Preparing For The Digital TV Transition

Chris Lawrence | Saturday, May 24, 2008

On February 17, 2009, most analog television broadcasting in the United States will cease, with the exception of some “low-power” television stations and stations physically located in Canada and Mexico that broadcast to U.S. audiences.

After that date, most televisions bought before 2005 will not be able to tune into most over-the-air TV channels without a digital converter box; the proceeds from the FCC auction of the TV frequencies to be vacated as part of the transition are being used, in part, to provide a coupon program for consumers to buy low-frills converter boxes for their old TVs. Of course, more advanced converters and devices with digital tuners are also available, with features such as high-definition output, video cassette/DVD recording, and digital video recording, but these are not eligible for the coupons; virtually all new televisions sold in the U.S. and Canada also include a digital tuner, but again are not eligible for the subsidy program.

Over at my other blog-home, I’ve been posting brief reviews of the coupon-eligible digital converter boxes I’ve tested personally so far; as the earliest-issued coupons are nearing their expiration dates, hopefully these reviews will be helpful to others. Other perspectives and further information on many models is available at the AV Science Forum’s CECB discussion board.

Tags | Chris Lawrence, Entertainment

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Deep South Blues for the GOP

Chris Lawrence | Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Democrats have picked up their second Deep South congressional seat in as many weeks, with Travis Childers defeating Republican candidate Greg Davis by a substantial margin in the special election contest to replace Roger Wicker, now serving as the interim junior senator from Mississippi, in the House of Representatives:

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004. …

Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University, called a Democratic victory potentially “a huge upset, and an indication of a terrible year ahead for the Republicans.” He added, “In theory, this should be an easy win for them.”

Mimicking a strategy that proved successful in 2006, Democrats ran staunch conservatives in both this and the Louisiana race, forcing their Republican opponents to attack national party figures as surrogates.

While Childers’ victory is somewhat surprising, despite Mississippi’s reputation as a “deep red” state it has never returned a Republican majority to the House since Reconstruction–the closest the GOP has come to any form of dominance is parity from 2003 (after the 2000 census led to a court-ordered redistricting plan that left Democratic incumbent Ronnie Shows as the odd man out when the musical chairs stopped) through Wicker’s resignation in late 2007, holding two seats against the Democrats’ control of the majority-black 2nd District (currently held by Bennie Thompson) and the south Mississippi 4th District held by yellow dog Democrat Gene Taylor.

I remain skeptical that Childers will survive in the strongly Republican 1st District past November, when he will face reelection on a ballot headed by John McCain and longtime incumbent Wicker after serving six months in a Democrat-controlled House, but stranger things have happened. And, as Ole Miss professor Marvin King observes the GOP’s “go-to” strategy of associating Childers and similarly conservative Democratic candidates with the national party (in particular, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and speaker Nancy Pelosi) isn’t working, as NRCC chairman Tom Cole tacitly acknowledged Tuesday evening.

Tags | Chris Lawrence Southern Politics

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Barr: McCain Bane or Obama Obstacle?

Chris Lawrence | Monday, May 12, 2008

As Alex reports below, former Republican congressman Bob Barr has thrown his hat into the Libertarian Party nomination contest. Assuming Barr does secure the Libertarian nomination–a big assumption, given that the LP isn’t exactly known for picking the most electable presidential candidates–how much of an impact will Barr really have in November, and if so, on whom? Certainly the conventional wisdom is that LP candidates generally draw from Republicans more than Democrats, but would that hold in this election year?

One of Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder’s correspondents suggests that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama may face more of a challenge from Barr than John McCain will:

There is a line of thought to which i am tempted to subscribe at this early hour that Barr actually hurts Obama more than McCain. Most of the libertarian voters would probably be tempted to vote against McCain and the horrible Republican record on [the Iraq war and civil liberties] and if Obama was the only choice, Obama could get it (since he has actually pretty good on the narrow subject of civil liberties) which would be a way to secure those margins in the West to the Democratic party for quite a while.

It is difficult to know for sure where those voters would have gone but when a Republican constituency goes from swing voters with two choices to third-party leaners, it is a loss opportunity for Obama at the very least.

It seems more likely to me, however, that Barr’s appeal will largely be to social conservatives who remember his behavior in Congress more than his (partial) conversion to libertarian orthodoxy. That said, the continued acrimony in the Democratic primaries could drive at least some of the rump Clinton campaign’s supporters, who decades ago we might have called the “Reagan Democrats,” into Barr’s camp in November to Obama’s detriment, at least if the polls in states like West Virginia are to be believed.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Bob Barr, John McCain

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Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Prediction

Dave Schuler | Monday, April 21, 2008

Tomorrow the long-awaited Pennsylvania primary will have arrived and I thought it might be a good time to launch fecklessly into a few predictions. As of this morning the polls are showing Sen. Clinton leading Sen. Obama by anything from six points (Zogby) to ten points (Suffolk). Sen. Obama’s strongest support is in eastern Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia and its environs, while Sen. Clinton’s is in western Pennsylvania. A lot will depend on turnout and in this I believe that Sen. Obama has a distinct advantage. His supporters certainly seem to be more enthusiastic than Sen. Clinton’s.

I think the greatest likelihood is a narrow victory for Sen. Clinton. Anything less than five points will be construed as a victory for them by the Obama campaign and they’ll be right since Pennsylvania will not have arrived at a decisive choice. That’s very much the way this entire primary season has gone—despite the impressions you may be receiving, Sen. Obama’s delegate lead over Sen. Clinton isn’t overwhelming.

In the unlikely event that Sen. Clinton wins Pennsylvania by double digits it will bolster the view that Sen. Obama can’t win big states and make the remaining superdelegates even wobblier.

In any event I don’t really expect Sen. Clinton to concede or withdraw. She’ll take her fight to the convention and maybe beyond. There is no next year.

Say, fellow OTB contributors, anybody care to play?

Update (Alex Knapp): I’d say that I expect a sizable, but not double digit lead for Hillary Clinton in PA–probably in the 7-9 point range. This will be followed two weeks later by a double digit Obama win in North Carolina and another, albeit smaller, Obama win in Indiana. I suspect that after the Indiana win, enough superdelegates will have come out for Obama that Clinton won’t have a choice but to concede, but I could be mistaken. (And, in fact, probably am.)

Update (Chris Lawrence): My gut feeling is that Clinton wins the popular vote by a smaller margin than Alex expects; my internal dartboard says 5 points, ±1. She probably nets narrow win in terms of pledged delegates too (netting a gain of 5–10). This should be enough of a win for her to fight on to North Carolina and Indiana, although her upcoming victory in Pennsylvania seems likely to be sufficiently Pyhrric to bleed her campaign coffers to the point she won’t be able to afford to campaign effectively in Indiana.

Tags | Alex Knapp, Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, Dave Schuler

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OTB Radio - Tonight at 7 Eastern

James Joyner | Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler, Alex Knapp, and Chris Lawrence will be joining me tonight to talk David Petraeus’ Senate testimony, the protests over the Olympic torch relay, a controversy over a popular American Government textbook, and (time permitting) other stuff.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

Tags | Alex Knapp, Chris Lawrence, Dave Schuler, James Joyner Media Appearances

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State Dept. Contractors Caught Snooping Obama Records

Chris Lawrence | Thursday, March 20, 2008

Via Marc Ambinder and reporter Bill Gertz of the Moonie Washington Times, three State Department contract employees were recently caught sneaking peeks at Barack Obama’s passport records. The relevant particulars from Gertz’s piece:

The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department’s consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama’s passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was notified of the security breach today, and responded by saying security measures used to monitor records of high-profile Americans worked properly in detecting the breaches.

Mr. McCormack said the officials did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.

“As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity,” Mr. McCormack told The Washington Times. …

One administration official said the FBI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into the officials involved in the unauthorized access incidents related to Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat. An FBI spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Government records of political candidates are tightly restricted because of concerns they could be used against candidates or the data could be altered as part of campaign dirty tricks. …

Each time an employee logs on to the passport-records network, they are informed that the records are protected by the Privacy Act and are “available only on a need-to-know basis,” he said. But no technical bar prevents a person, once he is in the system, from gaining access to Privacy Act-protected records to which he has no “need-to-know” rights.

But the network has an electronic monitoring system that is tripped when an employee accesses a record of a prominent person, like Mr. Obama. The alarm then triggers an inquiry into the incident, and “when the answer is not satisfactory, a supervisor is notified.”

More paranoic quarters of the blogosphere have leapt to the conclusion that the lookups represent Republican dirty tricks.

However, given both that the GOP presumably has people in the bureaucracy with access to the records who aren’t low-level contractors doing data-entry work, the timing of the incidents following news events (rather than months or years ago, when any opposition researcher worth his or her salt would be scouting potential targets like Obama), and the fact that any professional dirt-digger would know that searches like these in government databases raise red flags automatically, I strongly suspect that Sean McCormack is right to attribute these actions to “imprudent curiosity” or, as Mark Kleiman suggests, lame independent efforts to find some dirty laundry that could be shopped to opposition candidates or the media. Since the records in the application system appear to be very limited (basically, just what the was on the application form submitted to the State Department, with the only travel records being the optional “plans” disclosed thereon) I doubt you’d find much dirty laundry there even if you tried.

All that said, the FBI should continue its investigation to ensure that these were simply incidences of bad judgment by the contract workers. Presumably the fired employees are subject to criminal prosecution for violating the Privacy Act, subject to prosecutorial discretion; given the negative publicity the case has drawn, I’d imagine the chances of the employees being brought up on charges are quite high, even if they were just being willfully stupid.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama

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Obama, McCain Prevail in Mississippi

Chris Lawrence | Tuesday, March 11, 2008

To the surprise of virtually no one, Barack Obama has won the Mississippi Democratic primary, the last contest before Pennsylvania’s primaries in late April. To even less surprise, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain also prevailed in his party’s contest.

Perhaps more interesting than the primary victory are the exit poll numbers, which may suggest some serious problems for the Democrats if Clinton does emerge to be the eventual nominee. For starters, only 51% of Democratic primary voters said that Clinton was “honest and trustworthy” — and, even among that group, Clinton only prevailed 55-44%:

As in Texas, Clinton may also have benefitted from the “Limbaugh effect”: her support in the primary clearly came from conservatives in the Magnolia State, who are unlikely to vote for any Democratic nominee when November rolls around:

These exit poll fundamentals put aside the numbers that have attracted the most attention among the commentariat:

The rift in the party widens: Obama voters by and large would NOT be satisfied (55%) with Clinton as their nominee, while 7 and ten Clinton voters would NOT be satisfied (72%) with Obama as theirs.

It’s going to be a long six weeks for the Democrats in Pennsylvania…

UPDATE (James Joyner): It’s a little early in the morning for math but I’m at a loss as to how Clinton won did as well as she did. Her margins with conservatives of 14 and 10 percent are smaller than Obama’s with liberals of 44 and 28 and even his 19 percent among moderates. Either the exit polls are not reflective of the actual vote or conservatives absolutely dominated the turnout.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Southern Politics

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OTB Radio - Tonight at 7 Eastern

James Joyner | Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler, Chris Lawrence, and Steve Verdon will join me to talk about the Ohio and Texas results and all things Campaign 2008, the war in Iraq, whether we’re in a recession, and maybe some other things.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, Dave Schuler, James Joyner, Steve Verdon Media Appearances

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OTB Radio - Tonight at 7 Eastern

James Joyner | Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and Chris Lawrence will join me to talk about the latest twists and turns in Campaign 2008, the war in Iraq, and whatever else we can think of in a relatively slow news week.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, Dave Schuler, James Joyner Media Appearances

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Flat Tax? No, Fat Ban

Chris Lawrence | Friday, February 1, 2008

Radley Balko finds lard of a different nature than pork spending on the menu of the Mississippi legislature: a state legislative bill sponsored by two Republicans and one Democrat that would effectively ban all restaurants in the state from serving the “obese.” Lest you think the sponsors are kidding, blogger Sandy Szwarc contacted the main sponsor of the bill (a Republican from the Memphis suburbs) and he’s quite serious:

He kindly took a moment to answer my question while the legislature was in session. He said that while, regrettably, he doesn’t believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the “urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action.” He hopes it will “call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system.”

I am literally at a loss for words.

Tags | Chris Lawrence, Health, US Politics Southern Politics

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Political Scientists Say Obama Might Be More Liberal Than Hillary

Chris Lawrence | Friday, February 1, 2008

As James and Alex discuss below, the National Journal just released its 2007 rankings of Senators and found that Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record based on 107 “key votes” in the Senate in 2007. As legislative politics scholar Sarah Binder notes, this does not comport with Poole and Rosenthal’s NOMINATE scores, nor does it correspond with Lewis and Poole’s more recent Optimal Classification technique (via Kieran Healy), both of which show Obama to be much closer to the median Democrat.

Just to throw more fuel on the fire, I ran Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers’ item-response-theory-based ideal point estimator (sorry, it doesn’t have a fancier name–we in the biz just call it “CJR”) on all 433 non-unanimous rollcalls for the 110th Congress. The results suggest that Obama has the 9th most liberal voting record in the Senate, with rival Hillary Clinton in 11th place and very little daylight between them. Statistically, we can say that there is a (very slim) chance that either Obama or Clinton is the most liberal senator, as the 95% credible boundaries for both senators’ voting records overlap those of New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, who is nominally the “most liberal” according to the means. Both, incidentally, are slightly more liberal than John Kerry according to the procedure.

The most liberal senators (click for the full 110th Senate).

On the Republican side, John McCain appears in the middle of the GOP pack, as the 20th most-conservative senator, with no credible chance of being the “most conservative” (a rating that South Carolina’s Jim DeMint runs away with). McCain is, however, more conservative than GOP stalwarts like Orrin Hatch, Thad Cochran, Sam Brownback, and Lamar Alexander.

Tags | Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain

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Florida Primary Predictions

James Joyner | Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Yes, it’s that time again: trying to make predictions in a political season that’s largely defying predictability. Polls are open today in Florida, the last primary state before next week’s Super Tuesday extravaganza, and it’s an important contest, at least on the GOP side.

As for the Democrats, it’ll be a complete shock if Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the meaningless beauty contest. She’s ahead by an average of 19 percent in recent polls and by no less than 13 in any of them.

My guess on the final numbers:

Clinton 51
Obama 35
Edwards 14

No delegates are at stake, at least theoretically, and the media attention will be mostly on the Republican side unless a monumental upset occurs. Still, Clinton will be able to claim victory and gain a tiny bit of momentum heading into next week’s 22-state megaprimary.

The Republican contest is a coin toss between the national frontrunners, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

The most recent polls give McCain a slight advantage and the trend lines seem to be moving his way. Those results, though, are well within the margin of sampling error making the race too close to call.

The other wrinkle a key to remember here is that absentee voting has been going on for weeks, so recent events are not going to have the same impact that they might in a caucus or polling place-only contest. While Rudy Giuliani’s numbers have plummeted since New Hampshire, as many as a million people had already mailed in their ballots by then.

McCain got the 11th hour endorsements of Florida governor Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez, which should help a bit, and rumors that Giuliani is calling it quits may help McCain a bit. One wonders, too, whether Huckabee fans will decide not to “waste their vote” on a guy the polls show has no chance at winning this winner-take-all primary. If so, most will likely decide that the war hero is preferable to the flip-flopping Mormon.

The fact that Romney has outspent McCain 10-to-1 in television advertising and isn’t leading makes me think his support is a bit soft, too.

With very little confidence, then, I predict the following finish:

McCain 35%
Romney 32%
Giuliani 17%
Huckabee 11%
Paul 5%

Actual results may vary, of course. The polls have been uncannily accurate throughout this season with the notable exception that they have occasionally vastly under-counted the winner’s support.

The winner here will get a large boost going into Super Tuesday, since both McCain and Romney are vying to establish themselves as the clear favorite. If it goes anything like this, though, both Giuliani and Huckabee are toast.

Ron Paul, of course, will be sitting exactly where he intended all along, poised to win the whole thing once the field clears. (Well, not really.)

UPDATE: Scott Elliot sees both races tighter than my predictions, albeit with the same outcomes. He’s also rounded up other blogger predictions.

Feel free to add your predictions in the comments below. The closest for each contest will get a mention in tomorrow’s postmortem.

Update (Alex Knapp): Because James asked, and because I love making completely false predictions, here are my scores below. Frankly, I think that the sheer amount of early voting is really going to skew the results:

Democrats
Clinton 48
Obama 32
Edwards 20

This, by the way, is a Clinton victory that should be spun by the media as completely meaningless, due to early voting, the lack of campaigning by Obama and Edwards, and the actual “under-the radar” campaigning by Clinton. It will, however, be spun as a “change in momentum” for the campaigns heading into Super Tuesday.

Republicans

McCain 30
Romney 25
Giuliani 25
Huckabee 12
Paul 5
Thompson 3

(I’m assuming that the early voting returns will include some Thompson ballots, and will also produce a surprisingly strong showing for Giuliani.)

Update (Chris Lawrence): Here are some completely off-the-cuff predictions:

Democrats
Clinton 50
Obama 38
Edwards 10
Kucinich 2

Republicans
McCain 29
Romney 29
Giuliani 18
Huckabee 15
Paul 6
Thompson 2

Florida Recount II, here we come!

Update (Dave Schuler): Goodbye Rudy Tuesday

My guess is that in today’s Florida primary, at least partly because of the number of older voters, the regular party candidates win on both sides of the aisle. That means that Romney will narrowly beat McCain leaving Rudy Giuliani a distant third on the Republican side (Ron Paul should poll has customary 6%). Giuliani well may withdraw after such a finish although it hardly seems worth it with Super Tuesday mere days away.

On the Democratic side it means that Clinton will beat Obama narrowly with Edwards a distant third.

Update (Steven Taylor): I predict McCain wins by 2 points and that Giuliani eeks out a third place finish based on early voting. Meanwhile, Hillary wins 50% of the vote and cashes in on 0 delegates.

Tags | *FEATURED, Alex Knapp, Campaign 2008, Chris Lawrence, James Joyner Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani

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Bush to Issue Earmarks Executive Order

James Joyner | Monday, January 28, 2008

President Bush is poised to ban most spending earmarks by executive decree.

President George W. Bush will begin “unprecedented steps” to trim billions of dollars earmarked by lawmakers for pet projects, a White House spokesman said.

In his State of the Union address tonight, Bush will promise to “veto any spending bill that does not succeed in cutting earmarks in half from 2008 levels,” deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said in an e-mail.

Bush will issue an executive order tomorrow directing federal agencies to ignore any earmarks included only in committee reports, not in the text of legislation. Bush will say that if spending for such projects is warranted, then “Congress should debate them in the open and hold a public vote,” Fratto said.

Congress approved more than 11,700 earmarks valued at a total of more than $19 billion for the fiscal 2008 spending year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

This is a pleasant surprise, in that it looked like Bush was going cave on this less than a week ago.

It’s hard to make a case against this, really. While $19 billion amounts to a mere rounding error in a $2.8 trillion budget, spending should at least be done according to the process outlined in the Constitution. The idea that Congress can spend billions off book without even a floor vote is simply bizarre.

Update (Chris Lawrence): Unlike James, I think this action is really quite meaningless. The earmarks in committee reports (which don’t have the force of law) don’t actually expand the appropriated funds, so they are not “off-the-book” spending in the traditional sense; instead, they direct the bureaucracy to allocate funds that are authorized and appropriated in more general programs to certain projects rather than applying the bureaucrats’ discretion or established criteria for doing so. In other words, that $19 billion will be spent either way.

Since the president lacks a line-item veto power, the obvious response on Congress’ part is to simply fold the earmarks into the text of legislation or attach a rider to “must-pass” bills stating that committee report earmarks have the force of law. In the meantime, Congress has the power to make the bureaucrats who are responsible for following the earmarks miserable; political appointees and civil service employees only cross powerful members at their peril, and the only real effect of this executive order is to put those employees in the middle of a political squabble that Congress will certainly win in the end.

Tags | Chris Lawrence, Congress, James Joyner The Presidency

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Obama Thumps Clinton in S.C.; Edwards Takes 3rd

Chris Lawrence | Saturday, January 26, 2008

Barack Obama has bracketed his Iowa win in one of the whitest states of the Union with a victory in South Carolina, one of the nation’s blackest, in what appears to be a 2-to-1 rout over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Despite an apparent late surge by John Edwards in polls in the his home turf, it appears that he trails behind Clinton to take third place.

As Steven Taylor indicates, the exit polls being reported by CNN and MSNBC indicate that Obama received over 80% of the black vote but only 25% of the white vote in the state (with Edwards and Clinton getting roughly 37% each). One question going forward is whether the racial breakdown in South Carolina carries forward to subsequent primaries; if so, we would expect Obama to win primaries with Democratic electorates that are least 20% black, and be competitive in states that are more than 10% black. The other question is whether the Edwards vote, which is likely to be on the wane, is a vote for substantive change–essentially an “anti-Clinton” vote–or reflects voter skepticism towards black candidates, the apparent “Obama ceiling” noted by my fellow political scientist Philip Klinkner; so far, neither Obama nor Clinton seem particularly interested in cutting a deal to get Edwards out of the contest, suggesting that even the campaigns aren’t sure what the effects of Edwards’ departure from the competitive tier of candidates will be.