Political Science

I just got to Thursday night's Daily Show on Tivo, and one of the featured segments involved Samantha Bee and Jason Jones expressing their frustration at a focus group of undecided voters. How could they not see the difference between the candidates? How could they not know who they like better after 20 months of campaigning? It's like they're stupid or something! It was … [Read more...] about In Defense of Being Undecided

It's hard to really be sure, but the dumbest issue among the many dumb issues to emerge from this election season is the question of whether it was disrespectful of Newsweek to put an unretouched photo of Sarah Palin on the cover because it exposed all her flaws. That's an easy one: Newsweek does journalism. They're not supposed to retouch any of the photos. Besides, have … [Read more...] about Retouching Sarah Palin

One of the many side issues during this campaign season has been the use of contemporary music by the campaigns---in commercials or as background to conventions and rallies. The original artists don't always like the candidates who use their music, and often they have the legal right to stop them. (Not always. Music licensing is complicated and often kind of stupid.) Getting … [Read more...] about Music Rights, Politician’s Rights

When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his runningmate, one of the first things everybody noticed was that after all the talk about how inexperienced Barack Obama was, McCain's pick for Vice President---that is, his choice for President if he can't do the job---had even less experience. It seemed an odd choice, and it undercut his campaign's ability to bring up the experience … [Read more...] about The Palin-Obama Paradox

Over at Marathon Pundit, blogger John Ruberry accuses Barack Obama of being a "free speech phony" and quotes with approval from an editorial by Ann Woolner: When WGN-AM Radio in Chicago scheduled a two-hour interview last week with David Freddoso, who wrote The Case Against Barack Obama the campaign sent out an alarm to supporters, sparking an avalanche of angry phone calls to … [Read more...] about Obama, and Attacking Free Speech