This article about a poll indicating that the vast majority of so-called historians have already judged the Bush presidency a failure doesn’t give one confidence in the profession of history instruction.

No, academia isn’t biased at all…

Howard Dean’s going to be on Meet The Press this Sunday.

George, one of your progenitors in Hollywood once said, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”

”The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable.

Yes, I’d say unbelievable is exactly the right word.

”On the personal level it was how does a good person turn into a bad person, and part of the observation of that is that most bad people think they are good people, they are doing it for the right reasons,” he added.

Of course, most lousy directors and hackneyed script writers think they’re brilliant, profound and insightful.

I’ll probably go see the movie, but only for the special effects, which is all that Lucas was ever really any good at.

Rich Lowry describes the current state of the idiotic war on pot, and the continuing idiocy of John Walters. You’d never know that there’s a real war on, with stuff like this going on.

Jacques Chirac has managed to stay out of jail for a decade now, by continuing to be President of France for that period. It’s about his only significant accomplishment in the office.

For those interested, Iain Murray seems to have it covered.

Sara Townsley, a graduate student in biology (among other things–she should start a blog), offers a field guide to the Cornell University campus.

The Gray-Tufted Nostalgic Lamprey. Physically less imposing than their fearsome and often irreversibly tenured colleagues, comprising the bulk of the liberal arts faculty. These herbivorous throwbacks can be identified by their poor hygiene, old Volvos and apparent lack of vertebrae or testicles. As committed Marxists, a century of genocide poses a bothersome snag; thus, they’re prone to historical revisionism and faddish prejudices. These aging, conformist pseudo-radicals still regard themselves as courageous rebels, despite having built a habitat cleansed of all but lock-step sycophants. Found in organic markets, peace protests and pricey restaurants.

It sounds like a similar habitat to Ann Arbor, Madison and Berkeley.

Today is my first Cinco de Mayo since leaving southern California, and clearly the holiday is much less a part of the culture in southern Florida than it is there. It’s not a day that I’ve ever celebrated myself, and given the ongoing disaster that has been Mexican governments, alternating between feudalism and crony socialism, since Independence and up to the present day, I’m often puzzled that the Mexicans celebrate it, though I suppose they’re still better off than they were as a colony, given who the colonialists were. It wasn’t, of course, the day that they won their independence–that happened much earlier–but it was almost certainly the day that they cemented it.

But for Americans, there is one thing to celebrate today–it was a spectacular (which is to say, typical) military disaster for the French.

For years the Republicans have been champions of Federalism and the Democrats have been trying to have the Federal Government bring the States into national conformity. Now that Republicans control Congress and judicial nominees, we are likely to see those who favor and oppose Federalism switch sides.

The Republicans seem to be more aggressive at consolidating their new found power than Democrats are in holding onto theirs. For example, ramming through redistricting off cycle in Texas. Another example is the threat of the “Nuclear Option” underscores that collegiality and continuity are not more important to the current Republican leadership than partisan interests.

The Supreme Court is also moving in that direction and will do so decisively once there are a few more Republican appointees on the Court. Conditional federal spending like the No Child Left Behind Act largely invalidate any state independence of the sort granted in Lopez which lined out criminal, education and family law as provinces of the States. (I am surprised that no state has made it a felony to be a three-term Senator. That would test whether criminal law really is something a state can do and potentially allow term limits for federal officials to move forward.)

As red state policy becomes federal law, it will be more and more difficult for blue states to maintain their independent policies. There is a narrow window while Republican legislators and the Republican judiciary has not fully internalized the polarity switch. During this time, Democrats can try to cement Federalism before Republicans realize they no longer need this issue.

My guess is that the time for Federalism has passed and that Democrats will convert to Federalism more slowly than Republicans convert away from it. I look forward to reading how the Supreme Court Justices and some of the more self-important partisan publications will justify their newly-found interests in the opposite sides of the Federalism debate.