Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a blog post by Jennifer Rubin. I predict (1) that Barack Obama will be the Democrat nominee for president and (2) that he will get no more than 40% of the popular vote.

Here is an interesting story about sex disparities in higher education.

Is there a better way for Republicans to avoid the inevitable charges of racism and sexism than to nominate Condoleezza Rice for vice president? She is far better equipped than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be president.

I agree with Richard John Neuhaus that Martin Luther King Jr was a great man.

The Detroit Tigers
Are winless after six games
They will kick ass soon

Addendum: I hope.

Baltimore’s magic number to eliminate the New York Yankees is 156.

Here is a scene from today’s Tour of Flanders, which was won by Belgian Stijn Devolder. The most deserving rider doesn’t always win, but today he did. American George Hincapie finished fifth and three-time runner-up Leif Hoste 19th, both 21 seconds behind the winner. Did anyone besides me watch the race this afternoon on Versus? It was wonderful. I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “Biography Isn’t Enough,” by William Kristol (column, March 31):

If John McCain’s past implies superior wisdom in military matters, then why did he vote for the insane war on Iraq?

He has demonstrated that he doesn’t even know who and where our so-called enemies are, or who supports them. He has claimed that conditions in Iraq are vastly improved, when that’s clearly not the case.

Is his biography even relevant? Do we, and the world, deserve another president who chooses aggression over diplomacy; who still doesn’t know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis; and who has admitted, after 26 years in the Senate, that he knows little about economics?

Carole Ashley
New York, March 31, 2008

Note from KBJ: Why did John McCain vote for “the insane war on Iraq”? Because he didn’t think it was insane? Where does the New York Times get these people?

[H]ypothetical consent or contract theories rely on the following basic argument schema:

(1) If people were rational and in such-and-such circumstances, they would choose or agree to social arrangements of a certain kind.

(2) Therefore, people actually living under social arrangements of that kind ought to obey the rules of these arrangements and the officials designated to enforce them.

Depending upon whether the “social arrangements” in question are conceived as rules for distributing the benefits and burdens of social cooperation, rules for interpersonal conduct, or the institutions of a political apparatus (or State), this same argument schema will yield a hypothetical consent theory of social justice, social ethics, or political obligation.

(Gregory S. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], 398-9)

Here, courtesy of Mark Spahn (no relation to Warren, apparently, even though Warren was born in Buffalo, New York, near where Mark lives), is an interview with Bill James.

Here.