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Jay Livingston alerted me to this remark by conservative journalist Andrew Ferguson: That the “rich and powerful” are identical to conservatives and Republicans—Edsall’s assumption—is a hoary idea dear to many Democrats and essential to their self-image as the opponents of privilege. It persists even though many of the plushest and most powerful institutions of American […]

David Weigel asks: Conservative mega-donors are purging the GOP. Why aren’t liberal tycoons doing the same for Democrats? The short answer is that rich people are more likely to be conservative and Republican. Weigel talks about mega-donors for a hypothetical “Club for Socialism.” But extreme left economic views are not popular among the rich. Here […]

Steve Kolowich reports: In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software—with reduced face time with instructors—did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. . . . A total of 605 students were randomly assigned to […]

From an op-ed by Campbell Brown titled, “Obama: Stop Condescending to Women”: When I [Brown] listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. . . . But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line. Hmm, […]

Oops. I do remember that line from the First Amendment, though: Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of rich guys to fund campaigns . . . OK, not really. But there’s something about it in the Fourteenth Amendment, I’m sure.

Reporting on the recent French election, Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker wrote: [Former president Nicolas Sarkozy] quickly came to seem arrogant instead of energetic, and he never quite shook a reputation, earned in the first days of his Presidency, for flashiness and bling. Even his marriage to Carla Bruni, and the child they had […]

A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—-we!—-tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote: Murray does not consider the case of Joe […]

Psychologists who describe important cognitive processes as “unnatural,” then go on to be innumerate about risks, and then warn us not to “keep seeking the easy answers.”

Congressman Flake wants to zero out political science funding from the National Science Foundation. Flake makes two points: 1. “Three out of the four of the grants awarded by the NSF Political Science Program go to the wealthiest universities in the country. Would those who would oppose this amendment have believed that Harvard and Yale […]

Sander Daniels sends along this press release: Thumbtack.com surveyed 6,022 small businesses across the United States. The survey asked questions about the friendliness of states towards small business and about small business finances, such as: “In general, how would you rate your state’s support of small business owners?” “Would you discourage or encourage someone from […]