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RETIREMENT. This week the New York Times reported that Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who caucuses with the Democrats, has been speaking with previous contender Linda McMahon, a Republican campaigning for her party’s nomination for Lieberman’s seat, drawing the ire of many establishment Democrats.  Lieberman’s retirement and that of other members of Congress this year raises this […]

With the Supercommittee back in the news (see here and here, for example) after weeks of secrecy, it seems a good time to ask the question of whether all this secrecy is good for policy making. After all, it seems antithetical to traditional notions of openness and transparency in government, things we often seek to […]

In the “picture is worth a thousand words” department, the following graph shows the probability that each team will win at each moment of the game: Of course, this picture is pretty good too: Source for win probabilities (and more explanation available at): Fangraphs. H/t for the photo to Grantland.

Nate Silver, over at fivethirtyeight, objects to the conventional wisdom that Herman Cain, despite his place in the polls, has little chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee. That wisdom, consistent in this case with our book, The Party Decides, is that that Cain may have some appeal with some elements of the party, but […]

In the Wall Street Journal, of all places! What happened? They couldn’t get John Yoo to write something on short notice?

From the Washington Post: (link from here) As Jay Livingston points out, the Post’s lolcat is not only ridiculous on its own, it also doesn’t fit with the first paragraph of the news story.

In his most recent New York Times column, David Brooks falls into a common trap of political reporting, mixing concerns of policy and campaigning. Brooks writes: Democrats can win elections in this climate if they defuse the Big Government/Small Government ideological debate. With his Third Way approach, Bill Clinton established that he was not a […]

Continuing our series of articles from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section, Newsletter, today we present the following article on the “Ethical Challenges of Embedded Experimentation” by Macartan Humphreys of Columbia University. Since posting the first article from the newsletter on Monday, I have subsequently learned that the entire newsletter is free and […]

I am fascinated by this result from the latest HuffPo-Patch poll of Republican party elites in the early primary and caucus states: Nearly three-fourths, 74%, of these party insiders believe that “can beat Obama” describes Cain “very well” or “somewhat well.” That’s more confidence than I would expect. I would be interested to know why […]

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