Month: November 2004
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Not so fast, Julian Zelizer
The New York Times has
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The grinding decay of the liberal arts
The Boston Globe Ideas section reports on a conference pondering the future of the liberal arts in higher education, a subject that is near and dear to my heart as a graduate of Swarthmore College. And unfortunately, the Globe finds that colleges are under enormous pressure to make education more career-focused, meaning shifting to more
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The problems with Steven Freedman’s “The Exit Poll Discrepancy”
Mark Blumenthal, the famed Mystery Pollster, has an excellent post on the problems with Steven Freedman’s much-cited paper “The Exit Poll Discrepancy” (PDF). The short version is this: Freedman doesn’t really know what he’s talking about – he has a PhD in organization studies from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is not an expert
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What is William C. Rhoden talking about?
In a frontpage story, the NYT columnist
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The awful realities of urban warfare
Don’t miss Dexter Filkins’
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Stevens pounds the desk
There’s a famous legal maxim that says, “When the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; when both the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table.” When Rep. Ernest Istook Jr. was caught inserting a provision into the omnibus appropriations bill allowing
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The mandate debate rolls forward
Jan Freeman, the Boston Globe’s Word columnist, concludes her column on the mandate debate today with this strangely relativist conclusion: Arguments, however, can’t settle the question: The proof of a mandate is in the governing. If the 2004 election produced one, we’ll see the evidence soon enough. By this standard of legislative success, President Bush
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Politics goes Moneyball II
Following up on my last post on the increasing quantitative sophistication of politics, here’s Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman
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Filibuster-busting II
Bush courts Ben Nelson: Meanwhile, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was sounded out Friday by Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, about becoming secretary of agriculture, Senate sources said. In remarks to reporters, Nelson declined to say whether he had been offered the job or whether would take it. According to CNN, some Democrats said the
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A modest proposal
Can everyone stop saying 9-1-1 when they’re talking about Sept. 11? The pun on the phone number was clever for about ten minutes on Sept. 12. Now please stop. Thanks.