Slate publishes pieces my A.P. history teacher would laugh at

Unlike many bloggers I'm not too invested in politics, nor do I have a deep knowledge of the topic (though I do have a strong interest in quantitative political science). But I read political pieces in the same way I read sports columns: entertaining analyses which serve as brain candy. Nevertheless, the candy needs to pass a minimal threshold of intellectual palatability. I'm a Celtics fan, and was excited to see their first championship of my adulthood last year, but any sports writer that throws up a column which asserts that the 2007-2008 team was the greatest of all time would be too transparently hackish. There needs to be the verisimilitude of intellectual effort and seriousness when it comes to writing analytic puff-pieces which are the norm in sports, financial and political journalism. A piece in Slate, Specter's Shadow: Why Arlen Specter's defection should terrify the GOP, doesn't meet that ...