You can count the number of conservatives in a newsroom of several hundred people on your fingers -- with no need to borrow those of a friend. Last night I was asking an editor about the length of a story she was editing and she was really excited to show me something that one of her reporters had found for her on the Internet. It was a chart showing the average IQ by state and who each one voted for. She seemed very impressed with the "fact" that all of the smart states voted Democrat, and all of the dumb ones Republican.

I just shook my head and told her the chart is bogus. The average IQ of any state -- even with the smaller ones with only hundreds of thousands of people -- is 100. 100 is the average IQ -- period. If you get a large enough group of people -- and a state is plenty large enough -- the average IQ is 100. I reminded her of Garrison Keillor's statement about Lake Wobegon, "where all the children are above average."

I think I dampened her enthusiasm and engaged her critical thinking skills, but it should come as no surprise that some Democrats (and British newspapers) take refuge in the perceived superior intelligence following the shellacking they received Tuesday.