The Interocitor

A Modest Proposal

As any election expert will tell you, there is uncertainty in counting the ballots for any election -- some methods are better than others, but all methods have errors. In a large state such as California, Florida or Washington, the suggestion that a simple recount in a close election will settle all questions is silly in the extreme. So, in order to head off the inevitable crisis here in California, I offer the following Initiative Statue:

Sections 15650-15654 of the California Elections Code are amended as follows:

15650. This article does not apply to any primary election.

15651. (a) If at any election, except as provided in subdivision (b) and an election for Governor or Lieutenant Governor, two or more persons receive a number of votes differing by less than 0.01% of the total votes cast for the given contest, and no other candidate has received more votes an equal and the highest number of votes for an office to be voted for in more than one county, a tie vote shall be declared. tThe Secretary of State shall forthwith summon the candidates who have received the tie votes, whether upon the canvass of the returns by the Secretary of State or upon recount by a court, to appear before him or her at the Secretary of State's office at the State Capitol at a time to be designated by him or her. The Secretary of State shall at that time and place determine the tie by lot. If the Secretary of State is a candidate in the affected election, the Chief Justice shall break the tie. Except as provided in subdivision (b), in the same manner, at a time and place designated by it, the election board shall determine a tie vote, whether upon the canvass of the returns by the election board or upon a recount by a court, for candidates voted for wholly within one county or city.

(b) In lieu of resolving a tie vote by lot as provided in subdivision (a), the legislative body of any county, city, or special district not subject to the Uniform District Election Law (Part 4 (commencing with Section 10500) of Division 10) may resolve a tie vote by the conduct of a special runoff election involving those candidates who received an equal number of votes and the highest number of votes are tied as defined in (a). A special runoff election shall be held only if the legislative body adopts the provisions of this subdivision prior to the conduct of the election resulting in the tie vote. If a legislative body decides to call a special runoff election in the event of a tie vote, all future elections conducted by that body shall be resolved by the conduct of a special runoff election, unless the legislative body later repeals the authority for the conduct of a special runoff election.

If a special runoff election is held pursuant to this subdivision, the legislative body shall call for the runoff election to be held in the local entity on a Tuesday not less than 40 nor more than 125 days after the administrative or judicial certification of the election that resulted in a tie vote. If a regular election is to be held throughout the jurisdiction within that time period, the special runoff election shall be held on the same day as, and consolidated with, the regular election.

15652. If the tie vote has been determined pursuant to Section 15651, the person declared elected by the Secretary of State or the election board is entitled to a certificate of election. The Secretary of State, the county elections official or the city elections official, whichever the case may be, shall immediately make out and deliver to that person a certificate of election.

15653. When two or more persons have an equal and highest number ofvotes for either Governor or Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State shall deliver a certificate to that effect to each of the tied candidates. Each tied candidate may present the certificate to the Legislature in the manner that he or she sees fit.

15654. In case any two or more persons have an equal and highest number of votes for either Governor or Lieutenant Governor, the Legislature shall, by a joint vote of both houses, choose one of the persons to fill the office.

If the total votes for two candidates differ by less than 100 votes per million, why spend time and money searching for a nonexistant mandate? Just flip a damn coin. They're going to wish they did that in Washington State.

The LA Times: Dumb or Crooked? You Decide

Patterico's LA Times Year-End Summary (Part 1) is up. He looks at the Times' election coverage and their occasional lapses of objectivity on partisan matters. As is usual for the MSM (of which the Times is but a mundane example) the lapses all fall the same way. Which way? You'll have to go read Patterico's summary to find out.

UPDATE: Part 2 is up, dealing with the Times' non-election malfeasance. I particularly liked the link back to the Scalia/Ginsberg controversies, where Scalia got dragged over the coals for things he didn't do, and Ginsberg did, but got away with. Here's a post about Justice Ginsberg attending a speech by the named defendant in a pending case.

Update 2:

Asshat Award: Clair Short

Apparently Clair Short, Britain's favourite left-wing dimwit, thinks that the US and other countries are behaving unilaterally in rushing aid to the tsunami-striken counties of South Asia. According to this report, she told the BBC

“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up.”

It's bad enough that Indonesian generals are going to steal some of the assistance, but there's really no reason to cut the UN in on the theft.

Damned if we don't send aid, damned if we do. I sense a pattern here.

In related news, Amazon's disaster relief donations have passed the $5.5 million mark.

UPDATE: $11 7 million. More than some countries have given.

World's Most Useless Movie Review

How can a movie review be worthless? When the reviewer makes it clear that he hated the whole idea of the film going in, and the best that the movie could accomplish was to sustain his dislike.

Such is A. O. Scott's review of Phantom of the Opera in the New York Times. Scott's utter hatred of the Lloyd Webber canon makes him incompetent to review a film based on Webber's work; he will damn the film in any event.

....the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose relentless bombast afflicts this movie like a bad case of swollen lymph nodes.

Of course, Lord Lloyd Webber's music is the whole point of the film, and Joel Schumacher, the director, does his best to find a visual style to match the vulgarity and pretentiousness of the soundtrack. He succeeds admirably....

and lots more in that vein. If one hated Phantom on the stage, this review would confirm their prejudices. If one happened to like the play, though, parsing this rant is tiresome at best.

One is left with the impression that Phantom is a production that only the intellectually inferior could like, however well it is presented. You know ... a red state movie.

Blog Post of the Year

TIME and nearly everyone else awards the blog prize of the year to Power Line, in large part to the 61st Minute post of September 9, 2004. Go back and see how a major story develops in the blogosphere.

There's also 10 things TIME learned about blogs.

Glenn Reynolds, Time Man Person of the Year?

The Vodkapundit, obviously trying to ramp up his hit count, suggests that not only is this the Year of the Blogger, but that Glenn Harlan Reynolds deserves the award rather than some composite.

Naming a person unknown to most people is unusual, but not unheard of. A few years back a scientist whose name I still don't know won the award. Andy Grove (1997) is not exactly a household name etiher. Besides, not much could be worse than picking Gorby as Man of the Decade in 1989, when he will spend eternity as a footnote to Reagan's biography.

Besides, it would be a good run-up to Professor Reynold's Supreme Court appointment.

Mandatory link

Every so often you come across an item that requires a mandatory Google-assisting link. Here's one about the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where a faculty member's exhortation of violence and murder against Republicans is treated by the University as boistrous humor.

But a group of students from the UWSP College Republicans organization wasn't laughing Nov. 4 when a post-election Rothfuss column included phrases like "punching smug-looking Republicans in the mouth" and "key every car you see with a Bush bumper sticker." The column's premise was that Rothfuss was drunk while writing to himself, and it suggested, "why don't you go on a killing spree? I pet you can take out fixteen for sisteen republicans beofre they gun you down. Duke, youd' be like a heroe."

Book Reports

About this time of year I start putting a serious dent in my incoming book pile. Here's a few books I've read recently and enjoyed:

• Neal Stephenson, The System of the World (**** [out of 5])
  The thrid and final book in the Baroque Cycle. A bit of a letdown after the rapid pace of The Confusion as we return to the philosophy and quiet politics of the first book (Quicksilver). A hundred pages lost would have improved it a great deal. But Stephenson's great historical novel of the birth of the modern world is quite worth reading. History is not when and where, but why and this makes why very clear.
  


• James Ellroy, American Tabloid (***1/2)
  Story of the Kennedy Presidency and the conspiracies behind it, the Bay of Pigs and the assassination. If you like your cynicism unadulterated unalloyed, this one's for you. I found it a bit too dark -- sure things can be rotten, but they're not all rotten. Think of it as Tarantino in a bad mood.


• Peter F Hamilton, The Night's Dawn Trilogy (*****)
  Actually composed of 6 paperbacks starting with this one, Night's Dawn is a 4,000 page space opera. Wonderful stuff. The human Confederation thinks it has it all nailed -- secular values have finally led to a interstellar golden age. Immortality has been achieved by recording the minds of the dead and storing htem. Then for a very odd reason the souls of the dead start returning -- taking over living bodies -- and the Confederation gets to rethink nearly everything (e.g. their secular attitudes can't explain things like souls) while fighting a losing war against the rapidly expanding legions of the Possessed. Heaven, Hell and then some.


• John Birmingham, Weapons of Choice (****)
  First novel in an alternate history. The USS Hillary Clinton and her battle group are transported back in time to just before the Battle of Midway, which never happens as a result. Things start to diverge and the foregone conclusion of the Allies winning WW2 becomes oddly less certain with the addition of this powerbul asset to the Allied side. It doesn't help that the racist, sexist and fascist culture of the 1940s grates on the crew or the 21st Century battle group. And vice versa. Picture a 1942 Georgia boy under the command of a lesbian black woman and you get the drift. Meanwhile the bad guys are changing their plans. Great fun, but the unreasonable opening coincidences delayed my "willing suspension of disbelief."


• Harry Turtledove, Return Engagement (***)
  The alternate history begun in How Few Remain enters a second World War against a dictatorial South which is hellbent on finding a final solution to the "Negro Problem." Once a good idea, the series has gotten predictable in the extreme.


• Chris Moriarty, Spin State (*****)
  First novel by a new female writer. Think of Moriarty as a cross between C J Cherryh and Richard K Morgan, with a bit of Vinge and MacLeod tossed in. Humanity is utterly dependant upon certain Bose-Einstein condensates that can only be found on one planet (see: Arrakis), in order to operate their quantum entanglement technology. Lose that and it's back to relativity. Push has come to shove, and Catherine Li is tossed by the Powers That Be into the middle. She's not expected to survive -- and that's if she wins. First of several connected books.


• Larry Niven, Ringworld's Children (***)
  Ringworld's Children is half a book. The first half was the previous Ringworld Throne. Unfortunately, Niven didn't combine them, toss out the filler in "Throne", and write the book that would have been the worthy successor to "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers." But he didn't, and the two half books don't make a whole one. What we have instead is (like "Throne") the outline of a great novel, a few sketches of characters (and not even that for some: Chmee's son whatsisname), and Louis Wu solving a few puzzles with clues we never see. Larry Niven once said that the Ringworld offered so many opportunities for sequels that it would make Edgar Rice Burroughs look like a case of "writer's block." Sadly, having created such a mental playground, Niven is unable to capitalize on it.


• Peter F Hamilton, Pandora's Star (****1/2)
  Hamilton is the best modern writer of grand space opera. This new set of books (2? 3?) details the conflict between the expanding Human Commonwealth, whose economy is based on transport gates, and an utterly unexpected attack by a single alien. Of course, the alien has a lot of resources and the Will to win. Do the humans have the will to defend? Or is it just going to be politics as usual as segments of humanity grasp for advantage, not realizing they're in a war to the death? To be continued.

Yawn

Scott Peterson given death penalty. This will likely reduce his life insurance rates, as it keeps him out of the general population and his chances of being executed are about 1%. It also gives him an automatic appeal. He is more likely to die by either suicide or old age, or get a new trial, than he is of being executed.

How's the Night Stalker case coming?

Academic Discrimination: A Proposed Solution

Professor Bainbridge has the latest entry regarding academic discrimination against people on the Right, this time at Harvard. He particularly takes the LATimes Jonathan Chait to task for repeating canards that were old in Dixie in the 60's.

My take on the "Conservatives don't want to be professors" line is that the science and engineering college I attended in the 1970's had an entering class of 4 women out of 130. When I went back for my 25th reunion, the entering class was 48% women, and no, it's not affirmative action (wouldn't work at Mudd). It is affirmative recruiting, however. But the line back then was that "women don't want to be engineers."

Sure, if all the doors are closed, few will try to break them down, and fewer will succeed. As Harvard shows by attempting to block eminent right-of-center law scholars from the faculty -- and creating a very hostile workplace once they are hired -- with respect to politics academia today is roughly where Selma was in 1962.

A possible soution: What if Senate confirmations for appointees from academia treated membership on the faculty of a university hostile to conservatives as akin to being a member of a country club with no black members? A bit brutal at first, perhaps, but I bet you there would be changes made in a bloody hurry.

CBS's attack on bloggers

CBS doesn't like bloggers. No, really! According to CBS, bloggers are partisans who cannot be trusted with The News like the House of Murrow can. Or some such.

Hugh Hewitt and others have had at CBS's hypocrisy this morning and there's not much left to say except to note that my site has "Blogs for Bush" prominently displayed. I never saw a "Networks for Kerry" button over at the CBS site. So buzz off.

MoveOn.org to take over Democrat Party?

Joe Gandleman reports that MoveOn.org has had it up to here with those namby-pamby corportate stooges who run the Democrat Party. It seems that MoveOn.org, et al, intend to take back the People's Party and return it to its roots (i.e. socialism, protectionism and environmentalism). All I can say is "where can I send a check?" We need another 10 Senate seats.

Let's Miss the Point

The New York Times has a front page article tomorrow discussing an argument in the gay community about whether gay rights were pushed too fast in the last few years. Yet nowhere in the article does it even suggest that the mistake was pushing through the courts rather than through legislatures, or that the backlash ballot items had more to do with preempting activist courts rather than complete hostility to gay rights.

Christianity = Politics ?

Baldilocks has a great post up about how two networks are refusing to run a church's commercials welcoming gays to Christian services because the subject of gays and Christianity touches on politics, and they don't run political ads. Not a lot of Christians in management at those networks, I guess.

New low in cartooning

Ted Rall has nothing on this noxious pile of hate, from Martin Rowson at the Guardian. Martin's email address is below the "cartoon."

Question: If there are laws in England that outlaw attacking groups for their beliefs, wouldn't this qualify? It is quite comparable in its anti-Christian attitudes as any 19th Century anti-Semitic cartoon.

Grasping at Straws

During oral arguments in the interstate wine case today, Justice David Souter suggested that wineries post all their internal records to the internet and give the states passwords to access them. No legislating from the bench there.

Not to be outdone, Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that states could regulate wineries in other states. I can just see some small Napa winery trying to deal with impossibly countervailing demands from 17 different state bureaucracies.

Justice David Souter raised the possibility the Internet may increase the state's power to police out-of-state wineries.

He said states could require the out-of-state wineries to keep their financial records available online, but they could only be accessed by the state with a special password.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said states could require licenses for out-of-state wineries that would make them subject to state jurisdiction. "Isn't that feasible?" she asked.

In short, Todd Zywicki's comments about this case presenting the Justices with very few choices are made manifest after seeing the Court grasp at so many weak straws. Todd said O'Connor would have problems. Unless they rule for the wineries this case could be a very ugly precedent.

UPDATE: Dahlia Lithwick has the real lowdown over on Slate. Read. Then compare it to the mediocre offerings over at the NYT, Reuters and AP.

Tribune Co: Income tax doesn't apply to us

The Tribune Co, owners of the LA Times, are in tax court trying to defend an inherited 1998 Times-Mirror transaction that cleared about 2 billion dollars cash money, but on which they paid no income tax. One wonders if Times-Mirror used Irwin Schiff's theories of income tax avoidance, but no, it was all vetted by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Surely no fools they.

Gory details are all here in the LA Tax Avoider, but what it seems to be is that Times-Mirror sold some properties for 2 billion dollars. But they didn't get the money for their shares, quite -- a new LLC was set up holding just the cash and they traded their shares for shares of the new LLC in a tax-free exchange. So they only completely controlled 2 billion dollars rather than owning 2 billion dollars. Neat stunt. The IRS is asking for $915 million in back tax and penalty.

Note: for anyone considering the same thing for your business, the IRS has issued a don't-ever-try-this-crap-again letter.

Peace Crimes?

Judging by this Belmont Club rundown on the Congolese civil war, which may have killed more people than the Rwandan genocide it is related to, one has to wonder if UN peacekeeping is a worse scandal than UN sanctions administration. At least far fewer people died in the oil-for-graft program than in the UN mediated genocide in the Congo.

One has to ask. I know there are War Crimes, are there Peace Crimes? Is there any body of law that holds people accountable for allowing genocide to continue while they are duty-bound to stop it? Does Kofi and company have more to look forward to than resignation and retirement?

Hewitt's Principled Pragmatism

What to say about Hugh Hewitt's new book If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat? Patterico has badgered me into giving my take on this, so here it is. (You can find Patterico's review here).

I find I've come to a strange conclusion. Hugh's basic point (Vote the Republican party line or be damned) has much to say for it, but his understanding of the Republican coalition, his claim that 3rd parties are irrelevant and his distaste for intraparty dissent all cause me problems. Yet, after all this, I may well have come to his happy medium by an altogether different route. I am, for the moment, more willing to consider social conservative candidates than I was yesterday, despite violent disagreement with their statist ways.

First, Hugh's view of the Republican Party ignores substantial parts of it. He divides the Republicans into 3 camps: Faith, Wealth and Military. But from his discussion, his view of the Wealth Party is that of Wall Street investors and "the Rich" -- the Rockefeller wing -- when economic libertarians and small business owners are also primarily concerned with economic issues yet have no general alliance with Wall Street.

Similarly, Hugh lumps all neocons into the Military wing, when to many neocons Military is subordinate to other things, like free trade, democracy and personal liberty (crossing over into libertarian territory once again). Military is merely a tool to use when the real weapons (free trade, democracy ...) have been ignored for too long to be immediately useful. In short, there is a Liberty wing that Hugh completely misses.

Only the Faith wing does Hugh seem to get right -- perhaps because this is the wing he inhabits. Or perhaps I'm just sensitive here because while I see Faith as a personal strength and reservoir of integrity, I have no wish to see Faith-driven law, and am therefore often at odds with this camp.

Secondly, Hugh has no patience for third parties. His view is that there are two Established Parties, and if you don't vote for one of them you might as well not vote. While this is often the case, it is not always the case.

In 1992, Ross Perot got 19% of the vote, largely from Republicans and all from people who considered the mounting deficit that had exploded under Bush 41 to be enough of a threat that they'd throw over their own party's candidate to make that point. Bush was defeated in an election he would have won mano y mano. Was this a mistake on the Perot voter's part? No. Clinton and Congress got the message loud and clear. Perot's 19% got their balanced budget. They got other things, too, which they might not have wanted, but they agreed to that with their vote.

So, here I have to strongly disagree with Hewitt: Choice is more important than Party. If there's not a "dime's worth of difference" between parties on an issue you find critical and there is a third choice available, you are literally voting against your interests to vote for either major party. How are the politicians going to know what you want if you keep voting the other way? In the last election people who utterly opposed US involvement in Iraq were irresponsible if they settled for Kerry. There was at least one clear anti-war candidate on every state's ballot, and often two. If anything, we need more 3rd party voting, not less, or political lines will continue to ossify. In some states, on state issues, the initiative process takes the place of this 3rd party need, allowing things that both parties oppose (e.g. medical marijuana, property tax rollbacks) to become law. Properly instituted in most states, the initiative and referendum might obviate the 3rd party need entirely.

The main point of Hugh's book, though is to advocate partisanship and to argue for a pragmatic backing of the Party's candidates -- whoever they are -- rather than a focus on issues and candidates. Macropolitics versus micropolitics. There is no "i" in "Team." The Arlen Specter case, occurring after the book's publication, is a perfect example of this: Arlen may be a loose cannon, but he's our loose cannon. As Hugh points out over and over, "Majorities Matter" and one can't have a majority if one is constantly purging voting members. Fine.

Hewitt breaks partisan voters down into one of 5 groups: Regulars, Occasionals, Principled Pragmatists, Movement Activists and Fanatics. Regulars are the bread and butter voters -- they show up, pull your lever, and go home. They neither know or care what's in the platform or what any candidate favors. Occasionals show up when it suits them. Occasionals elected Jesse Ventura. I have a friend who votes only for pro-marijuana candidates, but mostly he's not motivated. Occasionals are unpredictable. Movement activists are the ones at the party meeting who are only interested in a candidate's views on their issue (e.g. the anti-abortion crowd). Fanatics are the activists who will roundly damn, in public, any of their own candidates who fail to support the extreme edge of their given issue.

Then there is the Pragmatic Partisan, who fights within the party for his own ideals, but cheerfully votes the party line in the end. He's a regular who does read and care about the platform -- a leader more than a follower, but a follower in the sense that he never strays from the Party itself. Hugh then suggests there is a variant of this: the Principled Pragmatic Partisan. It seems an oxymoron in the context, but it's not, exactly. It is, in fact, the group to which the book speaks.

The problem with People of Principle is that they often stomp off into the night when they're asked to accept the unPrincipled or Pragmatic candidate (e.g. Specter). Oh, they won't vote for the other Party, they might vote 3rd party or leave it blank, they might even vote for the Party, but they won't do any of it cheerfully. They care about their politics and are forever uncomfortable in a large party. Maybe they are social conservatives who can barely tolerate free-trading neo-cons who know "the value of everything and the worth of nothing". Or libertarians who roll their eyes every time the Abortion or Immigration topics come up. Or War on Terror types who get upset with everyone who doesn't understand What Comes First.

Hewitt tries to make the case, primarily to the Movement Activists, but also to the broader camps, that Party Must Come First. Only with Unity can we have Majority. You can't have that luxury of voting Libertarian or Constitution just because your local candidate is too mainstream. The problem is that I don't think he makes it.

To have party unity in the face of division, there must be a place where it is fair to fight it out. Only through conflict of some sort can consensus be wrought. In the current system this can happen one of two places: in a back room, caucus or convention; or in a primary. The first has the advantage of being private, where disagreements don't play as well into the opposition's hands, and the disadvantage of excluding many party players from participation, lessening acceptance. The second has the opposite problem, but by and large is to be preferred. And one of the things you have to be willing to accept is that, in a primary, movements and principles may well combine to select a weaker candidate than pure pragmatism would choose. You may lose some elections you might otherwise have won. On the other hand you may keep some voters that moderate candidate would have lost, possibly forever: Movement voters, if ignored long enough, become occasionals. Paul Weyrich, a social conservative icon, questioned the wisdom of participating in voting, or even American society, after the 1998 acquittal of President Clinton. George W Bush, however, changed his mind. A John McCain might have done far better in the center in 2000, and might even have won handily, but it would have been at the cost of the Weyrich-Dobson axis. Hewitt argues that this attitude is destructive, and Movement Activists need to become more Pragmatic. This is wishful thinking. We simply need to accept the conflict, resolve it however, and move on. The other side gains little as they have the same problem. Wishing won't help. Unity only comes after a fair fight.

You also need to accept that people need an outlet. There will be candidates that suck, standing on issues that appeal to few. Demanding party unity here is damaging to the coalition. See Duke, David.

There will also be candidates who seem unappealing to the middle but make the rank-and-file swoon. You win a majority by winning overall, and that means you keep the coalition happy, even if you have to lose some races a moderate might have won to do it. Specter, Shays, or Jeffords (oops, kept him) might be a better loss than a win if it keeps the coalition happy or builds the party for next time. Let your base have their try, they might just win. See Reagan, Ronald.

In 2002, everyone, but everyone, said that Bill Simon couldn't possibly beat Grey Davis and the Republicans blew it when they didn't nominate Riordan. Yet after the party gave up, without much money or support, Davis beat Simon by only 5 points, 47-42, with 10% going 3rd party. Self-fulfilling prophesy. Simon might have won, even in blue-state California, if the oh-no-he's-too-conservative faction had rolled up its collective sleeves and worked for it. And even if he'd lost, the people who backed him wouldn't feel like sitting on their hands next time a moderate runs. Not every strong conservative is Alan Keyes, just like not every moderate is Bill Jones.

In short, Hugh hasn't sold me, and I remain a principled partisan with pragmatic tendencies: a free-market, pro-immigration, small government, pro-war, libertarian non-social conservative. I believe strongly in a God, but am a member of no Church. I have enough of a time agreeing with myself to agree with someone else. And yes, I voted the Republican ticket in 2004, except where it didn't matter.

See also Clark Smith and The Yell for other takes on Hugh's book.

UPDATE: Welcome Weekly Standard readers. I hope you stay and check out the rest of the Interocitor. I'm a charter subscriber to the Standard, FWIW.

Libertarian Party Flush, Needs No Further Donations

The Libertarian Party announced recently that it has money to burn, and will not be needing any further donations. Recruitment drives, ballot access, even ad buys for promising candidates are all well in hand. So, thanks everyone, says the LP, we won't be asking you for money ever again.

Hard to believe? Well, what else can it mean when the Libertarian Party joins Kerry and the Green Party to spend $115,000 to recount the Ohio ballots to see if Bush won by 120,000 or only 110,000.

A ruling by a federal judge in Columbus on Friday rejected one county's attempt to stop a recount, avoiding a legal precedent that could have stopped other recounts. Green and Libertarian party candidates have already raised the required $113,600 for a recount.

Something only my old senile rich uncle would do, if I had one. So the next time the LP hits me up for cash, my answer will be "Go get it from Kerry and the Greens."

Bring Out Your Dead!

It's Dead Pool time. Rules here. My picks will be posted Jan 1.

Bye Bye Norman

Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation who completely flubbed the airport response to 9/11, is finally leaving.

Mr. Bush has already announced plans to thoroughly overhaul his cabinet. Eight cabinet secretaries, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft, have announced their resignations, and more, like Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary, are expected to go in the next week or two.

He Who Needs Not the Links has been tracking Norman here, here, here and here. Even though the airport security job was moved to the new TSA, under Homeland Security, it's still good to see Mineta leave. Now if we can just disband TSA -- nothing was wrong with the old private system that triple the pay wouldn't have solved.

UPDATE (12/9): And now he's not.

Controversy in England

Samizdata reports that the idea that one can defend oneself in one's own home has moved from the fringes of polite society to a position of mere controversy:

Even if a struggle led to the death of an intruder, Sir John added, the law would presume that the person in that house had acted lawfully "and let the law change that presumption because of fact in evidence".

He said: "The message it sends to the would-be attacker is, `Do not think you can come into people's homes and people will not defend themselves with the right type of force that's necessary.' At the moment it seems it's the other way round."

What a country! I guess this means that barbeque-fork control is off the political agenda for the year.

Whatever Happened to Mr. Yushchenko?

One of the stranger stories out of the Ukrainian election struggle is that of Yushchenko's mystery illness, which the MSM seems to want to ignore. The Belgravia Dispatch (competing with Samizdata for best UK blog) has a great rundown on whether Yushchenko was poisioned.

In September, Mr. Yushchenko immediately said he had been poisoned, but that charge was lost among the heated political debates and demonstrations in the final weeks of the campaign, which culminated in the disputed election.

"Look at my face," Mr. Yushchenko told the Ukrainian Parliament on Sept. 21, after his first stint in the Vienna hospital. "Note my articulation. This is one-hundredth of the problems that I've had. This is not a problem of political cuisine as such. We are talking about the Ukrainian political kitchen where assassinations are ordered."

Opponents dismissively suggested that the cause of Mr. Yushchenko's hospitalization was bad sushi or too much alcohol; doctors here said there was no evidence of either. But some doctors point out that it is conceivable Mr. Yushchenko had the bad luck to develop a rare illness, difficult to diagnose, at the height of the campaign.

The issue has persisted because of the obvious disfigurement and discoloration of his face, which is swollen and pocked with large bumps and cysts, and is a dusky grayish color. The left eye is bloodshot and sometimes waters.