Now I know that Florida is wacky. Actually, its wackiness is appealing to me. Life is never boring here. But...

In theory, as you point out, primary elections are the business of the individual parties. That's fine, as far as it goes. But the State of Florida runs the elections. It costs millions of dollars, something like $5 million, to administer a statewide election here. Now, neither the Democratic or Republican parties chip in for the running of the elections process here. In fact, it was the State Legislature (both Ds and Rs, but initiated and pushed by the Rs which hold huge majorities in both Houses) that changed the law moving Presidential Primary Day to January 29th. Now why is this?

The system is subsidizing the parties. Of course, there is the fig leaf that, should the Greens or the Veterans Party or any of the other 30-odd political parties recognized by the State of Florida wish to hold their Presidential Preference Primary on Jan. 29th also, they are just as entitled to the state apparatus. But let's face it - the magnitude of the affiliations to the two major parties means that really all the work of printing ballots (Yes! We are chucking the touchscreen machines for 100% paper ballots!), opening and staffing thousands of polling places, and counting and certifying the results, is giving the lion's share of this state-run, tax-supported effort to the two major parties.

I suspect that the state-run system is true in many (possibly all) other states as well. But if you think about it, there are all sorts of conflicts of interest that arise when states subsidize what are essentially private organizations.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean offered the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) $800,000 to run an alternative system in lieu of participating in the state-run primary. That kind of money may have paid for a caucus (perhaps), but nowhere near enough for a primary. For a number of reasons - some justifiably logistical, some outright hubristic - the FDP declined.

A short, final observation: I worked the 2004 New Hampshire Primary as a volunteer in the Dean campaign (yeah, I left 60-degree Florida January weather for nine days in the minus-15-to-plus-15 winter wonderland of Manchester - on my dime). A huge plurality of the voters I contacted told me they were tired of the politics and wanted it all to go away. This is understandable at some level - they were bombarded in a very contentious and crowded election of significant import. But this on-the-street attitude contrasted sharply with the pronouncements of the party leaders and activists, that New Hampshire deserved to have the first primary because its citizens were so enthusiastically involved in it, which the candidates ritually parroted (lest they offend anyone in the Granite State). Somewhere in that mix, the orthodoxy and the reality diverged tremendously.

One of many articles:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html

Soon we'll have to have farm subsidies for Idaho! (For all I know, we may already.) But the upside is, potatoes can be made into ethanol, and it can be made into fuel, too!

For the most part, these environmentalist cautionary tales have had the opposite of their intended effect, provoking fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among readers and the lay public, not the rational embrace of environmental policies.

Really? Is there some research to back up this claim? No...

Here's the methodology of this kind of writing: put forth an assertion - out of nowhere - as fact, promote it as if it were obvious truth, and draw your conclusions which just so happen to be your original thesis! How convenient!

Nordhaus and Shellenberger are desperately trying to break into the David Brooks school of punditry.

when word of the shredding and burning parties surfaces in early January 2009. I can only hope that the incompetence of this administration carries over to the attempts to destroy evidence that will surely come.

Ms. Walsh, I'm guessing that perhaps you could intellectually put yourself in Perino's place, and you ask yourself, what would you do? If it were you really, I'd bet that you would tell the truth, and then promptly get fired. And on top of that, you'd get all of Bush-loving wingnuttia coming down on your head. No right-wing welfare spot at the Heritage Institute for you, I'm afraid.

Assuming that Ms. Perino isn't independently wealthy, I'd surmise that she, knowing full well the wrath she'd face doing the honorable thing, chose to lie. "Got to put food on our children" is the operative phrase in the West Wing. Except she's not a good liar. I'm not either; many folks are not. So when it comes out, there are inconsistencies, sweat on the brow, etc. You'd never see that with Tony Snow.

Undercover police officers are superb liars (it's their job). Same for CIA operatives. So all the White house needs to do is borrow some of these and train them the technical aspects of Press Secretary, and voila!