Policy
pharyngula | November 16, 2006Clearly, Bush is not going to drift quietly into oblivion. Majikthise and Feministing report that his administration is appointing a certifiable kook to run the federal program that oversees family planning and reproductive health. His qualifications seem to be that he's fanatical about abstinence, to the point of making stuff up.
At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, "If I Only Had a Brain") by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships…
revere | November 16, 2006I will admit to admiring the people of Cuba and having respect for what their health care system has done for them against great odds and in the face of a vicious US embargo. I've seen it with my own eyes, and although things have fallen on hard times because of the embargo, it performs better than anyone would have a right to expect. It is true Cuba's government is not a model of tolerance and can be very repressive, a tendency aided and abetted by US policy. But the spirit of the Cuban Revolution still has my admiration. They aren't worse, and in fact are better than many staunch US allies…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2006Now that the Democrats have taken both houses of Congress, there will be loud calls for them to govern from center. This silliness will be promulgated by the likes of David Broder and other Mainstream Media Mandarins who suffer from Complusive Centrist Disorder. Complusive Centrist Disorder has always bothered me because a certain policy or view will mysteriously be labelled 'centrist' regardless of where it actually falls on the political spectrum, and suddenly it will be far more respectable than other policies. It's intellectual cowardice and laziness of a high order.
One problem is…
grrlscientist | November 12, 2006Two months ago, Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received a call from the Pentagon: Donald Rumsfeld would like to see him as soon as possible. Adelman said he knew then that this meeting might be their last.
"I suggested that we were losing the war," Adelman, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld, told The New Yorker magazine in an interview posted online Saturday.
Adelman and Rumsfeld had been friends for 36 years. Adelman first worked for Rumsfeld during the Nixon Administration, and then was Rumsfeld's assistant when he was the Secretary of…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2006This is one reason why having a Democratic congress matters. The Inspectors General of NASA and the Commerce Department have begun to investigate whether scientific findings were muzzled or altered by the Bush administration (italics mine):
Prompted by a request this fall by 14 Democratic senators, the IGs are examining whether political appointees have prevented climate researchers at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from conveying their findings to the public.
The issue of global warming has emerged as one of the most contentious scientific debates within the…
clock | November 10, 2006I agree with Publius' final assessment of the election. Read it.
I spit my coffee (tea, actually) through the nose when I read this today:
"Sadly, it seems that the Party of Reagan has been hijacked by the neocons, the big government crowd and the pragmatists."
PRAGMATISTS? Heellllooo?
As Deborah noted when she was calling VA voters, this was not about Iraq, it was about "throwing the bums out". The word "corruption" that is being banded about is misleading. Corruption was not the top reason for kicking the bums out, courrption is just one of inevitable sub-symptoms of the greater sin of…
clock | November 9, 2006If you have not received the e-mail from the Center for American Progress, it is here, under the fold:
MEMO
To: Interested Parties
From: John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Date: November 9, 2006
Re: The End of the Grand Conservative Experiment
There is a longer-term significance to the 2006 election that transcends the shift in Congressional control and the collapse of the Bush presidency and its capacity to govern.
The post-Goldwater/post-Reagan conservatism has been discredited as a governing philosophy, and simultaneously, a new progressive…
cmooney | November 9, 2006With the Dems now about to assume control of both houses of Congress, science policy is going to change. Big time. Indeed, in The Republican War on Science I pointed out that one reason the Reagan administration never messed with science as much as the current administration was because the Democratic Congress helped keep it in line.
We can now expect the same thing to transpire with the Bush administration. The big changes I'm looking at will come in the following areas:
1. Committee Chairs. People like James Inhofe won't be able to build global warming hearings around people like Michael…
tfk | November 9, 2006In keeping with my promise to stop writing about politics if Dems took the House and Senate (which I confess I didn't think would happen), it's time to talk policy. Adventures in Ethics and Science asks What's your legislative agenda for the first hundred days?:
To streamline things a bit… let's restrict the wish-list… to issues to do with science, education, and matters of ethics -- broadly construed.
I would argue that ethics plays into any policy decision, so I'll stick with science and education.
Item 1: Re-authorize the Endangered Species Act.
With Richard Pombo out of the House, the…
purepedantry | November 9, 2006Shelley Batts has this to say about the poor funding situation of late:
At the Society for Neuroscience meeting last month, there was a special symposium regarding the current NIH funding situation that was supposed to be given by the current director of the NIH, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni. Due to his plane being delayed, he was a no-show, although the talk was instead given by a few of the directors of NIH divisions. The gist of the talk was this: despite the NIH's budget being doubled a few years back, demand for grants has risen much faster and hence the paylines have decline dramatically. And…
grrlscientist | November 7, 2006As many of you know, I am in the hospital and have been for more than 90 days so far. Considering that I am unemployable and uninsured (and probably uninsurable after this experience), and that I lack any sort of financial support system, you might be wondering how I will pay all these bills, which currently exceed $100,000.
Basically, I am not and never will be held liable for my medical expenses because the state of New York is paying all my bills, including two ER visits. As many of you probably know or suspect, I am not a fan of state-run hospitals since they are typically associated…
jlynch | November 6, 2006It's election time here in the US and we need a new Congress -- here's why:
1. Congress set a record for the fewest number of days worked -- 218 between the House and Senate combined. [Link]
2. The Senate voted down a measure that urged the administration to start a phased redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq by the end of 2006. [Link]
3. Congress failed to raise the minimum wage, leaving it at its lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1955. [Link]
4. Congress gave itself a two percent pay raise. [Link]
5. There were 15,832 earmarks totaling $71 billion in 2006. (In 1994, there were 4,…
oracknows | November 6, 2006While perusing the new Richard Dawkins website a while back, I came across an article that, if you know my interest in World War II, you'd know that I couldn't resist commenting on, and it's been in my "to write about" queue for a few weeks now. In it, Dawkins discusses the aerial bombing campaigns of World War II and contrasts our acceptance of such carnage then with our revulsion at the thought of inflicting so many civilian casualties now. His point is that the moral zeitgeist changes with time, which is something it would not do if religion's claim of unchanging morality were truly at the…
tfk | November 5, 2006Ask a ScienceBlogger, November 3:
What's the most important local political race to you this year (as a citizen, as a scientist)?
I have to pick just one? There are two important Board of Education races in the area where a creationist can get ousted. There's an Attorney General's race where a panty-sniffing, science textbook fearing wacko can get the boot. There is a competitive House race in which a rubber-stamp for the bad actions of the Bush administration can be outpaced. Plus, a member of the House Science committee who has helped protect the integrity of federal science is up for…
catdynamics | November 4, 2006On tuesday Hvalur HF announced that the whaling ship Hvalur 9 was back in harbour and that the fin whaling season is over for the year.
Seven fin whales were struck and landed, out of a quota of nine total.
I want to provide my perspective on the whaling issue in Iceland and a possible political resolution:
to cut a long story short, the whaling quota should be open for bids, and the whale watching companies should buy it and not use it.
Whaling in Iceland has an extensive history. In Konungsskuggsjá (Speculum Regale), a 13th century "advice to kings", the expected yield of whale…
clock | November 3, 2006This post (from January 14, 2005) is how I see the political/ideological landscape in the USA.
----------------------------------------------------
We use the words Left and Right to describe Liberal and Conservative ideological and political leanings. The phrases stem, if I remember correctly, from the seating arrangement in the first French Parliament in the late 18th century. That was a long time ago. By now, most people realize that a straight Left/Right continuous line does not represent the ideological spectrum very well, yet the terms are still in constant use and, more importantly,…
tfk | November 2, 2006The Washington Post reports:
Prompted by a request this fall by 14 Democratic senators, the IGs are examining whether political appointees have prevented climate researchers at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from conveying their findings to the public.
Muzzling scientists like this is propagandistic nonsense. It hurts us all, it weakens the policy process and prevents the public from making informed decisions. If political appointees are censoring scientists, they deserve what they get.
purepedantry | November 1, 2006Whatever you think about Michael Barone's personal views, he knows more about the history of American politics than any man alive. Here is an article he wrote in the WSJ about the history of party changes in Congress during second-term off-year elections. Interesting stuff. Money quote:
All of which leaves me with the conclusion that ideas are more important than partisan vote counts. Democrats could not go beyond the New Deal from 1938 to 1958, because they had not persuaded most Americans to go Roosevelt's way until 13 years after his death. Similarly, Republicans never had reliable…
purepedantry | November 1, 2006There is an election coming up. Hopefully this is not a shocking revelation for most people. Frankly, it seems like everyone not in a medically-induced coma for the past three months has spent every waking moment bloviating about it.
The scientists too have come out in force. If you don't believe me, read the Policy and Politics section of this site. We certainly have opinions and have no hesitation in expressing them in the most forceful terms. (I do not exclude myself from that list either, and I plan on forcefully expressing a good bit in the run up to election day.)
However, every…
bcohen | October 31, 2006The Silencer (being performed in Blacksburg, VA, on November 1, 2, and 3, ahead of its London opening in 2007) is a play about Global Warming and Climate Science. How about that, a play about global warming and climate science. Not your everyday occurrence. I can't say if it's Michael Frayn-level theater, but I can say that it's not the usual approach to confronting climate science issues.
Here's a summary of the play:
Dr. Brian Heath must decide whether to protect his family or publicize his alarming findings about the impending threat of climate change. His predicament stands for our…