Lorem Ipsum

Some more assorted political items, including some partisan ones and a couple from before the election:

• How Univac changed election night in 1952.
• A Stanford Daily piece from before the election recommends Google for President.
• Daniel Benjamin on the latest Osama bin Laden video.
• I think a lot of people will be relieved to see the headline "Ashcroft Could Be First Cabinet Resignation." Ashcroft has apparently been indicating that he wants to resign; but "[o]n the other hand, Ashcroft is more recently energized by the election results and feels vindicated by them," and people have been calling and writing the Justice Department asking him to stay. I'm tempted to call or write the Justice Department and urge him to step down, but that would probably only encourage him. And I suppose it's conceivable that whoever replaces him would be worse.
• Reports from various countries: "How world sees Bush victory." Who knows how representative those comments are; still, interesting.
• I'm guessing y'all have probably seen several articles along these lines lately, but I might as well add this one from the Washington Post: "Bush Agenda: Bold but Blurry." Bush to CNN: "I don't think you'll let me be too free [to do whatever I want]. There's accountability and there are constraints on the presidency, as there should be in any system." But then: "Let me put it to you this way: I earned [political] capital in the campaign . . . and now I intend to spend it." The most interesting thing about the article, though, is that it goes on to talk about the ways that various reporters reported Bush's comments. From a Mike Allen article quoted here: "Bush spoke repeatedly about his desire to unify the country, including Democrats. . . . But he also made it clear that he views the election returns—especially a 3 percent margin of victory in the popular vote . . . —as a mandate to pursue conservative priorities. . . ."
• Sorry, Everybody is kind of arrogant in some ways (I don't normally think much of people who apologize on behalf of others who disagree with them), but I thought some of the images were entertaining enough to be worth pointing to. Especially the pandas on the first page of the gallery. (Their server appears to be suffering from a heavy load at the moment, so it may be hard to get through.)