Brendan Nyhan

Writing in the New York Times yesterday, columnist Nicholas Kristof summarizes how the weight of the evidence has grown against the Duke lacrosse prosecution:

Time-stamped photos show the accuser dancing at a lacrosse team party at 12:04 a.m. and slumped outside the house where the party was taking place at 12:30 a.m., so the alleged beating, gang rape and sodomy would have had to occur during that interval. Stuart Taylor Jr., the legal writer once for this newspaper and now for National Journal, has noted that the later photo shows her looking relaxed, with her clothes in good order.

Mr. Taylor, who has covered this case meticulously, told me he was more than 90 percent confident that the defendants were innocent.One of the defendants is Reade Seligmann, whose cellphone made at least seven calls between 12:05 and 12:14. The last was to a taxi driver, who picked up Mr. Seligmann at 12:19. That’s a pretty good alibi.

Meanwhile, no DNA evidence has turned up to confirm that the accuser had any sex with the lacrosse players (she said no condoms were used)…

I’ve been poring over a half-dozen police reports and witness reports filed in court in dribs and drabs, the latest just a few days ago. The initial police report by Sgt. J. C. Shelton shows that the accuser didn’t raise the issue of rape until she was about to be locked up in a mental health center. Then when she said she had been raped, she was transported instead to a hospital, where the same police report says she recanted the rape charge, and finally reinstated it.

Newsweek also analyzes how the latest evidence has opened major holes in the prosecution’s case:

Early in the Duke lacrosse rape investigation, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was in a close race to keep his job, spoke about the physical and emotional trauma the alleged victim had suffered at the hands of the players. A police affidavit stated that her medical records revealed the victim had “injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally.” But according to a motion filed by defense attorneys last week, no such physical trauma was found during her exam at Duke hospital. Quoting from the report, which was submitted to the court under seal, the motion states that the nurse—who was in training—examined the woman’s entire pelvic region and noted only diffuse swelling of the vaginal walls, a condition explainable by consensual sexual activity.

Police documents indicate that the accuser had in fact engaged in such activity in the days leading up to the incident. The accuser told police that she’d had sex with her boyfriend a week before. She added that she’d also performed using a vibrator in front of a couple. (Though the timing of this incident is not specific, the clear implication is that it had happened near the time of the lacrosse party.) And, according to defense attorneys, the boyfriend’s seminal fluid was found in her, suggesting she’d also had sex with him within 72 hours. Jarriel Johnson, who identified himself as the woman’s driver, told police in a statement that in addition to sleeping with the accuser himself a week prior to the party, he’d taken her to several appointments at hotels in the days before.

The documents are devastating to the accuser’s credibility. They show that the night of the party, the accuser kept changing her story. After reporting that she’d been raped, she told Sgt. J. C. Shelton, according to his statement, that no one forced her to have sex. Then at the hospital, she said again that she’d been raped. She told one doctor she’d had no alcohol or drugs, according to the motion, but told the nurse that she’d had one drink and was currently taking the muscle relaxant Flexeril, which can cause drowsiness and dizziness if taken with alcohol. The next morning, at UNC hospital, she said she’d been drunk.

The police summary of the statement Kim Roberts, the second dancer, made is especially damning. Roberts said the idea that the woman was assaulted was a “crock.” She went on to say that the accuser, who used the stage name Precious, was out of Roberts’s sight for less than five minutes. Roberts later told NEWSWEEK she believed a rape could have happened. In the meantime, Nifong, who declined a request for comment, had approved a motion to eliminate Roberts’s bond payments stemming from a prior conviction.

After Josh Marshall linked to the roll call tally for the “net neutrality” amendment, which was defeated 269-152 on Thursday in the House, I decided to take a closer look.

A quick statistical analysis shows that the vote was predicted extremely well by the ideology of members of Congress (where ideology is measured by DW-NOMINATE estimates from the 108th Congress, the standard metric of ideological preference in political science).

This is bad news for network neutrality advocates like me. The primary ideological division in Congress is, in large part, the result of differing views about the role of the government in the economy. If moderate members of Congress see network neutrality as a question of their fealty to the free market, network neutrality will lose. Right now, this issue splits the Democratic party (140 yes, 58 no) and unites the Republicans (11 yes, 211 no). No wonder the Republican leadership allowed Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, to offer the amendment rather than blocking it using the House rules.

Several left-leaning bloggers have expressed outrage at Democrats who voted no on the amendment. But it’s not surprising that moderates would vote no given how the vote turned out. A better way to look at the issue is to see who voted yes who “should have” voted no according to their ideology, and conversely for those who “should have” voted yes.

The top 10 heroes (members with the lowest estimated probability of voting yes):
1) Walter Jones (R-NC)
2) Jeff Miller (R-FL)
3) James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
4) Dan Burton (R-IN)
5) Gary Miller (R-CA)
6) Jo Ann Davis (R-VA)
7) Frank Wolf (R-VA)
8) Ralph Regula (R-OH)
9) Heather Wilson (R-NM)
10) Christopher Shays (R-CT)

The top 10 zeroes (members with the lowest estimated probability of voting no):
1) George Miller (D-CA)
2) Danny Davis (D-IL)
3) Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
5) William “Lacy” Clay (D-MO)
6) Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
7) Bobby Rush (D-IL)
8) Chaka Fatah (D-PA)
9) Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
10) Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)

This is a blog about politics, not sports, but I want to briefly recommend The Wages of Wins by David J. Berri, Martin Schmidt, and Stacey Brook. The three authors, who are academic economists, do for basketball and football what Moneyball did for baseball. This is a book that is not to be missed if you’re interested in how empirical analysis can overturn conventional wisdom. For a preview, see Berri’s op-ed in the New York Times yesterday and their excellent blog.

I’ve been reminded that the comment verification process that Typepad uses to screen out spambots is inaccessible to blind people (see the discussion on Wikipedia). As a former employee of Benetech, which runs the Bookshare.org service for visually impaired and print disabled individuals, this does not make me happy. Unfortunately, however, there are no good alternatives to the verification process, which is necessary due to the proliferation of spambots. So I want to post a standing offer to any blind readers – you send me comments and I’ll post them for you.

I was quoted in a Christian Science Monitor story about “Prairie Home Companion,” which has been adapted into a movie:

“The show has never appealed to me,” says Brendan Nyhan, a grad student at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Mr. Nyhan has serious qualms about Keillor’s political activism. As a former editor at the media watchdog website spinsanity.com, Nyhan once chided Keillor for making unsubstantiated allegations in a 2002 skit that suggested Minnesota senator-elect Norm Coleman was a suspect in the plane crash that killed his predecessor. “To suggest that it’s even plausible that Coleman was linked to the crash without evidence is beyond irresponsible,” wrote Nyhan in 2002.

The Spinsanity article in question is here.

Is Jon Stewart following in Stephen Colbert’s footsteps?

In late April, Colbert did a routine at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner that mocked President Bush with a series of easy, predictable jokes. It was not very good comedy, but it made liberals happy, and many thousands of words were blogged about how great Colbert was.

Unfortunately, it’s easy for satirists to give into the temptation, as Colbert apparently did, to (a) see themselves as serious political commentators and/or (b) play to their audience’s preconceptions. The result, as I wrote then, is that “The Daily Show and Colbert are increasingly focused on telling jokes that make liberals feel good about themselves. The result is that the shows are both pretty mediocre right now.”

Sadly, via Steve Benen at WashingtonMonthly.com, here’s a report suggesting that Jon Stewart put Colbert to shame while hosting the Peabody Awards:

Thomas Jefferson once said: “Of course the people don’t want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot.

An unfunny joke where the punchline is a Nazi comparison? Why hire Jon Stewart when you could get a commenter on Daily Kos to provide the same material? Sad, sad, sad…

Update 6/8 12:52 PM: Some commenters are mad that I don’t like the joke and think I’ve appointed myself the humor police. So let’s put the shoe on the other foot: Would people find it funny if Stewart’s joke was to say “Howard Dean said X about President Bush. Oh wait, that was Osama Bin Laden.” I doubt it. (Note: This is not hypothetical — conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh draw that equivalence all the time.)

Update 6/9 8:26 AM: For those who are interested in a more detailed argument against Nazi analogies and jokes, see see my exchange with Matthew Yglesias from last September. I’d also note that Jon Stewart reportedly mocked people invoking Hitler and the Nazis last year, although I can’t find video anywhere. (Does anyone have a link for this?) And for a lighter take, see the brilliant Beautiful Atrocities post “In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes”. Indeed.

Update 6/9 9:10 AM: Invaluable commenter Seth Kramer has found it — video of Jon Stewart denouncing Hitler/Nazi comparisons (note: you have to watch an ad first). Money quotes from Stewart:

These days when it comes to demonizing your enemies there’s a certain someone whose name is on everybody’s lips… Yes, Adolf Hitler, one of the worst mass murderers in all history, has now become the go-to metaphor and comparison for anyone you have a minor disagreement with.

…And good for Pat Buchanan for showing that much strength. He didn’t compare Terri Schiavo’s husband to Hitler, just a Nazi in general. Now we can discuss this at a reasonable level!

So to sum up, please stop calling people Hitler when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans them, and to be honest, it demeans Hitler. That guy worked too many years too hard to be that evil to have any Tom, Dick or Harry come along and say, “Hey, you’re being Hitler.” No! You know who was Hitler? Hitler!

Et tu, John?

[Disclosure: All the President’s Spin was featured on The Daily Show — Stewart interviewed my co-author Bryan Keefer.]

Does Maureen Dowd read her own newspaper?

Today the controversial New York Times columnist writes the following:

W. prefers tactical betes noires to real ones. (Hillary followed his lead by joining conservatives to support a constitutional ban on flag burning.)

But as her own newspaper editorialized on Dec. 7:

Hillary Clinton is co-sponsoring a bill to criminalize the burning of the American flag… It looks to us more like a simple attempt to have it both ways. Clinton says she opposes a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag-burning.

In fact, the Times editorial about Clinton ran on the opposite page from Dowd’s own column of Dec. 7. Did she open the newspaper that day? Does she know how to access Nexis?

Clinton’s compromise position on flag-burning may be somewhat awkward, but that does not reduce journalists’ obligation to get the facts straight. Unfortunately, several other writers have also gotten it wrong. A June 4 Washington Post Magazine article stated that Clinton “recently signed on to a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, which enraged free speech advocates, flag burners, and the match and kerosene industries” – an error that was later corrected. Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News recently wrote of “the anti-flag-burning amendment, newly endorsed by Hillary Clinton.” Finally, the Christian Science Monitor reported
that Clinton “is currently experiencing a wildfire revolt on her left flank with activists and left bloggers unhappy at the senator’s moderate and even conservative positions on issues such as an anti-flag- burning amendment and the war in Iraq.”

Why is this so hard? Nexis includes a number of articles in which columnists and reporters get Clinton’s position correct, including the New York Daily News, Cragg Hines of the Houston Chronicle, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times editorial page, and even the hapless Richard Cohen of the Washington Post.

The problem, it seems, is that (a) Hillary’s position requires reporters and commentators to actually understand a complicated political/legal question and (b) the idea that she supports the anti-flag burning amendment fits the narrative of her move toward the center. But neither is any excuse.

Update 6/7 12:10 PM: For more, see the Spinsanity archive of articles criticizing Dowd as well as two recent corrections of her work in the New York Times (documented by Ken Waight of Lying in Ponds).

Newt Gingrich’s triumph in a Minnesota GOP straw poll of support for potential 2008 candidates is meaningless, but the message circulated by state party leaders is not:

Delegates received a two-page letter warning that McCain is widely viewed as the front-runner, creating “a significant risk that a moderate candidate will get the Republican nomination in 2008.”

The letter was signed by some of the state party’s most influential leaders, including National Committeeman Brian Sullivan, former chairman Chris Georgacas, former National Committee member Jack Meeks, and Mike Wigley, a founder of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota.

While both McCain and Giuliani have been “steadfast supporters of the war on terror,” the letter said, “between them they have supported tax hikes, free speech restrictions, amnesty for illegal immigrants, gay marriage and abortion.”

Can John McCain win a GOP nomination if he faces attacks like this? I remain skeptical, though the Tradesports futures market still puts his probability of winning at 45 percent.

This article from Media Matters is a classic example of the games that the media bias warriors play:

On Fox News’ Your World, host Neil Cavuto complained that “the media is all over” the alleged Haditha killings but that there has been “virtually no coverage of the daily savage attacks by insurgents on Iraqi civilians and our troops.” Onscreen text during the segment read: “Blatant Bias?” But Cavuto has previously alleged that “all you see in the media out of Iraq are the insurgent activity, our soldiers getting killed or hurt.” In fact, he recently asked if “beheadings and roadside bombs, suicide attacks” in Iraq are “being blown out of proportion by the media.” Onscreen text during this segment read: “Media Bias?”

Today on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” analyst Cokie Roberts understated the significance of immigration in Iowa’s 1st District, where it has become a hot issue among Republican candidates in a competitive open-seat Congressional race:

And that’s surprising, Renee, because Iowa is about 94 percent white, as opposed to the rest of the country being about 75 percent, and only 3 percent Hispanic, as opposed to the rest of the country being somewhere between 13 and 15 percent. So it’s this very white area that doesn’t really have any immigrants making immigration the focus. And this is all about, of course, getting out the Republican base in a year when that’s the only people that people expect to be voting are the base in both parties.

The Census actually tracks the number of foreign born residents in each Congressional district. And when you look at the 2002 Census, you’ll see that Iowa’s first district is about 3.5 percent foreign born and 2.2 percent foreign-born non-citizens. It’s just not true that the district “doesn’t really have any immigrants.” Those numbers may be relatively small relative to the country as a whole, which according to the Census is about 11 percent foreign born and 6.6 percent non-citizens. But if you compare Iowa’s 1st District to all the other House districts nationwide, there are more immigrants in Iowa’s district than many others — it is ranked 312 out of 435 in the number of foreign-born residents and 297 out of 435 in the number of non-citizen residents.

I also object to the implication that it’s somehow illegitimate for Republicans in the district to be concerned with immigration even though there aren’t that many immigrants there. Surely Roberts would agree that voters in Iowa should be concerned about homeland security even though they are unlikely to be the targets of a terrorist strike. Why should illegal immigration be any different?

Update 6/5 3:28 PM: A colleague pointed out that Iowa has had substantial growth in immigration due to the meatpacking plants located in the state — a fact that I was aware of but hadn’t focused on. So I calculated the increase in the number of foreign born residents as a proportion of the population in each state between the 1990 census and 2000 census. Among the 50 states, Iowa had the 10th fastest growth in the proportion of foreign born residents during that period, with the number doubling from 1.56 percent to 3.11 percent. Presumably the inflow includes a substantial number of undocumented immigrants. Why is it so “surprising” that Iowa Republicans are concerned about this issue?

To put this in perspective, here is a bar chart of the increase in the proportion of foreign born residents by state from 1990-2000 showing Iowa at #10:

Note also that there is essentially zero correlation between the total proportion of foreign born residents in 2000 and the increase in the proportion of foreign born residents between 1990 and 2000. The increased inflows are not going to states like New York and California. In fact, none of the states that experienced the greatest increases (North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, Minnesota, South Carolina and Iowa) is in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Immigration has surged in the so-called “heartland,” which is the home of much of the Republican base. It’s therefore not so “surprising” that GOP primary voters are concerned about the issue…