By now many of you have undoubtedly seen this ad:

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) attacks Kay Barnes, accusing her of supporting “San Francisco-style values”

Now, I am not a political scientist, but I can think of several reasons why this ad bodes very, very, very poorly for Rep. Graves’s re-election campaign.

1. The ad talks about all of Kay Barnes’s fundraisers while showing people dancing, toasting with champagne, laughing, and generally enjoying life. The voiceover then goes on to talk about how those are not “our values”. I’ll admit, this is weak, but does that mean that Sam Graves is opposed to dancing and champagne and laughter?
2. The ad stays far, far, far away from Kay Barnes’s record as mayor of Kansas City. Why? If Barnes had no record, he could spend his time talking about her inexperience; if she was corrupt, he could go on about that; if she was ineffective, then he could talk about that. Instead, he has to resort to “she’s friends with Nancy Pelosi!”.
3. The ad stays even further away from Sam Graves’s record in Congress; it never even mentions that Rep. Graves is the incumbent in this race. Additionally, the ad appears to be geared at the rural sections of the district (in the northwestern corner of Missouri), especially with all that talk of “our values” and “big city mayor”. So, to my line of thinking, Sam Graves would rather rural Missourians think about hot gay sex than about his record on the war, the economy, Social Security, health care, education, or any of those other, lesser, issues.
4. And finally, my favorite… It’s May. Kay Barnes is still facing a primary in August; assuming she wins, the general election is in November (six months away). And Sam Graves is already going negative. Normally, we don’t see general-election attack ads until late September or early October, when candidates start getting really concerned about how well their opponents come across (or when their respective opponents have just attacked them). If Sam Graves is that concerned about Kay Barnes this early in the race, then it’s going to be a looooooong road to November for him.

I’m quite pleased to report that Kay Barnes’s campaign has responded well. (Love that tone, too. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”)

FWIW, Graves’s record is all here and here. Links will take you further back in his record.

You can also see where each candidate is getting campaign funding. I strongly suggest you look up Rep. Graves’s committee assignments after you see which industries are giving him the most money.

USA Today just published results of a poll showing widespread opposition to government regulation of same-sex marriages. 63% of respondents in this poll called same-sex marriage a “private decision”, and only 33% think the government should be able to pass laws against same-sex marriage. This majority holds in all age groups except 65+ (and even then, the 3% margin of error brings it to an even split); it holds in every region; it holds in every income level.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of Republicans, self-identified conservatives, and regular churchgoers still think the government has a right to pass laws prohibiting same-sex marriage. What’s surprising to me, though, is that this majority is not what it once was: 56% each among Republicans and those who attend weekly church services, and only 54% among conservatives.

What is even more surprising: 4% think the government should be able to pass laws prohibiting interracial marriages, and 2% think the government should be able to prevent interreligious marriages. Seriously? Interreligious marriages are one of the reasons (heterosexual) couples can get hitched at the courthouse: your church may say no, but as long as you meet the other criteria the government doesn’t care if you’re Catholic and your beloved is Protestant.

Congressman Paul Broun, a Republican from Georgia, has introduced legislation that would restrict sales of “men’s magazines” on military bases.

I guess things must be mighty boring up on Capitol Hill now that world peace has broken out, the economic and energy and climate crises have all been fixed, and every human has adequate health care and education.

Seriously, though, it’s pretty sad that a member of the Congress of the United States places such a high priority on keeping servicemembers from becoming aroused. Maybe his constituents should pay attention to what Rep. Broun isn’t working on in Congress when it comes time to re-elect him in November.

(hat tip to Joe.My.God)

The Advocate published a wee blog post about some NBC exit poll data that specifically asked GLBT voters how they voted in the Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday. That poll indicates that Clinton has notably stronger support among GLBT voters…

… but only among those in New York or California.

I can only imagine two scenarios where this methodology would be valid:

1. Only two states — New York and California — caucused or held primaries on Super Tuesday
2. GLBT voters only live in two states, New York and California; they simply do not exist elsewhere

However, neither of these scenarios are true; GLBT voters did vote on Super Tuesday in twenty-one other states. Therefore, I can’t help but conclude that the pollsters made one or more of the following hasty and demonstrably false generalizations:

1. GLBT voters in other states would have been deathly afraid to self-identify in an exit poll
2. All GLBT voters have the same mindset; there is absolutely no difference of opinion between, say, a Chelsea muscleboy and a fiercely independent lesbian in rural Oklahoma, so sampling exclusively in NY and CA is enough
3. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transfolk do not bother voting, except in NY and CA
4. GLBT voters elsewhere have not changed their minds one whit since Hunter College’s poll was released last fall
5. The “favorite daughter” effect had precisely zero effect on GLBT voters in New York state, therefore the “favorite son” effect clearly had precisely zero effect on GLBT voters in Illinois

Whatever the real cause, it’s pretty clear that the pollsters did not do a very good job of taking a representative sample of GLBT voter opinions. As a result, the results they do have should not be considered indicative of GLBT voter opinions elsewhere, and anybody who assumes that they are is either intellectually lazy or deliberately ignorant.

So an unnamed member of an unnamed government contacted the Wikimedia Foundation recently, asking for staff guidance on setting up a wiki so that unnamed citizens of the unnamed jurisdiction could collaborate on new laws. Since the staff mainly handle the operational aspects of the various wikis, the question got passed off to the volunteers — or, more specifically, me.

I sent a detailed response, advising strongly against anonymous editing and whatnot. The idea has been kicking around my head ever since, though, so I thought I’d post something about it and solicit further input on behalf of the unnamed elected official.

Long story short, I think that the proposed structure (”let’s get everybody together to write laws!”) is doomed to horrific failure, thanks to vandals, savvy agenda-pushers, and the fact that most people find most laws tedious and boring (and therefore would avoid watching the really important bills).

As evidence that vandals would pretty quickly make a nasty bitter mess of things, I offer the LA Times’s “wikitorial” experiment. Need more? Hang out on Wikipedia’s “recent changes” list and check out stuff in near-real-time; how many of those edits are actually useful?

Savvy agenda-pushers? I could refer you to any of those lovely articles on Wikipedia on controversial topics, but instead I’ll point you to this section of a Missouri law:

Services related to pregnancy, persons holding ministerial or tocological certification may provide.

376.1753. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, any person who holds current ministerial or tocological certification by an organization accredited by the National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA) may provide services as defined in 42 U.S.C. 1396 r-6(b)(4)(E)(ii)(I).

This was added to a health insurance bill and didn’t attract a whole lot of attention until after it had already hit the books. Then somebody finally got around to looking up “tocology” — it means “midwifery”, a practice which was at the time very sharply limited in Missouri. It was a brilliant trick, and it worked (if only temporarily) because everybody was too busy looking at the Big Provisions to notice this one wee alteration.

Now go to Wikipedia and start looking at articles on topics you don’t understand: math, physics, why people keep opting for short-term gain and long-term loss, whatever. How quickly could you spot very subtle vandalism? I’m not talking about pictures of penises on [[Johannes Kepler]]; I’m talking about a number changed here, a date there, a minor turn of phrase… If Wikipedia relies on its vast pool of editors to spot these things, and yet they still miss the tiny-but-important details, then how would a smaller law-wiki defend itself against subtle bias?

Finally, there’s the question of popularity. It’s trivial to prove that some articles on Wikipedia get a lot more attention than others: there’s even a game, “wikigroaning“, that makes light of this by comparing the lengths of a very geeky article and one that is much more mundane. (The link contains a few choice examples.) “Wikigroaning” only works because Wikipedia is done almost entirely by volunteers. Editors on the English WP are generally more interested in their own pet topics, so they devote more time and energy to those topics than they do to other, perhaps needier topics.

On a law-writing wiki, this phenomenon means that there will be much work on laws that relate to hot-button issues like abortion or war or taxes. That’s wonderful and everything, but most of a legislature’s in-session time is devoted to topics like infrastructure and school funding, which most people find excruciatingly boring but which are frighteningly important. Without additional eyes, though, editors with a vested interest may be able to get away with quite a bit.

+++

Now that I’ve said all that, I think that a wiki may work for writing laws, if it’s done right.

• Grant read-only access to unregistered users — otherwise you’ll have chaos in no time
• Recruit a small panel of editors — respected community leaders, some elected officials, and a few carefully-selected reps from interested groups
• Set up an extra-wiki feedback mechanism, so that the non-editing general public could voice their concerns
• Create an explicit and distinct mandate for the wiki — “write legislation that will achieve $GOAL” — and protect pages once that goal is achieved. (Leave article histories open, though, so people can see who made what changes when.)
• Ban discussion that isn’t germane to the topic at hand. The wiki is there to write laws; it isn’t there as a soapbox.
• Get the press involved, reporting heavily on the news from the wiki and encouraging people to check it out for themselves

Any other thoughts on this?