Entries for March 22, 2006

Here's an interesting post from Dale Carpenter of the Volokh Conspiracy on gays in the military. Carpenter notes that the number of service members discharged for homosexuality fell rather steadily from 1982 to 1994, then rose starting in 1995 (he erroneously says 1994) up through 2001 (with the exception of a slight decline in one year), then fell sharply in 2002 and 2003 (the last year for which he has data). The pivot points in the curve are thus 1994 and 2001, both with obvious significance: 1994 marked the installation by statute of the Clinton administration's don't-ask-don't-tell policy, and 2001 was the year of September 11 and the beginning of our active response in the war against Islamofascist terrorists. DADT, as Carpenter points out, actually resulted in rising discharges of gays; after September 11, as during other wars, discharges of gays declined in number.

The answer over the past few years has seemed to be no. Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns in 2004 were run on the assumption that there were few swingable voters and that the prime task was to increase the turnout of your own supporters. Both succeeded, one more than the other: John Kerry's popular vote was 16 percent larger than Al Gore's, and George W. Bush's 2004 popular vote was 23 percent larger than his popular vote in 2000.

John O'Sullivan, British native and former aide to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has a good column on Tony Blair's predicament. His prediction: Blair is going to stay in for a while.