First and foremost, if my old boss and friend, the wildly popular former Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), mounts a Democratic candidacy it means the seat would likely remain in the party's hands. Additionally, and more important for the long-term topography of American politics, Baucus is not just a single Democrat holding a Senate seat in a Republican-leaning state. He is one of the politicians most responsible for the Democratic Party's destructive long-term shift to the right on economic issues. That means his retirement isn't just a 2014 story or a Montana story; it is significant to the whole country.

Continue Reading...

If you want to influence a mass audience, for instance, you can try to do what the Pentagon does and subtly bake slanted information into entertainment products such as movies and television shows.  If, on the other hand, you are looking to influence a slightly higher-brow audience, you can embed disinformation in newspapers' news and opinion pages. And if you are looking to brainwash politicians, think tanks, columnists and the rest of the political elite in order to rig an esoteric debate over public policy, you can attempt to shroud your agitprop in the veneer of science.

While these are all diabolically effective methods of manipulating political discourse, the latter, which involves corporate funding of academic research, is the most insidious of all. But the good news is that the last few weeks provided important reminders about the problem -- and why scrutiny of sources is so important.

Continue Reading...