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Members of Congress have Better Stocks Than You

May 31, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
Congress has had its share of financial, fundraising, and pork-barrel scandals. Well, add this to the mix. There is an interesting article in the Business and Politics Journal, by… Read More

How You Can Become Parliamentarian

May 30, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
I was reading Gregory Wawro, Sarah Binder, Steven Smith and Gregory Koger’s Senate testimony earlier today when I came across the comments of Robert Dove, a former Senate parliamentarian (Wikipedia entry here). Read More

Managing the Budget: An American Story of Structure Induced Inefficiency?

May 27, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
In a recent blog, Sen. Fritz Hollings provides an answer to the prevalent question, “What’s Wrong with Washington?”  According to the Senator, “no one wants to pay for government… Read More

The Utility of Early Polls

May 26, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
The Monkey Cage’s John Sides has a great post on some new research coming out by Wlezien and Erikson. It goes nicely with Jordan’s post yesterday so I… Read More

The Marginal Significance of NY-26

May 25, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
Much has been made of Kathy Hochul’s victory in New York’s 26th congressional district–a district that has elected a Republican since 1970.  Most observers have cited her victory as a… Read More

Where’s the Realignment?

May 24, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
It dawned on me today just how much America has gone through over the last decade. A major terrorist attack, systemic economic failure, credit freezes, massive failures in disaster response,… Read More

“Mitch-slapped GOP,” Really?

May 22, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
Politico, an organization I have a lot of respect for, and one of the webpages I read daily, posted an article about 30 minutes ago on Mitch Daniels’… Read More

“Cognitive Madisonians” and Congressional Approval

May 12, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
Declining approval of Congress is a popular topic these days (note: low Congressional approval is always popular, just more so recently).  The importance of this issue was aptly described in 1974… Read More

A Shameless Plug: Shirking the Initiative?

April 28, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
Maybe shameless is a bit strong; disseminating your research is important in academia after all.  But Josh and I (along with our colleague at Florida, Dan Smith), have a paper that was… Read More

Obama’s Birth Certificate: Diminishing Marginal Utility and Finite Agenda Space

April 27, 2011  ·  LegBranch Team
I posted this on Seth Masket’s facebook page a moment ago (see his blog here).  Seth asked why Obama released his birth certificate now when there is presumably an electoral incentive to… Read More