Weekend Quick Hits

I think I'll wrap up with a palate cleanser for the week ahead:

• Iowa and New Hampshire may move up their primaries to late December, and I agree with Chris Bowers that this would be essentially the best of a bad set of primary calendar options for 2008. At least we'd get a little daylight between those two states and Super Duper Tuesday, which would lessen their impact. And the absurdity of competing for 2008 delegates in 2007 could spur the big change needed in the primary calendar.

• I also agree with this week-old Matthew Yglesias post about redistricting. I question the efficacy of gerrymandering, and I think most people self-gerrymander based on socio-economic status, rural vs. urban vs. suburban vs. college town living, etc. If you strictly made redistricting geographical I'm not sure you wouldn't make districts even safer. And if there's a real choice and some financial parity, I don't really think that matters as much as everyone thinks. Ask Richard Pombo.

• In Oregon, incumbent Gordon Smith is polling behind Rep. Peter DeFazio in the 2008 Senate race. The only problem is that DeFazio hasn't committed to running. David Sirota explains why DeFazio would be a progressive champion in the Senate, and there's an online draft movement to get him to run. With Colorado already looking good, DeFazio's entry in Oregon would have Democrats looking good in two seats, already.

• I thought it was an amusing image to think of mullahs blogging, so go read it and you can amuse yourself.

• Global warming deniers are bested by a six-year old kid in today's installment of "Are You Smarter Than a First-Grader?"

• The US is once again giving away the farm in a trade agreement, this time to South Korea. Democrats will certainly act to try and make the deal more balanced, especially because this isn't your neoliberal Democratic Party anymore. But what's interesting is how the Bush Administration will apparently try to talk tough on China in order to get this South Korea deal through. That appears to be the gambit, anyway. They act like they're fixing the trade deficit with China in order to open yet another market abroad and sell out American workers. Expect more on this during the week.

• This book proposal masquerading as an op-ed by Benjamin Barber about the infantilization of the American public regarding capitalism is pretty good, and if I were a more high-traffic blogger I would simply DEMAND a review copy so I could write about it! Gimme gimme gimme!

Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.

Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are now chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth.

Read the whole thing.

• The Bush years have not only set back the cause of justice, they've set all of these landmines within the Justice system that we'll have to spend the next several decades rooting out.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations [...]

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

Some of these Regent U. grads are in civil servant positions that will not be removed when the next President enters. We're going to need the equivalent of tunnel rats from the Vietnam days to find all of these unqualified office-holders.

• Finally, Entourage wasn't that good tonight, and if the whole season is going to be "will Vince go back to Ari," I think I'll tune out. It's looking too much like the Moonlighting season where all of a sudden Mark Harmon was Cybill Shepherd's boyfriend and Bruce Willis was hanging around and everybody would just look at each other longingly. Thanks but no thanks.