I'm thoroughly enchanted with Lying In Ponds, a nifty new site run by a fellow named Ken Waight. Amongst other things, he has attempted to mathematically model the partisanship of various well-known newspaper columnists. Using these models, he's listed the very most partisan pundits of our three widest-circulation newspapers here in the U.S.

I have a few issues with his system, which I may write about later. But on the whole it's pretty cool. I also have to say that of the most partisan pundits he lists, I only like one of them at all: Peggy Noonan. If you look at her stats carefully, she's partisan mostly because she makes so many positive references to Republicans, and makes so damn few negative comments about anyone. (She says more negative things about Republicans than about Democrats, for example.)

Compare her to howling banshees like Maureen Dowd and demented factoid-emitters like Paul Krugman, and the difference is obvious: she's clearly partisan, but she mostly tells you why she's made her choices, rather than why she thinks everyone else is evil or stupid for not making the same choices.

Not that I'm all that huge a fan of Noonan's. If I were to list my top 10 favorite columnists, she wouldn't even be on it. But I found it interesting that Waight was still able to nail exactly what I liked about her and why, to me, she's always seemed a cut above. It never clicked for me until I read her stats. He hasn't explained everything, but he's explained a lot.

Anyway, give his site a look. Like I said, it's nifty. (Link courtesy of Media Minded).