The primaries saw a plethora of debates; more than forty total if you add the debates of the two parties, between spring 2007 and summer 2008. Most of those debates had more than two candidates present, which complicated matters somewhat, but even given that they were horribly moderated. Candidates were asked to respond [...]

Check out this series of charts detailing the differences between the Obama and McCain tax plans. For one, the information itself is useful in comparing the two presidential candidates. Just as importantly, however, it makes it crystal clear how easily information can be manipulated to the whims of talking heads. After all, [...]

The public doesn’t have a right to know anything about private citizens. Anyone who says differently is selling something (probably a newspaper).

You should check out this article on weather forecasting, which compared the actual weather with forecasts made by the Kansas City evening news and the national weather service. It’s not the greatest or most thorough scientific study in the world, but it is a good first-stab at an interesting problem: how accurate are weather [...]

What is real patriotism? What does it really meant to “love America”? The pundits and politicians love to ask these questions. But they never answer them directly. Instead, these questions are usually set ups for a classic “bait-and-switch”; they ask about patriotism, but answer about something completely different. So I [...]

I just had to point this out: the New York Times transcript of last night’s debate is 26 pages long. The first question of any substance about what either of them would actually do as president is made on page 13. The moderators wasted half the debate asking the candidates how much they [...]

Check out this really fascinating piece on nytimes.com. We’ve all heard the candidates reference people that they’ve met on the campaign trail and relate their stories of triumph and tragedy. Sometimes, however, those stories come back to bite the candidates, as happened to Hillary Clinton recently. The story she told was a [...]

I’ve been pretty critical of some of the things the Clinton campaign have said about media bias. Now, I still maintain that for the campaign themselves to complain about bias is politically unwise, but last night’s debate generally proved me wrong. NBC’s moderation of the debate was awful, and virtually every one of [...]

If he [Barack Obama] values independent thinking, why is his the most predictable liberal vote in the Senate? A People for the American Way computer program would cast the same votes for cheaper.
- David Brooks, NY Times Op-Ed, 2/19/08

Bet you didn’t know that Obama was the most “predictably liberal” person in the Senate. In [...]

At what point do media pundits cross the line?
David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor, has landed in plenty of hot water for something he said yesterday. In response to a report that Clinton was using her daughter to try to recruit super delegates, Shuster provocatively asked if “Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in [...]