James Moody and Peter Mucha published a fascinating article recently on the polarization of the United States Senate. Given their findings (published in Network Science, 1:1, 119-121), senators are farther apart, and are more partisan than at any point since the early 1900s. To put it differently, there are more straight, party line votes than at […]
Archives
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Polarization in the U.S. Senate
06 Jun 2013
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Youth & the Republican Party
03 Jun 2013
No one does ritualistic self-immolation like the Republican Party. Still stinging from the 2012 setback, the Grand Old Party remains on the political couch, yearning for therapy and analysis. On Monday, the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) issued a lengthy report on the party and the youth vote. Politico‘s Katie Glueck published a nice summary […]
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The Perfect Storm
30 May 2013
I hope everyone has been watching the unfolding scandal at the IRS (that’s the Internal Revenue Service for the present). As I see it, this seems like the perfect convergence of several disturbing trends in recent decades. First, we see the increasing use by congress of “big” and “broad” statutes whose language is left (deliberately?) […]
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Right Track/Wrong Track Poll Numbers
28 May 2013
Public opinion experts–I do not consider myself one of them, mind you–use a variety of techniques to tap into how people perceive our nation’s health and welfare. One of the most popular is the right track/wrong track question, which is usually worded like, “do you think America is headed in the right direction or on […]
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Obama Administration: Scandals or Scams?
22 May 2013
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With public opinion polls low for Congress (independent of which party is in power) and support for the President seemingly at his base level, no real substantive work being done, and the only progress at all on our national debt is an approach that the President insisted on and now says is the worst way […]
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Lately it seems there have appeared more articles on the subject, known among Reformed folks as “The Radical Two Kingdoms Debate” or “R2K.” As near as I can tell, this debate is a resurrection of one that has been going on for centuries. It appears to be between those who accept the transformational model of […]
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Scandals: The Cumulative Effect
16 May 2013
The Obama Administration is, for the first time, mired in scandal. The IRS problems continue to irritate. Benghazi bubbles. The Department of Justice’s wiretaps rile. The most interesting article, for me, was Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei’s assertion that the DC political culture is turning on Obama as a consequence of these possible misdeeds. As […]
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Benghazi as Watergate?
08 May 2013
Congress is set to begin hearings on the Benghazi attack, in which four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christoper Stevens, were killed. The 9/11/12 assault, which was initially blamed on a YouTube video that defamed Mohammed, is now seen as a full-scale act of terror on a relatively soft target, the U.S. Consulate. The primary controversy […]
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Kagan and the Demise of Democracy
02 May 2013
Donald Kagan, a history professor, gave a “farewell lecture” at Yale University last week and made the statement “Democracy may have had its day.” Dr. Kagan is not one to shy away from controversy and has often raised the ire of his colleagues through his public statements and actions. By way of explanation, he argued […]