Back when I was in graduate school, my (dorky) friends and I had an impromptu contest: everyone had to create an urban legend based on their dissertation research, and whoever could spread it the farthest on the Internet in 1 month won. Since my thesis was about statehood politics, I came up with the...
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Political Science
DC statehood and political self-interest: Where are the flag makers?
On the consequences of landslides
How will the 2010 midterm election affect the ideology of the House Democrats? Without speculating or considering how it might have changed the ideologies of individual returning members, it probably is safe to say it will have a moderately large aggregate effect simply via replacement. As many commentators have pointed out (for example here and here),...
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Elecshun Dae
My unofficial 18-point junkies guide to having a fun election day: Before the first polls close (Indiana and Kentucky 6pm EST) 1) Do not — repeat, do not — turn on your television before 6pm. The only thing worse than the election night coverage on the cable news networks is the election day coverage...
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Cold Fusion
This is an article about political fusion. But it won’t seem that way for several paragraphs. From pretty much any perspective you want to look — drama, comedy, tragedy, intrigue, farce, oddity, chaos, what if, — it’s pretty hard, among political events, to beat the 1860 Presidential election. From a basic “what happened” standpoint,...
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On the idea of a “taxpayer’s receipt”
There’s a new white paper out from Third Way, a progressive think tank, that is making a lot of headlines on various blogs for its proposal that all taxpayers receive an itemized “receipt” showing where their taxes go. As an example of what the receipt would entail, look at the graphic from Third Way....
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On The Idea of Repealing the 17th Amendment
It sure looks like the summer of 2010 is destined to be remembered as the time when everyone seemed to want to get themselves some Constitutional amending. And I’m not talking about your garden-variety balanced-budget amendment or flag-burning amendment or school prayer amendment or line-item veto amendment or any of the other 75 or...
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Research Note: Defining “the South”
Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve seen claims made about “the south.” Things like polling data that reported regional cross-tabs, political analysts claiming something distinctive about the region and the 2010 election, or just a friend conjecturing about some regional cultural phenomenon. And, as usual, none of the sources defined what they...
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Executive Power: A quick note from the Kagan hearing
In response to a question about executive war power and the detention of enemy combatants, Kagan said that the Obama administration (through the Office of the Solicitor General and the DOJ) has grounded its opinion of its power not under inherent Article II powers, but instead under the statutory powers granted by Congress under...
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RIP: Robert Byrd
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia passed away early this morning. He will be remembered for many things, some good and some bad. He was the longest-serving Senator in American history, having served over 51 years. He was a staunch institutional defender of Congress in an age of Presidential supremancy, perhaps the last true...
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Getting your way: lessons from pick-up hoops dispute resolution
I play a lot of pick-up basketball, mostly at a park near my house that has a bunch of full-court setups, lights for night play, and almost always at least one decent game going during any hours I’m thinking of playing. The competition is good, and there are enough regulars that the rules and...
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On southern nationalism…
There’s a house in my town that prominently flies the confederate battle flag on a flagpole in the middle of the front yard. Now, that’s not something you see every day in northern Virginia. Sure, seemingly every highway here is named after Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, or Robert E. Lee. And yeah, many of...
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On the idea of “anti-incumbency”
You really can't swing a dead cat around the chattering class these days without hearing about the "anti-incumbent" situation both political parties are facing this primary season and then this November. It's really become the CW of a wide stripe of armchair political analysts, both the (over)paid type on TV and their counterparts at...
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Research Note: On Walking Out
Order of southern walkout at the 1860 Democratic conventions in Charleston, SC and Baltimore, MD:
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