One of the central figures in mid-twentieth century American history, Robert Strange McNamara, has died today at 93 years old.

Traverse.  They are the family that seem to connect the stories of everyone else.  Telling last name.  I just learned from Reef Traverse, that his father, named Webb Traverse, was in fact the famed Western Outlaw, The  Kielseguhr Kid. As Reef is taking Webb home for burial, he passes time reading  The Chums of Chance at [...]

The quite funny John Hodgman on the existence of extraterrestrials. I love the literal, almost Dylan Thomas-like literary quality of Hodgman’s humor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W51H1croBw]

Part of my Democracy in America Project:
The United States of America has vast, and somewhat complicated territorial dominion. The United States is comprised of:

48 Contiguous States, that run as far south as 24° 33′ N and as far north as 49°23′ 4.1″N. The Contiguous States border Canda to the north and Mexico to the south. The “Gulf [...]

I was thinking the other day that it would be hard to get a full sense of the Ameircan political regime, in the way that say Alexis de Tocqueville talks about it, from our current public discourse. I wonder, if we had to update Tocqueville’s observations, what they would look like. I’m going to try [...]

Via Public Reason, Episteme has a great big symposium on the arguments presented by David Estlund’s Democratic Authority.

Volokh Conspiracy posted a link to this NYT article on Voter Fraud in the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement.  Of course the actual Volokh page then went haywire with commenters arguing about hypocrisy, allegations vs. proof, accusations of the other party stealing elections, etc.  Nothing reported, if true, can be a bad thing in [...]

Matt Yglesias wonders about seeing the prequels first, this provokes much bashing of the prequels, and one would be hard pressed to say it isn’t mostly deserved.  However, I have some very dorky thoughts on the subject:
First of all, I cannot believe I’m writing this. Second, I actually think that there are large swaths of [...]

This has to be one of the weirdest stories of the day. 

We finally got cable in our apartment tonight, and I turn it on to find out that the Obama campaign is actually down the street in Saint Paul. Go figure.
Some reflections on this night:
1. From the Florida and Michigan delegates, the superdelegates issue, and the different results form open primaries, closed primaries, and caucuses — [...]