If I am that one, you can put me in the non-Bush column now. I may not vote, and maybe I will have to vote for Kerry, but I can't vote for Bush based on his support of the Amendment. It's too long a discussion for this morning, but will follow through soon.

I just think the proposed amendment is not only regressive, but it's purely political, to energize the base. The issue for me is one of state law -- even though many of the rights and privileges are federal -- but it needs to be worked out in the first instance at the state level, like lots of "moral/social" issues. I think there are lots more important federal constitutional amendments I'd like to see, and that are consistent with a conservative bent (eg, I'd like to see an amendment that declares that as a federal constitutional level, unanimity isn't a requirement for a felony jury, and I'd like to see abortion made a state issue, for two). I think it's deeply cynical, and shows a lot of thrashing around by Bush. I think the Presidency is something you inevitably learn "on the job", and I don't think Bush shows that he has -- he did a great job initially post 9-11, but he keeps overplaying his hand, as if he can't see two steps ahead. I don't fault him too much for Iraq, although some of the information coming out makes it seem as if he was looking for an excuse to go in there, but having gotten us in there, he seems unable to do anything about getting us out. I agree with him, as you know, about disdain for the U.N., and you can certainly go it alone, and largely should, but you can't do it if you seem constantly lost and improvising.

Mark, in a benzene entry you recently wrote: "I've seen names like Sandy Alderson and Bill James a lot, but I never really knew who they were."

I haven't been a baseball fan since about 1979, and I haven't been into statistical theory since about '83 ... yet I'm a Bill James fan, and I have been since spending five months living with James Wall and Matt Fleming in 1987. His quote that your reviewed book cited went to the heart of the matter. No Heinlein quote reinforced me more growing up than the "Notebooks of Lazarus Long" paragraph in Time Enough for Love about "Again and again and again -- what are the facts?" rather than acting based on conventional wisdom or religious dogma or celebrity endorsements or blind hope. Bill James took that approach in challenging the world's most bullshit-laden over-analyzed data set -- baseball stats past and present -- and wrote stuff that skeptics could appreciate. Tested theories against large sets of the facts, disproved many, found more detailed reason to understand and believe a few. I haven't read him in many years beyond an occasional paragraph quoted one place or another, but he's still one of the few people from whom I would read an article based just on its author. I think every field of human interest ought to have its own Bill James. I certainly wish the USA federal government had one.