This Week's Clips

This Week's Clips

First off a happy birthday to my wife Koni, and thanks to the folks who filled up my Facebook files on Tuesday for mine.

Constitution Daily ranks the top GOP candidates for governor. There's something addictive about a countdown format. Even flipping the channels and seeing the lamest infotainment show, if it's a Top 20 whatever I always wonder what's Number One. I guess it was growing up with Casey Kasem.

In The New Republic, Ben Adler writes about election reform. While he mentions equipment toward the end, the piece focuses on much more important issues: database problems, ID laws, and suppression of student votes. And here's a novel idea: "One way to solve the problems of voter purges and provisional ballots--as well as concerns about fraudulent registrations--would be a universal registration system, in which a national program automatically registers every American citizen when they turn 18." That's what other countries do.

There's a scary, reinstate the draft subtext, but Danielle Allen of the Washington Post looks at links between military service and regional partisan divisions: "Montana, Alaska, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Texas send the most young people per capita to the military. The states with the lowest contribution rates? Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York."

I noticed this on the campaign trail, particularly at pre-caucus McCain events; invariably the biggest applause line was not for McCain, but to someone who introduced himself as a vet as McCain said "thank you for your service." True, the Dems were all received well when they discussed vets benefits, but there was never that gut-level oomph from the crowd like there was at GOP events, which always had the whole drill of color guard and Pledge of Allegiance. No, the biggest Dem applause line was usually for scrapping No Child Left behind.

Just for fun: the net meme of the week is shoe-throwing parodies.