Recent years, have seen many advancements in computerized
document ranking and classification systems.
In this paper, we compare one recently developed algorithm known as
Wordscores to several industry standard
document ranking, classification, and summarization algorithms.
We point out several of the weaknesses in Wordscores, illustrating
that it performs well at partisan identification in specific instances,
but show that it fails critically at other tasks, such as identifying stances on
terrorism taken by Supreme Court Justices and Saddam Hussein.