PapaBigears

I linked a while back to the the Sunlight Foundation’s PAC Name Generator, which they created to point out the absurd vagueness of many PAC names.  But as it turns out, several actual PACs were created that matched names from the generator.  See here.  Coincidence?

Courtesy of Gallup.

Monkey Cage contributor Erica Chenowth and Maria Stephan’s book was just named to The Guardian’s “Best Books of 2011,” thanks to Steven Pinker.  He writes: Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works (Columbia). Gandhi was right, not just morally but empirically: nonviolent resistance is three times more effective than violence. Congratulations, Erica!

Political scientist Andrew Reynolds, in the New York Times: Egypt, the largest and most important country to overthrow its government during the Arab Spring, is careening toward a disastrous parliamentary election that begins on Nov. 28 and could bring the country to the brink of civil war. Why?  Part of the problem is the wrong […]

This is a guest post by political scientist David Peterson of Iowa State University. The allegations about Herman Cain became public on October 31.  Two colleagues and I were fortunate to have a poll of registered Republican and independent voters in Iowa go into the field the very next day, on November 1.  We interviewed […]

This is a guest post by political scientists Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman. The Supreme Court has reinserted itself in the heart of domestic politics by agreeing to review the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).  How is the Court likely to rule?  Consider two scenarios. The first scenario relies on a prominent theory […]

The latest rounds of “nerdfight”—Seth Masket vs. Sean Trende, Nate Silver vs. Ron Klain vs. Nate Silver vs. Brendan Nyhan, and also Harry Enten—are instructive in many ways.  I want to weigh in with some points that I feel are getting short shrift. A lot of the discussion has centered on the value of particular […]