Way back in my AP days, just as the Afghanistan war was getting underway, I wrote about the difficulties minorities face in special forces in the U.S. military. Blacks made up 20 percent of the military but just 4 percent of special forces.
In the process, I uncovered a federally commissioned Rand Institute report, that concluded that, yes, minorities fear racism in the elite units – but added that the researchers were not qualified to assess whether there was racism.
Imagine that.
As far as I recall, the institute – an independent think tank with close government ties – charged taxpayers close to $400,000 for those insights.
I marveled then at how government is ready to pay big bucks for, well, the bleeding obvious.
Now Rand’s come out with a report that uses Israeli data to show that terrorist attacks close to an election affect the outcome of the election.
Hmmmm.
Via Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Iglesias and The Monkey Cage (whew!)
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