1. James Joyner, "David Horowitz at CPAC."
"[T]he vast majority of the speakers at CPAC are much more mainstream and gracious. For every Horowitz, there are a half dozen Mark Tapscotts and Mike Pences. But it would be much more comforting if the radicals generated less enthusiasm."
2. Mark Blumenthal, "The Secret Lives of Pollsters."
"If pollsters disclosed more about how their polls were conducted, we would be in a better position to know which polls are likely to be right, and which ones can be safely ignored."
3. Deroy Murdock, "McCain Could Become the Reagan of Fiscal Discipline."
"McCain largely has refused to be led into temptation. He supported 2001’s $143.4 billion No Child Left Behind Act, but fought 2002’s $180 billion farm bailout, 2003’s $558 billion Medicare drug entitlement, and 2005’s $286.4 billion highway bill, which contained 6,371 earmarks worth $24 billion. 'Those were the four biggest budget-busting bills of the Bush presidency,' notes Heritage Foundation fiscal analyst Brian Riedl. 'And McCain voted against three of them.'"
4. Fred Kaplan, "What's Really in the U.S. Military Budget?"
"As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion."
5. Chris Wilson, "Testify Before Congress, Meals Not Included."
"Even if a congressional committee forces you to testify in Washington, the government is not obligated to pay your way. The Committee on House Administration's handbook for such matters calls reimbursements to witnesses an 'extraordinary measure' that must be authorized by the chair."
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Daily Digest
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The Daily Digest
Rudy and McCain will not contest the Ames straw poll. Bully for them, says David Yepsen, who declares the famed poll "a shake-down of candidates that, for some, has replaced the caucuses themselves as a test of viability."
Frank Luntz shows off his dial technology for the most recent Republican debate. The winner: Romney, whose answer about his faith sent the dials off the chart.
Even before Ramesh Ponnuru suggested that earmark reform was a misguided cause, Cato's Stephen Slivinski and Reason's Jacob Sullum were voicing similar arguments.
Michael Rosen, an attorney in San Diego, explores Rudy's studied neutrality on Roe v. Wade.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Beware Internet Polls
In general, I distrust polls. But I really distrust those those don't even pretend to scientific accuracy, as by distinguishing between likely vs. registered voters, screening for people who cannot legally vote, disclosing the margin of error, using neutral language, and so on. The only thing the latter are good for, as Jesse Walker ably explains, is to measure how devoted a following someone has.
This is why, when in 2002 the Modern Library announced its list of the 100 greatest novels and invited online readers to submit their picks, two groups rose up: the Randians and the Scientologists. Where the official top three consisted of Ulysses, The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, the people's house picked Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Battlefield Earth.
Of course, there's always some cheating (as in using a single computer to vote multiple times). But as Jesse observes of Ron Paul, who's been racking up victory after victory in various online polls, "The congressman does well even when the multi-voters are ferreted out."
The reason for such success, as with the Modern Library survey, is the Internet, which from its inception has been a boon for the marginalized (pornographers being the obvious example). Such people are usually geographically separate, but in a classic display of supply meeting demand, the Web allows them to pool their resources.
The final point is the icing on the cake. As Jesse puts it, those, like Little Green Footballs and Pajamas Media, who have banned Paul from their polls, would do well to "ponder the point of offering a system so easily gamed." Or, in the case of Fox News host Carl Cameron, who questioned his employer's text-messaging poll, in which Paul placed a solid second, they might "admit that if the votes for Paul didn't mean much, the same was true of the remainder of the results."
