Brendan Nyhan

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  • The continued dominance of the white quarterback

    Why are black quarterbacks still so rare in football? There are more black coaches than ever before (though still very few) and a number of black QBs have been highly successful at the college and pro levels, but the position is still ridiculously white. Don’t believe me? Check out this picture from a New York

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  • The sycophants of Power Line

    Via Andrew Sullivan, the obsequious rhetoric of Power Line: It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another

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  • Bill Frist’s stem cell decision

    Bill Frist’s decision to back an expansion of stem cell research is fascinating. Frist has been assiduously courting Christian conservatives for years in anticipation of a presidential run. So why did he decide to burn them now on a litmus test-type issue? Some possibilities: 1) He decided that stem cell research is just too popular

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  • The myth of Hillary as moderate

    Hillary gave a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council on Monday, and all hell broke loose. The funny thing is that if you actually read it, you’ll see it was largely Democratic boilerplate with only a few vague rhetorical gestures toward the center, as Mickey Kaus pointed out. But lefty bloggers lost their s—, helping

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  • What is a quality candidate?

    A question recently came up during a conversation I had with Jason Reifler: what makes someone a good political candidate? Right now, political science models focus on variables like partisanship, economic performance, etc., and don’t take the personal qualities of the candidate into account. Is is true that personal qualities don’t matter, or is the

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  • Durham in summer: Pros and cons

    It was an inferno here the last few days, but on the upside, I got to watch Grant Hill play pickup basketball against the Duke guys at the gym. Pretty cool. Things have been busy; more soon…

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  • Seth Mnookin includes corrections in paperback edition of Hard News

    Good for Seth Mnookin! The journalist has taken the unusual step of including a dedicated corrections section in the paperback version of his book about the New York Times: Random House will publish the paperback of Seth Mnookin’s 2004 book, “Hard News,” on August 9. An advance copy received by E&P reveals that the book

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  • More spin from Eleanor Smeal

    In an email to supporters after the announcement of John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal falsely suggests that Roe is in danger of being reversed for the second time since Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation: Let there be no mistake about it. The case most likely to be reversed or

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  • Josh Marshall asserts White House behind Fitzgerald probe

    According to two paragraphs at the end of a long Reuters story, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, will “hold hearings on the use of espionage cover” and “review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two

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  • Atrios suggests Roberts is gay

    Just a day after I denounced conservatives for manufacturing a conspiracy to suggest that John Roberts is gay, Atrios has made the same suggestion, even though the judge allegedly described in the story was reportedly removed from contention: I Wonder Who This Was? And did he wear plaid pants? Amid the political hullabaloo surrounding white-bread

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