive branch as best they could. Barnett says Oklahoma really doesn't have an executive branch, as most state government agencies are run by boards, to which the Governor only has a minority of the appointees, and he can only remove his appointees with cause. If the Governor appoints someone apparently solid to a board, but then his appointee goes native, becomes more of an advocate than an overseer for the agency, the Governor is stuck. There is no accountable executive power, and there is no means for negotiating priorities among the different agencies of government.

Barnett says he's working on a book about Oklahoma Government, and his working title is It's Amazing That It Works At All.

Barnett called for reform of the State Constitution. He headed up the effort to rewrite Tulsa's City Charter in 1989, and reflecting on that experience, acknowledged that they hobbled the City Council excessively, out of a fear that Councilors could become ward bosses. Some would say that the result under the previous administration was a city-wide ward boss unfettered by checks and balances. Barnett said that some structures do a better job of functioning when you have the wrong people in office -- so constitutional reform is important -- but the quality of the office holder is the most important factor in the healthy functioning of government.

If I can find anything on the web that Barnett has written on this subject, I'll link to it, and post an update to this entry.

This time it's the limited government advocates who feel cut out of the Bush administration:

In a memo to hundreds of fellow conservatives, a former Reagan administration official says traditional views are being edged out by a neoconservative "national greatness" ideology that accepts big government and advocates interventionist foreign policy.

"Today, most conservative pressure ends up as simple cheerleading for the White House," Donald J. Devine, who was President Reagan's director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote in the memo. "That can be helpful, but there is nothing that pushes politics further to the right, leaving conservatism and the Republican Party to drift." ....

The close identification between the conservative movement and Republican politics is part of the problem, said former Reagan administration official Floyd Brown.

"The Republican Party is becoming more and more entangled with big government," said Mr. Brown, now executive director of Young America's Foundation. "As that trend continues, the movement needs to stand up and differentiate itself from Republican politics � not that I am not a supporter of the president's, because I am."

A similar danger may loom for conservatism and the Republican Party locally as well. We love finally having a mayor who embraces faith and traditional values and who is willing to upset a few applecarts in order to reform city government. But what will conservative Republicans do if the Mayor backs a sales tax hike to build a new sports arena? Will conservatives swallow our concerns and rally 'round him? If the Democrats come out in opposition, will we feel more compelled to demonstrate loyalty to Our Mayor, or will we join with the Democrats against a regressive tax increase, on principle? And what if Republican leaders go in two different directions on the issues?

We can only hope that the Mayor won't put the Republican Party in such a tough spot.

Stephen Glass, "who fabricated details in 27 of the 41 stories he wrote" for the New Yorker has apologized with a hand written note to the head of the American Conservative Union for a 1997 article describing orgies and drug abuse amongst the College Republicans at that year's CPAC conference, an article Glass fashioned out of whole cloth. Nice of him to own up six years later when he's promoting a new book.

Not a day goes by without a report that employees of our State Department (motto: "To protect and to serve... Saudi interests") is in some way undermining the policies of their nominal boss, President Bush.

Donna M. Hughes, Women's Studies Professor at the University of Rhode Island, reports on NRO that the State Department seems to be touting legalized prostitution to foreign countries as a solution to the problem of global sex trafficking:

Last week, the State Department took a Southeast Asian delegation for a tour of a brothel in Nevada. As a part of the International Visitor's Program, nine people from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia visited the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and heard lectures on legal prostitution....

Taking foreign visitors to brothels in Nevada seems to be an ongoing practice of the State Department. In August 1999, I gave a presentation on trafficking of women and children for prostitution to a group of U.S. Information Agency visitors from East Asia. They told me they too had visited a brothel in Nevada as part of their tour....

The purpose of these particular State Department visitors' tours is to teach the participants about human trafficking and how the U.S. is combating the problem. One might conclude from the program of a visiting brothel and a pro-prostitution organization that the State Department is telling international visitors that legalization of prostitution is a solution to trafficking.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports on morale over at State Department HQ:

Walk the halls of the State Department's main offices in Washington these days, and you'll encounter an abundance of political cartoons � something you could not have found even three years ago. It's not that the diplomats at Foggy Bottom have suddenly developed a sense of humor, but rather a newfound contempt for the leader of the free world. The cartoons overwhelmingly lampoon President Bush as a simpleton who doesn't understand the "complexities" of the foreign policy.

Foreign Service sneering at a president is nothing new, of course, but such open disrespect for a commander-in-chief hasn't existed since Foggy Bottom's diplomats decried Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But at least then-Secretary of State George Schultz was able to keep something of a handle on his lieutenants and foot soldiers. Colin Powell has not.

Consider an example with deep policy ramifications. On March 31, representatives of the North Korean government told State Department officials, for the first time, that they were reprocessing plutonium, a key step in developing nuclear weapons. The Pentagon and the White House did not learn of this stunning announcement until Pyongyang told them during previously scheduled talks with North Korea in China on April 18. The State Department intentionally withheld this vital piece of information, fearing that, if the White House knew, officials there might call off the meeting. The White House was reportedly furious about this deception, but it has done nothing concrete to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And if you want more reason to get mad, read through NRO's archive of reporting by Joel Mowbray, who has relentlessly covered the State Department's policy of expediting visas for Saudi nationals, obstructing efforts to release abducted American children being held in Saudi Arabia, and undermining our relationship with Turkey.

Does the State Department exist to represent U. S. interests abroad, or to influence U. S. policy for the benefit of foreign countries? Is there corruption -- bribery -- behind this behavior? Or is it that people attracted to the Foreign Service are more likely to be enamored of foreign countries and disdainful of America? Does the glamour of jetting around the world and attending peace conferences in fancy hotels lead to a preference for "peace process" over real peace (which usually only results from the measured application of military force)?

Perhaps we ought to fire the whole lot and start from scratch. A government agency charged with representing our interests around the world ought to by manned by people who identify with those interests. Yes, Foreign Service employees should have an appreciation for foreign cultures, but they ought to passionately love our culture, our way of life, and our traditions of liberty and rule of law, and seek to defend them against all threats.

If someone views himself more as a "citizen of the World" then as an American, let him go join the French Foreign Legion. He doesn't belong in the U. S. Foreign Service.

A hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the link to the Washington Times op-ed. LGF is another source for a long litany of State Department outrages.

In today's edition of NRO, Kenneth Connor, President of the Family Research Council, warns that the Republican Party is in danger of alienating social conservative voters, who see the party leadership more interested in wooing those actively working to undermine traditional values than in defending those values. Connor points out that 4 million evangelicals failed to vote in 2000 and might stay home again:

Since church attendance was the single best indicator of voting behavior, the stay-at-home evangelicals cost Mr. Bush the popular vote and very nearly the election. If these evangelical voters were not highly motivated by eight years of the smarmy Clinton presidency, and were not eager to "run to the polls" and put the whole sorry Clinton era behind them, then it is dangerous to dismiss the possibility they might stay home again on Election Day 2004 if their core issue is treated in a cavalier fashion.

In case you missed it, an excerpt from the remarks of State Senator Bernest Cain:

"I got a quote the other day that I got from Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler. And I don't have the exact words, but here's basically what it says. He says, in our government we are going to put Christians in key positions of responsibility because there has been too much liberal access going on out there and we are going to straighten up and make sure that the Christian culture is back in control. Now folks, they took Jewish people and they took them out and they strung them apart, they killed them, they mass murdered some of those people, and all of the ideas that were behind that were, and they were doing this while they were having Christian music going on, while they were having hymns. They killed thousands of Jews while they were doing hymns. That is what happens when you let the right wing of the Taliban come in and try to dictate to the State how we should run our business."

You can read it all here in the context of the legislative debate, with a brief, apt rebuttal from State Senator Charles Ford.

Cain has used his position as chairman of the Senate Human Services Committee to block legislation aimed at protecting the dignity and sanctity of human life. For example, he blocked a ban on human cloning which passed the State House on a 96-0 vote and which was sponsored by fellow Oklahoma City Democrat Opio Toure. On this occasion as well, he took the opportunity to bash supporters of the bill.

"I'm not going to pass laws just so a bunch of right-wingers can go pump to their folks that they passed something," Cain said. "I'm not going to do that. We've got too much of that junk."

I see from Cain's bio (linked above) that he learned philosophy as an undergraduate at Oklahoma Baptist University. Hope they do a better job of filtering out the duds nowadays.

Separation of church and state notwithstanding, you can't separate your theology (or lack thereof) from your politics. What you believe about the existence and nature of God and the nature of mankind will shape your ideas about government and society. If we build public policy on a solid foundation of ideas that reflect the world as it really is, we will build a peaceful, happy and prosperous society. If we build policy on a complete misunderstanding of human nature, we will produce chaos and despair. That's why I like to ask candidates -- particularly judicial candidates who won't be drawn out on specific issues -- "Are people basically good, or basically evil?" If they get this question wrong, they'll make all sorts of bad decisions, and I'll end up in my house behind seven different kinds of locks, hoping the marauding hordes will leave me alone.

This is what got me thinking about this: In today's "Bleat", James Lileks tells us about a couple of Anthony Burgess's dystopian sci-fi novels (The Wanting Seed, A Clockwork Orange), and how they reflect Burgess's fascination with "the dynamic between the teachings of St. Augustine and the Pelagian heresy." Augustine said that it was not possible for man not to sin -- because of the fall, humans cannot acheive perfection, apart from God's grace. Pelagius said, yes, it was possible for man to be perfect, and Augustinians shouldn't be so lazy about attaining personal holiness. Of course, theology has implications for public policy: "...in this argument, Burgess saw the two poles of political philosophy at work in the West, and beyond. Augustinian philosophy, which saw man as flawed and sinful and basically hosed when it came to perfectibility in this mortal plain, was the conservative view. Pelagius was liberalism: our nature is not only perfectible, we can perfect ourselves here and now."

Which view you hold comes down to a matter of religious conviction but it leads you to very different conclusions about the role of government, how to educate, how to deal with crime. Some theological propositions aren't testable, but with regard to human nature, we have thousands of years of recorded history to draw from. We can see how real humans have responded to various methods of governing and quickly determine which set of presuppositions, which model, is closest to reality.

I am reminded of a Monty Python bit: The Amazing Mystico and Janet, an illusionist (and his assistant) who builds high-rise apartments by hypnosis -- they stay up as long as the tenants believe in them. In real life of course, apartment buildings stay up only if they are constructed in accordance with the immutable laws of physics, exploiting those laws to produce the desired result. In the same way, a society built in accordance with the immutable laws of human nature will stand firm, while no amount of sincere believing will sustain a society built upon an illusion.

Read the whole article. Lileks' Bleat is always worth reading, and the rest of his site is hilarious, thought-provoking, and amazing, too.

Just got finished with our monthly Midtown Coalition meeting. We shifted it from our usual date and time in order to hold a discussion with area legislators. Tuesday falls in the middle of the legislative week and it's inconvenient to return to Tulsa for a meeting only to drive back to OKC the following morning. We understood, set a Thursday date at the recommendation of the legislators, who normally don't meet on Fridays, confirmed availability, got a meeting room. The only State Senator who said she would come backed out, citing the Senate's schedule, but so far no bad news from the House members. (Although Rep. Easley did warn me that so close to the end of the session, something might come up that would make the members unavailable.)

Monday I sent out reminder postcards to our members. Tuesday afternoon I sent an e-mail reminder to the legislators. Within minutes I received two replies saying that because of the addition of a session on Friday, the representatives regretted that they would be unable to attend our meeting. Wednesday afternoon another cancellation came in. I'm expecting a big crowd for this meeting, and so I started to worry, because the star attractions won't be at the meeting. So I asked Councilor Chris Medlock to have someone come to talk about the Route 66 proposal.

Thursday morning I got a phone call and an e-mail cancelling. Now we're down to one legislator left who confirmed he would be there and who hasn't cancelled. I assumed he had just forgotten or perhaps he figured that we will assume that he can't come like all the others. And since I hadn't heard if anyone could come to talk about Route 66, I called County Commissioner Randi Miller to see if she could come talk to us. At least we'll get to visit with one elected official.

Lo and behold, at 7 p.m., just before the meeting is set to begin, State Rep. Roy McClain (D) walked in. The reason he didn't e-mail with a cancellation is because he actually planned on showing up. I cast no aspersions on the others for cancelling. Perhaps some had committee meetings late into the day; for the older members, perhaps making back to back drives between Tulsa and OKC would be too much to take. But I was impressed that Rep. McClain took the time to be there and was willing to make the extra drive. (I wonder if his colleagues will scold him for showing them up.)

McClain may be just another Michael Flanagan. Flanagan, a poorly-financed Republican, beat Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, an entrenched and powerful but scandal-plagued incumbent, in 1994, but then lost big in 1996 as the seat reverted to its normal voting habits, replacing Flanagan with another Democrat.

McClain didn't wow anyone with his answers tonight, but the kind of initiative he showed just by showing up may indicate that he has what it takes to hang on to a district that is overwhelmingly Republican by tradition and character. Mark Liotta (R) and Mary Easley (D) are two examples of representatives who hang on against unfavorable voter registration numbers; they do it by maintaining contact with their constituents all through the legislative session, and by wearing out shoe leather during the campaign season.

Republicans who want House District 71 back in their column shouldn't take it for granted.

P. S. Thanks to Julie Miner of the City Urban Development Department, who came to talk about Route 66, and Commissioner Miller, for being available at such short notice.

The Democrat primary to replace convicted State Sen. Gene Stipe (D - Big Mac) has produced a narrow win for State Rep. Richard Lerblance of Hartshorne, with only 27% of the vote in a field of five candidates. There is no runoff in this special election, so Lerblance moves to the general election knowing that 73% of Democrat primary voters wanted someone else.

We had a similar result in the race to replace John Sullivan in the State House after his election to Congress in early 2002. Six candidates ran in the Republican primary, won by Chad Stites with only 35% of the vote. The predominantly Republican district gave him a healthy victory over the Democrat in the race, but then the man's flaws began to surface. One wonders if a runoff in that special election would have brought matters to a head earlier.

I believe in majority rule, and "winning" with 27% of the vote doesn't qualify as a majority. Given the closeness of the race, even a two-candidate runoff could fail to give the victory to the candidate preferred by the majority of the voters. The third-place finisher, with 22% of the vote, might have been the choice of those who voted for #4 and #5 if the bottom two candidates had decided not to place their names on the ballot. If all of their votes had gone to #3, he would have had 48% and far outpaced #1 and #2. A similar situation in Louisiana in 1991 sidelined the incumbent governor and left voters with a choice between "The Crook" (Edwin Edwards) and "The Klansman" (David Duke). The same sort of thing happened in Oklahoma in 1990 in both parties' gubernatorial primaries; Burns Hargis might well have placed 2nd had it been a three man race, and Steve Lewis easily could have finished 1st ahead of Walters and Watkins, if a couple of minor candidates had not been in the race.

(Gubernatorial -- doesn't that word just make you think of a peanut doing the backstroke?)

The only way to ensure that the most preferred candidate is elected is to have a series of runoffs, eliminating the candidate with the lowest vote total after each round.

Too expensive and time consuming you say? That's why they invented Instant Runoff Voting -- one ballot, one election, but all the runoffs you need to ensure that the voters' preference gets the victory.

The 2/5 cent sales tax for the use of the Sheriff's Department of Oklahoma County, opposed by the Mayor of Oklahoma City and the Chamber of Commerce as "too large ... too loose ... too long", was defeated soundly tonight, by an 80-20 margin. While the debate leading up to the vote was forceful, it did not appear to get personal, and as this Daily Oklahoman article (free registration required) shows, the two sides were respectively gracious in defeat and magnanimous in victory, with Sheriff Whetsel phoning to concede defeat, and a Chamber official offering to work with the sheriff to address the needs that prompted him to seek the tax increase. 36,000 people signed the petition to put the issue on the ballot, but only 10,059 voted for the proposition. Turnout was less than 14% of registered voters.

Last night Mikki and I attended a banquet honoring Arthur E. Rubin, a pioneer, volunteer, and elder statesman in the Tulsa County Republican Party. Art, now in his 80s, campaigned for Wendell Wilkie in 1940, helped reorganize the local party after big losses in 1958, and has been in the party leadership ever since. He got Jim Inhofe started in elective politics, and has been an encouragement and supporter of countless other candidates, including John Sullivan and Bill LaFortune. He's a man of strong convictions, and a frequent writer of letters to the editor. When he started, Tulsa County was 4-1 Democrat; today, the county is solidly Republican.

The evening included an impression performance by the Trojanaires, Jenks High School's show choir, and a slide show starting with Art's early days on the farm near Fairland, Oklahoma, through his service in World War II, his wedding, and his many travels with his wife. The photo that got the biggest laugh was of him riding bareback on a donkey while on a visit to Greece -- a humorous illustration of his life's work.

Half the fun of these events is getting to talk to elected officials and other activists and hear some of the inside scoop, which of course I can't share in this forum. I will simply say that for someone as fascinated by politics as I am, talking to these folks is like "an adult Christmas every day", as Rush Limbaugh says about his radio show.

Not many years ago, I was on the outside looking in. I was interested in politics, but felt unable to make much of a difference. I had been involved in the late '80s and early '90s, but was frustrated by some of the internal party politics and backed off to invest more time in my church.

Sometime in the mid '90s, on the ok.general Usenet group, Dale Switzer, a computer engineer who was active in the GOP, mentioned that he had been part of a group of activists and leaders who effectively chose between two high-profile candidates for a major office. Both gentlemen were interested in the office, and were viable candidates, but as a result of the influence of activists like Dale one of the two filed for office, ran, won and served for many years, and the other never filed for the race. I asked Dale how he managed to get into such an influential position, and he said it was by being a dedicated, involved foot soldier in the party. It certainly wasn't money or power.

In the intervening years, I learned that Dale was absolutely right. As I've been constructively involved in campaigns and party-building, as well as civic issues, more people have come to know and trust me, and some of the friends I've made are now in influential positions. Many activists have had the thrill of seeing a candidate elected to high office, having helped knock doors or raise money for his first city council campaign. Politicians, the good ones, at any rate, remember and remain grateful to the folks who were with them from the beginning.

So if you love politics but feel left out, go volunteer, get involved, even if what you are doing seems insignificant. No one is going to appreciate the brilliance of your ideas until they see the sweat of your brow. Once you've demonstrated your bona fides, the doors begin to open. And doggone if it isn't a hoot!

Today's featured article on the Wall Street Journal website is a note of thanks from Iraqi poet Awad Nasir. He says that it wasn't the Turks, the Iranian mullahs, the Arab League, or Jacques Chirac that came to free his people from the clutches of Saddam:

"No, believe it or not, Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world--from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity.

"Those who died to liberate our country are heroes in their own lands. For us they will be martyrs and heroes. They have gained an eternal place in our hearts, one that is forever reserved for those who gave their lives in more than three decades of struggle against the Baathist regime."

Read it all.

Tulsa Today has a powerful account of the self-destruction of the once-powerful Tulsa Metro Chamber, an organization that receives millions of tax dollars annually to promote Tulsa's economic development. The article quotes an unnamed staffer who describes Chamber CEO Jay Clemens as "a complexly bizarre kind of guy who vacillates between psychotic paranoia, arrogance, and bullying." The article goes on to detail the control-freak organizational culture that keeps employees in a state of fear and keeps board members in the dark.

The Chamber's influence has been on the wane since the November 2000 defeat of "It's Tulsa's Time", the $263 million sales tax increase for a new arena and convention facilities. I served on the Convention and Tourism Task Force leading up to that vote. It was supposed to be a grass-roots process to determine what Tulsans wanted for our city, and there were reports that the Steering Committee was developing a novel set of recommendations that would look very different from the failed 1997 proposal. The Chamber leadership and then-Mayor Savage sidelined the Steering Committee, a broad-based group which included opponents of the failed 1997 package, and created an "Executive Committee" that could be relied upon to reach the predetermined conclusion. The Chamber's campaign strategy was to avoid debate and pretend that the opposition didn't exist. The ostrich-like strategy didn't work, and Tulsa voters simultaneously turned down the Tulsa Time package and approved "4 to Fix the County", a sales tax extension for a variety of improvements to county facilities and infrastructure.

The Chamber leadership seems to still want to believe that they alone run the city, and they've rebuffed friendly overtures to include them as partners with other groups in developing a new vision for the Tulsa region. "My way or the highway," is the unspoken gist of the Chamber's response.

High praise to Mayor LaFortune and his team for setting out to scrutinize the effectiveness of the Chamber's economic development efforts. Meanwhile, the hundreds and thousands of ordinary businesses who belong to the Chamber ought to wonder if their interests are being effectively represented by the organization that receives their dues. The board's job is to hold the CEO and staff accountable; the members should insist that the board do its duty.

Hard to believe? Well, it's not happening here. It's happening in Oklahoma City, where Mayor Kirk Humphreys and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce are joining forces to defeat a 0.4% permanent county sales tax sought by Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel to fund his department. The Daily Oklahoman quotes Humphreys as saying, "It's too large in the amount of money, it's too loose in accountability and it goes on for too long."

Approval of the tax on May 13 would create an oversight committee, but the members would serve at the Sheriff's pleasure. The tax will raise $30-$35 million a year. The Sheriff could spend it on anything. Mayor Humphreys says that having that kind of money to spend with no oversight would make the Sheriff more powerful than the Governor.

Competition over and coordination of tax elections takes place all the time behind the scenes, as overlapping government entities try to keep the money flowing. An ill-timed bond issue from, say, the Vo-Tech District could make it harder for another taxing authority, such as the city, to extend a sales tax. But an elected local official is usually reluctant to oppose another local official's tax hike, because he doesn't want to create enemies for the next time he must ask the voters for more money. So it's refreshing to see Mayor Humphreys break the code of silence of the Bureaucratic Brotherhood and take a public stand against a bad idea.

Here's the Oklahoman's collection of stories on the proposed tax hike.

You have heard that Fox News won the war-coverage war, but conservative news outlets posted gains in other media as well. Local news/talk station KFAQ nearly doubled from the previous quarter, rising from 17th in the market to 11th. And the latest newspaper circulation numbers show New York Times circulation dropping 5.34% from the previous year, while Rupert Murdoch's New York Post gained 10.21%. Despite the war, the LA Times and Washington Post also saw numbers drop, although not as steeply as the New York Times. The story only showed the top 20 papers -- anyone know how the Oklahoman and the World did?

We tend to use "democracy" as a shorthand description for the relatively free and stable social, political, and economic system we enjoy, but by looking at the post-colonial experience of most Third World nations, it's easy to see that a voting system alone is an insufficient basis for liberty. Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto, in an interview in National Review Online, explains why establishing secure title to property is an essential step for "nation-building" in Iraq. He mentions a startling figure: There is no clear title to 78% of assets in Mexico, 90% of assets in Egypt. Investment and credit are impossible if no one can be sure who owns what.

Here's the website of DeSoto's organization, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, for more on this concept.

James Lileks introduced a new piece of music at this weekend's Minnesota Youth Symphonies concert, dedicated to a two-year-old girl who was on her way to Disneyland with her mommy and daddy on September 11, 2001, when her plane slammed into the World Trade Center. Lileks writes that her story "is the story that defines that day, and makes me unable to speak." Yet it was his task to introduce a piece written in her memory, with her grandparents in the audience, and then to introduce Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Lileks wrote about Christine on the anniversary of 9/11; his words still give me chills.

We must never, ever forget. Read these columns and remember. And pray.

Interesting column by George Will in the April 28 newsweek on Oklahoma senator
Jim Inhofe. Here's the lead:

"Many members of the House and Senate say they ran for office out of love�of justice, equality, peace, the American way, etc. James Inhofe says he ran for Congress in 1986 for �vengeance.� In a city full of people who pretend to believe that politics should be kinder and gentler, Inhofe is refreshing. He does not even pretend."

Sorry about the lack of entries for the last couple of days, as I was down at the Oklahoma Republican Convention in Midwest City. It was a fun but busy time. Friday was a day-long seminar for grassroots party leaders. County party officers from across the state were there to learn about election and campaign finance laws, motivating volunteers, and fundraising. I gave a brief talk on using computers for campaigns and for off-year party building.

I went to my first State Committee meeting late Friday afternoon, where we debated amendments to the state party's permanent rules, deciding which would go before the full convention. The most controversial rule would have abolished the requirement that chairman and vice chairman not be of the same sex. It would have applied to every level of the party: precinct, county, congressional district, and statewide. I supported the move, as it would make it easier to fill precinct offices. I was surprised at the opposition to the change from the rural counties, which dominate the state committee. Some women expressed fear that women would be squeezed out of leadership if the amendment were passed. I think you'd be more likely to see women filling both top spots, given that women dominate grassroots activity in the party.

Friday night was the convention banquet. Ralph Reed , chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, and Joe Allbaugh , recently retired head of FEMA and one of George W. Bush's closest advisers in Texas, were our two main speakers, both introduced by political consultant Marc Nuttle.

The connections in politics are amusing -- Nuttle and Allbaugh first met in 1974, when Henry Bellmon was running for re-election to the Senate. The '74 Senate race (Bellmon was opposed by Ed Edmondson) was one of the closest in Oklahoma's history , and there was a controversy involving the voting machines in Tulsa County, which lacked a "straight party" lever. Bellmon was finally seated by the Senate 90 days after the election. That year Allbaugh was Bellmon's driver, Nuttle was campaign manager. 26 years later, both wind up in Florida, working on the closest presidential election in recent history -- Allbaugh as an adviser to Bush, Nuttle as an attorney working on the legalities of the recount process.

More later.