Lies, Damned Lies, and Health Care Polls
Ezra Klein points to a new ABC/WaPo poll showing a solid majority support "a law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, either getting it from work, buying it on their own, or through eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid." Further, the same poll finds a third of those who oppose would switch sides "if the government gave financial assistance ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 20, 2009 15:16
Do Republicans Cheat More?
Yet another rehash of the factoid that "states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006" causes John Sides to commit social science. Welcome to another episode of “The Ecological Fallacy”! Once again: you cannot infer the behavior of individuals — Democrats and Republicans — from data at an aggregate ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 29, 2009 09:19
The End of Fascism
Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin's Law that would put an end to "using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration." How is this helpful? Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples' understanding of what the Obama administration is doing? All this does is drag the specter of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 31, 2009 08:32
A Republic, Not a Democracy
Inspired by an OTB comment thread, Steven Taylor has written two essays questioning the use of the phrase "A Republic, Not a Democracy." In Part I: Looking at Terms, he cites the political science literature to show that the terms are interchangable. Part II: Madison, Republican Government and Federalism, he argues that even the founders wanted democratic institutions -- ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 13, 2009 10:04
Academic Journals: More Is Less
Tyler Cowen laments the splitting of the quarterly American Economic Review into multiple, monthly journals. I don't intend any criticism of the editors, as it seems (based on a mere perusal) they have done a good job in each case. But the coming of the American Economic Review was for me an event to look forward to. Now it ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 23, 2009 09:15
Samuel Huntington Dead at 81
Legendary political scientist Samuel P. Huntington died on Christmas Eve, Harvard News reports. [caption id="attachment_29260" align="alignright" width="206" caption="Samuel Huntington, Harvard University's Albert J. Weatherhead University Professor. (Jon Chase/Harvard University)"][/caption] Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007, following 58 years of scholarly service at Harvard. In a retirement letter to the President of Harvard, he wrote, in part, "It is difficult for ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 27, 2008 17:29
Deracialization and Barack Obama
While I've been busy moving my stuff to Texas, Barack Obama has been inadvertently injecting race into the presidential contest with his statement that he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." While the historically-inclined might have criticized his remark for lumping Alexander Hamilton in with the motley crew of ex-presidents represented among the now-circulating ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 4, 2008 02:19
Blog Polarization and Self-Segregation
Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence, and John Sides have collaborated on a paper, still in late draft stages, entitled "Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics." A PDF of the working copy is available here. Henry reports that, [B]log readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 1, 2008 15:29
Obama, the South, and the Black Vote
Thomas Schaller, the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, argues that the notion that Barack Obama has a good chance of winning Southern states because he'll energize black turnout is based on fallacious reasoning. The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 1, 2008 13:37
Dumbing the Presidency
David Broder uses Elvin Lm's book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency to argue not only that presidential speeches have steadily dumbed down over the years, which we might have guessed, but that this dumbs down public policy, too. In what must have been a heroic effort, he applied standard techniques of content analysis to state papers of every president from Washington to the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2008 07:13
Reggie Love: Barack Obama’s Body Man
Reggie Love was a standout wide receiver and basketball player at Duke that the Dallas Cowboys, for some odd reason, unsuccessfully tried to turn into a pro linebacker. Love was occasionally flat on his back in his college days. He's landed on his feet, working as the body man for the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Ashley Parker has ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 27, 2008 13:58
Schlafly Honor Protested
Washington University in St. Louis' awarding of an honorary doctorate to Phyllis Schlafly was met by protest from several students, faculty members, and invited guests. Margaret Bush Wilson, a retired civil rights attorney, volunteered to introduce Schlafly as faculty and students were calling on the university to rescind the degree. Wilson said after the ceremony that while she does not agree ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 17, 2008 07:21
Do Liberal Professors Indoctrinate Students?
A new study finds that, while college professors are overwhelmingly liberal, that fact does not have much impact on the politics of their students. A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it’s true that the professoriate leans left. But the study ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 28, 2008 06:55
Obama and Wright: Kristol Compounds Kessler’s Error
Ronald Kessler reported in a Sunday evening column for Newsmax that Barack Obama attended a controversial Jeremiah Wright sermon. The Obama campaign has told members of the press that Senator Obama was not in church on the day cited, July 22, because he had a speech he gave in Miami at 1:30 PM. Our writer, Jim Davis, says he attended ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 17, 2008 10:54
Sending Your Kid to College: The Wrong Questions to Ask
Dennis Prager, who apparently hasn't been on a college campus in a few decades, compiles a handy dandy list of questions to ask in selecting a college for your kids. 1. Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist Paper or one book of the Bible? If so, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 6, 2008 15:21
