Archive for January 2009

Conservapedia Sysops Address Critics & Prepare to Implement “FlaggedRevs”

Frequent readers of this site, and followers of the Internet dark comedy that is Conservapedia’s day-to-day existence, will know that Conservapedia’s handpicked administrators (“sysops”) scrupulously avoid contact with the outside world, battling even the incursion of new ideas with a zealotry typically reserved for suicide bombers. Indeed, the nerdier among us (like yours truly) could say that a discussion with a Conservapedia sysop is rarer than news from Gondolin.

Credit where it’s due, then, to Tony Sidaway,  whose two-article coverage of Conservapedia drew responses from two members of Conservapedia’s higher echelons, igniting a battle with Conservapedia critics taking advantage of this rare opportunity for mutual discussion. Both of Tony’s articles (the first on the site in general; the second on its recent parody affliction) and the comments sections are must-reads for interested parties. To be sure, Tony gets a lot wrong, particularly in his pigeonholing of RationalWiki – that is, after all, what happens when you walk into a show at intermission – but the dialog elicited is valuable for clearing up several misconceptions, and exposing the depths of Conservapedia’s delusions of grandeur.

In bigger news, per discussions with some of the same sysops, we have reason to expect that Conservapedia will further “circle its wagons” by implementing the “flagged revisions” MediaWiki extension sometime next week. To the uninitiated, “FlaggedRevs” is a means of ex ante quality control, whereby edits to popular, controversial, or newsworthy articles are screened prior to being made visible. Wikipedia is in the process of implementing the same, to meet the embarrassing problem of nefarious editors misrepresenting breaking news. Ironically, Conservapedia roundly condemned Wikipedia for going down the FlaggedRevs route, characterizing it as a means of entrenching Wikipedia’s “liberal bias”… when we can be certain that Conservapedia’s FlaggedRevs implementation would be complete,  and leveraged to utterly eliminate any “liberal” edits to their putatively “objective” compendium of knowledge.

Upon information from the same sources, FlaggedRev’s appeal to Conservapedia’s administration stems from its perceived ability to completely eliminate “vandalism,” which they define roughly as “any edits which dare conflict even incidentally with Andy Schlafly’s worldview.” This modest goal it would probably accomplish. But if implemented cross-wiki and deployed as “liberally” as their blocking and protection policies, it would also cut the editing population of Conservapedia down to a handful, prove once and for all that the values cherished by the Conservapedia population simply cannot withstand meaningful ideological challenge, and entrench rather than solve Conservapedia’s inability to distinguish legitimate fundamentalist editors from parodists. This – not “vandalism” – has always been the greatest danger to Conservapedia’s existence, as proved by the half-dozen trusted editors who’ve turned out to be subversives bent on driving away productive-but-moderate editors (Richard, MexMax, Bugler, Rodweathers, SSchultz, JJacobs, etc.). But Conservapedia’s susceptibility to parody stems not from its software, but from its worldview: and lord knows that’s not going to change.

BREAKING: Resorting to Identity Politics Again, RNC Picks Michael Steele as its First African-American Chairman

Perhaps forecasting their strategy for the next four years, earlier today the Republican National Committee picked Maryland’s former lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, to be their new chairman.

This is something of an odd move. While it’s nice that the RNC has finally recognized that black people do, in fact, exist, Mr. Steele comes with his own problems. In his abortive run for the Senate, Steele enlisted poor out-of-state residents to circulate sample ballots on election day – ballots that claimed that he, and other Republican candidates, were actually Democrats. While this is the kind of election chicanery we’ve come to expect from the Republican Party, it’s strange if unsurprising to see it rewarded.

Further, Steele’s policies are just slightly more moderate than the current conservative hard-line: he’s on record opposing a constitutional ban on gay marriage but pledged to support it if appointed RNC chairman, anti-stem cells, and just as anti-choice as the rest of the RNC, albeit a little more practical, in that he recognizes that Roe‘s probably here to stay. Apparently, to Steele, gay Americans are just another playing chip.

So, the RNC gave us a chairman who’s just as mired in scandal and just barely better on social issues than the rest of the party. But, he’s black. Here’s my theory: the Republicans think they lost in 2008 because of Obama’s race, not because he was the better man. Just like with Sarah Palin, they’re putting identity politics before substance, trying once more to put a new face on the same old policies. Let’s hope it fails again.

The Republican Brain Trust at Work (with Bachmann Bonus!)

(The Republican Party has been quite busy the latter half of this week.)

PART I. On the work ahead for the party:

The [RNC] is getting together to choose a new chairman, settling an unusually intense competition … It will also consider whether to issue a call to put the kibosh on President Obama’s stimulus plan and any future industry bailouts. … The members linger over soup in the hotel restaurant and chat quietly in the hallway. Ron Kaufman — a committeeman who was tight with Daddy Bush — tries to sell a couple of fellow members on the virtues of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”

….

In the hallway at the RNC meeting, when someone asks Kaufman who he is, he doesn’t say “Republican committeeman,” “savvy Washington insider” or even “Ayn Rand booster.” He opts instead for an extreme identity makeover.

He says, “Brad Pitt.”

When all else fails, soup, objectivism, and … Brad Pitt to the rescue!

PART II. On Obama’s goals:

West Virginia national committeewoman Donna Lou Gosney, said she didn’t want her party working with Obama much. “I know this is probably not going to come out right, and it will be an awful quote,” she said. “But I’m not really one that wants Obama to succeed when he talks about nationalizing medicine, Medicare, and when he talks about closing Guantánamo, and when he talks about just throwing money at things.”

At least she was right about the first part. Though, she might want to take the temperature of her fellow Republicans regarding what rights ought to be afforded to Guantanamo detainees.

PART III. On the Republican image:

“The first task, in my view, is to find the voters who’ve left the party,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the RNC. “As we do this, the temptation for some will be to run from our principles or to dilute our message. I think that’s a temptation we need to resist. These people were Republican for a reason.”

….

The party does have problems, McConnell told them, but they’re all about image: “Ask most people what Republicans think about immigrants, and they’ll say we fear them. Ask most people what we think about the environment, and they’ll say we don’t care about it. Ask most people what we think about the family, and they’ll tell you we don’t — until about a month before Election Day.” But the solution to all that isn’t to change policies, he said; it’s just to communicate them better. His first example? “Workers need to know that we’re not anti-union — we’re pro-employee.”

Because buzz-words never “dilute” the message.

PART IV. On bipartisanship:

Mr. Boehner, who was attending a retreat with his fellow members, issued another missive today — using bipartisanship in his own way (because 11 Democrats voted with 177 Republicans against the bill): “The vote last night sent a clear, powerful, and bipartisan message to Congressional Democratic leaders about the current version of the economic “stimulus” package: the American people deserve better.

Using Boehner’s “logic,” the 31 Republicans who voted against the alternate Republican stimulus proposal (immediately before the Democrat bill came up for vote) “sent a clear, powerful, and bipartisan message to Congressional [Republican] leaders … the American people deserve better.”

PART V. We would be remiss not to include a Republican’s weighty contribution to science. Here’s a gem from everyone’s favorite intelligent-design-loving treason-sniffer-outer, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN):

“On the Inauguration Day, Dr. Tom Price [GOP U.S. congressman from Georgia] can attest to this — we were freezing to death, sitting there during the inauguration, with our blankets huddled up there,” Bachmann said. “We were asking Al Gore when he came in through the door, ‘Hey Al, is it cold enough for you down there? This isn’t exactly a global warming day.’”

Pure magic. It has to be, because none of this makes sense as anything else.

Hillary Clinton is the New Hillary Clinton

When now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to President Barack Obama, PUMA blogs like “The Confluence” declared a holy war on Barack Obama, accusing him of everything from rigging the primaries to being a feminist “sum of all fears,” a secret pro-lifer who’d undermine the nascent equal pay movement, etcetera, etcetera. This putative tragedy quickly turned to farce when, in the general election, these pro-women’s rights Clinton voters turned to Sarah Palin, declaring her “the new Hillary Clinton,” the torchbearer for American feminism, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Sadly, these PUMAs have done an enormous disservice to Clinton – who we here would have been proud to have as President, too – by tying her internet presence to their fringe, loony, Republican false-flag movement. Thanks to them, it was hard to find a Clinton fan-site not somehow tainted by the mind-virus that is PUMAism. Until this week.

On Wednesday, Clinton aide Ann Lewis launched NoLimits.org, a community of old school Hillary primary supporters bound together by their affection for our new Secretary of State, and their commitment to women’s rights (Politico reports). Post #1 – a congratulations to Congress & the President for passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. PUMAs should take note: this is a group of people who, instead of feeling sorry for themselves and turning their misdirected rage against the Democrats, did something productive and found a productive voice. Such additions to the women’s rights movement can only be good for the country.

On that note, we’re only in week two of the Obama administration, and it’s already clear that this is a pro-woman presidency. Ms. Ledbetter’s law was the first to grace President Obama’s desk, and the first to be signed into law. Despite that, one searches in vain on blogs like “Confluence” for messages praising either Obama or the Democrats for acting so quickly. One has to wonder: how long will it take the PUMAs to realize that Hillary Clinton is still a Democrat, and the Democrats are still on the side of equality? Hopefully sooner rather than later: maybe Mrs. Lewis can help.

Conservapedia: Obama Still a Secret Muslim

President Obama’s election seems to have done a number on the power-accustomed brains of more than a few paleoconservatives, whose reactions have ranged from the sad (Brad Blakeman, ex-Bush staffer, ranting incoherently on NPR yesterday) to the delusional. As usual, for the latter, we go to Conservapedia, where Andy Schlafly has built his article on the President around a bullet-point list that purports to prove that Obama is, somehow, a Muslim. See for yourself – you just can’t make this stuff up.

Obama’s background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.^{[27][28] [. . .]}


Obama recently mentioned his religion as “my Muslim faith.”^{[31] [. . .]}


Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam.

Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for “Pakistan” rather than the common American one.^{[38] [. . .]}


Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name “Renegade”. “Renegade” conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning “Christian turned Muslim.”^{[41] [. . .]}


“President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend [Sunday] church services since winning the White House earlier …, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.”^[44]

But the real slam-dunk, in Schlafly’s mind? Obama fumbled the oath of office when he had his hand on the Bible, and his second oath was conspicuously Bible-less. Gotcha!!! Oh, and let’s forget that he only won because he’s black. Remarkable how quickly the “we must always respect the President” narrative disappeared.

Notably, Schlafly’s disdain for Obama may not be completley political. Obama and Schlafly were classmates at Harvard Law, and colleagues on the Law Review, until Obama beat out the conservatives’ slate (which may have included Schlafly) to become President of the Law Review. Sour grapes would explain a lot, but excuse little.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Rush?

Artist's conception (not pictured: bottle of pills).

By all accounts President Obama started out his presidency on the path to partial bipartisanship, and to their credit, congressional Republicans are going along with him – to a point. Regardless of how this experiment in bipartisanship turns out, though, merely embarking on the endeavour is sure to have one effect: the freezing out of the extremes. That’s as it should be. As much I’d love to see America run by ACLU policy analysts, in a country still oriented around the middle (I’d argue middle-left), governing from the far-left is as impractical as governing from the far-right. Ask Bush how the latter went. So this quip by the President came as no surprise to me:

You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.

Just so. America no longer has the luxury of fighting battles between the extremes, nuking the political center in the process. Only the Democrats have political capital and the mandate to govern from the extreme, and even though they could, they shouldn’t either. In a crisis, it’s just common sense.

Of course, what’s common sense to you and I is historically at odds with whatever (besides Oyxcontin) may be running through Mr. Limbaugh’s mind at any given time. Predictably, Rush reacted angrily to the news of his own irrelevance, igniting a tempest in the backwater teapot that is the conservative blogosphere. But here’s the thing. This time, no-one’s listening. Not even the Republicans:

Phil Gingrey (R-GA 11): I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach. I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.

Congressman Gingrey (my onetime employer!) is quite right, his later retreats and apologies notwithstanding. The time for pandering to the base is long past, for both parties, and Congressman Gingrey is a good man to recognize it. Who knows: if the GOP manages to purge itself of ideologues and rebuild a pragmatic, rational center, they might just be a useful party in America once again.

Update: new bailout bill passed the House last night without Republican support, proving that Rush is really, truly irrelevant.

More on the Economy: See Spot’s Profits Disappear (UPDATED)

UPDATE: The House just passed the stimulus bill (approx. 6:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday). The final amount is about $819 billion, less than the $825 billion reported last week and likely the result of Democrats agreeing to cut things like birth control and STD education and treatment funding. Final vote count: Ayes=244; Nays=188 … arguably along party lines. (Currently, there are 256 Democrats and 178 Republicans.) More on this later. Actually, I just learned 11 Dems voted against the bill; ZERO … Z-E-R-O Republicans voted for it.

This is Cal Worthington and his dog, Spot:

He has been a mainstay on the new & used car dealership scene for decades in California. He has several dealerships in Southern California. The above ad is from the 80s for one of his dealerships in Sacramento. Before my family moved to California from Roswell, New Mexico (yes, that Roswell) in the early 80s, we knew who Cal was. We got some of the local Los Angeles stations in Roswell (It might have something to do with superior alien transmission signals.), and my sister and I were mesmerized by the majesty of the cowboy car magnate.

Well, even Cal’s empire isn’t spared fallout from the crashing economy. On NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, Worthington’s decline in business was spotlighted in an interview. Please do click on the link; there is another quick story about Norco, California, a Southern California city that is a mix of big-box stores and ranching that is using sales-tax revenue to help local car dealers stay in business through loans. These car dealerships provide a large percentage of those same tax funds through auto sales. Frankly, I believe contraction nationwide in car dealerships is inevitable. It will be painful, but I do not see how it is avoidable unless auto makers make serious and far reaching efforts to completely overhaul their product lines with vehicles that get far more than 30 mpg, highway.

The larger point is that people everywhere are feeling the pinch, and individuals, communities, and governments are working arduously to face economic uncertainty, which is why passing a stimulus package quickly is so important and why Republican grandstanding and clamoring for tax cuts over spending is SO. NOT. HELPFUL.

Here is one reason why spending is more stimulating than tax cuts:

When a business receives a tax cut there is no guarantee that money will be used to create a new job or even to make capital improvements that would maintain the health of vendors or contractors. Instead, that money could be saved to buttress against future losses in a sagging economy. (Similarly, companies like IBM, Google, and Microsoft, while currently reporting profits, have announced layoffs … trimming in places to shore up potential losses.) Extra money does not always mean additional investment.

Government spending, however, puts disposable monies in the hands of individuals immediately. If a job is created by a shovel-ready project, the income from that job is ready to spend on things like mortgages and car payments and other goods and services. (Yes, some of that income will go towards consumer debt, but everyone benefits when a foreclosure is avoided. Besides maintenance of other personal debt obligations helps keep mortgages affordable.) Also, the current stimulus package in the House promises large injections of money into student loan programs, which is an investment in long-term economic viability. The Department of Education is slated to receive a chunk o’ change, too, providing funding for new school construction and beefing up Title I coffers, both promising job creation.

Of course, there is still some time to debate details (like how the money is actually disbursed and what oversight will be required), but not the broad strokes and the intent of the bill. Unfortunately, Republicans seem all too willing to sacrifice their tenuous connection to reality for their continued and long unrequited love of tax cuts.

Are You Smarter than a Sitting Congressman? Lamar Smith Edition

One option.

It’s easy to hate Guantanamo Bay, and everything it stands for – human rights abuses, a policy of legally “black hole-ing” detainees to avoid the rule of law, kangaroo courts, you name it. But as President Obama has found, now that he’s set a deadline to close America’s dirty little secret, it’s significantly harder to come up with an alternative. While the problem admits of several solutions, ranging anywhere between detention in specialized facilities and trial in specially-constituted Article I “national security” courts and integration in the existing federal criminal process, each option poses its own problems and political impediments. In making these difficult decisions, at least one person is not helping: Congressman Lamar Smith, of Texas’ 21st District, a gerrymandered monstrosity seemingly mapped specifically to marginalize urban influence.

Rep. Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, recently submitted a bill entitled Enemy Combatant Detention Review Act (ECDRA, H.R. 630), with an eye to expressly forbidding President Obama from detaining ex-Guantanamo inmates on American soil (text @ LoC). Defending his bill on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” Rep. Smith assumes detention on U.S. soil would entitle detainees to plead their case in federal court, and cites two central problems with this outcome: first, the possibility that Guantanamo detainees would receive the same constitutional freedoms as American citizens; and second, the fear that trials in federal court would result in disclosure of classified information.

However, the ECDRA seems poorly tailored to these goals. Its initial provisions provide for limited habeas review of detainee claims only in the D.C. district courts: a solution more moderate and in keeping with the (admittedly unclear) post-Boumediene ((Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. ___ (2009).)) legal landscape than his fiery rhetoric suggests. So far so good: what’s there to be mad about?

The problem is in ECDRA’s provisions regarding classified information, which require judges to substitute classified information and battlefield witnesses with textual stipulations. If we were building our legal world from scratch, this might be a reasonable solution to the problem of using classified information in trials: turns out, though, we’re not. Federal law already provides a framework for dealing with classified information in criminal trials – the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA – text) – and for more than twenty years, CIPA has managed to strike an adequate balance between the defendant’s valid need for relevant information, and the government’s valid need for secrecy. ((Sustained as constitutional, against Fifth & Sixth Amendment claims, in U.S. v. Wen Ho Lee.)) CIPA covers not only classified documents, but has been used (by analogy) to provide an adequate framework for limited admission of testimony by undercover agents, ((U.S. v. Moussaoui, 4th Cir. 2004.)) all without any leak of classified information, ever.

In this sense, the provisions in ECDRA for handling classified information are worse than useless: they’d effectively rewrite CIPA, duplicating what’s alread on the statute books, but in the process throw out a useful, balanced jurisprudence twenty years in the making.

I’ll admit that Rep. Smith was on the right track. Striking a delicate, principled, and rational balance between due process rights and national security interests is best for all parties involved, and necessary. The Guantanamo cases demand something more than your garden-variety criminal trial. But why re-invent the wheel, or rile up the public over problems either non-existent, or long-since solved?

Then again, maybe that’s all the Republican Party is capable of these days.

Where There Is Yet Shame, There May In Time Be Virtue.

Just don’t expect either from Congressional Republicans.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Twerp, er, Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) are busy imploring fellow House Republicans to oppose the stimulus package, demanding more tax breaks while using inane mathematics to challenge all sorts of spending proposals.

From Krugman yesterday (emphasis mine):

First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

….

The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 — and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats.

….

Finally, ignore anyone who tries to make something of the fact that the new administration’s chief economic adviser has in the past favored monetary policy over fiscal policy as a response to recessions.

It’s true that the normal response to recessions is interest-rate cuts from the Fed, not government spending. And that might be the best option right now, if it were available. But it isn’t, because we’re in a situation not seen since the 1930s: the interest rates the Fed controls are already effectively at zero.

That’s why we’re talking about large-scale fiscal stimulus: it’s what’s left in the policy arsenal now that the Fed has shot its bolt.

In the meantime, over 70,000 jobs were on the chopping block yesterday across industries. In fact, today, my husband’s workplace is suffering a 10% cut in jobs. (400 people out in one location). Not to mention, home prices in the country dropped 18% in November.

Yet, always and forever, Republicans hold onto supply-side economics. Why? To be partisan? At what cost?

One of the targets for increased spending is the Federal Pell Grant Program. According to Andrew Leonard, no spending plan is immune from Republican scrutiny and suspicion:

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., “opposes the proposed increase in funding for Pell Grants for college students because it would do little to spur short-term economic growth.”

….

From the get-go, the Obama economic team has made clear that their priority is to find mechanisms for stimulating the economy that do not have to be created out of thin air. … In infrastructural terms, that means “shovel-ready” projects … But it also means expanding funding for spending programs that are popular, effective and already in place. The Pell Grant program satisfies those requirements nicely, with the added benefit that it efficiently puts cash in the hands of those families that are most likely to spend it.

….

Pell Grants also serve a long-term interest: Increasing access to education. So in the long run, the country gets a more educated workforce, while in the short run, lower-income families find their own budgetary constraints loosened.

If Boehner represents the reinvention of the Republican voice, it sounds very much like the voice that theoretically “led” the U.S. the last eight years, that promoted a hands-off approach to everything, EXCEPT whatever it took to cut the carotid artery of oversight.

To paraphrase President Obama: That voice lost. And now, it really ought to back off.

Barack Obama: the Science President?

Last Tuesday, President Obama’s inaugural address took more than a few shots at outgoing President George W. Bush – some unexpected. About halfway through his address, Obama excoriated Bush for, of all things, his marginalization of the sciences: “we will restore science to its rightful place.” Huh. How about that.

While scientific integrity is a major sticking point for, well, scientists, and major upper-lower-mid-range blogs like ours, it’s not every day you get a President, or any politician for that matter, who actually cares – let alone two:

Rep. Pelosi (D-Ca.): In the economic recovery package, we are going with proposals that we have in general for infrastructure, for innovation, for health care, and for energy independence—and they really are all related. And I said, if you want four words to describe this: science, science, science, and science.

Talk is cheap, but Obama has acted quickly, from tightening emission standards to respond to (rather than politicize) global warming, making plans to loosen Bush era faux-moral restraints on stem cell research, to putting a scientist at his right hand by restoring the long-neglected office of the Presidential Science Advisor. ((“Obama has said his presidential science adviser will have the official status of an assistant to the president — something the current science adviser, John Marburger, has not been granted.” Alexandra Witze, “Climate first for Obama transition team,” Nature, Nov. 11, 2008 (available through subscription service only).”))

Obama has similarly resisted the urge to politicize science on the culture war front: rather than cave to U.S. popular opinion, which is (shockingly) favorable to creationism, the President’s position on all forms of creationism is perfunctory and dismissive. As a Nature questionairre revealed, unlike his erstwhile contender, Obama appeared categorically unwilling to pander, mince words, or vacillate on this point:

Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools?

Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.

McCain said last year, in a Republican primary debate: “I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.” In 2005, he told the Arizona Daily Star that he thought “all points of view” should be available to students studying the origins of humanity. But the next year a Colorado paper reported him saying that such viewpoints should not be taught in science class. ((Alexandra Witze, ”U.S. Election: Questioning the Candidates,” Nature, Sep. 24, 2008 (available through subscription service only, abstract stub here.))

It’s about time. The history of American hegemony is the history of scientific progress, and even though the Cold War abruptly terminated science’s role in “showing those Russians,” this fundamental maxim of American history remains true. Good for Barack for recognizing it.

Faith of the heart.

So much for policy leadership. The only variable that remains today in Obama’s science plan is whether he’ll leverage his “soft power” – call it leadership, inspiration, or auctoritas ((The Romans distinguished between potestsas – hard power, conferred by office – and auctoritas, power derived solely from one’s informal personal authority, fame, and force of will. For the Romans, the distinction was vital: Augustus illustrated the difference when he famously disclaimed his status as de facto emperor, saying, “While I have exceeded all in auctoritas, I exceed none in potestas.”)) – to make science “cool” again. As Ira Flatow argues, he can, and he should: at the end of the day, what sets America apart, as a people and as a superpower, is our commitment to scientific progress. And the goodies it brings with it.