Such charged adjectives and such straw men you all create.

In his first Historical Abstract, Bill James wrote at length about Harlond Clift, who was a third baseman for the St. Louis Browns, and listed him as, I believe, the tenth-best third baseman ever. In his second Historical Abstract, he knocked him down about twenty pegs and didn't say much about him. As they are saying about Jim Rice between his first time on the ballot and today, he didn't make a single hit or a single out in the meantime. But James's own (often flawed) statistical analysis had changed.

Traditional baseball stats are generally either counting stats (Rickey Henderson's stolen bases) or averages (Jim Rice's slugging percentage). They are a great way to get a fourth grade kid who doesn't like math to do some simple arithmetical functions. They're easy to understand and easy to calculate. Some of their value has been superseded by the modern game (ERA made a lot more sense when a starting pitcher went nine innings, win or lose). Some are based on value judgments (whether sacrifice flies or sacrifice hits [i.e., bunts] go into on-base percentage), some on simple visual judgment (errors) that made more sense when players were a lot less competent in the field than they are today.

Nontraditional baseball stats have many useful purposes. Some are predictive (although the numbers they come up with are simply the medians or modes of ranges that are not shown), and are good for figuring out the likely value in advance of a trade or a call-up. Others seek to create a value based on an expectation of how certain actions will lead to runs or wins. These are mathematical formulae based on models taken from real games, and they work, in general, in a gross sense. They do not, nor are they expected to, work on the level of a single game, a single inning or a single at-bat, just as a batting average doesn't tell you that a batter will get a hit in a particular instance.

Scouting and coaching and observation by those skilled in the mechanics of baseball still make a difference. Swings can be improved and new pitches learned. Players can learn how long a lead to take and how to read the pitcher's tells for what is coming. No reasonable proponent of sabermetric statistics would argue otherwise. And players will defy their predictions, for better or for worse, all the time.

Apart from the fact that such arguments fed the wonderful and late lamented FJM website for its entire life, there isn't a lot of value to going through these arguments again. Or either side calling the other side names. The stuff is out there and it is useful, but it is not the be-all and end-all. It doesn't tell Felix Hernandez how to throw his curveball, or Michael Young how to hit it.

And it doesn't tell you whether Jim Rice should be in the Hall of Fame.

The distinction Glenn is making is close to identical to the one between whether Congress can authorize the Federal Reserve to regulate the currency, a denial of which is a popular topic on the internet, and whether the Treasury Department can guaranty obligations of banks outside the statutory authorizations in TARP. In the one case, it's a simple hop, step and jump from the currency clause of Article I to the Necessary and Proper Clause and you have an executive official doing a job for which he was expressly clothed by Congress. In the other, you may have someone making something up out of a claim of necessity.

I am not saying the FISC court was right; I don't see the "except where Congress declares otherwise" language in the Fourth Amendment they seem to see. But while that constitutional infirmity is a chasm, the one Bush tried to leap over is Hell's Canyon.

is that it was completely ineffective, because the President does not have the power to pardon someone for state crimes, and Rich is subject to prosecution (and extradition from any state) for a host of state criminal charges. So the whole damn thing is a GOP tempest in a teapot. Let's move on to things that matter.

The President (I love being able to refer to Obama by that title alone) should send a clear message to Congress: he will veto any legislation with 1984-style titles.

We have a President who understands that the "culture of life" is about the living, breathing citizens of the United States, who can be trusted to make their own choices about their bodies and their lives. And the more government enables them in that mission, the happier everyone will be.

I'm sorry to disillusion you, but if you seriously believe that accommodation of your position on abortion was the most important issue confronting Obama in his choice of his running mate, I really hope you are never in a position of power over anyone but yourself, ever. The person demanding a litmus test was you, not Obama.

This country is in serious trouble right now. The President chose his Vice President based on the him being the person best suited to help him get this country out of its trouble. Please take your single issue and sit in the corner for the next eight years. No one cares.

To what extent was it luck that there was room on the Hudson to make the landing, without vessels in the way? Watercraft are not designed to get out of the way of landing jetliners on a moment's notice. And they don't tend to advertise if they are carrying a cargo of, say, explosives to those flying above. I presume the pilots would have landed on a more crowded river if they had no choice between that and a crash onto land, but that they didn't hit an oil barge or a ferry was, I would think, only partially in their control.

just suddenly prefer water to ice?