From yesterday’s Los Angeles Times:

: Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay mechanic, had attracted a media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento called, he figured officials wanted advice on promoting alternative fuels.

Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a tax cheat. He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier’s license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he burns, and paying a tax on each gallon.

All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck, who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I said, ’Not a problem. I’ll do my part. But what do I get? At least let me into the carpool lane.’ "

No such luck. The state offered Eck only a potentially large fine -- and not just for failing to pay taxes. He can also get in trouble for carting kitchen grease away from eateries without a license from the state Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch.

Or for not having at least $1 million in liability insurance, in case he spills some of the stuff. Or for not getting permission from the state Air Resources Board to burn fat in the first place.

The regulations are so burdensome that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to set an example for Californians by driving a Hummer that burns cooking oil he buys at Costco, had not complied. Schwarzenegger . . . was unaware that he was required to send Sacramento an 18-cent road tax for every gallon of kitchen oil he burned, according to spokesman Aaron McLear. After The Times raised the issue, McLear said the governor would pay the taxes he owed.

John Stossel deconstructs Ariana Huffington’s assertion that she converted to Liberalism because after working with conservatives for so long, she was finally confronted with "the facts." The problem is that Huffington doesn’t really fare so well when she’s confronted with real facts. Her response to them is to confront her interlocutor (Stossel) with a pile of incoherent feelings. In the end, not even Huffington can dance around her inconsistencies, admitting,

"There is no question that the fact that I’m living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes -- all those things are contradictions. I’m not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle."

A friend sent me this story about why conservatives are more happy than liberals.

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person’s tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one’s social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

Jay Cost explains. I’d add that parts of northern Indiana are in the Chicago media market, which ought to have helped Obama.

NLT readers who are members of the American Political Science Association may be aware that our professional association is entertaining a couple of proposals regarding the siting of meetings. In a nutshell, there are some--many?--in the profession who say they’re worried that "states with Constitutional restrictions on rights afforded recognized same-sex unions and partnerships may create an unwelcoming environment for our members in cities where we might meet."

If you’re interested in the proposals, you can go to this page, which provides a plethora of information. There’s even a comment box, in which I wrote the following:

Both proposals indicate a certain level of hostility to states in which there is exclusive public support for traditional marriage. I don’t think that the APSA should be in the business of taking sides in a political dispute, using its prestige and business clout to punish states and localities whose citizens don’t share the views held-rather intensely-by some portion of the APSA membership. If the Association goes down this path, I can foresee other efforts to take political stands. Will we refuse to convene in states whose citizens passed referenda prohibiting affirmative action? Will there be a move to stay out of states that use lotteries to prey on the gullibility of lower income citizens? Or should the Supreme Court at some point overrule ROE, will some of my colleagues press the APSA to refuse to convene in states that choose to restrict access to abortion?

At some point we cease being a professional association that welcomes and includes the variety of points of view that members hold and become a mere interest group. Both proposals represent an ill-advised step in that direction.

I fully expect the APSA to adopt one of the two proposals, which would make it difficult (albeit perhaps not impossible) to hold a meeting in the vast majority of states. But, unlike at least some of my colleagues, I won’t thereby be deterred from entering precincts that would constitute an "unwelcoming environment" for someone who holds my views.

Barnes does well in explaining why the slow road to picking the Democratic nominee has taught us much we wouldn’t know otherwise about the two candidates. It has also may have provided the party leaders with a genuine role in selecting the nominee, if they chose to exercise it. This race has similarities to the last couple under the "mixed" nominating system (some delegates selected by primaries, others selected by party leaders in the states)--the Republican contest of 1964 and the Democrat one in 1968. In both of those cases, the June California primary was crucial. CA made the Goldwater nomination inevitable and, in my opinion, would have made Robert Kennedy’s nomination very likely [We’ll never know, of course]. I also remember CA in those days was decisive because it was winner-take-all. Under the Democrats’ current scheme of hyper-proportional representation, the close CA result in the Goldwater and Kennedy cases would have been utterly inconclusive.

From what at first glance--but only at first glance--would seem to be an unlikely source.

Here’s one of my favorite passages:

I don’t doubt that Hillary and Obama are patriots. I don’t even doubt that the upscale secularists who have taken over the Democratic Party are patriots; but theirs is a “soft” patriotism, a patriotism twice diluted, once with the waters of cosmopolitanism, and again with the waters of something tasting of pacifism. McCain, by contrast, is a “hard” patriot, not in the least a pacifist. But isn’t there a danger that a patriot of this stripe will prove to be a warmonger? Yes, some danger. But George Washington wasn’t a warmonger, and neither was Dwight Eisenhower, and neither, I think, is McCain. Retired warriors are willing to fight, but rarely do they yearn for another battle (think of Colin Powell).

John McCain is set to speak about his approach to the Constitution. The journalists will focus on the hot button issues that appeal to what the AP reporter is happy to call the "far right." (Is the expression "far left" in her lexicon, and does it apply to groups like the ACLU and PFAW?) McCain will surely say (more than) a few words about these subjects, but will probably give voice also to this position (with which I’m quite happy when it comes to judging):

"It’s not social issues I care about. It’s the Constitution of the United States I care about."

We’ll see.

Update: Here’s the speech, with red meat for judicial conservatives but little for those who want Sen. McCain to embrace an activist social conservatism. To be sure, there’s criticism of the ethereal language of Griswold v. Connecticut and of the steel wool secularism of Michael Newdow, but amidst all the talk about upholding a limited Constitution, there’s nothing about amending it. I didn’t expect it and I’m not really disappointed, as I share Sen, McCain’s view that most of our debates ought to be conducted in the political arena.

If there’s anything "unusual" about the speech, it’s that the Justice whose views are closest to the spirit of Sen. McCain’s remarks is Antonin Scalia, about whom he is conspicuously silent. That’s probably the price to be paid for trying to continue to appeal to "independents," not because Scalia should be persona non grata to them, but because his quite reasonable views have for too long been caricatured by those who disagree with him.

Word is out that ome prominent evangelicals will engage in some prophetic witness about the prophetic witness in which some of their brethren have engaged.

Among the prominent signatories are (apparently) Rick Warren, Os Guinness, and Richard Mouw. Prominent non-signatories include a number of the usual suspects, like James C. Dobson, Richard Land, and Tony Perkins.

1. I’m glad to see Bill Kristol and our Julie getting on board with Bobby Jindal for VP. (And for a pithy and precise summary of his virtues for the ticket, see Ivan the K’s comment on Julie’s post.) My only reservation: I do remember that Bill (I flatter myself without any evidence) followed my lead in talking up Huck, but that didn’t work out so well. A member of my department--a moderate Democrat and no reader of NLT--came in this morning all excited about the McCain-Jindal ticket as a genuinely competent alternative to all-talk Barack. Bobby is young and, in a way, relatively inexperienced, but his young life is already full of stunning examples of his mastery of public policy and its implementation. I agree with Bill K. that choosing Bobby would quiet a variety of fears about the McCain administration. Besides (to repeat) the Republicans really have no one else--Pawlenty is solid but boring. It seems to me likely that Obama will generate some excitement and counter his obvious weaknesses by picking the ultra-competent Sam Nunn. McCain is toast if he doesn’t counter with a similar (and really better) move.