Moon, Bitches!

The improbable story that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize obscured the actually far stranger story that we, um, bombed the moon last night.

NASA crashed a piece of space junk into the moon's south pole this morning to find out if the dark, cold craters there contain water in the form of ice.

The impact of the 2.2-ton empty rocket part kicked up a cloud of dust. Then, a second spacecraft flew down through that dust, checking for water, and sent data and live footage of the crash back to Earth.

NASA broadcast the images on its Web site, but it wasn't as dramatic as some had hoped — just a scene full of gray craters, and the craters slowly got bigger and bigger as the spacecraft seemed to creep toward the moon frame by frame.

I started reading about this on Twitter last night and I thought it was a joke meme. But no, we actually went ahead and bombed the moon.

For science!

Perry's Cover-Up

I'm sure the Fox-bots will be talking about some other grave misconduct inside the Obama Administration today ("the candy czar took a Snickers bar away from a baby!"), but a truly sickening story of political cover-up is unfolding in Texas, should they care to turn their heads.

A top prosecutor in the Tarrant County district attorney's office said Wednesday that he has no idea why Gov. Rick Perry abruptly removed him from the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

Perry abruptly replaced three members of the commission -- including the chairman -- just two days before it was to meet to discuss a finding that a faulty investigation might have led to the execution of an innocent man.

The meeting was subsequently cancelled.

Perry also removed board member Aliece Watts, a forensic scientist in Euless.

The governor told The Associated Press that the board members' terms were expiring and that replacing them “was pretty standard business as usual.”

But several board members have had their appointments renewed, The AP reported.

The chairman was replaced by a DA named John Bradley, "one of the most conservative, hard-line prosecutors in Texas," who never heard of the position until Perry offered it to him on Wednesday.

Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in 2004 for an arson that killed his three daughters, but the overwhelming body of evidence, detailed in this New Yorker article, is that he was an innocent man. The article notes that Dr. Gerald Hurst, an arson expert, ran an investigation of the incident and concluded there was no evidence pointing to Willingham and that the fire resulted by accident, and delivered a report saying the same to Gov. Perry's office before the execution, which the Governor then ignored (there's no evidence he even looked at it). The board meeting to review the case could have determined that Perry's negligence led to the state killing someone innocent of any crime.

Perry didn't want that information revealed, and so he shut down the board. And given that he faces a March primary for another term as Governor, he probably really wanted to make sure that the board wouldn't meet again until after then.

Simon Malloy writes:

This is all, at the very least, quite fishy. It's also potentially earth-shaking -- never before has it been conclusively determined that someone in this country was wrongfully put to death. If Cameron Todd Willingham's innocence can be proven, it would upend the entire rationale behind our system of capital punishment. And yet there hasn't been a whole lot of media coverage - a Nexis search of all news sources for the past two days for (cameron w/2 willingham and perry) turned up seven results.

What are we being treated to instead? In-depth and sensationalist reports about what President Obama's "safe schools czar" said to one of his students 21 years ago. That's the problem with letting Glenn Beck set the news agenda - the stories that actually matter sometimes slip through.

We're talking about state-sanctioned murder here, or at least negligent homicide, with one of the most obvious cover-ups to that action.

I know I'm not conservative enough to be America's assignment editor, but this seems worth a mention.

Breaking Up Big Corn

The Administration's new biofueld strategy was better than it looked at first glance, especially if it means the death of ethanol subsidies.

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed renewable-fuel standards that could reduce the $3 billion a year in federal tax breaks given to producers of corn-based ethanol. The move sets the stage for a major battle between Midwest grain producers and environmentalists who say the gasoline additive actually worsens global warming.

For much of the last decade, federal officials have touted the potential of corn ethanol as a substitute for gasoline and a tool for reducing global warming and foreign oil dependence.

However, environmentalists and others have questioned the wisdom of that support.

A recent Congressional Budget Office study found that increased ethanol production was responsible for 10% to 15% of last year's increased U.S. food costs. And the rush to produce more corn for fuel has had a global environmental impact as forests and other vegetation have been cleared to make way for cropland.

I believe in alternative fuels as part of the solution, but not when it competes with that other type of fuel, the food that fuels our bodies. Not only does corn-based ethanol expend more in energy for its production than it saves, but it artificially raises food prices globally and impedes efforts to reduce world hunger. If the President is serious about following the science, he will allow the EPA tests on emissions of biofuels to show that corn and soy-based biodiesel do not meet the test. Already the Energy Department has used stimulus money to boost the cellulosic ethanol industry.

Speaking of following the science, watch Mike Pence stumble his way through an interview where he denies global warming, questions stem cell research and equivocates on evolution, and then claim not to be "anti-science." Fun stuff.

The Answer Is We Don't Know

The first US victim of swine flu is a 23 month-old child who died in Texas. However, he was infected in Mexico. The danger of this strain of flu will probably not be apparent until the fall, when we see if it mutates. Right now, it's harmful, but not more so than other flu viruses, which kill thousands annually, usually those who are vulnerable like children and the elderly. If it mutates into something more dangerous, we won't be able to mitigate the effects as well. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

...Meanwhile, the Organic Consumers Association has demanded that Smithfield close its factory farms that may have contributed to the virus.

Factory farms, such as Smithfield, dose pigs with massive amounts of antibiotics and vaccines, resulting in swine incubating and spreading antibiotic-resistant pathogens and mutated viruses. This is considered a major human health hazard by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Given these serious public health concerns, a number of health and safety organizations have called for limits or bans on the use of antibiotics in livestock farming including the American Public Health Association, American Medical Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. .

Organic Consumers Association and Via Organica are calling on their hundreds of thousands of members in the US and Mexico to contact Mexican President Calderon and his Agriculture Secretary Alberto Cardenas and US President Obama and his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and urge them to:

• Immediately ban Confined Animal Feeding Operations (hog, beef, and chicken factory farms) across the United States and end the dangerous practice of feeding antibiotics to farm animals.

• Initiate a criminal investigation of Smithfield Foods and other major factory farms that could be a source of disease outbreaks.

Perverting The Science, Boiling The World

Here's an incredibly unsurprising story: for decades, big business put their own profits ahead of reality and did whatever they could to poison the planet.

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

This story is a smoking gun as much as the secret emails showing that cigarette makers knew their products caused disease and death. We have industry ignoring science for material gain. And the losers are you and me.

All they had to do was deny the science, and the broken media structure did the rest - posing the issue as a debate rather than exploring the facts, sowing confusion instead of certitude. For 15 years or more, we dithered, when we could have been moving forward on solving the problem. And we're still having to fight these groups.

The coalition disbanded in 2002, but some members, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, continue to lobby against any law or treaty that would sharply curb emissions. Others, like Exxon Mobil, now recognize a human contribution to global warming and have largely dropped financial support to groups challenging the science.

Documents drawn up by the coalition’s advisers were provided to lawyers by the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, a coalition member, during the discovery process in a lawsuit that the auto industry filed in 2007 against the State of California’s efforts to limit vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions.

This time around, we do have a counterpart - progressive groups that have formed an alliance to finally get meaningful climate legislation passed. But we have lost so much valuable time, to the extent that we have not much left. And all because some executives decided they needed a new luxury yacht to go with the beach house.

Shameful.

It's Comical To Say John Boehner Knows What He's Talking About

Sadly, the Minority Leader of House Republicans is not the first to relate global warming to cow farts, although when Crazy Dana Rohrabacher did it I believe he used dinosaur flatulence as the example instead.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.

This is just comically wrong, and we can all laugh about it, but this is dangerous to our future and our economy. As Joe Romm notes, "Anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the ocean hot, acidic dead zone." If you want to know why we haven't progressed on renewable energy or fuel-efficient cars or green technologies, look no further. Here are some real-world consequences.

China’s leaders are investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy. Other countries are equally energetic in their embrace of alternative energy technologies; they are setting targets and investing billions of dollars to spur the development of entirely new markets in wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, energy efficiency, high-speed rail, and other clean and innovative solutions to global warming.

The United States, too, is poised to transform its economy to create millions of new jobs and help create a cleaner, safer planet by investing in a green, renewable-energy based economy. The Obama administration wants to unleash the ingenuity of our private sector to rein in pollution and put millions of Americans back to work. Yet China is spending twice as much as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spends to lay the foundations for a green energy economy, despite the U.S. economy being 1.5 times as large as China’s. And across Europe and Asia, other governments have diversified their energy portfolios and encouraged entrepreneurs to start and expand clean and renewable energy companies.

As venture capitalist John Doerr recently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, “If you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots. That fact should worry us all.”

Read that whole thing. We're simply falling behind the rest of the world in the industry that will lead the 21st century. And know-nothing, status-quo obstructionist conservatives are the reason why. Clinging to the dirty industries of the past only makes us a fossil. I think the Obama Administration and most Democrats know this and want to fix it, but time is running out and anti-science troglodytes like John Boehner aren't helping. He says that his party has a plan but that plan merely is to obstruct any progress.

...Just to show you the sense of urgency here, one company wants to bury emissions under the ocean. And people are listening to them.

The Revolt At The Washington Post

This slow but growing rollout of frustration from inside the Washington Post at George Will's pig-ignorance on climate change has become very compelling to watch. I still think the problem resides with Editorial Board chief Fred Hiatt for printing not only the false op-ed, but the continued lies and distortions from Will, in the first place. He is not entitled by virtue of his editorial position to lie. The editors fail in their responsibility to inform the public in that scenario. And Eugene Robinson basically called them on it.

ROBINSON: What George Will did was cherry-pick a sentence in a report, you know, be very persnickety in the way he parsed his sentences, and end up making it sound as if the report had said the exact opposite of what it actually said. He was persnickety enough that his editors, who also happen to be my editors, felt he didn’t quite cross the line. I thought he did. And the ombudsman agreed with me, actually, and wrote about it in last Sunday’s paper.

In a related note, Tom Toles rocks.

The blame does indeed lie with the editors who allowed the lies to appear in print. And it taints not just the editorial page but the entire newspaper. And clearly the reporters there know that, which is why they're speaking out. Ultimately, the editors hold the cards, they can stop providing a platform for misinformation, and the passive-aggressive way they're going about "addressing" the issue speaks very low of them.

New Data Show George Will Is Full Of Crap

The Washington Post goes with the most passive-aggressive way possible to smack down their op-ed columnist.

The satellite data released by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the maximum extent of the 2008-2009 winter sea ice cover was the fifth-lowest since researchers began collecting such information 30 years ago. The past six years have produced the six lowest maximums in that record, and the new data show that the percentage of older, thicker and more persistent ice shrank to its lowest level ever, at just 9.8 percent of the winter ice cover.

"We're seeing an ice cover that's younger and that's thinner as we head into summer," Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a telephone news conference. "It's been a pretty sharp decline."

The new evidence -- including satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant decline from the 1980s -- contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.

The reference to Will appears in paragraph 9, by the way.

To the WaPo's credit, they also published a more extensive rebuke to Will on their website from Andrew Freedman. And they published a response in their paper from Chris Mooney a week or so ago. But all of this damage control, in the face of continued anti-science columns on the subject from Will, represents a real danger to the credibility of the newspaper. They can continue to gently contradict him throughout the paper, or they could, and this is just off the top of my head, not publish the guy if he keeps making demonstrably false claims.

Ending The War On Science

It's not just that the President overturned George Bush's executive order on funding for embryonic stem cell research today. That part was expected. It's the other half of today's orders, the memorandum on scientific integrity, that is so powerful, and such a welcome break from the past.

The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity.

By this memorandum, I assign to the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (Director) the responsibility for ensuring the highest level of integrity in all aspects of the executive branch's involvement with scientific and technological processes. The Director shall confer, as appropriate, with the heads of executive departments and agencies, including the Office of Management and Budget and offices and agencies within the Executive Office of the President (collectively, the "agencies"), and recommend a plan to achieve that goal throughout the executive branch.

In short, this is an effort to wall off science from politics, and let's face it, to separate church from state. We have suffered from a science deficit for the duration of the Bush era, particularly because ideologues held an effective veto over policy papers coming from NASA, the EPA, the National Institute for Health, etc. In addition to the ban on political officials suppressing scientific information, the order will secure transparency for scientific and technological information used by the government, which puts another check on those who would subvert sound science. That way we can have these debates in public with the input of experts.

Of course, the order on stem cell research is positive as well. But I really like the idea of science being left to the scientists again.

Todd Beeton has more on the politics of Obama's reframing of the stem cell debate. Of course, I liked this part.

This Order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let’s be clear: promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda – and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

By doing this, we will ensure America’s continued global leadership in scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs. That is essential not only for our economic prosperity, but for the progress of all humanity.

John Kerry Campaign, 2006 Democratic Agenda Promises Kept

After a month or so of uncertainty, Barack Obama will sign an executive order reversing the limits on funding for embryonic stem cell research. This will allow for expanded stem cell lines and a faster track toward potential cures.

Which is great, even if the research on stem cell alternatives that don't impact embryos is becoming safer without being as ethically questionable, sidestepping the need for the sturm und drang about this. On balance, it's great to expand funding for the embryonic version as well, and make scientific study more available, increasing the chance to wipe out debilitating diseases. But ultimately, this issue, like others like it that Obama has acted upon, are relics of a bygone age, way back in 2004 and 2006, where they were the most important things to worry about. I'm glad he's doing them, but we're in an economic meltdown right now where the top officials are unwilling and unable to reverse course. So I'm not going to jump for joy at the news that these side issues are being progressed forward when the zombie banks are still eating what's left of the country.

(I'm in a foul mood today, aren't I?)

It Might Be A Good Idea To Know When A Volcano Will Erupt

Bobby Jindal's dismissive reference to "volcano monitoring" was plain stupid. Disaster preparedness is obviously something we should fund, and someone who runs a state that was recently devastated by a natural disaster should know that. Proper volcano monitoring can save thousands of lives and millions of dollars. And this is made more urgent by the fact that there is an active volcano about to erupt in Alaska, and residents are being evacuated, thanks to the monitoring systems.

I happen to have a weird stock of knowledge about volcanoes thanks to a show I edited on Yellowstone and the giant caldera underneath the park. This is very serious and dangerous stuff, and the knowledge about when a volcano may erupt would be the difference between life and death for an untold number of people.

It's more of the anti-science talk that is driving Republicans into the furthest recesses of extremist irrelevance.

FAIL.

UPDATE: Krugman:

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Blinding Me With Science

Politico has a piece today on Obama's cabinet being a middle-of-the-roader's dream. I guess that's true, and it's not entirely unexpected. Obama always told us who he was throughout the campaign, despite the hopes of those inclined to spin his cultural uniqueness into obvious progressivism.

But I would argue that this centrism is not uniform throughout the cabinet. In the green and labor spaces, the cabinet does live up to the promise of idealists for the most part. Hilda Solis is a fiery progressive at Labor, and all of the environmental picks are pretty solid. Most of all, we have a President who clearly values science and pays attention to scientific reason. That's a major change from the past eight years. The Presidential Science Advisor is going to be a Harvard physicist, and the head of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will be a marine biologist and MacArthur genius grant recipient.

John P. Holdren, a Harvard physicist best known as a strong proponent of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and a specialist on energy technology policy and nuclear nonproliferation, has been chosen to be Mr. Obama’s science adviser, according to two people close to Dr. Holdren and one person involved in the decision [...] Also, Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University and longtime contact of mine on marine conservation issues and climate, will be nominated by Mr. Obama to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dr. Holdren has long been pressing for prompt action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and advance research on non-polluting energy sources. He has told me in the past that he consciously eschewed getting involved with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to maintain an independent view of the science.

This is how Dr. Holdren described his stance to me in 2007: “I am one of those who believes that any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system…. What keeps me going is my belief that there is still a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”

You can add this to Dr. Stephen Chu, the new Energy Secretary, and you have a cadre of scientists who understand the very real dangers for planetary sustainability that come with continued burning of harmful greenhouse gases. We have to reduce the CO2 burden on the planet and come up with a new energy future that doesn't just reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but on fossil fuels entirely. A recent climate study by the American Geophysicist Union makes it clear that an American return to native fuels like coal would be disastrous for the world.

Some commentators have argued that falling reserves of oil and gas will automatically limit CO2's rise.
But at an American Geophysical Union meeting, researchers said reserves of coal dwarfed those of other fuels.

It was even possible oil's demise could trigger an acceleration in emissions through more coal use, they added.

"We can replace oil with liquid fuels derived from coal," said Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California.

"But these liquid fuels emit even more carbon dioxide than oil, so the end of oil can mean an increase in coal and even more carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, and even more rapid onset of dangerous climate change."

In the past, there would be nobody in the highest reaches of government to stop the headlong rush to boost parochial interests by burning coal as somehow a way to mitigate the effects of climate change and get us off oil. But now, we have an Energy Secretary who has called coal a nightmare.

Carbon capture and storage research is still in its early stages, said Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist announced by Obama this week as his nominee to run the U.S. Department of Energy. Real-world projects to pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide might also be rejected unless scientists show it can be done safely, Chu said during an April speech.

"Coal is my worst nightmare," said Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Stanford University professor.

Chu noted that coal is the current "default option" for meeting growing energy needs in the United States, China and India. But coal is also firing continued increases in worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, even at a time when scientists say the need to dramatically reduce those emissions is critical.

"We have lots of fossil fuel," Chu said during a talk outlining his views on energy policy. "That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy, but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."

This is a return to SCIENCE driving policy, instead of policymakers driving a truck through science and doing whatever they want. Nothing about that is middle of the road.

...I just want to make it clear that I am not advocating living in a cave, in case you were wondering.

The Hope Needle In The Depression Haystack

These are depressing times in the world. Super-rich investment bank CEOs won't get their multimillion-dollar bonus, Monaco doesn't have the scratch to build a giant artificial peninsula into the Mediterrenean Sea, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

(That actually has a financial rationale too, it's going to save NBC about $13 million a week and cut hundreds of jobs on weekly dramas.)

I need to feel good about something. Come on, world, hit me!

OK, Larry Craig is still guilty. Fine, fun in a schadenfreude kind of way, but lacking in "the world is a better place" kind of depth. Surely something must be benefiting the world!

... Found it.

A vaccine against the parasitic disease malaria cut illnesses by more than half in field trials and could be safely given with other childhood inoculations, two studies have reported. The vaccine, which will begin a third and final phase of clinical trials early next year, could become the first to protect children from malaria, which kills nearly 1 million people worldwide every year.

The studies, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, were reported at a New Orleans meeting of tropical medicine researchers and were hailed as a significant breakthroughin the fight against one of the most intractable and deadly infectious diseases.

If the phase three trials are successful, it would be "an extraordinary scientific triumph," said Dr. W. Ripley Ballou, deputy director for vaccines and infectious diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the research.

"But more importantly," Ballou added, "it could save millions of children's lives."

We're talking about 1 million people a year, largely children in sub-Saharan Africa, dying of a disease that has been all but eradicated throughout the rest of the world. A vaccine would not only relieve a monumental amount of death and suffering, but could finally bring some stability to Africa. If children can grow up without the threat of disease and death, the continent can focus on education and economic development, and those children can be an engine to growth.

OK, that's positive.

The Death Of Information

One really harrowing consequence of the economic shock is what it's doing to newsgathering organizations. CNN just fired its entire science and technology team (hey, unlike MSNBC and Fox News, at least they had one to begin with). This includes the environmental unit that has produced the "Planet in Peril" specials, which at least treat the climate crisis in the context of providing information instead of as a political football. We can't just have political coverage on broadcast television and cable news - there has to be some factual basis for their stories.

In addition, multiple newspapers are likely to fail:

Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment [...]

Fitch rates the debt of two newspaper companies, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. as junk, with serious possibilities of default. It also assigns a negative outlook to both the companies and the newspaper sector, meaning their credit ratings are likely to deteriorate further.

As the Internet democratizes information, it also leaves gaping holes in investigative journalism, particularly local coverage. Having entire cities without newspapers is just demoralizing, not to mention the fact that McClatchy is an excellent outfit who frequently turns out great journalism. I don't know who's supposed to cover local stories anymore. Bloggers aren't profitable, though they do a bit of work. Newspapers are dying. Even public access cable is feeling the sting of the economic downturn, and that looks like it costs 4 bucks a day. But it's an important source of City Council and Board of Supervisors meetings, among other things.

We are beginning to live in a post-information society, where there's a lot of data but too much of it overlapping, and there are enormous gaps in what most busy people need to understand their neighborhood and the world. We can't have a functioning democracy without a vibrant fourth estate. It's terrifying to think that it's completely fading away.

Palin's Failure

I think history will show Sarah Palin to be among the worst Vice Presidential choices in American history. Normally these picks have little to no bearing on the race. This year, it caused a big bounce up due to conservative enthusiasm followed by a HUGE bounce down once Americans got to know this lady. Especially considering the age on the top of her ticket, the idea that she might become President is enough to frighten the vast middle. In fact, it's enough to frighten McCain campaign advisers.

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

Why the revulsion? Because she represents everything that we've seen from George Bush for the last eight years. She is completely ignorant, particularly in the area of science...

his is too much. Sarah Palin gave a policy speech today in which she claimed that she wanted more support for children with disabilities, more tools to test for disorders, and while also decrying the expense of scientific research.

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

...she is terribly corrupt, a strong believer in cronyism - she installed 100 friends and hangers-on in government positions in Alaska - and happy to abuse the power of her office:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin testified for two hours Friday in an abuse-of-power investigation that has been a distraction to her Republican vice presidential campaign. Palin's leadership was questioned this month in a stinging but largely toothless legislative report that found she violated state ethics laws by letting a family dispute influence her decision-making [...]

The (personnel) board is investigating the firing of her public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan. Monegan claims he was dismissed because he refused to fire Palin's former brother-in-law, a state trooper involved in a messy divorce from Palin's sister. The controversy, known as "Troopergate," took on national significance after John McCain selected Palin as his running mate.

(BTW, Palin calling it "Tasergate" admits guilt; their party line is that Monegan was fired because of budget issues, but the "Taser" refers to the conduct of Mike Wooten, inferring that Monegan really was fired for refusing to remove Wooten from his job.)

...and her extremism on social issues gives aid and comfort to domestic terrorists:

Brian Williams: Back to the notion of terrorists and terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers -- hanging out with terrorist – domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don’t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the ‘60’s terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under the definition?

Sarah Palin: There is no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was um one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon -- that is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or um facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable -- I don’t know if you could use the word terrorist, but its unacceptable and it would not be condoned of course on our watch. I don’t know if what you are asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.

Brian Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers? Protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails, were thrown? People died.

Sarah Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. There's the whole not understanding the role of the Vice Presidency, which puts her at odds with her own running mate. But it's a good sampling of why she has been so uniquely miserable as a nominee. It's why even John McCain's closest friends are unable to defend her. Joe Lieberman says "thank God she's not going to have to be president from day one"; Tom Ridge says the campaign would be going better if he were on the ticket. There are little controversies like wardrobe-gate. But this is about who Sarah Palin is. It terrifies people.

No Physical Evidence

One suspects that the traditional media is pretty much done with the anthrax case, having wrung all it can from the lurid tales of Bruce Ivins' obsessions with sororities and emails depicting a dark side and mental instability. But two aspects of the case stick out like sore thumbs - 1) nobody can place Ivins at the scene of the crime, and 2) the scientific evidence is woefully lacking.

The FBI is hanging its case on the fact that Ivins took an administrative leave on September 17, 2001, at which time they believe he drove to Princeton and mailed the first batch of letters. But it's very unclear whether that narrow window was enough for the 3 1/2 hour ride.

Ivins normally got to work early--around 7:30 AM. Assuming his brief stay was half an hour (are they suggesting he went in and picked up the anthrax? and if so, did anyone ask why he'd do so during daytime hours?), he would have had eight hours to drive to Princeton and back. That's certainly doable--Google says the drive takes 3 hours and 25 minutes. Who knows whether Ivins sped much in his 1993 Honda Civic (in 2001, he also had a 1996 Dodge van; he did not yet have his 2002 Saturn). But even if he went faster than Google says he should have (he would have been driving on I-95, after all, which pretty much requires speeding), he almost certainly would have hit rush hour traffic at least once in his drive, if not twice.

In other words, Ivins could have made the drive, but just barely.

And why Princeton, of course; the Kappa Kappa Gamma connection is extremely weak, and no witnesses placing him at the scene have come forward (in fact, the FBI never even bothered to ask). In addition, if Ivins did mail the letters in that window, the postmarks would have been for the wrong day.

If the Post's reporting about Ivins' September 17 activities is accurate -- that he "return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m." -- then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, "a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime," since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 -- not a September 18 -- postmark. Just compare the FBI's own definition of "window of opportunity" to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.

And the scientific evidence is even more sketchy. In fact, the FBI provided almost no scientific testing evidence despite dumping hundreds of pages of documents about the case. They banked on the press foregrounding the lurid details and not the hard facts.

Meanwhile, virtually nobody with a science background in microbiology has stepped forward in support of the FBI's conclusion that Ivins was likely the one and only person involved in the 2001 attacks, said Gigi Gronvall, a senior associate with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"[Federal officials] came out and said they'd made the case, but they didn't actually present that science. So it really can't be evaluated," Gronvall said in an interview. "They talked about the genetic signature but they didn't elaborate on what that was. We want to know how they were able to determine that that one flask contained the parent train of what was sent out."

Dr. Meryl Nass' entire blog is worth reading to dissect the numerous holes in this case, but in particular you can check this post about the lack of conclusive evidence. It's damning. Go read it.

This investigation is maddening and I guess we're all going to have to keep screaming about it until key questions are answered.

... I think this aspect of the investigation merits a read, too. Almost everyone who has been suspected as the anthrax killer has ended up eroding under the pressure, because the FBI has hounded these people to the breaking point. They've ruined lives to cover their own asses and now they're pinning the whole thing on a dead man. It's a history of shameful conduct.

McSame

This Bush/McCain press availability is hilarious. The press keeps asking over and over again "Mr. President, is this the worst endorsement that John McCain would ever want" and he got his back up and now he's practically shouting back at the press corps. McCain tried to talk and Bush cut him off. The press pissed him off and now he's yipping like a stray dog. McCain kept saying "I'll appear at events when it fits with the President's heavy schedule," and I'm sure that schedule will suddenly fill up. This was awful.

Brian Williams and Tweety Matthews tried to put the best spin on this, calling McCain a "warrior" and saying how committed he is to his country (not like those softie DemocRATs). But you can't really put a spin on this display.

Bush was all about pulling McCain under his wing, saying that "there's not going to be any change in Iraq and in fighting terror" if McCain comes to power. I'll go a step further, there wouldn't be ANY change. McCain wants to revive the "Just Say No" campaign and continue the Drug War. He's just as just as anti-science as Bush, blaming vaccinations on the rise of autism in the face of all available evidence. His economic policy includes more tax cuts and privatization of Social Security, which is at odds with his own website that's trying to hide the similiarities. His healthcare "plan" won't cover anybody and would amount a big tax increase on employers. He leads a privileged life thanks to his heiress wife and uses his charitable donations to benefit friends and family. And his campaign is suffused with lobbyists (always has been) and would continue corporate control of government.

This independent expenditure campaign is brilliant and they're putting a million dollars into it.



McCain has started his post-primary run to the Presidency on a bumpy road, with the John Hagee situation (which mainstream Jewish groups are now attacking him for), the Vicki Iseman rumors, running afoul of the FEC by pretending to opt in to the public financing system. All of this has really hit his fundraising, where the split between Clinton and Obama and him has been 7-1. The race continuing obviously helps McCain, which is why IE commercials like this are so important. The media loves McCain but there's no story there for the next month or so. While they try to tear down Obama and Clinton, McCain's negatives HAVE to be goosed. He's an unprincipled politician with a long Senate record full of inconsistencies. That has to become the conventional wisdom in the populace, if not in the media.

The Populist Strategy

Rather than argue about who stole from what speech or who has wanted to be President for how long, I think it'd be instructive to take a look at the way both campaigns are presenting themselves and organizing on the ground.

I know there is this creeping idea that Obama is engendering a cult of personality (thanks for that, Hillary partisans in the liberal blogosphere!), but actually he's empowering individuals to take action and build a working majority. The great thing about this is how the campaign is manifesting that vision in Texas, where he's making young voters care about politics, organizing within unions, and using a full-throated message of populism to make his case.

Union officials say that a push from younger members helped persuade the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers to endorse Obama last week. Both unions plan to be active in the campaign, making personal contact with their membership on behalf of Obama.

About 40% of the food union's members are younger than 30 years old, and their enthusiasm helped move the union out of neutrality and toward an endorsement, said union president Joe Hansen. "Barack Obama did something to our members and to our leadership," Hansen said [...]

One of two ads that Obama is airing in Latino radio markets in Texas is pitched explicitly at younger Latino voters. "Obama is talking to me," it says, "about the opportunity to go to college, and about ensuring my parents and grandparents have the healthcare they need. That's why I'm talking to others -- my parents, my uncles, and my friends" about supporting Obama.

Some local Obama backers say they have begun to see the Illinois senator, the son of an African father, as someone who can relate to the Latino experience [...]

Both also say they favor reworking the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Still, Obama's strategy is to try to make NAFTA a central issue of the campaign and to try to draw contrasts on the issue with Clinton.

Many union voters believe that NAFTA was responsible for encouraging companies to send U.S. jobs abroad.

Of course, with Texas close to the border and Ohio shedding manufacturing jobs, it's natural for both candidates to take on an unabashedly populist strategy.

WAUSAU, Wis. — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama intensified their populist appeals on Monday, responding to widespread economic anxiety and pushing the Democratic Party further from the business-friendly posture once championed by Bill Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking on the eve of the Wisconsin primary but looking forward to primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4, issued a 12-page compendium of her economic policies that emphasizes programs aiding families stressed by high oil prices, home foreclosures, costly student loans and soaring health care premiums.

In public appearances here and in her economic booklet, she took aim at hedge fund managers, oil company profits, drug company subsidies and trade agreements that she says encourage companies to export jobs [...]

Campaigning in Ohio before flying to Wisconsin for an election-eve rally, Mr. Obama said the wealthy had “made out like bandits” under the Bush administration and called for an end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

“In the last year alone,” Mr. Obama said, “93 plants have closed in this state. And yet, year after year, politicians in Washington sign trade agreements that are riddled with perks for big corporations but have absolutely no protections for American workers. It’s bad for our economy; it’s bad for our country.” [...]

At an event Monday at a union hall in Wausau, Mrs. Clinton said that other countries had taken advantage of the Bush administration’s pro-trade policies.

“I’m tired of being played for a patsy,” Mrs. Clinton said at the hall. “We have the largest market in the world. It’s time we said to the rest of the world, ‘If you want to have anything to do with our market, you have to play by our rules.’ ” [...]

He delivered a blistering critique of corporations that he said had benefited to the detriment of working families across the United States over the last seven years.

“We now have greater income inequality than any time since the Great Depression,” Mr. Obama said, speaking to reporters after touring the titanium plant. “For us to want to reverse that so everyone has a stake in the economy, I think is just common sense and good for everybody, including business.”

I don't think that suddenly, with the election of either of these two, that overnight worker's rights will top the agenda and corporations will lose their personhood. But I do think it's excellent for them both to try on the populist rhetoric and take it out for a test drive. Who knows, they might even like it. And it shows how John Edwards is STILL driving policy in this race. Obama met with him over the weekend, and if Edwards were smart he wouldn't endorse yet. He's getting a lot of mileage out of dangling the endorsement, and the candidates truly are moving to his side.

It's also great that there's still a race going on. That's not a popular view, but you wouldn't be seeing this back and forth on who is more committed to American jobs and reducing inequality without an actual contest. I didn't think I'd EVER see Hillary Clinton say something as forceful as "I'm tired of being played for a patsy." And because the race is extending into so many states, that's just another method in which the new coalition of Democrats can hold whoever makes it to the White House accountable.

Now, I don't expect this to last. Clinton is already scurrying away from her rhetoric by talking about the continuing vital role of the oil and gas industry in remarks to the Houston Chronicle. But for the record, I DO think that both Clinton and Obama are committed to some fairly fundamental changes in our economy, like investing in green jobs, rewarding companies that stay stateside, making trade deals somewhat more fair, and stressing the need to fight climate change. That would be a significant shift from the status quo. And having two candidates who send surrogates to a debate on science is, in a word, refreshing.

Once again, these candidates aren't perfect but their becoming boxed in through this battle to a strikingly new vision for America, and that's a good thing.

They'll Still Find A Way To Oppose It

With the news that researchers have figured out how to create stem cells without destroying embyros, the theocratic right will have to come up with a new rationale for stopping scientific breakthroughs. Maybe they'll decide that it's akin to cloning people.

The unencumbered ability to turn adult cells into embryonic ones capable of morphing into virtually every kind of cell or tissue, described in two scientific journal articles released today, has been the ultimate goal of researchers for years. In theory, it would allow people to grow personalized replacement parts for their bodies from a few of their own skin cells, while giving researchers a uniquely powerful means of understanding and treating diseases.

Until now, only human egg cells and embryos, both difficult to obtain and laden with legal and ethical issues, had the mysterious power to turn ordinary cells into stem cells. And until this summer, the challenge of mimicking that process in the lab seemed almost insurmountable, leading many to wonder if stem cell research would ever wrest free of its political baggage.

There weren't any mad scientists looking to build a race of über-humans. The goal was to create stem cells from adult skin cells all along, mainly because they are more efficient and more plentiful. The fundies were trying to hold back progress on technical grounds, and I have no doubt they'll continue to do so.

La-La-La-La-La-La

That sound you hear is the Bush Administration sticking it's fingers in its ears and yelling to distract themselves from gathering any information on global warming.

The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago [...]

The reduced system of four satellites will now focus on weather forecasting. Most of the climate instruments needed to collect more precise data over long periods are being eliminated.

Instead, the Pentagon and two partners — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA — will rely on European satellites for most of the climate data.

"Unfortunately, the recent loss of climate sensors ... places the overall climate program in serious jeopardy," NOAA and NASA scientists told the White House in the Dec. 11 report obtained by the AP.

Steve Benen has a list of over a dozen other times where the Bush Administration responds to bad data by ending the collection of that data.

It's like they're run by a 4 year-old who doesn't have object permanence. Oh yeah, that's probably right...