Archive for February, 2012

In response to my post from yesterday about brokered conventions and dark horses, Jonathan Bernstein makes the case that I’m underestimating the possibility of a factional bolt if the (highly unlikely) deadlock came to pass: I’m going to stick up for my argument a bit. The thing is: Matt’s objections are also objections to...
Read more »

Greetings from Austin, TX! For those of you who missed it, last time I was here (September) I took a fabulous tour of the state capitol building, which inspired this post on legislative security, or the lack thereof. Austin is, of course, named for Stephen F. Austin, who managed to make it into one of my GOP Candidate...
Read more »

I’m headed down to Austin, TX on business this morning for the next bunch of days. That means blogging could be lighter. Or heavier. We’ll see.
Read more »

Some stuff I enjoyed reading from this week: 1. John Sides had a two-part series — here, and then responses to criticism here — on the obsession with negative political ads and the reality of their effectiveness. I suspect the Daisy ad from the ’64 election is one of the most overrated campaign messages...
Read more »

People always say that it’s tough for Senators to run for President because they have all these roll call votes lying around from the past that opponents can pick on. But the actual mechanism that makes all these votes problematic usually goes unexplained; it’s not clear, on the surface, why having taken a ton...
Read more »

So don’t worry ’bout tomorrow, take it today; Forget about the check, we’ll get hell to pay. —AC/DC, from Back in Black (1980) Once again, my wife is going out with some friends tonight, and assuming that the girls go to sleep fine, at home it’s just going to be me, the GOP debate,...
Read more »

Happy 100th Birthday Arizona! This is a few days late — Arizona the state turned 100 back on February 14 — but I happen to know a little Arizona territorial history, so I thought I’d pass it along. Better late than never. My dissertation looked at the political development of the American west —...
Read more »

My graduate school adviser, David Mayhew, had an article over the weekend in the Washington Post — entitled Which Was The Most Important U.S. Election? — that I’d recommend reading. The...
Read more »

Read more »

Back in October, as an anti-tribute to Columbus Day, I wrote a post on federal holiday legitimacy that included this chart: The chart plots all ten federal holiday on two dimensions: 1. First, to what degree would the event be celebrated/commemorated absent the federal holiday. Was the holiday significant prior to government recognition? Would...
Read more »

Well then, congressional staff. Someone asked me a few weeks ago to do a general post on the topic, but…where to begin? Let’s do this in three chunks: a legislative branch overview, a basic rundown of the staff in a Representative’s office, and a look at the most relevant recent trend: leadership staff growth....
Read more »

Read more »

A few weeks ago, in response to this blog post, Jamelle Bouie asked me a question: why do I consider myself a libertarian, rather than a straightforward liberal? That’s a great question! And I’m spending some time answering it. Previous entries in the series: Part One: Consenting Adults (1/31/2012) Part Zero: Ground Level Decks...
Read more »

Today, as required under law, the President submitted his FY2013 budget to Congress. Imagine that I sent an email to you and six of our friends suggesting that we plan a picnic for next weekend: Hey all, we were talking about getting together this weekend. It looks like the weather is going to be...
Read more »

This post was authored by my brother-in-law, Dan Courtright, a writer who lives in New York and knows a hell of a lot about football. I’ve heard each of the following claims over the past few days, mostly on the Mike Francesa show and ESPN. Let me weigh in on their relative merits: 1....
Read more »

I’m seeing/hearing a lot of political analysis today that goes like this: Fact:  a majority of Catholics (58%) are in favor of the Obama administration’s recent birth control decision. Conclusion: therefore, the decision cannot possibly hurt Obama electorally among Catholic voters. This is bad logic: the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the fact....
Read more »

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down Proposition 8, effectively legalizing gay marriage in California. For the libertarian reasons I’ve outlined in depth here and also defended here, I don’t think this is the optimal way to address the issue of marriage inequality; it takes a set of special government preferences (for...
Read more »

The Sunlight Foundation has slogged through two quarterly House Statement of Disbursements reports to produce a nice piece on staff turnover in the House. Endlessly interesting to think about. Go read it. I don’t mean the following as a harsh critique — I really liked the study and, having done my share of research...
Read more »

Quite unexpectedly, I found myself in a very interesting situation Sunday morning: listening to an overtly political sermon at church. Based on the reaction I saw in the congregation, I think it might be a very big deal. It was absolutely the talk of the congregation on the way out of the building when...
Read more »