Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

03 Dec 2001, 21:02 p.m.

When I took Political Science 2 (Comparative Politics) my freshman…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

When I took Political Science 2 (Comparative Politics) my freshman year of college, Simon Stow pointed out a passage near the end of some article in our reader. "Some people say that [dangerously-close-to-straw-man argument]. They are wrong." Stow told us to remember that sentence, since we'd never again see "They are wrong" in any other article by a political scientist.

Slate just published a New Republic editor's hard-nosed exposé of Republicans' culpability for the current recession. The sentence that reminded me of "They are wrong":

"It wasn't just some giant miscalculation. It was a lie."

From the same article, another great comment that touches on a Leonard gripe:

"So the previous tax cut was supposedly needed to make the surplus disappear. The next one is needed to bring it back. Whatever."