The live action role playing occupation of the Capitol building went over America like a lead balloon. Support for the action is dismal: "Not sure" responses, constituting 9% of the total, are excluded, so the residuals are the percentages who disapprove of the takeover. As if the optics weren't bad enough, that 1-in-5 working-class white... Read More

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety are a majority: Working-class white men are a problem. They're always a problem. Nobody else except Republicans--a redundancy, since we already mentioned white men--has an issue getting with the program. The troglodytes hate The Science. They need remedial education. In camps, if... Read More

The following graph shows the percentages of people, by selected demographic characteristics, who agree that some members of the FBI and DOJ are trying to delegitimatize president Trump through politically-motivated investigations (that's putting it mildly to say the least). The data comes from a Reuters Ipsos poll that was conducted the first week of February.... Read More

I've a couple of other posts queued up and don't have anything novel to add at the moment, but diverting attention away from a scandal bigger than Watergate isn't something that can be done with a clear conscience. Collusion between the FBI and a presidential campaign to violate the constitutional protections of the oppositional presidential... Read More

Agnostic on the political-industrial alignment: Since its inception, the GSS has queried respondents about federal government spending on "the military, armaments, and defense" with three possible responses--"too little", "too much", or "about right". The following graphs show the percentage of liberals and conservatives, by decade, who gave other than a goldilocks answer: � The differences... Read More

The 2016 iteration of the GSS asked respondents about who should be the primary provider for the sick, the old, and of education, along with five possible responses--the government, private businesses, non-profits, religious organizations, or family and friends. The following graphs show the percentages, by selected demographic characteristics*, who said the government should be the... Read More

Obama is correct when he asserts that mandatory voting would be "transformative". The intellectually impotent mainstream right has no answer for why, in a country where democracy is venerated as the unquestioned (and unquestionable) apogee of political systems, anything other than universal suffrage should be the aspiration. March of progress, being on the right--er, correct!--side... Read More

With the admission by the IRS that it targeted Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny in their petitions for tax-exempt status�and put red tape in their way to bog down their operations in the headlines, I thought it'd be a nice time�to take a look at the party affiliations of� government (federal, state, and local)�employees... Read More

In a blatant but understandable attempt to gain electoral advantage (anything that makes voting more restrictive benefits Republicans, and anything that makes it easier to do benefits Democrats), the Justice Department rejected South Carolina's version of a voter-ID law requiring putative citizens to produce proof that they are indeed citizens eligible to vote in their... Read More

It's neither my forte nor my foible, but when Razib and Randall get this worked up about something, I'd be a pretty crappy squire not to pay attention. The AMA doesn't want you to be able to access your own genomic profile directly from companies like 23andme (as I have). In the proceeding video, doctor... Read More