Brendan Nyhan

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  • DAs call for Nifong to give up Duke lacrosse case

    In the wake of the ethics charges filed by the North Carolina State Bar, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys is calling for Durham DA Mike Nifong to give up control of the Duke lacrosse case: The group, which represents district attorneys from across North Carolina, said in a statement that “it is in

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  • John McCain’s presidential proto-campaign

    Has anyone noticed how aggressive John McCain’s allegedly exploratory presidential campaign is being? He’s sending fundraising appeals (PDF) and running Google ads already: The biography (PDF) on his exploratory site also offers some interesting clues to the stances he may take in the campaign. For instance, it does not mention the losing issue of private

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  • Ethics charges against Nifong

    The North Carolina State Bar has hit Durham district attorney Mike Nifong with much-deserved ethics charges: The North Carolina bar filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case, accusing him of saying misleading and inflammatory things to the media about the athletes under suspicion. The punishment for ethics violations

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  • Mirror-imaging in Bush commentary

    It’s been amusing to see the confusion among pundits as President Bush has apparently decided to put more troops into Iraq rather than using the Iraq Study Group report as a pretext to move toward withdrawal. They shouldn’t be surprised. In each situation like this since Bush took office, he has done the opposite of

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  • The DeBrendanator

    How much did I bother dogmatic liberals when I was blogging for The American Prospect? Some guy posted a computer script online called the DeBrendanator that automatically strips my posts out of TAP’s blog: DeBrendanator Description: Removes posts by Brendan Nyhan from prospect.org Written By: Mike J Tags: Brendan Nyhan prospect.org Horse’s Mouth Horse’s Ass

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  • Ad policy

    Since there’s a John Edwards ad running in the sidebar, here’s the standard disclaimer: accepting an ad does not imply endorsement.

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  • Robert Reich advocates confiscatory taxation

    We need to take steps to equalize opportunity in this country, which is plagued by a vicious combination of high income inequality and low income mobility. More and more Americans are recognizing that the status quo is unacceptable. But Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, is taking the wrong approach

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  • 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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