Brendan Nyhan

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  • Douglas Jehl should read his newspaper

    In a story yesterday, New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl expressed puzzlement at the lack of suicide bombings in the West before the London attacks: Why suicide attacks have not previously emerged in the West is a mystery. In the Middle East and in Asia, the tactic has spread in recent years far beyond its

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  • He said/she said reporting at the AP

    Here’s an example of lazy AP journalism. In a story about the wildly optimistic new budget projections from the White House, the AP buries any critical perspective until this passage at the end of the story: CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economist at the Bush White House, warns that it is too early to

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  • Attacks on dissent from O’Reilly, Hannity and Granholm

    It’s depressing to see how common attacks on dissent have become in post-9/11 politics. Media Matters documents the latest salvo from Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly: The anti-American press both here and in Europe is actually helping the terrorists by diminishing their threat. “Talking Points” urges you to begin holding people accountable for their position

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  • Wall Street Journal recycles supply side nonsense

    Those wacky editors at the Wall Street Journal are still peddling the supply-side nostrums that every respectable economist disavows. In an editorial today, they trumpet the recent decline in the federal budget deficit as vindicating President Bush’s tax cuts: Not even the most unbridled supply-sider predicted that President Bush’s investment tax cuts would unleash such

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  • What is Jerry Bowyer talking about?

    Jerry Bowyer is a conservative radio host in Pittsburgh who was nice enough to have me on his show a couple of times to talk about Spinsanity and All the President’s Spin. But his latest economics column for National Review Online is wrong-headed at best. He writes that “states that went for George W. Bush

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  • Beach trip

    Back on Wednesday…

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  • Hillary 2008 watch: Favorability ratings and stereotypes

    According to political insiders polled by The Atlantic, Hillary Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination. But contradictory predictions about her chances in the general election abound. Marshall Wittman, a conservative turned centrist Democrat, is strangely optimistic, while Bob Kuttner, the liberal editor of The American Prospect, is more cautious. So as

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  • Daniel Henninger: Feelings equal truth

    Who knew conservatives were so sensitive to people’s feelings? First David Frum wants to protect Christians from any educational content that might conflict with their principles, and now Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, asserts that a link between 9/11 and Iraq exists, well, because some people feel it exists: Nearly four years after

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  • David Frum endorses the tyranny of the majority in education

    As Kevin Drum notes, National Review writer David Frum recently made the disturbing argument that “Christian principle” should determine what is taught in public schools: [Frum on h]ow evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. … Christianity

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  • NRSC cheap shots at MoveOn donors

    In the latest National Republican Senatorial Committee press release attacking Bob Casey, the Democratic candidate for Rick Santorum’s Senate seat, the NRSC bashes him for taking MoveOn cash. At the end of the release, there’s a headline stating that “MoveOn’s membership is less than mainstream.” The NRSC then lists a number of donors to MoveOn,

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