I always appreciate a good rebuttal. But like all things I usually appreciate it when it's fully informed. In truth the 2003 data -- which I saw -- further proves my point but seemed redundant to my core argument.
I made the point that I was using the 2001 data because that's the last survey available BEFORE Priscilla Owen was nominated by President Bush. Her nomination, put forward in May 2001 (right after the 2001 survey came out) quickly drew very high profile opposition from NOW, NARAL and several other activist groups, which was widely covered in Texas and in the legal press. So while many Americans may have only recently become aware of Priscilla Owen because of the filibuster issue, the Houston legal community was well aware of her nomination -- and the virulent opposition to it -- by time the 2003 survey was done. In other words, the 2003 data was as subject to political opposition as the 2005 data.
The 2005 HBA survey was also being used at the last minute by opponents of Judge Owen's nomination. The ``Freakonomics-like'' idea was to take a data set before and after an event (her nomination and vocal opposition) and try to explain the results. The 2003 results were not relevant to that point.
But since you bring up 2003, don't you notice the exact same trend? How is it that the positive opinions of her don't change in a statistically meaningful way across the three surveys? Is it reasonable to assume that EVERY person who originally answered that she was Acceptable has suddenly ranked her as Poor based only on her judicial conduct? The quality of her opinions apparently didn't go down, because there's no loss under the Outstanding category - they were simply, suddenly more ``polarizing,'' otherwise she would have lost standing across the board. What made her more ``polarizing'' between 2001 and 2003? A sudden shift in her opinions? Political opposition to her nomination came from opinions written prior to 2001. The only cause-effect reasonable from 2001 to 2003 was her nomination and high-profile opposition.
There's also something else I didn't put in the original email printed by PowerLine. The HBA survey says only lawyers who have argued cases in front of those judges within the past two years were supposed to evaluate them. Yet there were 350 lawyers from the Houston Bar Association ALONE who submitted reviews of her. That court tries cases in Austin, and hears all Texas cases from Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso as well as Houston. Is it possible that 350 lawyers from Houston alone could have argued cases in front of her in 2003 and 2004? Not very likely.
I was wrong to say that Hinderaker "didn't search very hard [for earlier evaluations, done before the political factor had kicked in];" the political factor kicked-in before the 2003 poll.
I was also wrong to say that Wildermuth hadn't seen the 2003 data.
| Outstanding | Acceptable | Poor | |
| Harriet O'Neill | 55.0% | 30.5% | 14.5% |
| Wallace B. Jefferson | 53.4% | 29.7% | 16.9% |
| Dale Wainwright | 48.7% | 25.7% | 25.7% |
| Nathan L. Hecht | 40.3% | 17.4% | 42.3% |
| Scott A. Brister | 36.9% | 20.7% | 42.4% |
| Priscilla R. Owen | 39.5% | 15.2% | 45.3% |
I recently finished the Freakonomics book (a book I recommend by the way) and today noticed a blog entry on the Owen nomination topic. Levitt cites a blog entry on Power Line apparently due to its mention of Freakonomics. But, Chris Wildermuth's discussion seems far from Freakonomic-like. In fact, a tiny bit of research shows that he ignored an important piece of information. Before I dive into that piece of information, let me review the Power Line blog entry.
The blog entry includes some brief commentary by John Hinderaker and an e-mail sent in by Power Line reader Chris Wildermuth. John says:
It was pretty obvious what happened: now that the Democrats' filibuster of Justice Owen is topping the news, Democratic lawyers in Houston are dropping their evaluations of her.He says that he "searched the web for earlier evaluations, done before the political factor kicked in, but couldn't find any." As we'll shortly see, he didn't search very hard. Chris Wildermuth looks at the 2005 results and compares them to the 2001 results. He notes a substantial negative shift in voting. Here are the '01 and '05 results for Houston lawyers' "Overall rating" of Owen:
| Outstanding | Acceptable | Poor | |
| 2001 | 41.1% | 26.1% | 32.9% |
| 2005 | 39.5% | 15.2% | 45.3% |
| Outstanding | Acceptable | Poor | |
| 2001 | 41.1% | 26.1% | 32.9% |
| 2003 | 43.0% | 9.9% | 47.1% |
| 2005 | 39.5% | 15.2% | 45.3% |