The Study

I'd heard this study mentioned before, but now here's the link, courtesy of Brian Beutler. It shows that "the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops."

To state what I guess isn't clear to much of the national press corps, this is the scandal behind the scandal of the US Attorney firings. The issue isn't merely that a handful of US Attorneys seem to have lost jobs they shouldn't have lost -- they'll be okay all things consider -- but that if a handful of US Attorneys get fired for refusing to mal-administer justice, what does that tell us about the ones who aren't getting fired? The linked study is one strong piece of circumstantial evidence that something very fishy is up, and the firings are a second such piece.

3/28/07 1:47PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

And what did Rove have in mind for 2008? All those new USAs were supposed to go after Democratic candidates and Democratic "voter fraud!" It's no coincidence that the fired USAs were from states Rove has tagged as battlegrounds in 2008!

Posted by: grytpype on March 28, 2007 02:06 PM

Off topic but too good:
So Matt have you seen your BF Andy's piece "An Honest Neocon"?
(How's that for unconscious irony?)
It's really kewl how he manages, while admitting to being totally wrong in his support for Bush and the Iraq Adventure still manages to blame the dirty fucking hippies and "unfair" media for making him do it, their mad beating of the Peace Drums driving him to support the Shrub and an illegal war of aggression..
And then of course Atrios went and got him all wet in his panties. Again.

Posted by: Willy on March 28, 2007 02:15 PM

I think several points need to be made about this "study", before you take it too seriously.

1. It's not a study of investigations and prosecutions. It's a study of media accounts of investigations and prosecutions. That's why their data tables have a column for when the story was published. News accounts do not, it should be noted, even pretend to be representative samples.

2. They conclude that the Bush administration was the first to engage in this "political profiling", but if you look at their data, they didn't collect data on previous administrations. It should go without saying that to arrive at conclusions about how A compares to B, you have to have looked at both A AND B.

3. The discrepency they found exists only at the state, and primarilly local, level. They looked at major media news accounts. Major media outlets are hedquartered in major metropolitan centers. Major metropolitan centers are politically dominated by Democrats.

Gee, which investigations do you suppose they'd be covering?

Now, despite the manifest flaws of this study, and apparent unprofessionalism involved in stating conclusions where data wasn't collected, they may be right about political profiling.

By coincidence.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore on March 28, 2007 02:27 PM

I'm not sure this disparity really indicates bias. I'm no expert, but it's my impression that most of the old fashioned "machine politics" goes on in central cities, which tend to be democratic strongholds. For example, have you seen the documentary "Street Fight" about the mayoral race in Newark?

Posted by: ed on March 28, 2007 02:31 PM

This data is truly striking, but I had some of the same concerns that Brett lays out above. Really the most valuable thing would be to compare it to the Janet Reno justice department and see how big a difference there was.

My guess: there is a significant difference, but given the same methodology, you're still going to see a tendency towards prosecuting Dems.

Posted by: right on March 28, 2007 02:34 PM

I think one reason why this doesn't raise as many eyebrows as it should is that, in the American subconscious, there still lurks the belief that Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans.

Hell, it still lurks in my subconscious, even though I know far, far better.

This stems, I think, from decades back when Democrats were associated with three fairly corrupt groups: Big city political machines, industrial labor unions and the Southern white overclass. Sure, there were good, upstanding Democrats--Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman--but the Democrat stereotype was Boss Tweed, Richard Daley, and Lyndon Johnson. Republicans, by contrast, drew from Main Street/Wall Street and good-government types like LaGuardia. Sure, the Republicans could be wrong--hell, they usually were--but they were wrong out of principle, not out of avarice.

That's the default stereotype, at least. The one I picked up in small town Indiana in the 1970s.

Of course, like so much else in American politics, Nixon changed all this. The Republicans are now home to the corrupt Southerners, the unions are largely broken, and cities are generally too cash-strapped to make good patronage vehicles. (They've been replaced by the military/aerospace industry.) But since the typical newspaper editor is an aging baby boomer, his instincts on this are even more ossified than mine. So he still thinks "Corrupt Democrat--makes sense to me."

The idea that the GOP machine of the 1990s and Bush Administration is perhaps the most all-encompassingly corrupt political organization in American history is so counter to the stereotype that it will take more evidence than any Congressional investigation could hope to uncover. Unless someone in the Administration comes forward, comes clean and lays out the entire scope of the enterprise so clearly that even the willfully blind can see it, the entire rotten orchard will be written off as a few bad apples.

Posted by: jlw on March 28, 2007 02:37 PM

Bellmore's conclusion that the study is mostly bogus and any correct conclustion is due to coincidence seems to rest largely on his point 3, and the argument seems to hinge on the assumption that media outlets in heavily Democratic areas would be more likely to cover Democratic vote fraud. Really? Democratic dominated newsrooms who, unprofessionally, allow their own political bias to favor the display of their own political dirty laundry? Really?

However, point 2 is valid, and it would be very useful to see a study on previous administration DOJ behavior.

On point 1, many studies of this kind are done by using media accounts as an index of only partially observable activities, including corporate finance, and public health. So point 1 is not as damning as it may first look. Certainly, much of a district attorney's activity may be secret, and one cannot observe confidential investigations directly.

And why not operate at the state and local level? That is where much of the nitty gritty election law operates, at least in terms of manipulating voter turnout, and dealing with contested votes. That is where establishing a bias in terms of burden of proof would affect judges decisions, sentiments of potential jurors, and tendancy of media to pursue a story.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 02:41 PM

OK, sorry, Bellmore's point 3 could rest on the assumption that areas dominated by Democrats will have more nefarious Democratic activity because... why exactly? If party X dominates an area, that means it dominates becuase it is crooked? That requires an argument. Or if party X dominates because of voter registration, does ne assumed if Y% of voters are of party X, that means every voter in party X spends a little voter fraud duty every year? Or what exactly? One could as easily make the argument that a minority party would be more tempted to try voter fraud to increase its slim chances at election time.

So, he needs some more arguments and more evidence to discredit this admittedly preliminary and imperfect study as much as he does.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 02:46 PM

I have to think there is something to Bellmore's point number three. I live around Chicago. There is obviously a lot of corruption in and around Chicago. I can't tell you the last time that the Republican Party was in control of Cook County or the City Council or a majority of wards. Therefore, if you are looking into political corruption in the City of Chicago, it sort of makes sense to look at the Democratic Machine.

Looking at the list of investigations in the data tables, I would imagine that the same sort of principle applies to areas like Baltimore and Detroit, amongst others. I am not saying that profiling isn't envouraged, I am saying that I agree that most large city local corruption cases would likely involve Democrats since they are generally the ones in charge of large cities.

Perhaps a more telling stat would be how many of those investigated were actually prosecuted and subsequently pled guilty or were convicted vs just investigated as a function of Dem vs GOP...

Posted by: Stosboy on March 28, 2007 02:51 PM

By the way, I do not think either party is fundamentally corrupt. If Chicago had been ruled by Republicans for decades, the same amount of corruption would still exist here as it currently does.

Posted by: stosboy on March 28, 2007 03:02 PM

Absolutely, this is the next wave. Krugman mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, and I'm curious to see if any journalists other than Josh and his muckrakers will pursue it. We know which seven didn't play ball; what about the other 86 who did? The fact that Rove and Gonzales didn't want them fired is, at this point, probable cause all by itself.

Posted by: Ish on March 28, 2007 03:02 PM

My point 3 could rest on the assumption that media outlets tend to pay more attention to events in their own backyards, and that their own backyards happen to be almost exclusively dominated by Democrats.

A follow up study ought to be done which,

1. Looks at records of actual investigations, rather than just news accounts.

2. Collects comparable data for previous administrations.

and,

3. Also collects aquital/conviction data.

If the ratio of aqquitals to convictions is substantially higher for Democrats than Repubicans, that would be quite damning, as it would indicate that much weaker cases were being brought against Democrats.

I should say, I don't know that one party is more corrupt than the other, but I'm not willing to reject the possiblity out of hand.

What I do reject is the idea that a study this flawed can be considered more than mildly suggestive. It's not proof of anything.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore on March 28, 2007 03:03 PM

A minor quibble with Brett's #3, I'd be interested in seeing the ratio of indictments (and even of investigations, if that can be quantified), as opposed to convictions. I always believed that Rove et al were interested first and foremost in creating the implication of wrongdoing, and that actual convictions were just gravy.

Posted by: Ish on March 28, 2007 03:09 PM

I agree with Brett Bellmore's suggestions. There is one more thing the authors need to do and that is be more precise about their comparative normative distribution of party affiliation. Some comments say that we would expect more investigations of Democrats in, say Chicago, since there are more Democrats there and there is a Democratic machine there as well. But the authors attempt to account for this by doing chi-square tests comparing the distribution of investigations reported to what one would expect if investigations where proprotional to party affiliation and under assumptions parties are equally likely to break the law. What they expect to see under those assuptions is described by what they call their 'normative' distributrion of party affiliation. They appear to have just one (for the whole country) which is voter registration, or proprotion of elected officials of each party -I am not sure which. I looked at this study a few weeks ago and I thought I had seen details about their 'normative' distribution, but I can't find them now. Anyway, they apparently have just one distribution indicating how many investigations by affiliation of the target there should be, and that may not be appropriate for each individual state and local area.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 03:38 PM

A related issue is that if you have a big city dominated by Democrats with some corruption, and bunch of smaller surrounding towns dominated by Republicans with some corruption, it's much, much easier for a prosecutor to pick one high-profile target in the Democratic city than to pursue of bunch of cases against lower-profile targets in the Republican towns. Given what's come out about the pressure for bogus voter-fraud investigations in Washington State, I'm definitely not suggesting there's an innocent explanation for everything, but I agree that this ratio probably doesn't tell the whole story.

Posted by: MattT on March 28, 2007 03:44 PM

"much, much easier for a prosecutor to pick one high-profile target in the Democratic city"

Much much easier to go after the Big Man in the Big City Hall, than go after the yokels in little city halls? I don't get it.

Obviously, this is a preliminary study with a very simple methodollgy -it probably should be called an 'exploratory' or 'hypothesis generating' study. Those aren't bad things if you can use them to come with really cool ideas for the next study. I think the authors oversell it to some extent. But I think some people here are in an auto-debunk mode that is not warranted.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 04:02 PM

I think it's a bit of an exageration to speak of "pressure for bogus voter-fraud investigations in Washington state". There unquestionably were enough illegal votes cast to swing the election, and there were fraudulent registrations aplenty, too. The US attorney there decided that he couldn't establish intent in the case of the illegal votes, and thought that the fraudulent registrations were probably a result of financial motives, rather than a desire to swing an election.

But this was a judgment call, and the opposite judgement was not so outrageous as to constitute, IMO, a demand for a bogus investigation.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore on March 28, 2007 04:04 PM

"But I think some people here are in an auto-debunk mode that is not warranted."

I'm just trying to stop people from entering an "auto-buy into" mode. I agree this study is reason enough to conduct a genuinely rigorous study on the subject. I just don't want anybody to think that THIS study was rigorous enough to base any conclusions on.

Think of it as a cheap screening test with a high potential for false positives.

I'm also somewhat bothered that they went out of their way to express a conclusion (About Bush being the first...) they HAD to know they hadn't collected the data to arrive at, even in a tentative way. That wasn't at all professional.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore on March 28, 2007 04:08 PM

"most of the old fashioned "machine politics" goes on in central cities,"

People here need to get out more. I was just in a suburban part of Long Island that has been so thoroughly owned by the Republican machine for so many years that a town full of black people overwhelmingly vote Republican in local elections.

It has been historically very helpful to racist nativists to pretend that political machines were a "city" thing--Tammany got a lot of notice not just because it was big, but because it was Irish, and the same can be said for Chicago. If I'm running a political machine, lord knows, I'd like people to believe it "doesn't happen here" so they don't notice the fact that yep, it's totally happening here.

It's been a useful lie to claim that cities are more corrupt than the country. Frankly, this is not and has never been true--especially in politics.

At the time when Tammany ran NYC, Republican President McKinley was a complete tool of the robber barons' political machine--and Republican Boss Platt of New York put Teddy Roosevelt on the VP ticket (over the objections of McKinely's kingmaker Mark Hanna) because Roosevelt was doing too good a job rooting out corruption! Furthermore, Teapot Dome--the most infamous of government scandals--happened under Republican Calvin Coolidge. And do you want to get into Nixon? Forget his subsequent abuses of power, let's look into his slush fund in the '52 Presidential--the one whose discovery led him to make his famous "Checkers" speech, which never really cleared up the matter but did save his hide. Political machines have simply NEVER been a city thing vs. a country thing. Look at LBJ--he was part of a Texas political machine, one which was not at all centered in the cities.

If you really thing political corruption is confined to the cities, then you not only know nothing about modern politics (uh, deLay? from the bustling metropolis of Sugar Land?), but you also know nothing of political history. Country boy Andrew Jackson gave a huge kick to the spoils system by arguing that government jobs should be rotated, a position which delighted his supporters and strengthened his young and weak party by letting them dole out jobs as reward. Remember, this was a time before the Civil Service, where EVERY federal employee served at the pleasure of the President.

Corruption and machine politics have always been a bi-partisan, city & country enterprise, and reform has always been a minority position. Ironically, it's often been pushed by people who came up through the machine--look at Al Smith's meaningful and effective reforms in New York State once Tammany made him governor. Machine politician Chester A. Arthur passed the Pendelton Civil Service Act after the President had been shot and killed for refusing someone a job.

Honestly, it is the height of ignorance to suggest that throughout American history, it's just been the Micks in New York City and Chicago who were caught up in machine politics. Read a book.

Posted by: anonymous on March 28, 2007 04:22 PM

I agree with most of the critical comments on this study. I think at this stage we should mark it down as "interesting" and worthy of follow-up but not use it to assume a grand strategy on the part of the White House.

One reason is that conspiracies are hard. The more people involved, the more likely it is to have the cover blown off. To achieve this kind of effect across the nation would involve corrupting many (most?) of the USAs. Think what you want about the Bush White House, but I don't believe it's possible, or possible without someone having screamed about it a long time ago.

Looking at the cases listed by the study authors, it looks like they cover many USA districts, many of which appeared to show this anti-Democratic bias in their investigations. Who were the USAs in these cases? How many show at least some tendency toward this bias, admittedly with small population sizes? I think we'll find out the "bias" crosses too many offices and is unlikely to represent a real Washington-directed strategy.

I think we'll find in the end that there were a few USAs who displeased the White House and there were a few cases here and there which the White House got compliant USAs to pursue, but there was nothing systemic about the whole thing.

Posted by: santamonicamr on March 28, 2007 04:25 PM

I think the first great national political boss was Mark Hanna, a Republican, from around 1900. Maybe Rove longs for the McKinley days, since then Rove could be Hanna to Dub's Mckinley and go down in history as something or other that I would consider unsavory, but maybe Rove would not.

As for evidence of national campaign to intimidate Democratic voters, and provide a bias of sympathy toward Dem and against GOP voter fraud charges, well, we know that campaing exists. Rove has publicly announced and explained it. Only question is how far and what tools they were going to try to use to push it. Seems that the campaign went at least as far as New Mexico Congresspersons making at least unethical calls to one fired US Attorney. So, we do have some prior probabilities about what might be. That doesn't mean what the study is questions asserts is true, but I still think some too much in auto-debunk. I think a middle ground between auto-debunk and auto-buy-in is warranted, and this study does produce some interesting numbers.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 04:34 PM

probably meant to type:
"a bias of sympathy toward charges of Dem and against chargees of GOP voter fraud"

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 04:36 PM

I think it's a bit of an exageration to speak of "pressure for bogus voter-fraud investigations in Washington state".

Uh, no.

Swing-state prosecutor McKay hadn't prosecuted voter fraud in 2004 because he looked at the evidence and found there wasn't any. The FBI agreed with his finding. But when he went to meet Harriet Miers, she accused him of mishandling the matter, and reiterated that Washington Republicans were mad at him for not going after Democrats. And then she didn't give him a judgeship. And then he got fired.

Furthermore, New Mexico prosecutor Iglesias was nationally recognized for his ability to detect voter fraud. Then President Bush himself called the head of the DOJ to pass on complaints from politicians that Iglesias hadn't gone after Democrats for voter fraud in a recent election. And then prosecutor Iglesias in this key swing state was fired, and the DOJ lied about the reason why.

Sorry, but it's obvious these guys got fired for political reasons--first and foremost, because that they wouldn't misuse their office and follow the directives of politicians instead of following the evidence. And as more emails come out, that's gonna become more and more clear.

The voter fraud allegations were bogus. These prosecutors were fired by Republicans because they refused to bring bogus charges against Democrats. It's that simple.

Posted by: anonymous on March 28, 2007 04:43 PM

"A follow up study ought to be done which . . . 1. Looks at records of actual investigations, rather than just news accounts."

Investigations, however, are supposed to be secret. Nevertheless, if an investigation is being pushed for political reasons, it of course must be leaked to the press; otherwise it can have no political effect.

What would it tell us if D's and R's were being investigated at the same rate, but the investigations of D's were leaked to the news media 7 times more frequently than the investigations of R's? Nothing very favorable to the administration . . .

Posted by: rea on March 28, 2007 04:57 PM

Much much easier to go after the Big Man in the Big City Hall, than go after the yokels in little city halls? I don't get it.

Investigations aside, I'd guess that it requires less hours of prosecutor work dealing with one large trial than a lot of smaller ones, although I'm not a lawyer and could be wrong . Certainly, I think the work-to-reward ratio is a lot better for a prosecutor who nails a big-shot than some relative unknowns.

Posted by: MattT on March 28, 2007 04:59 PM

I think there are only two realistic explanations for the seven-fold difference:
1. Local Dems are much more likely to be corrupt than are Local Repubs (and I don't see any reason whatsoever for believing this explanation).
2. The standard for investigating Local Dems is much lower than the standard for investigating Local Repubs.

Brett posits another explanation: 3. Newspapers report investigations of Big City Corruption, which tends to be Democratic corruption, but fail to report Suburban and Rural Corruption, which tends to be Republican corruption. And he gives some suggestions on how to conduct some subsequent research to resolve the matter.

But we don't have, and probably never will have, that subsequent research. Right now, however, we do have two other pieces of information. First, the Justice Department does not have to depend on media reports; it has the info about actual investigations. The Justice Department could easily refute this study by releasing the ratio of its investigations of Local Dems to Local Repubs. The Justice Department's SILENCE in the face of the study's accusation strongly supports the findings of the study. Second, we have all the prevarications in the USA firing scandal, which indicates that the Justice Department is covering up malfeasance.

Posted by: dogfacegeorge on March 28, 2007 05:23 PM

http://stubbornfacts.us/politics/partisanship/more_debunking_of_the_political_profiling_study

Posted by: Chris on March 28, 2007 05:41 PM

Of course, there's a possible fourth explanation for the results: GIGO. Unfortunately, the study is preliminary, and the authors do not discuss their methodology.

Posted by: dogfacegeorge on March 28, 2007 06:19 PM

Whoo boy. Trust Brett Bellmore to get it wrong about Washington State.

Republicans scoured the state looking for evidence of voter fraud, and brought their case in an Eastern Washington courtroom, that they hoped would be rightwing enough to buy their claims. The judge listened to what they had to say, and dismissed their case with prejudice, meaning essentially that their case was so bogus that they shouldn't try that again.

One Republican alone committed over 200 counts of perjury filing false affidavits claiming that voter registrations were invalid when, in fact, they were perfectly valid. As far as I know, no Republican has been charged with perjury for the numerous lies they told in their efforts, so they have no grounds for complaining of persecution.

As for "big-city corruption", when I went to school in Ohio I was very much amazed to learn that every small town and crossroads in the state had a mob-run cardroom, bootleg liquor, and prostitutes. Of course, at that time the head of the Ohio mob was running his operation from a suite of luxury cells in the state penitentiary, complete with catered meals and free long-distance calling.

See today's remark by former Gonzales aide Sampson, where he says that the difference between 'performance-related' and 'political' firings is artificial- it's all politics. Outa the mouths of babes.

Posted by: serial catowner on March 28, 2007 07:04 PM

Sometimes statistical evidence is not the best evidence. The stubbornfacts blog post linked to above makes some good points, but some very bad and besides the point points too. And their suggested alternative data set has flaws as deep as media reports, especially if the Rove plan centered mostly on publicity (that is, a form of pre-emptive jury pool tampering, and shifting of burden of proof to manipulate public support, media sympathies and judges' decisions during campaigns and elections).

Sometimes direct testimony and recorded communications point to the underlying causal structure more reliably that mere estimated correlation from imperfect data. And it is the causal structure we want, not a bunch of jivey correlations that are just proxies for the real story. Sounds like we might have a whole heap of that direct stuff soon. I do hope so.

Posted by: anon on March 28, 2007 09:15 PM

http://stubbornfacts.us/politics/partisanship/more_debunking_of_the_political_profiling_study

Jeebus. Was Matthew really unaware that this "study" (scare quotes intended) was debunked, like, weeks ago??? How am I supposed to take anything Matthew writes on the this topic seriously at all if he doesn't even know the simplest, weeks-old, facts! I mean, the study doesn't even include the investigation into Ralph Reed fercrissakes.

Posted by: Al on March 28, 2007 10:48 PM

You might want to check this out in order to snark more effectively about "the press corps" on this issue. Something along the order of "how to convince the public that this is as important as you say it is"?

"Attorney Firings Stir Limited Public Interest
Despite Extensive News Coverage"
Pew Research Center for People and the Press
Released: March 21, 2007

Summary of Findings (week of March 12)

The controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys is not attracting strong public interest in spite of intense media coverage of the story. In fact, the story evokes a typical response from the public when compared with news interest in past Washington scandals. Amid calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation, the news media's coverage of the story outstripped public interest. Most Americans remained focused on the Iraq war and the problems facing returning soldiers.

Overall, 19% of the public paid very close attention to news about the fired U.S. attorneys and 8% said this was the single news story they followed more closely than any other. The news media devoted 16% of its coverage overall to the firings - an eight-fold increase over the week of March 5 - making it the most covered story of the week. Public interest increased as well though at a lower rate. Democrats followed the U.S. attorneys story more closely than Republicans (23% vs. 15%, respectively, followed it very closely).This story did generate more public interest than the recent verdict in the Scooter Libby trial....

Posted by: artappraiser on March 29, 2007 01:26 AM

Sure, there were good, upstanding Democrats--Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman

I am not saying Truman was bad, but I will note the irony in the fact that Truman owed his political career in large part to Tom Pendergast, a big-city political boss who eventually was convicted of income tax evasion.

Posted by: Mak on March 29, 2007 02:07 PM

Wait, let me get this straight...

1) These were media stories to provide the data sets.

2) according to the authors, the reason the state officials didn't show a relevant discrepancy was:
"We believe that because the investigations of state-wide and federal elected officials and candidates occurred within
the radar of the national press, there was little room for nefarious, out-of-line investigations for political purposes on
the part of the Bush Justice Department."

So, we required media stories for all data points, but the reason the state data didn't show a discrepancy, is because the media was involved...

Does that even come close to logical?

Posted by: Gekkobear on March 29, 2007 03:42 PM

No, but get back to the point that they, in their conclusions state that Bush was the first to do this. And they didn't look at previous administrations!

It's such a basic point: You can't compare A to B without looking at both A AND B. Any researcher who's either ignorant of this elementary point, or doesn't care about it, simply can't be trusted to do a competent, reliable study. Especially when they're mum about the specific details of their methodology.

My tentative conclusion is that this was just a political hit piece dressed up as a study. I'd like to see somebody conduct a real study of this subject, but I put no reliance on THIS 'study' at all.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore on March 29, 2007 05:58 PM

To paraphrase a recent interview with an NFL referee, recalling a head coach who complained that his team had seven more penalties than their opponents:

"Perhaps it's because your team committed seven more fouls."

Posted by: hitnrun on March 31, 2007 03:06 PM

A failure of imagination? I can imagine other reasons:

1. Cities typically have larger budgets (both absolute dollars and per capita) than surrounding rural areas since they provide more services. This means there are more opportunities for corruption in cities. Since most cities are run by Democrats, more Dems ought to be investigated.

2. State and local officials normally get investigated by the State Attorney General, not the Feds; the Feds get involved when the politicians are very powerful (more likely to be a big city mayor than a small town councilman).

3. US Attorneys are located in big cities and don't get drawn into state/local corruption cases not immediately under their nose.

4. The NY Times does not cover penny-ante corruption by upstate NY Reps; in fact, most big city newspapers don't cover penny-ante cases in the hinterlands; hence the authors miss that.

Add that up, and all we may be seeing is that newspapers, US Attorneys, and Democratic politicians are all common in big cities and rare elsewhere.

Bonus Credibility Check: Cragan and Shields published this "study" at E Pluribus Media, a news outlet founded by some D Kos regulars; for another sense of where Cragan and Shields are coming from, here is their deck of cards of corrupt and incompetent Republicans.

When the debunking appears at Fox News funded by Scaife, let's see if the self-styled reality based community believes that.

It seems like a shame not to re-run Matt's endorsement:

The linked study is one strong piece of circumstantial evidence that something very fishy is up...

Oh, we don't totally disagree - I smell something fishy, too.

Posted by: Tom Maguire on March 31, 2007 11:39 PM

Assuming that there was a liberal media bias, we didn't believe the media, even though they were correct. The obvious solution, now that the media is vindicated and we were proven wrong, is to correct the liberal media bias which, as I just stated, only existed in our imaginations.

Posted by: sohbet on August 14, 2007 04:21 PM

So whats wrong with the Democrats? for me it sounds really fishy... But one study wont change anything

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While I do agree that such a study sounds very scary on one’s initial viewing, I do agree with Brett – the study is of media stories and really isn’t that big of a deal. Media always go with the big stories in the big cities, and those are indeed Democrat dominated. I too would be very interested to see how this data compares with news stories (or with actual investigations, if anyone wants to get that information) for other administrations. How do the Clinton years stack up with the Bush regime, I wonder? Also, I wonder how independents or other third party politicians fit into this chart? While there aren’t nearly as many of them as there are officials from the two main parties, I would think that the great collective unconscious would consider them more “dangerous” than Democrats just because they buck the system and aren’t part of the majority.

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