Brendan Nyhan

Month: May 2007

  • Bruce Bartlett: Dems likely to win in ’08

    The conservative pundit Bruce Bartlett thinks Democrats are almost surely going to win the presidency in 2008: As each day passes, it becomes increasingly clear that the Democrats will win the White House next year. It’s not quite 1932, but it’s getting close to a sure thing. All the energy is on their side, they

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  • Brad DeLong falls into the media bias trap

    In the conclusion to All the President’s Spin, which was published in August 2004, we warned that liberals were increasingly following the lead of conservatives and the Bush administration in embracing the worst spin tactics: Some citizens might hope that things will get better when Bush leaves office. But the problem is unlikely to disappear

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  • Thompson intro: The “Law & Order” theme

    In a sane world, a top potential presidential candidate wouldn’t introduce himself to audiences with TV theme music: The audience loved the preview, and applauded the criticism of Hollywood, but also thrilled to Mr. Thompson’s Hollywood stories. As he came to the microphone, the theme of “Law & Order” was played. But then again, we

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  • Marshall: Bush aids the enemy

    I’m sad to report that Josh Marshall, who used to be one of my favorite bloggers, recently argued that President Bush “has been helping Osama bin Laden,” reversing the inflammatory GOP charge that opposition to the war in Iraq aids al Qaeda: Democrats should just hit right back on how President Bush has been helping

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  • Hoyt to replace Calame as NYT public editor

    Hooray! The useless Byron Calame is being replaced as public editor of the New York Times by someone who may have something important to say: The New York Times today named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain’s coverage that questioned the

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  • New evidence in Chait v. Yglesias

    Jon Chait’s TNR article on the “netroots” makes an important point: there is a new wave of liberal bloggers who are putting ideological/partisan loyalty ahead of the open-minded pursuit of the truth. One device that Chait uses effectively is pointing out that even Matthew Yglesias, a famously open-minded liberal blogger, “confessed in March that he

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  • Gilder attacks “Darwinian storm troopers”

    Since it’s impossible for anti-evolution conservatives to win a debate on the merits, George Gilder is trying to smear proponents of evolution instead: Skeptics of Darwinism like William F. Buckley, Mr. West and Mr. Gilder also object. The notion that “the whole universe contains no intelligence,” Mr. Gilder said at Thursday’s conference, is perpetuated by

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  • NYT refers to “inbred racism” in the South

    Imagine you’re a writer for the New York Times, a newspaper that many people believe is politically and culturally out of touch with the South. Shouldn’t you try to avoid using words like “inbred” when writing about the region? This new wave of historians, many of them young, believe that one cannot understand today’s housing,

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  • Off until Friday

    The family and I are headed west to the mountains, so no posts until Friday. Enjoy the week!

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