Re: I got polled!

So here’s the first report I’ve seen on the poll I contributed to.

Look at the Numbers: But in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, McCain comes out on top (although within the margin of error) when GOP voters are asked which candidate would follow Bush’s policies closely. McCain receives 63%, Giuliani 62%, Fred Thompson 39%, and Romney 37%. In the horserace, Giuliani leads McCain by 11 points (33%-22%), followed by Thompson at 17% and Romney at 12%; no other Republican gets more than 2%. On the feeling thermometer, 42% view McCain positively versus 22% who view him negatively -- which is virtually unchanged from March, but a drop from the 50%-13% split he held back in May 2004, before McCain began aligning himself so close to Bush.

Interesting terminology, “McCain comes out on top”, meaning most similar to the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. Talk about damning with faint praise! Clearly by the order of the candidates, the only Bush policy most respondents were thinking of was the war in Iraq.

Personally, I chose not to answer this entire batch of questions. Naively considering the vast range of national issues, I told the interviewer it was up to the candidates to lay out their own policies and they hadn’t yet done that sufficiently. I didn’t realize the question was just a proxy to determine who was most closely identified with the *lost* war in Iraq.

Regarding the horserace – and I hate all the attention that goes to judging who’s ahead at the moment while ignoring significant discussion of the issues – I noticed one interesting feature of the questions. I was asked once for my preference among a list of announced candidates, and then once again among the same list with the addition of Fred Thompson. Evidently the media considers the possible entry of Thompson will be a major event.

Jury Trials in Iowa

About this time last week the wife and I received our monthly issue of The Iowa Lawyer magazine. I got to flipping through it here this evening and happened across an article on the litigiousness of the state of Iowa (sorry, I can't find a link to an online version -- if you'd like to look for a paper copy, it's on page 12 of Volume 68, issue Number 4).

The gist of the article is that Iowa is not a particularly litigious state. (And that's a good thing.) To highlight this fact, the article reports that 37 of Iowa's 99 counties held no civil jury trials last year. You read that correctly. More than a third of Iowa's counties held no civil jury trials. Another 21 counties held only 1 civil jury trial. Eighteen counties had two. Seven counties held three. Add that up, and 87 of Iowa's 99 counties held three or fewer jury trials. Of the remaining twelve counties, only Woodbury (15), Pottawattamie (12), Polk (33), Johnson (19), Linn (27), and Scott (23), held more than ten.

Overall, there were 262 civil jury trials in Iowa last year, or an average about 2 and 2/3 per county.

Even more interestingly, there has been a 44% percent drop in the total number of jury trials, civil and crimal combined, since 1994.

The article draws the conclusion that perhaps tort reform is not necessary in Iowa. I think that's a defensible position. But what the numbers make me think of another issue: county consolidation. Why should Iowa be maintaining 99 separate courthouses when apparently not too darn many people are making it all the way to the courthouse? I realize that other government functions take place at a courthouse, but really, I'd bet the average Iowan visits their courthouse only once, maybe twice, a year.

And yes, I know, a lot of suits that get filed settle before trial, sometimes on the courthouse steps. What I've heard is that 1 in 20 make it to trial. But settling could be just as easily done if we had fifty, or even thirty counties.

I got polled!

No longer can I say that those big national pollsters never ask ME what I think. A very nice lady from a research firm doing a poll for NBC/Wall Street Journal wanted MY opinions. Actually, my wife had answered the phone, but apparently they already had enough women respondents because she wanted to speak to the man of the house. My B.W. thought for a minute and then handed me the phone.

She first asked me the usual right track/wrong track question, which I declined to answer because it is so bogus. I mean, it is generally interpreted as “How good a job is the president doing?” but if you take the question by itself, you have to consider congress, business, the current hot news story, everything. Because the news of the day is almost always bad, the question cries out for a “wrong track” answer and I won’t play that game.

She had about twenty minutes of questions including my choices in the 2008 election, the war in Iraq, abortion, Virginia Tech, race relations, etc. There were no questions on the fired US attorneys (the significance of that is that no one cares about it) nor on Anna Nicole Smith (ditto). Don Imus got a mention in conjunction with the Duke lacrosse team and the economy came up one time in the “What are the two most important issues facing the president today?” question. I take that fact to mean that even the media is now resigned to the fact the economy is doing well.

Several of the questions had no good answer. This was particularly true of those where I was given only two choices and neither reflected my views. I’m curious just how the responses to some of that type of question will be spun.

Rush Limbaugh says that network polls are just the news media’s efforts at reconnaissance to see how well their latest bombing run did and if another attack is required. I think that’s true, but I didn’t notice any obvious media bias or attempts to influence my answers by the order in which the questions were asked, so I’ll have to wait until the results get broadcast starting Tuesday on MSNBC to see how I was manipulated. Actually, since I can’t stand MSNBC, I may have to wait longer than that.

Our Thoughts and Prayers Go Out to the Students, Faculty, and Community at Virginia Tech

In Other News

A couple days back, in making one of my many daily treks through the skywalk system here in scenic Des Moines, I ran into the proprietor of the always informative Roth and Company Tax Update blog, Joe. He had one comment for me: "You need to post more often."

Admittedly, this is true. And I don't want to disappoint Joe, so let me just point out that Joe has been dropping some helpful hints for all of us last-minute tax filers.

I, being a dunderhead, have apparently failed to adhere to most of these.

Mildly New Look

Our literally dozens of daily readers will note a somewhat freshened look to T'n'T today. Just updated the template to "New Blogger" and took the opportunity to use the nifty new template modification tool to change a couple things.

If you like irony, you gotta love this

Remember how upset the Left got when people criticized “Mental Ward” Churchill, “Ditzy Chick” Natalie Maines and “Tokyo Rosie” O’Donnell for exercising their free speech rights in commentary which was (respectively) anti-American, ignorant, and anti-American and ignorant. You wouldn't know it from the Left's yammering, but so far, none of those people have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured or otherwise deprived of their jobs, except that very few country music fans buy Dixie Chick stuff anymore.

Well, today several prominent leftists had tried, but failed in their attempt to deprive one American – because he had made a particular $50,000 free speech donation - of a new job as ambassador to Belgium. President Bush, however, made a recess appointment of Sam Fox, a wealthy Republican fundraiser who had committed the unpardonable sin of supporting the Swift Boat Vets against John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation, Bush withdrew the nomination last month. On Wednesday, with Congress out of town for a spring break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.

The Dems had blocked Fox’s confirmation in the Senate because he had donated money to a group opposed to John Kerry’s candidacy for president in 2004. Evidently, most Senate Democrats believe the right to free speech has its limits. Kerry and others blasted the nominee at the confirmation hearings.

Fox's withdrawal comes after contentious debate in the Senate committee deliberating his nomination. Yesterday, a letter to committee chair Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE,) written by Kerry's Vietnam crewmates, blasted Fox over his ties to the Swiftboat group, saying, "Those who finance smears and lies of combat veterans don't deserve to represent America on the world stage."

Read the quoted line again. According to Kerry’s supporters, people can disqualify themselves from public service representing America by what they say. Interestingly enough, here is what the future presidential candidate John Kerry had to say in 1971:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

So if I understand the Left, free speech that you cannot be criticized for includes any nasty, ignorant or treasonous batch of garbage that disparages American values and non-free speech - that which may cost you something - includes publicizing the Left's free speech.