More on the media and Ron Paul

A thoughtful (as always) post from Will Wilkinson at the economist comparing the major media's treatment of Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann.

A somewhat different explanation than the one he offers is that the standard issue establishment democrats in the major media simply do not know how to think or talk about Ron Paul because he does not fit into the comfortable but conceptually incoherent boxes of red and blue that they are used to deploying when analyzing partisan politics. Under this theory, they avoid talking about Ron Paul for the same reason I generally avoid talking about macroeconomics or baseball: they want to avoid the unpleasant feeling of not understanding what they are talking about.

Data security

I've spent a good bit of time the last two weeks devoted to issues of data security. In this regard, my first thought is always that one hears many stories - there are some amusing ones from the UK here and the post about Canada from a couple days ago is also relevant - about politicians leaving sensitive information about, as well as stories about data being left by bureaucrats in a Starbucks in DC or somewhere similar because Jessica Cutler walked by or some other distraction intervened, but I have never, ever heard a story about ill effects from any academic researcher using confidential data.

Methinks perhaps margins are not being equated here.