Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
Congress is apparently now speaking at a 10th grade level. The Sunlight Foundation recently analyzed the Congressional Record and found that the average member of Congress speaks at 10.6 grade reading level on the standard Flesch-Kincaid scale. That’s down almost a full grade level from 2005 ... Read More
Last week the House voted 218-208 to block the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. No other type of research would be blocked by the NSF budget amendment. The NSF could still continue funding research in sociology, anthropology, and economics. The amendment would ... Read More
On Wednesday, President Obama became the first sitting president to support marriage equality for gays and lesbians. The president’s support does nothing to alter the moral case for marriage equality. While Obama said he personally supported same-sex marriage, he didn't say he thought states should ... Read More
In an interview in Ohio on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would “take a lot of credit” for the fact that the U.S. auto industry has rebounded. That’s a remarkable statement. In fact, it’s an outrageous statement. When the auto manufacturers were bailed out in late 2008, Mitt Romney was out of ... Read More
Torture doesn’t work. There has never been much reason to believe that it does. Now Reuters reports that a three-year investigation by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence committee confirms what we already knew: there's little evidence that our so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques ... Read More
Being an expert means never having to say you’re sorry. If it turns out you’re wrong about something—about, say, whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or whether there was a housing bubble—that’s okay. As an expert you must have had good reasons for being wrong. Anyone who got right what you ... Read More
When Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, it removed the last real obstacle standing between Mitt Romney and the nomination. The race has really been over for a while. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the race, but Romney has more than three times more delegates ... Read More
Earlier this week I argued that the Affordable Care Act should be ruled constitutional. There are genuine reasons to be concerned about the scope of Congress’ commerce power, which has been used to justify the federal laws concerning what appear to be non-commercial issues that could easily be ... Read More
President Obama said Monday that overturning the Affordable Care Act would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step.” But by all accounts oral argument in the Supreme Court went badly for supporters of Obama’s health care law. In one exchange, Justice Anthony Kennedy—who is widely expected to be ... Read More
Mitt Romney will win the nomination. Rick Santorum’s victory in Louisiana only delayed the inevitable. Santorum gained just 5 delegates in Louisiana on Romney, who is still 295 delegates ahead. Romney has won 55% of the delegates available so far, and needs just 45% of the remaining delegates to ... Read More
How would you describe the Republican candidates? A Washington Post/Pew Research poll conducted two weeks ago asked respondents what one word came to mind when they heard the name of different Republican candidates. “No” was one of the top words for each candidate. But that doesn’t really mean ... Read More
After Mitt Romney’s 12-point win in Illinois, it’s difficult to see how anyone else could win the Republican nomination. His lead in the delegate count over Rick Santorum has expanded to 300 (although the Santorum campaign argues hopefully that his count will be a little higher than most think ... Read More
Rick Santorum had a great day on Tuesday, winning the Republican primaries in both Alabama and Mississippi—a state in which no poll had shown Santorum in the lead. Newt Gingrich, whose campaign said had to win both states to in order to remain a credible candidate, came in second in both. Mitt ... Read More
Over the weekend, I looked back at this blog’s most popular posts from 2011. I like to believe they were popular because readers found them interested and recommended them to their friends. But of course they may simply have been the most timely posts or the ones with the most titillating headlines ... Read More
After more than two years of writing this blog, I still haven't learned how to predict how people will respond to my writing. The posts I am most proud of—and the ones I work the hardest on—often get relatively little response, while posts I dash off on the spur of the moment are sometimes the ones ... Read More
Mitt Romney is looking more and more like the inevitable Republican nominee. Romney won 6 of the 10 Super Tuesday states, including the crucial state of Ohio. He won the majority of the delegates at stake. He now has more delegates than the rest of the field combined, and more than twice as many of ... Read More
Here’s what we can expect for Super Tuesday. Mitt Romney will win his home state of Massachusetts, the neighboring state of Vermont, and Virginia, where Ron Paul is the only other candidate on the ballot. Rick Santorum will win Oklahoma. And Newt Gingrich will win his home state of Virginia. When ... Read More
Whatever happens next week on Super Tuesday, the race for the Republican nomination is likely going to go on for a while. By winning the Arizona and the Michigan primaries on Tuesday and the Wyoming caucus last night Mitt Romney reaffirmed his status as the favorite to win the nomination. Political ... Read More
Nobody seems to really like the U.S. tax system. Conservatives complain that taxes are too high, while liberals say the system isn’t progressive enough. Both may well be right. But, as Lucy Barnes recently explained, the surprising truth is that taxes in the U.S. are both relatively low and ... Read More
The latest Quinnipiac poll has Rick Santorum ahead of Mitt Romney 35-26 among Republicans and voters who lean Republican. National polls are not by themselves be good indicators of who will win the nomination. Futures traders at Intrade still give Romney a 75% chance of being the Republican nominee ... Read More
About Robert de Neufville
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.