I've developed my own personal system for determining how conservative/fundamentalist columnists are in various newspapers around the country. I call it the George Will Ratio. Simply put, the George Will ratio is the number of times I agree with a column versus the number of times I don't.

Consider his wonderful Op-Ed for the WP today on how Dover should be a lesson for Republicans to stop trying to shove religion into science classes and cut out the damn pork. Now, of Will's 25 Op-Ed's since September I have agreed with his take on Miers 1 and Miers 2 and his article on the benefits of judicial activism.

That makes about 4 articles out of 25 which is close to my observed ratio of about 1 in 6 articles (or 17% agreement). From this benchmark one can then assess other conservative commentators. David Brooks of the New York times gets a similar score of about 1 in 7 or 14%, William Safire had a ratio of about 1 in 10 or 10%(This is inexact but I remember only agreeing with him about once a month), and to date I have never agreed with Max Boot of the LA times, that freak Charles Krauthammer (*cough* Dr. Strangelove *cough*) or Count Novakula (since discontinued) of the WP giving them approximate scores of 0.0%.

Why do I do this? I'm obsessive compulsive. There, I admitted it. But it's also a useful metric for whether or not someone is a true conservative and is intellectual about their opinions and positions on various topics. The lower the score, the more likely you're just a hack who will support anything the administration does. If the Bush administration decided to make internment camps for hippies tomorrow, I'm sure Krauthammer would have a glowing Op-Ed about how this makes Bush as great a president as George Washington, or maybe even Ronald Reagan. Think that's an exaggeration? Well, check out his wonderful apologia for Dick Cheney's "Go Fuck Yourself" incident and decide whether he has a any legitamacy as a commentator whatsoever. Krauthammer described the slur against Patrick Leahy as, "Cheney's demonstration of earthy authenticity"
Ha! What an asshole.