Brendan Nyhan

Month: December 2006

  • A précis on the Duke lacrosse evidence

    Stuart Taylor, the National Journal legal columnist, and K.C. Johnson, the Brooklyn College professor and respected Duke lacrosse blogger, have published a devastating Wall Street Journal op-ed today on the case. It’s all worth reading, but their summary of the evidence is especially damning: How can we be confident that the charges are false? Let

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  • WSJ makes transition costs disappear

    In an editorial condemning an increase in the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, the Wall Street Journal continues to pass off the false comparison between currently legislated Social Security benefits and estimated benefits from private accounts. Consider this graphic, which runs alongside the editorial: The problem is that there is no such

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  • Giuliani third-party hype

    Writing on TNR’s Open University blog, University of Texas professor Sanford Levinson proposes a Rudy Giuliani third-party run (rather than the more conventional call for an independent McCain candidacy): The two-party system remains vulnerable to a challenge, and Rudy, for better and, definitely, for worse, is precisely the kind of person who could explode a

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  • Edwards’ faux consultation on ’08

    At its worst, John Edwards’ shtick verges on hokey populism — he signs emails to supporters “Your friend, John” — so it’s disappointing but not surprising that he sent this patronizing email to his list last week: For the past two years, we’ve worked together to build an America that lives up to its promise

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  • The racist Washington Times editors

    I knew that several Washington Times editors had close associations with white supremacist organizations and figures, but the open racism is apparently even worse than I thought — see

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  • Revisiting the old Iraq strategy

    For a while, I’ve been wondering what happened to President Bush’s previous plans and timetables for Iraq. This administration has been masterful at goalpost-shifting without catching flak from the press. For instance, as we wrote in All the President’s Spin, Bush kept issuing new versions of his “plan” to cut the deficit in half (which

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  • WSJ pronounces recovery strong

    According to the Wall Street Journal, it is “a canard” to claim that “workers are doing far more poorly than they did” in the 1990s expansion: The latest reports on wages and income have been rolling in, and with them we can discount one more canard about the current economic expansion–namely, that wages are stagnant

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  • Who leaked the Webb-Bush exchange?

    In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Senator-elect James Webb attributed the release of his infamous exchange with President Bush to the White House: Q: You have seen President Bush, with whom you had a famously tense exchange at a White House reception shortly after the election. A: I think that was vastly overblown. Q: Bush,

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  • Hillary not looking so electable

    [Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000’s polls. The results discussed below should thus be viewed as potentially suspect until the matter is resolved.] With the 2008 presidential race barely underway, it’s striking that Edwards and Obama are already doing so well in key primary states and Hillary, the

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  • Schlussel questions Obama’s loyalty

    I started tracking early attacks on Barack Obama last week when I pointed out that Rush Limbaugh was calling him “Odumbo.” Now, via Media Matters, the conservative pundit Debbie Schlussel is engaged in a far nastier line of attack, questioning Obama’s loyalty to this country: So, even if [Obama] identifies strongly as a Christian, and

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