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There is no reason to sit here and belabor the point. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is THE authority on recessions. Arguing against what they say is like arguing with Einstein that he cannot spell his own name because you know the 'i before e except after c' rule and he got it wrong in his own name twice.

Hardly. The NBER make the call, really A call. A recession is not really a very precise term. Their call is an opinion. The MSM give much weight to their opinion. I don't give that much weight to the MSM. I am a profession economist and as I said above the NBER is not without its own biases.

They made the strange call to call a recession in 2001 but leave out the first quarter of negative growth. That is very odd to me. But of course they mostly work in fancy Eastern schools or in DC where the GOP is not popular. Given the chance to call this an inherited recession or say it is Bush's fault, they chose the latter. That does not make there opinion the only one. Lott apparently has a different one. He may have his own biases.

"And Lott’s point is pretty well taken, as yet we have not had a quarter of negative growth during this election cycle."

I agree with that statement. I also agree with the general point Lott is trying to make. I just don't think he needs to revise history and claim a recession in 2000 when there was not.

Direct from the pages of the BEA: link

In general usage, the word recession connotes a marked slippage in economic activity. While gross domestic product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity, the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation. The designation of a recession is the province of a committee of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private non-profit research organization that focuses on understanding the U.S. economy.

Since you are relying upon data from the BEA and they rely upon the NBER, is there a conclusion to be reached here? I cannot match your knowledge of this subject as you are a professional economist living and breathing this type of information while I am not, but I'm also not fully illiterate, do have post graduate degrees and can read. It seems to me that the reason an entity such as NBER has it's provenance is precisely so one has somewhere to look for answers. Whether they are East coast, West coast, ivy league or hillbilly doesn't matter as long as they are consistent and I know their bias. Personally I think they exist to keep bloggers from revising history.

I just don't want to wind up on Jeopardy some day and miss that econ daily double about the 2000 recession simply because an article from John Lott, Jr. stuck in my mind.

I also agree with your eyebrows rising over the strangeness of 1st qtr 2001 negative growth not being mentioned. However, I had a multi-day debate with my son's room mate in the summer of 2002 over this very subject and the data at the time didn't reflect Q1-2001 being negative. I'm sure that is a revision as I may not remember the exact numbers, but I certainly would have remembered a negative quarter as it would have simply killed my argument.