Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Blogging software

My friend and colleague Eugene Volokh is having problems:

1. He wants folks to be able to send trackbacks to his blog even though he is still using Blogger to power the Conspiracy.
2. Blogger is giving him email problems.
Blogmatrix is giving him RSS feed problems.

The obvious solution is for Eugene to move the Conspiracy to Movable Type. (Given the Conspiracy's bandwidth usage, TyePad wouldn't work. I get a fraction of the Consipracy's traffic and I'm still using 3-4 times the maximum allowed bandwidth.) As for trackbacks alone, Kevin Aylward provides a fix by which Eugene could send trackbacks to any MT or TypePad blog, but I don't know of any way to add the trackback feature to a Blogger-powered blog.

Blog gratification

Last Friday I recommended Spiegelau's Vino Grande Burgundy wine glasses. As of this morning, Amazon reports that 4 of my readers have already bought a set of those glasses through my site. It's a heartwarming feeling when folks act on my recommendations. It's not only financially rewarding, but personally very gratifying. Makes it all worthwhile. Thanks guys. If you're one of the folks who bought the Spiegelau, let me know how you like them - and whether I can quote you by name.

Dissecting the Polls

Donald Lambri dissects the recent Presidential polls in the Washington Times:

Voter surveys showing Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry defeating President Bush are premature, at best, and do not reflect the president's relatively stable job-approval rating, polling analysts say. Other factors behind the numbers, meanwhile, suggest the president may not be in as much political trouble as his opponents believe.

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll reported Wednesday that public support for Mr. Kerry had soared, putting him 12 points ahead of the president in a head-to-head matchup among likely voters — 55 percent to 43 percent. But the poll's footnotes suggest the Massachusetts senator's spurt in the polls may have more to do with the sharp increase in the number of Democrats who described themselves as 'likely voters' than with any change in the way voters perceive the president's job performance....

The big rise in the Democratic voter numbers was an "unusual situation" because "Republicans are disproportionately likely to be 'likely voters' in most situations, which has historically given them an advantage on Election Day," the polling firm said....

Other pollsters said that a spike in the Democratic vote in the early months of an election year after a string of hard-fought, media-promoted primaries was nothing new. In May 1984, for example, after a tough Democratic primary battle, polls showed Democrat Walter Mondale locked in a 49 percent to 49 percent dead heat against President Reagan. Mr. Reagan won that year in a 49-state landslide.

Note to self: Let's skip the doom and gloom, shall we? We're still in good shape for November.

The Nativists in the California GOP Must Go

The nativist right continues to misrepresent President Bush's immigration plan as an amnesty. As I've shown over and over again, it is no such thing. It is difficult to get a clear picture of just why these folks are so upset. Lately a lot of them have been claiming that their opposition to the plan is motivated by national security concerns. The LA Times (R), for example, quotes Darryl Issa as claiming that: "As long as people are here illegally, to give them the ability to further cover their status is to empower Al Qaeda." Every once in a while, however, the mask slips and their real motivation shines through. the same story quotes Gloria Irwin, the Glenn County Republican Party chairwoman, who objects that "The main street in our little town looks like Tijuana." It's nothing but naked prejudice against Latinos. As long as the California GOP harbors such people, it will remain - and deserve to remain - a shrinking minority party.

Nader announces

Ralph Nader's going to run again, but this time as an independent. Juan Non-Volokh opines that: "Whatever the effect of Nader's campaign on the 2004 election, if it invigorates efforts to improve ballot access for third parties, it will be a plus for the nation." Instapundit applauds Juan for having made the "best observation" on the Nader announcement. Why? Juan's claim is hardly self-evident, but neither Juan nor Glenn provide any justification for it. In the United States, the Electoral College makes it almost impossible for a third party candidiate to win the Presidency. Countries in which that is not true are not demonstrably better off. Look at the last Presidential election in France: In the first round of voting, Chirac led - but got less than 20% of the vote. Worse yet, nationalist nut-job and perrenial fringe party candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the run-off with a mere 17%. Do Juan and Glenn think this is a model we should emulate? Anyway, I doubt very much whether most Americans are dying for third party candidates to have ballot access. As Bruce Bartlett observed: "The recent California election is evidence that there is no real demand for third parties. Despite the fact that anyone with $3500 could be on the ballot for governor and with 135 people running, 95.5 percent of the final vote went to candidates openly identifying themselves as either Republicans or Democrats." Update: James Joyner elaborates:

A winner-take-all system such as ours produces two moderate “catch-all” parties. Political scientists call this phenomenon "Duverger’s Law." Third parties, by their very definition, are those who can’t attract much popular support. ... The value of third party candidates aside, I also reject the premise that it’s particularly difficult for serious ones to get on the ballot. Ross Perot did it twice, Ralph Nader has done it several times, and all manner of fringe parties manage to do it every year.

Poliblog has links to info about Duverger’s Law.

Chomsky

Via Pejman and Baude, I learn of yet another predictable Chomsky interview. As Will observes, "conservative types will want to find something in [the] interview to attack." I dunno. At least Chomsky in this interview fails to launch his usual attacks on Gondor's military-industrial complex or, even worse, his meretricious defense of the Orcs.

What a Girl Wants

Scheherazade has a great post on what she wanted in a law professor. I'm not sure I would meet more than about half of her criteria, but on the basis of those criteria I know she's what I want in a law student.

The new Audi A6 …

... is what BMW's 5 series should have been. With the exception of the grotesque front grille, it looks like a real winner.