Washington Post's (Partially) Misleading Graphic: Can Anyone Do Better?

A nice little graph today by the Washington Post, where you can sort each Congressperson by the amount of campaign contributions from the Health Care industry, and relate that to their predicted vote on the health care bill.

When you do so, you'll find that Charlie Rangel - who received the most in campaign contributions from the health care industry - is actually voting against the bill.  Of course, as the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee - overseeing things like Medicare and Social Security - Rangel is bound to receive more cash from the health industry, and relatively more contributions overall.

A better measure would certainly be the percentage of all the congressman's contributions furnished by the health care industry.  That would help control for the fact that powerful people get more funds and are less susceptible to one industry pulling its support.   One could argue that this still doesn't control for the germaneness of the industry (in Rangel's case, for instance), but this shouldn't matter in a measure of financial influence.  After all, the fact that they're on a more germane committee doesn't make that money any less attractive.

Seriously ADL? Seriously?

After the Israelis embarrassed Joe Biden and effectively scrapped his initiative to start new talks, Netanyahu rightfully apologized to Biden and ordered to probe to see that better procedures were followed.  Not to be outdone, however, Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, announced that the ADL was "shocked and stunned" the "gross overreaction" of the administration, and noted that "One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians."

Guess what ADL?  When Israel screws up and publicly humiliates the vice president, you give the administration two choices: say little and once again reinforce the idea that the United States is a biased participant in the peace process, or rebuke the incident and yes, maybe gain some greatly needed trust from the Palestinian side.  Israel's relationship with the United States is strong and won't be in jeopardy anytime soon.  So if the US needs to save a little face because and gain a little bit of credibility at the negotiating table, let them have it, won't you?