Brendan Nyhan

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  • Mitt Romney’s baby carriage ditty

    Mitt Romney is apparently trying to lock down the social conservative vote among nine-year-olds: Republican Mitt Romney recited a schoolyard ditty Thursday to underscore his argument that traditional marriage is essential for improving education. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage,” the presidential hopeful told a crowd of

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  • Rush Limbaugh says Pelosi has “gone hormonal”

    In another anti-woman smear from the originator of “feminazi,” Rush Limbaugh explains Nancy Pelosi’s criticism of Vice President Cheney by saying “You know, girl’s gone hormonal”: RUSH: My hero, Dick Cheney, is back. The highest levels of the administration are not backing down. He was on Good Morning America today from Sydney, Australia. Correspondent Jonathan

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  • Rick Reilly smeared in SI letter

    Earlier this month, I noted a Rick Reilly column in Sports Illustrated that gently turned against the war in these concluding paragraphs: Athletes love teams, and when they run out of sports teams they sometimes join bigger teams, ones with Humvees for huddles and tombstones for trophies and coaches they’ve never met sending them into

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  • Misperceptions of civilian casualties in Iraq

    A new AP survey finds that the public is knowledgeable about American military deaths in Iraq, but they “woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed”: WASHINGTON – Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully

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  • Study: Flag makes Americans more tolerant

    Contrary to the lefty hypothesis that nationalism activates prejudice toward outgroups, a new study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds that subliminal exposure to the American flag reduces hostility toward outgroups (PDF – subscription required): Three studies examined the implications of nationalistic ideologies and exposure to the U.S. flag for the activation of

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  • The Wall Street Journal’s fuzzy math on AMT

    Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page blames Democrats for problems with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is going to hit millions of taxpayers in coming years if it is not reformed. Apparently, however, the WSJ has no use for budget rules — check out this creative use of scare quotes: The estimated “cost” of

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  • 9/11 conspiracy theories come to Duke

    Why oh why are these people showing their film at Duke? Director Mike Berger and writer Rebecca Cerese, a resident of Chapel Hill, spoke Tuesday night in Richard White Lecture Hall and presented their film, “Improbable Collapse,” which presents a controversial take on the events of Sept. 11. The documentary retraced the events of the

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  • Why Hillary should apologize for Iraq vote

    Writing in Slate, Will Saletan makes a convincing argument that Hillary’s refusal to apologize for her vote on Iraq is a mistake. Here’s how it begins: Five years ago, Hillary Clinton supported a Senate resolution authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq. So did I. It took me four years to admit this was

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  • Comparing John Murtha to Lee Harvey Oswald

    In the latest attack on dissent from the right, Matthew Yglesias flags National Review’s Mackubin Thomas Owens comparing Rep. John Murtha, a leading Democratic opponent of the war in Iraq, to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald: We Marines maintain that except for Lee Harvey Oswald, there is no such thing as an “ex-Marine.” I believe

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  • Joe Biden: Blowhard

    Some people think the Senate has made Joe Biden more of a blowhard, but I think he’s always been one. Check out this quote from Oct. 27, 1990, which has to be one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said in Congress: Cleaning up the mess created by S&L crooks over the next 10

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