My primary vote lines up based on this and this.

Not really. I'll let them as is Democrats make their choice.

The Dallas Morning News has a review of a 'funny' Irish writer whose works are densely written (sounding a bit less impenetrable than Ulysses). Though Flann O'Brien, nom de plume of Brian O'Nolan, was a contemporary of Joyce, his work until a recent compendium was apparently hard to get. The review is fun partially because of a pretty sprinkle of Gaelic. Surviving with Wolves, 'a children's view of the Holocaust,' reviewed in Haaretz, would be amazing in a different way.

In the tradition of his English ancestors, GW Bush has muddled forward sticking to his ideals and changing his assessment and strategy. How he decided on the surge. As to how we got there, I understand that the first chapter of Fiasco is instructive.

Volokh conspiracy brings a culture war offensive it seems to patient and therapist sex. I had to comment form Edmund Pellegrino's great narrative, part of the meetings of the President's Commission on Bioethics. Other reports on the site, by the way, give some thoughtful perspective to the 'national health insurance' debate.

Orin Kerr has a good discussion of the President's economic stimulus proposal, see also the comments, e.g. Bader's. Mankiw's blog post is informative. The Economist blog, linked left, gets into a link derivative of a discussion of useful infrastructure endorsing intercity train travel.

Fred Thompson and the South Carolina primary

Fred made a good point that he’s held up a mirror to the Republican Party. He has appreciated the values of our first president; the party has had other preferences. I think he’ll be inclined to follow George Washington’s lead after finding a lack of support for his position immediately after winning against the British and depart, trusting to Providence. Mr. Thompson said ‘it has been for the country,' and I think he may wonder if continuing fragmentation is positive or not in the Republican primaries. So many Republicans have said you wouldn’t vote for McCain and he may think that conceding thus to the Democrats may not be in the best interest of the country. He may think it better that the Republicans have a winner in the primaries. If Fred withdraws, the animus against McCain can be measured in votes. If it is sufficient, McCain will not win. If it is not, those who have preferred someone else may feel they have had their say and lost fairly.

Health care blog post by a Nobel Prize winner in economics and a federal judge.

Po' McCain

Instapundit has a lot of nice references to what Fred Thompson represents and links to the problems of McCain over Free Speech and overregulation in relation to global warming etc. And I'd be delighted to see President 'po boy' Thompson. OTOH, I don't know that any candidate other than McCain has attacked the ethanol subsidies of the corn farmers. He favors free trade and imports from Brazil of cane sugar based ethanol which would capture a large part of our market in ethanol. To me, on economics, McCain walks the walk while others talk the talk. Maybe there is an advantage in cutting taxes in part because the deficits which might occur restrain future entitlements, but that is the easy part. Being for or against immigration or to some extent criticizing the McCain Feingold law is the easy part. The Republicans the last 8 years have been, from the point of view of Republicans criticizing him, great in economic theory, but McCain has been the only one who actually seemed to practice not wasting our money.

Ran into a fun read on the remainder table at Border's for $5.99, Intelligence in War. The first chapter shows how close Napoleon was to being destroyed by Nelson before he ever got to Egypt at the beginning of his deadly imperial career. I had a German teacher at Texas from Berlin who was personable offer that 'Hitler was like Napoleon' in a kind of historical shrug. The second recounts Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign, an impressive military feat. The third chapter shows the value of entrepreneurial technical progress as in Marconi's example in developing wireless for the British Navy as well as showing you the deadly thrill of sea battles with the background the hubris of the Kaiser's regime.

Michael Barone had a column January 4 in the Wall Street Journal on how voters tend to show changes in what's important to them after 4 presidential elections, every 16 years, reflecting the median voter being 45 and his/her view reflecting what they've like and/or don't in their American experience and in part discounting the dangers that have been avoided by the overhang of the previous trend. I don't know if that can be freely linked.

To paraphrase Janis Joplin, after the Iowas caucus, 'Conservative is just another word for something left to lose.' Just to show me that my schadenfreude isn't what it used to be, even the fact that it was an ABC, anybody but Clinton, election didn't send me. Instapundit had a nice link though to something on Obama.

A really towering paper in the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder literature is that regarding the month long use of Cortisol (Cortef) 10 mg a day, this is a low dose of glucocorticoid, by Amanda Aerni. R. Greene at the Dallas VA has a nice paper using rats in a related paper; impressive statistics with that one.

A fun exegesis of the oxen, other animals at the Christmas manger scene.