Cheering for the death of others

Posted on 16 September 2011 by Terry Chay

I find the cheering of 234 executions extremely odd for supposed supporters of the death penalty.

Rick Perry’s success in the primary hinges on being the daddy-figure posture with the right wing bedwetters. Given that he’s on record as having [executed an innocent man][new yorker death penalty], he has to double down to cover his mistake. So, I understand Rick Perry’s political strategy here.

But why cheer executions? Have we as a country sunk so low? Continue reading about the economics, statistics, and morals of the death penalty after the jump→

Are democrats more educated?

Posted on 21 July 2010 by Terry Chay

Balloon Juice links to a Brookings study that measures educational attainment by metropolitan area and notes that 24 out of 25 areas are in states that went for Obama in 2008.

This made me immediately wonder which the outlier was. A quick scan said that the post is incorrect and that there are two outliers according to that metric. The first is Austin-Round Rock at #14 and the second is Tucson, AZ at #25. Doug was probably referring to Austin. But why talk about states, when we have the county breakdown? The county Austin resides in (Travis, TX) actually went for Obama by almost 2 to 1 (64-35%)—seems a shame to pick on Austin simply because it happens to be in a red state.