… George Washington University political scientist Danny Hayes has described how the “issue attention cycle” results in a surge in news coverage of a new issue like gun control followed by a fairly rapid decline, which received increased attention after the Sandy Hook massacre but ultimately trailed off, following a […] Read more »
How the media outrageously blew the IRS scandal
… In short, the entire scandal narrative was a fiction. But it had real consequences, effectively derailing Obama’s agenda not long after a resounding reelection, costing several people their careers, and distracting and misinforming the public. It’s not that nothing went wrong at the IRS, but that the transgression merited […] Read more »
Fox News Poll: Obama ratings suffer as scandals continue
President Barack Obama’s job rating remains upside-down — no big change there. Yet for the first time in a Fox News poll, more than half of voters find Obama unlikeable. In addition, only about a third of voters say they trust the federal government, and most want Congress to continue […] Read more »
Shifting IRS polls contradict key deposition
Roughly half of all Americans now think the White House was behind the Internal Revenue Service decision to target conservative political groups — a growing belief at odds with information recently provided to CNN by congressional investigators. [cont.] Alan Silverleib, CNN Read more »
Dark Money Politics
In the world of nonprofit “dark money” groups, nothing is as it seems: political committees, through the magic of the internal revenue code, become tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations; a partisan campaign ad becomes principled “issue advocacy”; and federal election law that requires public disclosure of donors is rendered toothless by […] Read more »
Americans Think Officials Knew About IRS Political Targeting
Nearly six in 10 Americans believe that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were aware the IRS had a practice of targeting conservative political groups for greater scrutiny in recent years. One-quarter think knowledge of this was mainly limited to the agency’s office in Cincinnati where the mishandled applications for tax-exempt […] Read more »