It’s almost February, and it’s Super Bowl week, which means the issue weighing most heavily on people’s minds is… baseball.

Ok, you win. We can’t tease you away with posts on 2008 and media’s uncontrollable Obasms. We’ve got to give you the content you demand, and right now you have a fever for fantasy baseball.

The Wright brothers, therefore, present you with 10 strategeries that will help you become a fantasy baseball legend. Not to mention, after you become champion of your league, you’ll have more achievements under your belt than Ob… Ah, mmm, ahhh, never mind. On with the tips!

We’ve done the hard work for you, culling through advance copies of Lindy’s Fantasy Baseball, the Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Owners Manual and John Edward’s Almanac (he is a psychic, you know). From these expert sources we’ve extracted what are sure to be the ten best moves you can make this year.

No thanks necessary.

1. First, be sure to join a league that does not allow trading or mid-season roster changes. This will maximize your interest and fun.
2. If your league holds its draft on a Monday night, auto-draft using Yahoo’s pre-rankings. No fantasy team is worth missing “24.”
3. Consider drafting every member of your favorite team in alphabetical order. Results may vary.
4. Look for starting pitchers who are fresh off having Tommy John surgery, as they will be reinvigorated and revitalized for a new season of dominance.
5. Always draft players by name recognition. Only nerds go by so-called “statistics.”
6. If league rules will allow it, avoid the rookie mistake of drafting position players.
7. Give yourself an edge by focusing on just one or two categories instead of maintaining a roster that is “balanced.”
8. Expect immediate results from your team. You may have acquired Albert Pujols, but if it’s late April and he’s only hitting .271, go ahead and cut your losses.
9. Remember to keep injured players on your active roster. That way second stringers won’t drive down your averages.
10. You can’t win if you won’t accept insanely risky trades.

The New York Times and its allies on the Left are up in arms about an executive order signed by President Bush last week. The order instructs executive agencies (and “independent agencies” also under executive branch authority) to add a few steps to the process of writing new rules and regulations.

Check out the alarming lead:

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

…

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

Rubbish.

Since the Times provides no link to the order and apparently wants to confuse matters, let’s take a look at it ourselves.

If you’ve never read from the Federal Register, this order will probably mean little or nothing to you… which is why the Times is so successful at misleading people as to its implications, but more on that in a few seconds.

The executive order amends a previous one (PDF) signed by President Clinton in 1993 and does several things:

1. Requires federal agencies to identify in writing the specific problems which have led them to draft new regulations.
2. Increases the scope of previous instructions to also cover “guidance documents.”
3. Defines “guidance document.”
4. Requires agencies to alert the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of any new “significant guidance document.”
5. Defines “significant guidance document.”
6. Allows “the Director” (of the OMB?) to hold a meeting including all agency heads to review annual policy goals.
7. Gives each agency’s “Regulatory Policy Office” review of that agency’s “Plan,” unless authorized by the head of the agency.
8. Asks agencies to include an annual, aggregate costs and benefits analysis of rules and regulations, in addition to individual cost-benefit studies.
9. Allows agencies to consider implementing a formal rulemaking procedure “for the resolution of complex determinations” after the 60 day comment period.
10. Orders each agency head to designate one of the President’s appointees to be its “Regulatory Policy Officer.”

The Times raises the most hell about the sentence below, which is actually just a rewrite of the previous one (with added words in bold):

Each agency shall identify in writing the specific market failure (such as externalities, market power, lack of information) or other specific problem that it intends to address (including, where applicable, the failures of public institutions) that warrant new agency action, as well as assess the significance of that problem, to enable assessment of whether any new regulation is warranted.

Times reporter Robert Pear says business groups support the order because it makes federal agencies “more open and accountable” and could potentially reduce the burden of federal regulations, while other special interest groups worry that it “gave too much control to the White House and would hinder agencies’ efforts to protect the public.”

The article’s headline, “Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation,” and the photo caption, “President Bush… has signed an executive order that in effect increases his control over guidelines the government issues regarding health, safety, privacy and other issues” both betray a sympathy for the latter view.

The article refers to “agencies” a dozen times on the first page, not once mentioning the fact that they are agencies of the executive branch. And it isn’t until paragraph 13 that we learn, by way of a scare quote, that the order is President Bush’s attempt to “increase his control of the executive branch,” a notion which is itself arguable.

How successful is the Times in obscuring the fact that these are executive agencies already under the President’s control and that this doesn’t represent an extraordinary power grab by the White House?

Well, just take a look at how the blogs react this morning.

“They Call Me BT,” in a post titled “Skipping the Chapter About Seperation [sic] of Powers,” writes, “Serious, George Bush scares me sometimes. It’s not that I think he’s evil or something, but that he’s just insipidly dumb and doesn’t understand the problems with the Executive Branch controlling the other branches of government.”

“Lordrag” at We Are The Resistance titles his post “Bush grabs more power” and says, “Just how much power does Dear Leader require? Is it just me or is it absolutely disgusting what this man is doing to the ideal of America?”

Other post headings of note:

• The country formerly known as America
• Bush Crowns Himself Emperor
• Bush siezes [sic] more power
• The US being transformed into the Soviet Union

The list goes on.

Just a few points the Times and these ignorant bloggers might want to consider:

1. These agencies are part of the executive branch. The President typically has authority over the executive branch.
2. Because of the nature of their positions, political appointees are more accountable to the public than [are*] other career bureaucrats. In a democracy, that’s a good thing.
3. This order is far less exciting than you apparently believe. It simply amends a previous order and deals mostly with procedural matters for agencies you’ve probably never heard of before.

One last point.

The Times quotes some liberal activist as follows:

“By requiring agencies to show a ‘market failure,’ ” Dr. Bass said, “President Bush has created another hurdle for agencies to clear before they can issue rules protecting public health and safety.”

Then the Times goes on to report this about OMB nominee Susan E. Dudley:

Some of Ms. Dudley’s views are reflected in the executive order. In a primer on regulation written in 2005, while she was at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Northern Virginia, Ms. Dudley said that government regulation was generally not warranted “in the absence of a significant market failure.”

Unless I’m missing something, this concept of “market failure” dates back to at least 1996, when a team put together under President Clinton performed a two-year study of his executive order and wrote, in part, “In order to establish the need for the proposed action, the analysis should discuss whether the problem constitutes a significant market failure.”

The term does not originate with Bush or his appointees.

If it was the Times’ goal to bash Bush and whip people into a frenzy, they succeeded; if their goal was to inform the public and report the story accurately, they failed.

* Added for clarity and GB’s benefit.

UPDATE: As seen on Slate.

UPDATE II: Slate said the blogs were “split along the usual lines” and identified me as a conservative who, as would be predicted, supported the executive order. All well and true, but here’s Kevin Drum: “[T]here’s a pretty reasonable argument that an elected president should have greater policy control over the rulemakers in our farflung executive bureaucracy.”

Nobody is denying that WMDs were found…

- A.C. Kleinheider, WKRN - Jan. 29, 2007.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

- Commercial Appeal - Jan. 24, 2007.

13,100

- Number of results from a Google search of “No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq”

Some handy links from the archives:

• Ferris Helper’s Day Off
• Time for another reminder
• Memphis Flyer Hack Devotes Column to Fishkite
• SHOCKER: Saddam was enemy of U.S.
• Another example of revisionist history

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee announced his Presidential candidacy on Meet the Press today. I admire his weight loss and bass guitar skills, and I’m sure he’s a perfectly good person, but I don’t think he’d make a very good national leader based on what I’ve seen thus far.

Saturday’s heads-up article said Huckabee would be running against a crowd led by three better-funded candidates, but that “those three men [McCain, Romney and Giuliani] have records or positions on social or fiscal issues that don’t sit well with conservative voters — and that could give Huckabee an opening.”

Huckabee won’t be filling that “conservative opening” any time soon.

First, you have CATO’s Fiscal Policy Report Card, showing Huckabee to have earned a F for his final term and a D overall (for comparison, Tennessee’s Gov. Bredesen, a Democrat, earned a B).

Thanks to a final term grade of F, Huckabee earns an overall grade of D for his entire governorship. Like many Republicans, his grades dropped the longer he stayed in office. In his first few years, he fought hard for a sweeping $70 million tax cut package that was the first broad-based tax cut in the state in more than 20 years. He even signed a bill to cut the state’s 6 percent capital gains tax—a significant pro-growth accomplishment. But nine days after being reelected in 2002, he proposed a sales tax increase to cover a budget deficit caused partly by large spending increases that he proposed and approved, including an expansion in Medicare eligibility that Huckabee made a centerpiece of his 1997 agenda. He agreed to a 3 percent income tax “surcharge” and a 25-cent cigarette tax increase. In response to a court order to increase spending on education, Huckabee proposed another sales tax increase. Huckabee wants to run for the GOP presidential nomination next year. He’s already been hailed as a viable big-government conservative candidate by some. That seems about right: Huckabee’s leadership has left taxpayers in Arkansas much worse off.

In the interview, Tim Russert quoted from this Hotline profile (a good read): “[The Club for Growth] say [Huckabee] raised taxes five times — a gas tax increase in 1999, the cigarette tax hike, tax increases in ‘2004, a tax on beer and a tax on nursing homes.”

The Hotline also reports that, “just months after he came into office, Huckabee championed a state constitutional amendment that aimed to levy a small (1/8th of a cent) conservation tax,” and that he “signed a law that makes his state’s [minimum wage] the highest in the region.”

It was easy to sympathize when Huckabee told Russert he wouldn’t take a no-tax pledge as President, because “it’s a very dangerous position to make pledges that are outside the most important pledge you make, and that is the oath you take to uphold the Constitution and protect the people of the United States.”

Still, Huckabee is clearly not a fiscal conservative, or as the Hotline puts it, he is a big government conservative, and “not anchored by ideology.”

In fact, Huckabee’s willingness to cave on conservative fiscal ideology earned him a place among TIME magazine’s top 5 governors. As I wrote about it earlier:

TIME’s roundup of “America’s 5 Best Governors” includes Virginia’s Mark Warner, who “pushed through the state’s largest tax hike”; Nevada’s Kenny Guinn, who “fought for the largest tax increase in state history”; and Arkansas’ Mike Huckabee, who “helped persuade voters to increase their own gas taxes.” Rounding out the five are two red-state Democrats (Arizona’s Janet Napolitano and Kansas’ Kathleen Sebelius) who have held the line on taxes but have promoted increased social spending while deftly dividing state Republicans. Included in the “worst governors in America” list is South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, whose only sin appears to be frugality.

Second, you have Huckabee’s miserable record on illegal immigration. The AP reports that he “opposed banning state services for illegal immigrants,” and he spoke out against the Real ID act, which would have required proof of citizenship or legal residency in order to obtain a driver’s license. The premiere Mike Huckabee shill blog came to his defense, calling the law an “unfunded mandate.” But somehow the “unfunded mandate” had been working just fine for the 39 states already requiring such proof prior to the federal law, which was supported by a majority of U.S.-born Hispanics and Latino voters.

Third, Huckabee’s rather squishy when it comes to social conservatism, as well.

When Russert asked if he would seek to ban abortion as President, Huckabee dodged by saying that he couldn’t do it “singularly,” and that the issue had to be advanced socially rather than legislatively. Huckabee also dodged when Russert asked what the penalty should be for doctors who perform abortions and woman who have them if there was a ban, such as the one Huckabee said he supported in South Dakota.

Huckabee also attempts to redefine “pro-life” and stretches its meaning into a laundry list of issues:

But I think those of us in the pro-life movement, we have to do also some growing and expanding. We have to remind people that life, that we believe it begins at conception. It doesn’t end at birth. And if we’re really pro-life we have to be concerned about more than just the gestation period. As a pro-life person, as a governor, look at my record. Yes, did we pass pro-life legislation? We did. But we also did things that improved the environmental quality and the conservation issues that would affect a child’s air and water. We also made sure that he had a better education, that access to affordable health care would be better. So I think that real pro-life people need to be concerned about affordable housing, we need to be concerned about safe neighborhoods, access to a college education. That, for me, is what pro-life has to mean.

Did Jim Wallis write that one for you, Mike? I can almost guarantee that quote will headline the next issue of SoJo Mail. Thanks so much for selling us out, there.

Huckabee apparently agrees with critics who charge pro-life activists with hypocrisy. But that’s always been nonsense. Pro-lifers celebrate life at every stage. The reason we’re adamant defenders of the unborn is because nobody else seems to care about them, and that’s the one stage where life is legally expendable. And now that you can legally starve someone to death, it’s soon becoming one of two life stages, I suppose.

But you’re trying to tell me I’m pro-life just because I’m “concerned about affordable housing?” Give me a break.

Access to a college education? It’s called taking out a freaking loan.

How about we redefine pro-life to mean no new taxes? That would certainly improve our quality of life, but we don’t see you signing up for that, now, do we?

[UPDATE: Bill Hobbs defends Huckabee at Elephantbiz.com.
UPDATE II: …but The American Spectator isn’t as generous.]

To close, here are some resources on Huckabee. The first is a link to a USA Today round table discussion with Huckabee and another Presidential hopeful, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

And below the fold are my unedited notes from Huckabee’s speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis early last year, where he suggested that things were just hunky dorey for Republicans. No, really. Enjoy: (more…)

The latest Flyer has a nice article on elephants, and it mentions the two at the Memphis Zoo, pictured above. I love watching the animals, but it upsets me that many of the large mammals are confined in small or dull habitats. I’m glad the Memphis Zoo is continuing to plan bigger and better spaces for them; I wish it could happen faster, and that other zoos would do the same.