Demographics & Economics
OMB
Congressional Budget Office
The Federal Budget
U.S. Census Quickfacts
Inflation Calculator
CIA World Factbook
NationMaster
State Healthcare Facts
UN HDR stats
US Bureau of Economic Analysis
US Bureau of Labor Statistics
US CDC health stats
US DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics
US DOJ crime stats
Constitution
The Constitution
The Founders' Constitution
The Avalon Project
The Federalist Papers
The antifederalist papers
Founding documents
Politics
ADA (liberal) Voting Records
ACU (conservative) Voting Records
Census Voter Turnout
Congressional Research Service
Memeorandum
NOW list of voting scorecards
PolitiFact
PorkBusters
Project VoteSmart list of voting scorecards
RealClearPolitics
Roll call votes--House
Roll call votes--Senate
Survey USA
WaPo Votes Database
Iraq/Terrorism
CentCom
Brookings Institute Iraq Index
Project on Defense Alternatives War Report
Nat'l Defense Univ Iraq
Nat'l Defense Univ Afghanistan
MERLIN, Nat'l Defense Univ Library Network
STRATFOR
Nat'l Memorial Inst for Prevention of Terrorism
West Point's Combating Terrorism Center
Politics blogs
Baldilocks
Blue Mass Group
Cadillac Tight
California Conservative
Jon Chait
Confederate Yankee
Crooked Timber
Democracy Project
Dinocrat
First Read
Gateway Pundit
GenerationPatriot
Horse Race Blog
Just One Minute
Hugh Hewitt
Michelle Malkin
Patterico's Pontifications
Power Line
Red State
RNCC blog
Scrappleface
Talking Points Memo
The Blogometer
The Corner
The Next Right
The Moderate Voice
Think Progress
Wizbang
Moderate / centrist
Ambivablog
Bipartisan Rules
Booker Rising
Centerfield
Charging RINO
Donklephant
Liberal War Journal
Militant Moderates
The Buck Stops Here
The Glittering Eye
The Iconic Midwest
The PoliGazette
The Walrus Said
Legal & blawgs
How Appealing
Becker-Posner
Bench Memos
Concurring Opinions
Law & Letters
Legalities
Prawfsblawg
SCOTUSblog
Sentencing Law & Policy
The Volokh Conspiracy
Christian
ADW blog
Father Z
First Thoughts
Mirror of Justice
Veritas Rex
Middle East & Muslim affairs
Eteraz
Iraq the Model
Lebanese Political Journal
Michael Totten
Michael Yon
General interest
Althouse
Ambiance
Chris Muir's Day by Day
Instapundit
IowaHawk
JAC
Professor Bainbridge
Prettier than Napoleon
Rachel Lucas
The Right Coast
Science Blog
Sippican Cottage
The Anchoress
Whatever
Welcome, Instapundit readers, and thanks to Tom for the link. Feel free to join in our discussion, just remember that we like to keep our language clean. And come back and visit us again, soon.
The left-wing nutroots need to get their act together and settle on a single message. Are the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress the most corrupt, most investigated bunch of crooks ever, or does the Bush Justice Department engage in "political profiling," selectively targeting Democrats for investigation by a margin of 7 to 1, an even greater rate than African-Americans are profiled for traffic stops, as claimed in a recent "academic" study of DoJ prosecutions of political candidates and elected officials?
Tom Maguire, posting as an Insta-temp, discusses the latest, a left-wing "statistical" attack on the Bush Justice Department (also discussed in detail at Obsidian Wings). Two academics, Donald C. Shields and John F. Cragan, claim to prove that the Bush Administration has engaged in "political profiling" of Democratic elected officials and candidates in The Political Profiling of Elected Democratic Officials: When Rhetorical Vision Participation Runs Amok. Unsurprisingly for an article which includes in its opening paragraph a reference to the "Bush/Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department's blended religious-fundamentalist and neo-conservative rhetorical vision," it fails to support its outlandish claims. Its biggest flaw: omitted data.
Omitted Data
The authors say little about their data source or selection criteria, but include their data table [pdf], from which some inferences can be made. They claim that this data reveals all investigations of candidates and public officials from 2001 through 2006. Their claim is flat wrong. It is incumbent on the authors to disclose their methods and selection criteria, so we may determine whether their omission was intentional or inadvertent.
Just a few Google searches found several instances of Republican elected officials who were investigated by the Department of Justice but which were not included in the authors' data set. My quick search revealed 6 Republican elected officials or candidates who have been served with subpoenas or had their offices searched as part of federal investigations.
Ralph Reed is perhaps most prominent of the names omitted. Reed was subpoenaed as part of the investigation into Jack Abramoff's misdeeds, while Reed was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. However, Reed is not included in Shields' and Cragan's "study."
Another major omission is a major investigation into the Alaskan legislature. The key subject is Ben Stevens, the state Senate President and son of Alaskan Republican U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. As part of a wide-ranging corruption probe, FBI agents searched the offices of Ben Stevens and 5 other state legislators (4 Republicans and 1 Democrat) were searched by FBI agents. Yet the "study" notes only one Alaskan official as the subject of an investigation.
These omissions are a result of one or more types of statistical bias. The theoretical biases were obvious simply from reading the paper. The concrete examples prove that the study is worthless. Just that quick sample increased the number of Republican officials and candidates investigated by the Bush Administration by about 10%.
Selection and Definitional Bias
Shields and Cragan appear to have obtained all of their data from newspaper reports. The data table includes a column "date of story." A quick Google search for several of these names reveals that indeed, the "date of story" is the date that first public mention was made of an investigation, often because subpoenas were handed out around that time. For example, the data tables refer to an investigation of the members of the Baltimore, Md., City Council. This one "wide-ranging investigation" accounts for 19 of the Democrats under investigation. It lists a story date of "Oct. 19, 2003." Pop over to the Baltimore Sun and you find the source data in this story: U.S. Attorney Subpoenas City Council.
Relying only on newspaper publications for such data is certain to introduce biases into the results. Not only might some stories simply be overlooked, but not all investigations make it into the paper. Criminal investigations are generally secret, or supposed to be, for two reasons. One, you don't want to tip off the bad guys so they can dispose of the evidence. Two, you don't want to improperly tar an innocent person, simply because of the investigation. If the investigation doesn't result in an indictment, it may start and end without the public ever knowing of it.
Another potential for bias is the classification of a person as being the subject of an investigation. It is the reporter, and not the U.S. Attorney, who categorizes whether someone is "under investigation." Reporters leap to those conclusions; U.S. Attorneys do not say it. Take the Baltimore case discussed above. That all 19 council members received subpoenas does not mean that they are all "under investigation," and of course the U.S. Attorney never said so. Perhaps only a few of them are, but in the course of an investigation, one must often obtain information possessed by innocent parties either to rule them out entirely as suspects or to provide information against the bad guys. Fields and Cragan simply declare that they are all "under investigation."
Some investigations are more likely to become public than others, and my bet would be that investigations of one party's officials by the government when the other party is in power would be generally more likely to be publicly revealed. Again, take the Baltimore case. Suppose only one subpoena had gone out, to a Republican councilman from a Republican U.S. Attorney. How likely is it that the subpoena would be revealed by the guy who got it? He gains very little from publicly revealing that he has received a subpoena. Now take the mass subpoenas of all the council members in Baltimore (the members are all Democrats; at the time, there was not a single Republican council member). They can make plenty of political hay by trumpeting the subpoenas and claiming political persecution. They have little interest or need to keep it quiet.
The authors completely fail to discuss their selection criteria. Does receipt of a subpoena, declared publicly in the newspaper, count as being "under investigation"? How did they determine who were "candidates"? Was Ralph Reed omitted because no reporter declared him to be "under investigation" or because Fields and Cragan overlooked him?
Finally, Shields and Cragan fail to discuss their selection process. Did they do a Lexis/Nexis search for the word "subpoena"? Did they use Google? Did they collect the data week by week, or in periodic batches? As we learned from the Volokh Conspiracy’s work on Vietnam soldiers being spit upon, not all newspapers are available on-line. If the authors used Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw, that’s a fairly comprehensive source, given the recency of the time period studied. However, if they used Google, many papers do not make their archives freely available and searchable. This is a potential source of bias because Democrats tend to control local government in large urban communities. These cities are more likely to be served by larger papers which are more likely to provide comprehensive search capabilities and provide data to Lexis/Nexis. Republican local elected officials tend to be found more commonly in smaller, more rural areas, whose papers may not be as quick or thorough at getting their data into the national databases.
Selection bias is a common flaw in data compilations and analysis. The authors implicitly recognize the possibility of selection bias in their methodology by calling for a national registry of criminal investigations (more on that foolish idea later). If they were certain that newspapers revealed all investigations, then no such registry would be necessary, obviously. But the authors do not address directly the potential for selection bias and the impact it would have on their conclusions.
Counting individuals rather than investigations
A related problem is counting the number of individuals under investigation rather than the number of investigations. Again, the Baltimore case is illustrative. There is, apparently, one investigation, but 19 individual officials who received subpoenas. Each of these is counted separately, given the same weight as the investigation into, say, Congressman William Jefferson.
This creates a serious risk of under counting, because the number of individuals publicly known to have received a subpoena is not the same as the number of individuals who actually receive a subpoena or the number of individuals under investigation who are never subpoenaed. Suppose, for example, that only one of the Baltimore council members had disclosed the subpoena. In the authors’ calculations, that would then only be one investigation, not 19, regardless of whether more people are actually being investigated. Many criminals are indicted without ever receiving a subpoena, and without the investigation into them becoming public prior to an indictment.
I’ve taken the raw data provided by the authors and grouped them into different investigations. Where multiple individuals, at the same level of government (i.e., state or city) were named in the same location with source dates within about 2 years of each other, I assumed that all the individuals were part of the same general investigation. This quick-and-dirty grouping is almost guaranteed to still over count the number of investigations; suspects often are identified months apart as an investigation continues, and the data suggests this. But I don’t have time right now to look up all the newspaper accounts, so I erred on the side of the authors, grouping together only the most obvious ones, like the Baltimore city council investigation.
Even this quick and dirty, obvious grouping reduces the number of "investigations" from 375 to 229. The partisan divide, while still present, is significantly reduced, with 50 investigations primarily into GOP officials and candidates, 172 into Democratic officials, and 7 into independents or other party members. To calculate that total, I assigned a value of "-1" to Independents and others, a value of "0" to Democrats, and a value of "1" to Republicans. I took the average of all the individuals in the investigation group (for example, the Baltimore case averaged to "0", because all the members were Democrats) and assigned that as the group party. Values of .5 or higher were treated as Republicans, values between -0.5 and 0.49 were tallied as Democrats, and anything below -0.5 was counted as independent/other.
This does make a noticeable difference in the percentages, though it does not by itself destroys the authors’ thesis. Under the grouping analysis, GOP investigations increase from 17.87% of the total to 21.83%. DEM investigations fall from 79.47% of the total to 75.10%. I would also note that I always erred on the side of counting investigations as "separate." For example, there were a spate of investigations into local government corruption in New Jersey in 2002 and 2003. I did not review the newspaper coverage or external data for any of the charges to determine if, say, two counties with a spate of investigations were adjacent to each other, which would suggest a connection; such cases were counted as separate investigations. Frankly, the likelihood is that all of those names stemmed from a general investigation of corruption into local government in New Jersey. Lumping them all together would vastly reduce the count of actual investigations.
Claiming things they did not study
Finally, I note that the authors make claims which they did not even purport to study:
The current Bush Republican Administration appears to be the first to have engaged in political profiling.
The authors did not study other administrations. They do not claim to have studied other administrations. They collected data only on the Bush Administration, not prior presidencies. They say as much earlier in their brief post:
We compare political profiling to racial profiling by presenting the results (January 2001 through December 2006) of the U.S. Attorneys' federal investigation and/or indictment of 375 elected officials.
You can't draw conclusions about something you did not study. Unless they have failed to cite some data they have elsewhere, they are not justified in making any comparison between administrations, including the claim that Bush is the "first" to have done this. For all we know, President Clinton (who fired ALL U.S. Attorneys when he took office, an unprecedented step at the time) did the same thing in reverse, disproportionately investigating Republicans.
Conclusion
Paul Krugman should know better. I don't expect him to, but he should. This "study" by Professors Shields and Cragan is fundamentally flawed. Not only does it appear to suffer from a severe potential for selection bias (any academic study should disclose its methodology in great detail), but omissions resulting from that bias have been confirmed, including at least 7 individuals who appear to meet the authors' selection criteria. When an hour of Google searching can increase a crucial data point in a 6-year-long study by 10%, the authors should be deeply embarrassed. Professors Shields and Cragan have shown that they value ideology more than academic rigor.
UPDATE: I've written several additional posts on this topic. All are linked to in this post, rebutting Shields' response.
Our RSS feed
I commented on this over at
I commented on this over at ObWi, and there's other big problems with the study as well, ones so obvious on first glance that I dismissed the "study" out of hand (except to show briefly why it means nothing).
Namely, just from a glance at their data and only their data, the "bias" they claim exists is simply not present in federal investigations of federal and state-wide elected officials, where the "count" is what you would expect from random selection by party numbers. So the "overweighting" of Dem officials "investigated" is limited ENTIRELY to the data on municipal/county officials. No such bias is shown in the federal/statewide data offered by the authors. NONE.
The selection bias of US Atty's investigating municipal/county corruption should be blatantly obvious to anyone who's familiar with American political demographics. Namely, US Atty's offices are located in larger metro areas, not in West Podunk. Large metro areas are massively more Democrat-controlled. US Atty's will not investigate local corruption unless it extends into statehouse-level corruption (thereby potentially compromising the state AG's office by state-level political pressures), or involves federal funding, or quite literally falls into their lap--as one major California case did, when a guilt-stricken principal walked into their offices and exposed a corruption scheme that netted ten or a dozen indictments of local Democratic officials. They're not going to travel to West Podunk to begin investigations of Billy Bob's cement contracts. The opportunities for large-scale municipal/state corruption are the province of big metro areas.
They work those areas for the same reason Willy Sutton robbed banks. That's where the (federal) money is. That's where the major corruption "opportunities" are.
Obviously, on logistics alone, the "available suspect" pool for local/municipal corruption that rises to the level of federal investigation is going to be mostly confined to elected officials in larger metro areas in the immediate vicinity of US Atty's offices. Which are overwhelmingly Democrat. More local corruption not rising to a level of federal oversight would be handled by the state attorney general's office--and thus never be seen in federal stats. It's also much tougher to prove, tending to be of the back-scratching Good Ol' Boy variety of favors exchanges and not "cash buys."
So directly out of the gate there's more than one major bias towards a Democrat-inclined selection process in municipal/county corruption investigations by US Atty's, regardless of the party of the admin.
I didn't even need to leave the study itself to notice that. I also noticed that the authors included several investigations in their federal database that actually began LONG before the Bush admin came into office, such as the Traficant and Toricelli investigations. And that they offered no basis for claims that the pattern was a change from previous admin investigations, as they offered ZERO data on such.
Bad social "science." The study has on the face of it a ZERO statistical validity, completely flawed methodology, and other blatant flaws. There's a reason they present it only at politically-correct venues, and that it has not been peer-review published. It's barely even worthy of contempt, the authors likewise.
Krugman does know better. But he's a hack who long ago sold out his considerable intellect to whore and shill for the Democratic party.
Quite correct, Tully
The authors are retired professors of communication, so statistical analysis is probably not their strong suit.
The point about the Traficant and Toricelli investigations is particularly well-taken. Hard to blame Bush for investigations he inherited. That again goes to the issue of their undisclosed methodology. Did they receive subpoenas after Jan. 20, 2001? Were they the first subpoenas, or supplemental ones?
Traficant's first indictment
Traficant's first indictment for corruption came in 1983, while he was Sheriff of Mahoning County, Ohio. He got elected on the publicity from beating the charges. The investigation of him while he was a Congressman was initiated during the Clinton admin--he was a bit of an embarrasment ot the Dem Party, and he made it easy for them by being blatantly corrupt and cheating on his taxes. The Toricelli investigation began in 1996 under the Clinton admin.
the actual potential scandal started with the termination of as many as 8 US Attorneys for what appears to be their unwillingness to bend to the Administration's political pressure to go after Democrats
Shrug. We don't know that. In at least three cases (Margaret Chiara in Michigan, Carol Lam in San Diego, and Bud Cummins in Little Rock) the USA's had low ratings. Two others had internal management problems and comlaints within their offices. The only really questionable one is Iglesias in New Mexico, apparently fired due to complaints by Pete Domenici and others that he was ignoring a blatant vote-fraud case.
Even assuming it's true that they were removed for "not going after Democrats" the question would remain as to whether the Democrats involved deserved investigation. Simply that the admin is GOP and that some folks who might deserve being investigated are Democrats doesn't make such an investigation (or the urging to conduct one) unethical. What, the opposition party gets a pass on criminal conduct? Do we need an equal opportunity investigations policy, regardless of where the evidence leads? If real corruption leads take us to five Dems and two GOP, must we not issue more than an equally-divided number of subpeonas or indictments?
But they're patronage appointments in the first place, so I don't see much to really whine about yet. For partisans, of course, it's all Catch-22. If they're fired for anything that doesn't match the partisan agenda, it's a "scandal." If they're fired for no reason at all--which happens all the time with patronage appointments--it's a "scandal." And had Bush fired ALL the USA's after re-election as Harriet Miers urged him to, that woulda been a "scandal" too. Heh.
Unless something truly illegal or majorly unethical occured in the firings, it's all partisan fodder. Like the ranting about Clinton firing all the USA's when he took office, purportedly to derail the Arkansas Whitewater/Rose investigation--yeah, that might've been a big motivator, but he was doing what incoming admins of the opposite party do anyway. Side benefit for doing the usual. In a lame-duck admin it's not at all unusual to make new appointments to boost the CV's of the favored. (Which is how Ed Muskie got to be Secretary of State for a few months in the Carter admin.)
Good post--The study seemed
Good post--The study seemed pretty flawed on a quick read--I take it at best as a back of the envelope calculation by people who are ideologically pro-dem.
However, this study being junk in no way affects the larger theme as the "left's" attack on the Bush administration on this issue is not really based on this study--the study has been used (incorrectly) as a "gotcha" kind of argument, but the actual potential scandal started with the termination of as many as 8 US Attorneys for what appears to be their unwillingness to bend to the Administration's political pressure to go after Democrats
A preemtive sur-rebuttal
I imagine the authors would respond, in part, that the problems with data-gathering I've illustrated would strengthen their call for a national database of criminal investigations into elected officials by the DoJ. That's one of the loonier ideas I've ever heard, but I already spent a day debunking a loony study, so let me set this one straight by asking a few questions which show why it's so loony.
Who would have access to the list? Is the list public? Presumably so, since the idea is that the DoJ can't be trusted and needs to be watch-dogged. This would both tip off the bad guys that they are being investigated and unfairly tar innocent people who will be cleared during the course of the investigation.
What would be the selection criteria for putting someone on the list? When they become a "target" of the grand jury (a legal term which does not apply until pretty late in the ballgame)? Must an official go on the list of "investigations" when a U.S. Attorney decides to subpoena some of their records? Must the U.S. Attorney predict, before he has all, or even most, of the evidence whether he thinks he will ultimately seek to indict that person?
As a former prosecutor, I can assure you that these are not easy questions. On the whole, we investigate crimes, not people. There are times when this is reversed (as in sting operations), but it generally holds true. Prosecution is a very reactive business, mostly. We investigate things when complaints are made. We don't go into the process with our minds made up; we go where the evidence takes us. When somebody comes to us with a complaint that there's corruption within Department X of the local government, we have no idea whether that corruption stops at the level of some supervisor, or if it goes all the way up the line to the mayor or city council. That's why we do the investigation, to find out what, if any, crimes were committed.
A national database as called for by the authors of this "study" would either not serve the purpose sought, because it would be kept confidential, or it would unwisely notify criminals that they are being investigated and wrongly defame innocent individuals who would be cleared by the investigation. It's a loony idea.
What we have here....
...is a failure of communication profs.
So these two grad school chums decide to do a little public bitching. Notice the "study" is an op-ed which allows them to forgo the usual strictures of "peer review." Basically it is a glorified blog posting in which the authors get in over their heads, largely because they are in unfamiliar territory. (What DO they do in communcation departments? Anyone ever cover the BASICS of research design and methodology? Yikes.) But this is what you get when you are seemingly ignorant of Political Science, Law, Public Adminiatration AND statistics.
I'm embarrassed to see one of the authors is from my alma mater (UMSL).
Emeritus profs, Rich..
They're professors emeritus, Rich. Retired.
They both graduated in the early 1970s, which may or may not reveal the basis for their political leanings...
Yeah, I noticed...
...they were emeritus. That is too bad, as a display this dishonest should have been (would have been?) shameful enough to lead to vote for denial of tenure IMO.
100 points to Rich...
Forgot to award Rich 100 points for the day's best allusion to Cool Hand Luke.
bias - or truth?
What if it's true that many more Democrats are being investigated than Republicans? That does not NECESSARILY indicate a political bias. One cannot just rule out the possibility that there are more Democrats DESERVING of investigation than Republicans. (I doubt it - they're all politicians - but logic demands including the possibility.)
Quite correct, Glenmore.
Thanks for stopping by and posting. That is one of a number of things that the "study" fails to rule out. I would note that while most of the "crimes" listed as being under investigation are public service related (corruption, bribery, etc.), several are entirely apolitical. There's a sheriff who had sex with inmates, a sexual battery charge, and a few others of an entirely apolitical nature. There's really no reason to suspect political bias one way or the other in such cases.
If the methodology were sound, then demonstration of a disparity would provide grounds to investigate further in search of an actual bias, but it would not itself be proof of bias.
Also, our general system of checks and balances exists not to right every single wrong, to prevent every single act of political expediency or chicanery. If the Republicans treat corruption as a political matter, then they will eventually be defeated electorally (witness the 2006 election) and the other side will likely reverse the trend and go after the Republicans who got away with stuff while in power.
Agreed. And to play advocatus diaboli --
Agreed. And to play advocatus diaboli -- what if it's true that there isa political bias, as long as the investigations are in fact legitimate? The real potential difficulties, it seems to me, are either (a) if there are politically-motivated failures to investigate, or (b) if there are politically-motivated investigations that are in fact totally without merit. But if the pressure is purely to prioritize legit investigations, I don't see that as any more inherently problematic (and possibly, in view of Michael Brown etc., less so) than patronage in general.
Generally my take as well,
Generally my take as well, Simon. The only legitimate beefs I can see are if the USA's were told to persecute innocents or ignore the guilty. Those would be legit gripes.
You do succinct much better
You do succinct much better than me. ;) That's a much better way of saying what I was trying to get at.
I typed out a long comment
I typed out a long comment agreeing with Tully. However, despite carefully copying the validation code before submitting, it would not accept my comment due to an alleged error.
I returned and typed in the next validation code, which was accepted. But my comment was GONE. That's a pretty discouraging feature!
Sorry about that, Serratta!
So sorry about that. We hate that feature, too, but without it the spam strikes pretty quickly. If you register, you only have to get through the validation code one time, then never again as long as you're logged in.
Did you try hitting the "back" button on your browser? On mine, the text is still there if I navigate away and then hit the back button.
The "back" might not work in
The "back" might not work in Internet Explorer, it loses the text. Use Firefox instead, it's a better browser anyway.
If you do a preview first,
If you do a preview first, you can usually do a back or refresh and get your typing back. Any browser. IE7 and Firefox both work for me, whichever button the mouse rolls over first.
Thanks for checking this out.
It's so easy to pull out numbers and publish them. I have to wonder if their colleagues accept this without question or if they've been criticized in their own circle for sloppy work. I seldom believe anything statistical anymore. Unless you're willing to go in depth and study you can't be sure that the published work is worth the time it takes to read it.
As you say, it didn't take you long to find a number of errors in their methods. It probably took you longer to write the post than to research the problems. That's sad. At the very least, a study should stand up to modest scrutiny. The fact that this has made such news is even more sad. What a commentary on critical thinking in this country.
I have a simple rule,
I have a simple rule, Teresa. If Krugman cites it, I always check out the data and methodology in-depth....
the problem for the White
the problem for the White House, as I see it based on a reading of this post, is that NO ONE in the WH communications shop or anywhere in the building has the willingness or inclination or ability to push back in such a thorough and deliberate way.
As soon as this "study" came out, the big brains in the WH...to the extent there ARE any...should have immediately begun to debunk it and slam its head on a turnbuckle. Call the authors right into the WH press room and kick their asses on live tv.
Now, by not having done so, either through unwillingness or inability, the WH has allowed the meme of "8:1 partisan investigations by Chimp WH, scholars say" to be the accepted and dominant thread in this story.
to find ONE HINT of any of what stubbornfacts has written here, one has to look in the blogosphere, for surely none of this will ever be reported or mentioned in the msm.
THAT is failure # 10,576,954 by the White House communications team. by failing to bring this info to the attention of the public and media, regardless of the fact that it would never be reported, the WH once again gets the coverage it deserves.
True Mike, D, but...
That's been a big problem of this White House for the past 6 years. They've been generally very ineffective at getting the facts out to rebut the falsehoods being spread. That said, however, public knowledge of this study was pretty much non-existent until Krugman mentioned it. Responding in crushing detail to it might have given it more stature than it deserves.
Also, it's often difficult for government officials to respond to things like this because of confidentiality and other requirements. While the DOJ knows, or can find out, what's going on around the country, there really isn't an official category of "under investigation." They certainly couldn't release names of suspects who have not yet been publicly identified, just to appease partisan critics.
Thanks for coming by and commenting!
Bush, the Great
Bush, the Great Non-Communicator. (Rich already won the 100 points.)
I'm gonna save up my points....
...and trade them in for the inflatable Packers lounge chair.
Omitted Data
Ralph Reed is perhaps most prominent of the names omitted.
I nominate Dick Cheney - Fitzgerald was investigating *somebody*, even though Cheney was never indicted.
And Fitzgerald's special counsel status should not be a disqualifier - there was a DoJ investigation which preceded Fitzgerald (and led to his appointment).
I've discovered direct
I've discovered direct evidence of the Shields/Cragan methodology at work in other fields.
Obvious Errors and Biases in Study Methodology
What is the source of the data? There can easily be a selection bias. If someone believes Democrats are being persecuted, then a lot of data can be found of Democrats who are charged and/or convicted, or at least "investigated". Conversely, if someone wanted to show persecution of Republicans, one could focus really hard on finding Republicans who were indicted or at least "investigated", while not trying nearly so hard to find Democrats.
For example, there was a federal probe into judicial corruption in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana called "Operation Wrinkled Robe". Two district judges -- Republican Ronald D. Bodenheimer and Democrat Alan Green -- were indicted, convicted, and sentenced to federal prison for various corruption charges. However, their table lists only Green, and omits Bodenheimer.
As for "investigated", at least four other judges were subpoenaed and called before the federal grand jury in "Operation Wrinkled Robe" -- appeals judge Susan Chehardy, district judges Kernan "Skip" Hand and Steve Windhorst, and justice of the peace Steve Mortillaro. I know Hand and Mortillaro are Republicans, and am not sure about Windhorst and Chehardy. None of these judges are listed in their table.
(I grew up in New Orleans, and still follow news from down there. The Louisiana section of their table was the first thing I turned to.)
However, I live in the Seattle area now (almost 20 years now) and was also interested in the Washington section of their table. Three elected officials were listed, all present or former Democratic members of the Seattle City Council -- Heidi Wills, Judy Nicastro, and Jim Compton.
However, I cannot find any evidence whatsoever that our local U.S. Attorney's Office (led until recently by John McKay, one of the eight recent "removals") ever investigated Wills, Nicastro, and Compton for anything. These people didn't commit any crime. They did violate some Seattle ethics rules, and received fines from the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission for some improper ex-parte contacts and free dinners from the owners of a strip club with a rezoning application that was before the Seattle City Council.
The only criminal investigation was for state crimes by the King County Prosecuting Attorney, and did not involve Wills, Nicastro, and Compton. Instead, the local prosecutor was looking at whether the strip club owner had illegally given campaign contributions to these council members, by laundering it through third parties. Four people were eventually charged and are now pending trial in state court on these allegations.
They have listed no one else for the state of Washington. However, Republican Spokane Mayor Jim West was "investigated" by the FBI for public corruption charges in a major way -- his home searched and his computers seized in August 2005, before being cleared in February 2006 of any federal criminal wrongdoing. West was pretty infamous -- the voters recalled him from office in December 2005 for "misusing his office as mayor to lure teenage boys for sexual relationships". Basically, Washington's answer to Mark Foley. However, West is not included in their list.
(Oh, and speaking of former Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida -- he is nowhere to be found on their list either. The FBI and Justice Department are "investigating" Foley to determine if he broke any federal laws in his page scandal.)
To make sure this study was as accurate as possible, you would have to eliminate selectivity bias. You would need to have a listing of every single elected official or candidate who was been indicted for a federal crime (i.e. having a case number in federal district court), and the results of that case (i.e. conviction, acquittal, dismissal, etc.). Only after compiling such a list should you try to determine the party affiliation of people on that list.
As for "investigations", that term seems too subjective to be defined. Does it mean being called before a grand jury? Or just being interviewed by FBI, other federal agents, or prosecutors? The vast majority of people questioned in either fashion are witnesses, not suspects, in any event. Or just being the subject of a frivolous complaint filed by some nutcase, which the FBI "investigates" and finds to be unwarranted?