SPEAKING OF RECLAIMING LOST DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME. Pedant point of the day — I just got corrected over on my blog — it’s “saving” not “savings.” It’s not like a savings bank, apparently. Anyway, the guestbloggers seem to be sleeping in! I get the feeling about 50,000 people have already cursed us. I hope you realize it’s Central Time for me. So like it’s only almost 9 o’clock. Still, pathetic for a serious, public-serving blogger. You probably know all the news of the day already, without my pointing to things. But I’m on the job now, cooking up juicy nuggets. This is your appetizer. And I imagine 35,000 of you exclaiming: “Feh, bring back the regular chef.” Really, I imagine 35,000 people saying exactly those words in unison. Intimidating? Nah! Dr. Helen is pointedly advising us to “keep moving, moving, moving and to try scary things and not to give a s**t when they are rejected.” So let’s go!

How To Reclaim That Hour Lost To Daylight Savings: Colin McEnroe has a suggestion.

Here is background from Mickey Kaus on how Luke used The Force.

More on Fred Thompson from A.C. Kleinheider:

Fred Thompson is his own man but he has a lineage and he he has a history and it is not as conservative as his studio-packaged image would indicate.

At the end of the day, Thompson may be the best conservatives can hope for but let’s not fool ourselves into believing he is a conservative — he isn’t.

He may be conservative (adj.) but he is not a conservative (n.) and he has certainly been less than helpful to the ascendent traditional conservative wing of the Tennessee Republican Party.

We last heard from A.C. a few days ago.

Zahra Kamalfar and her children will leave Moscow Airport and be admitted to Canada, not forced to Iran. Pajamas Media has been following this, as has the True InstaPundit.

“AWESOME FACTS ABOUT FRED THOMPSON.” From Frank J. Sample: “The actual cause of global warming: Fred Thompson’s burning rage.”

If I May Amplify And Extend: The always-interesting Megan McArdle links to a Matt Yglesias article on neoliberalism below. For a thumping of the neolibs from the left on foreign policy, let me wave in Max Sawicky.

Radley Balko Finds A Congressman With Courage – 75 year old Congressman Pete Stark has announced that he is an atheist (but I won’t step on the punchline). Nathan Newman’s view on atheism in politics is timely again, and Mr. Balko had some thoughts just last week.

CREEPAZOIDAL: Check out FDR warning that the Supreme Court has too much power. It sounds like something he copied out of “Speechwriting for Megalomaniacal Dictators”.

CALL ME UNAMERICAN, but I flunk on all three counts:

We live in an age in which every American from Bakersfield to Nantucket likes lattés, has an idea for a psychological thriller, and knows that NBC is struggling to find a new ratings juggernaut, but hates latté-drinkers and Hollywood types.

Although I don’t actually hate lattes; I just think they’re dramatically inferior to a dry cappuccino.

WHO KILLED NEO-LIBERALISM? Matthew Yglesias fingers . . . neo-liberalism, with a cry of “Sic Semper Success”:

I think the primary cause of its declining fortunes is that, as tends to happen with once-ascendant political tendencies, it had a lot of successes. The most persuasive neoliberal ideas have become conventional wisdom. The netroots shares the neoliberal critique of interest group brokerage as a model of party-building. Absolutely nobody nowadays makes the sort of arguments that you heard from the 1980s-vintage left about the possibility of winning elections purely through increasing voter turnout. And a lot of the low-hanging policy fruit has already been implemented. Nobody thinks TANF will be re-reformed as an open-ended entitlement. Nobody thinks NAFTA will be rescinded. Nobody thinks we’re going to re-regulate the airlines or restore the government-sponsored telephone monopoly. I even think people have privately reconciled themselves to the fact that race-based affirmative action is going to fade away. And so on and so forth.

What tends to happen when a political tendency achieves a fair amount of success, however, is that what continues to make that tendency distinctive are precisely those strains with the least appeal and cogency. Similarly, insofar as neoliberals succeeded in reformulating a more politically viable conception of liberalism they’ve tended to render their own habits of mind less relevant since the revived, more viable liberalism wants more self-confident, more earnest advocates.

Sandy v. Scooter: The Tigerhawk has questions about the sentencing disparity between Sandy Berger and Scooter Libby.

Porkbuster’s Alert from Mark Tapscott

Looks Like Bush Has Caved on Earmarks

When I heard last week from Hill sources that the White House congressional liason staff was pressuring OMB Director Rob Portman to not release all of the earmarks requested by Members of Congress to executive agencies under the FY2005 budget, I called the OMB press office.

When I asked for a copy of the earmark database and copies of all correspondence between OMB and executive branch officials and Members and Hill staff, I was promised a call-back from a senior OMB spokesman. Not surprisingly, that call never came.

Now this morning, word is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data.

Not my area of expertise, but I am passing it along.

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR DIAL: Nor do you need to adjust your glasses – this post has had a certain “Now you see it, now you don’t” quality while I have been grappling with the HTML. Sorry for any confusion.

<strong>Porkbuster’s Alert</strong> from <a xhref="http://www.examiner.com/blogs/tapscotts_copy_desk/2007/3/12/Looks-Like-Bush-Has-Caved-on-Earmarks">Mark Tapscott</a>:
<blockquote><em>Looks Like Bush Has Caved on Earmarks

When I heard last week from Hill sources that the White House congressional liason staff was pressuring OMB Director Rob Portman to not release all of the earmarks requested by Members of Congress to executive agencies under the FY2005 budget, I called the OMB press office.

When I asked for a copy of the earmark database and copies of all correspondence between OMB and executive branch officials and Members and Hill staff, I was promised a call-back from a senior OMB spokesman. Not surprisingly, that call never came.

Now this morning, word is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data</em>.</blockquote>

Not my area of expertise, but I am passing it along.

“REPRESSION BLOOMED INTO RAPTURE LIKE RAGING WEEDS shooting through cracks in the cement.” Patti Smith has a NYT op-ed about getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s kind of scattershot and incoherent as you’re reading it, but in the end you get the idea that what she wants is honor for Fred Sonic Smith and the MC5.

REWRITING HISTORY? If true, this is an enormous scandal:

. . . replication is impossible if someone else has changed the dataset since the original analysis was conducted. But that would never happen, right? Maybe not. In an interesting paper, Alexander Ljungqvist, Christopher Malloy, and Felicia Marston take a look at the I/B/E/S dataset of analyst stock recommendations “made” during the period from 1993 to 2000. Here is what they found:

Comparing two snapshots of the entire historical I/B/E/S database of research analyst stock recommendations, taken in 2002 and 2004 but each covering the same time period 1993-2002, we identify tens of thousands of changes which collectively call into question the principle of replicability of empirical research. The changes are of four types: 1) The non-random removal of 19,904 analyst names from historic recommendations (“anonymizations”); 2) the addition of 19,204 new records that were not previously part of the database; 3) the removal of 4,923 records that had been in the data; and 4) alterations to 10,698 historical recommendation levels. In total, we document 54,729 ex post changes to a database originally containing 280,463 observations.

. . . Not surprisingly, they find that these changes typically make it appear as if analysts were (a) more cautious and (b) more accurate in their predictions. The clear implication from the paper is that analysts and their employers had a vested interest in selectively editing this particular dataset; while I doubt that anyone cares enough about most questions in political science to do something similar, it is an important cautionary tale. The rest of their paper, “Rewriting History,” is available from SSRN. (Hat tip: Big Picture)

The I/B/E/S database keeps track of analyst recommendations for 35,000 companies. It’s used in research into financial markets, as well as by people who rank analyst performance. Altering the database is pretty major, though it’s not clear whether this is something like grade-grubbing, where analysts only correct the mistakes that make them look bad, or whether it’s actual fraud.

I always read these things with a slightly admiring air—not for the researchers, though this is great work, but for the criminals. I get all nervous and blushing when I lie to telemarketers in order to get them off the phone. I would never in a zillion years have the guts to bribe someone to alter my past recommendations in a database. I don’t admire it, exactly, but I’d like to know where I could buy some of that nonchalance.

EDDIE IZZARD HAS A NEW TV SHOW.

He went with “The Riches” instead [of “24”], partly because he sees himself as a sunnier actor than “24” demanded. An actor must know if can be believably sinister, he says.

“I did a film with John Malkovich,” he says of “Shadow of the Vampire.” “If John says, ‘Come and have a cup of tea,’ you do think John has just murdered his family. He has that interesting feel, like, ‘John, what have you done?’

“And I have that light thing, a more positive, upbeat thing.”

I love Eddie Izzard! I have all his concert DVDs. Lately, I find I can barely force myself to watch television. Silly behavior, I know. Why would you try to force yourself to watch television? But I am going to… set the TiVo for this. Setting the TiVo these days reminds me of the way I used to Xerox law review articles. Xeroxing ≠ consuming. I kept magical-thinking it would. Ditto TiVo.

Laffer Curve Laughers: Dartmouth economist Andrew Samwick ponders John McCain and asks the question that makes every Irishman (and tax cut enthusiast!) shiver – “Why did you make them so small?”

“Where’s Lloyd Bentsen when you really need him?”

Don’t We Need A Baseline? Hilzoy discusses the "Gonzalez Eight", the eight prosecutors fired in a political purge (left), or for poor performance (right). My eyebrows (and ire) were raised by an excerpt from Paul Krugman citing a study which tells us this:

Well, if you don’t even look at data from earlier Administrations you aren’t likely to find anything, now are you? Hilzoy is experiencing a reader’s revolt in her comments, but I expect this "study" will be cited again. And again.

GROAN:  Gender-bending pronoun fixed; more after I return from killing myself.  Metaphorically.

We Go To The Movies, or at least, the movie reviews – Wretchard ponders the criticism of “300”, the battle epic about 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermoplyae; the Armed Liberal wonders whether to take his ten year old; yours truly suggests not.

Hey, this can be as much fun as actually seeing the film, and is a lot more time-efficient.

RETRO, I KNOW, BUT… in a nod to tradition let me link to Douglas Bass, who has actually seen the film.

“THE MOST CHALLENGING RUBIK’S CUBE THAT WE’VE FACED IN OUR LIFETIME.” The early primary season is driving the strategists crazy.

YOUTUBE AND PHILOSOPHY COMEDY. Andrew Sullivan’s on a new kick: here and here. I guess if I was horsing around looking for crap in YouTube and got the idea of searching for two words I’d might pick “philosophy” and “comedy.” Not saying that’s what Sullivan did. Just saying that’s what I might do.

MAYOR GIULIANI’S MUNICIPAL JUDGE PICKS. Since they didn’t do constitutional interpretation, does this say anything about the kind of federal judges he would appoint if he became President? Lawprof Stephen Gillers says it’s “nonsense,” and Ted Olson says “It’s making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s not even a molehill. It’s an anthill.” (I tell you what I think over here, where you can bat this around in the comments.)

"Only in Durham": The invaluable KC Johnson refers us to the indefatigable John in Carolina for more coverage of the Duke lacrosse situation. Here is the Johnson summary of John’s post titled “Major Duke Involvement":

After some digging, however, JinC discovered fairly intimate connections between CrimeStoppers and two key Duke officials. In the listing for the Duke Alumni Association board of directors, Sue Wasiolek, dean of student life, is listed as “involved in the boards of Durham CrimeStoppers.” And, as of February 2006, Bob Dean, director of the Duke University Police Department, was listed as chairman of Durham CrimeStoppers.

Moroever, the organization has an in-depth link to Duke through longtime Duke Police Director Paul Dumas—who, one Duke insider told JinC, “was always ‘recruiting’ for CS. He worked with them for years.”

To Boldly Blog Where No Man Has Blogged Before… Or at least, in a way no Insta-surrogate has blogged before. I can do it my way or the right way. Fortunately, I am flexible.