Assignment March 11

See our New Cities Page:

http://newcitywestliberty.blogspot.com/2009/03/creating-your-lobby.html

Marbury v. Madison

Next Test II

FYI... see this link about your test. You'll print these on this site and I just invited all of you to become bloggers here:

http://newcitywestliberty.blogspot.com/2009/03/blogger-invitations.html

Congress is Like a Whiskey Drinker....

"CONGRESS IS LIKE A whiskey drinker," President Lyndon Johnson once observed. "You can put an awful lot of whiskey into a man if you just let him sip it," he said. "But if you try to force the whole bottle down his throat at one time, he'll throw it up."The 36th president and former Senate majority leader was referring to Congress's ability to produce legislative outcomes -- too much activity inebriates the system.

Next Test

Your next test will consist of a single essay answer to the following question:

1. West Liberty is participating in a project known as the New Cities Institute initiative. At the end of this process, leading citizens of the community will come together and decide on a course of action… a plan… on how to make the community a “New City.” The plans might include economic development proposals, recreation ideas, etc. Using the political linkages of the policy pyramid, analyze how this process might work.

Political Bias on the Part of the Media?

The media is not infallible. They’re often accused of harboring their own agenda. Here are a couple of clips on YouTube that discuss alleged bias:
Here are allegations of Fox News bias:


And here’s Fox using ABC political news director Mark Halleprin to claim other network bias:

Public Opinion and Presidential Politics

George W. Bush has been a very consequential president in recent years, thanks largely to the War on Terror. Here’s Gallup Opinion Poll’s Frank Newport on public opinion in the Bush years:



Public opinion on candidates can be shaped permanently by how these candidates come across in TV appearances. If they look silly or unprepared even once, these images can haunt their entire careers.

Here are a couple of examples of how this happened in Vice Presidential politics:





Looking silly has been a bipartisan affair in Presidential politics. In 1988 Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts and the Democratic nominee for President, faced attack ads by George Bush that highlights his appearance in tank:



Dukakis was also hit hard for his policies on crime. In this ad, that many considered racist, Dukakis is criticized by an outside political group with links to George Bush. The criticism highlights Dukakis’s furlough policy: