I'm sure the reason my copy wandered off is that I lent it to someone after I told them what a good book it is!

Virginia election rules are designed to minimize turnout in state and local elections.  That's why the governor and legislature are all elected in off years.  It originally perpetuated the Democratic Byrd machine, now it helps the Republicans who essentially represent the same interests.

The classic book on this topic is V.O. Key's Southern Politics.  My copy has wandered off, but I recall reading there that Virginia had the lowest turnout of any southern state.

Judge Scalia thinks that judges need to have empathy - for business owners.  He warned that with low judicial salaries "you end up with a senior judiciary ... that is made up of people who have never met a payroll."

I suspect that Republican derangement is helping maintain Obama's numbers.  If Fox, Rush, and the Republicans in congress weren't so over-the-top, more Democrats might be complaining about all the money to Wall Street.  As it is, Democrats don't want to be counted with those guys.

Specter left the door open to changing his vote after the primary.  There's been speculation he would switch again as he goes into the general.

But what does he do if he loses the primary?  Isn't there an implied threat that if business still backs Toomey, a post-primary Specter would vote for the original EFCA.  While if business squeezes Toomey out, Specter would at least get them some kind of compromise.

Doesn't he represent Charlotte?  HQ of Bank of America?

One area that a recovery can come from is investment in mass transit and transit-oriented development.  The direct employment effects of building mass transit are straightforward.  But the indirect economic effects are probably even more important.

If you think only about housing in the aggregate, there is an excess supply that will take years to work off.  But the excess is concentrated in outer-suburb McMansions that are losing attractiveness because of cultural shifts toward urban living and the high price of gas.  The collapse of demand for such housing is a self-reinforcing process because buyer's expectations of increasing house prices was a large factor in creating demand for McMansions.

There is still unmet demand for housing in lively urban neighborhoods.  Construction can resume (or continue - I learned yesterday that the Exxon station near my Metro station is shutting down this week to be replaced by a high-rise) even while exurban building remains shut down.

I did a lot of canvassing in Virginia, mostly in Wittman's house district.  No one thought the Democrat, Bill Day, had any chance whatsoever.  Yet the Obama canvassers all carried Day's palmcards and were instructed to do voter ID for Day.  Day wound up getting the same percentage as Judy Feder got in her hotly contested districted.  

That will tell you how much real influence conservative intellectuals have.

The commercialization of Obama imagery is just exploitation.  The use of Che is a symptom of something worse.  I wrote about this in Dissent 6 years ago:

The so-called left in a lot of other places doesn't deserve the name.  Democrats won in the last election because we stood up for America's legitimate interests (such as not having our jobs taken away by underpaid workers in China) while recognizing that things have to be reciprocal (like we don't have the right to invade other countries unprovoked).

The Israeli left understands that no country can allow rockets to be lobbed into its territory.  (Note that Meretz, to the left of Labor, also supported military action.)  It also understands that the ultimate goal is accomodation (unfortunately, a more realistic goal than peace in current circumstances).  The combination of defense of legitimate national interests and understanding that military action is an unfortunate necessity when it is necessary is the position that won the election for Barack Obama (think of Afghanistan), and let's hope it is successful in Israel too.

But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not.

Excuse me, but the IRA was not the Irish Army.  The Irish government was hunting the IRA, not as effectively as some wanted, but the Irish government was not shooting rockets.  If the Irish government had been shooting rockets into Northern Ireland, surely the British would have acted differently.

And, by the way, the reference to "zap 300 civilians" has nothing to do with what Israel is doing.  It is pure slander.

I have successfully run for office (local democratic committee) as a write-in on paper ballots.  When you have a write-in candidacy, some people will inevitably write your name and not mark the box.  It is unfair to write-in candidates to not count votes where the name is written but the box isn't marked.  The Minnesota law is the appropriate one.

If this comes down to a single vote, the courts will get to hear evidence about whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a human or a deity.  To think that the practical abilities to enact laws in this country could turn on that question...  

This wording inspires a further thought.  It seems that the situation of a worker choosing from competing offers of employment never entered the mind of any of the people involved in drafting this document.  The word "competitive" has the intended meaning only if the text is read from the viewpoint of management, stockholders, and bondholders.  The drafting betrays the feudal mindset of the drafters, in which workers are not citizens.