And speaking of Civics Tests . . .

by David Safier

AZ Blue Meanie was right to tear into Tom Tancredo for his blatantly racist suggestion that we need civics and literacy tests for voters. People who don't see the latent — and not-so-latent — strain of racism among tea partiers and many others in the anti-Obama movement just don't want to see what's staring them in the face.

But the phrase "Civics Test" reminded me of something else. I haven't asked Matthew Ladner lately, "Do you have any more information about the possibly bogus survey you used in your report that high school students don't know enough about civics?"

[Note to distractors: No, I'm not saying students know what they should about civics. I'm just questioning the way the survey was conducted.]

Ladner has had plenty of time to investigate whether Strategic Vision LLC, the company G.I. paid to conduct the survey, actually called all those students or made up their results out of whole cloth. There's substantial evidence suggesting Strategic Vision made up the results, and Ladner and G.I., as well as the media outlets that picked up the G.I. report, were chumped.

Ladner has also had plenty of time to hope the whole thing will go away, even though he's said he'll look into it. Which is why I bring the survey up occasionally, just to let him know I haven't forgotten.

I know it's presumptuous of me, an unpaid blogger pecking out posts on his MacBook, to make a suggestion to the multi-million dollar Goldwater Institute or the very well paid Matthew Ladner. However . . .

G.I. has hired two journalists, one in the past few weeks. Journalists do investigative reporting. The validity of the G.I. Civics Test survey definitely merits investigation, given all the evidence that the survey company could be a sham. I suggest these able journalists track this thing down and see if they can find out whether or not the survey is legit.

If they want some leads, some places to begin their investigation, I'll be happy to supply a few.