Vote On Science

Much as I like Obama and detest the GOP pandering to the creationist lunatic fringe, I have to go with McCain. I don't vote for President, I vote for the Supreme Court.
No society that claims to be rational can let facts be superseded by procedural issues in court, and that's what we have had since the "procedural revolution" of the Warren Court. Miranda was a monument to irrationalism, a formal decision that reality no longer mattered in court. No society that claims to live under the rule of law can allow its Constitution to mean whatever people (and not even the people in general, but whatever group happens to have the trendiest prejudices) want it to mean. Saying the Constitution is a "living document" amounts to saying it's a dead document.
Threats of lawsuits are routinely used to stifle free speech. In one infamous case, a planetarium was threatened with a lawsuit for saying that purchased star names had no official standing. Environmental activists have fought observatories on Mount Graham and Mauna Kea. Indian activists very nearly got custody of Kennewick Man. One of my colleagues was harassed for years by a person who filed progressively battier lawsuits. They were all pro se, but they all cost money to fight. Fortunately he was represented by my institution so he wasn't bankrupted. These abuses are not "rare" if they happen to you. Whose court nominees are more likely to oppose abuses like these? Which party supports tort reform?
Then there are the people who want us to stop spending money on space exploration so we can "spend the money on problems here on earth." I remember the last time we did this. After the Apollo Program ended we cut sharply back on space exploration. We junked the Grand Tour mission and only the determination of the Voyager team succeeded in salvaging as much as we actually did. We didn't send a mission to Halley's Comet. Would anybody care to tell me what we did with the money instead? Who is more likely to sacrifice science to fund entitlement programs: McCain or Obama?
If I were voting for the most scientifically literate candidate, I would certainly vote for Obama. But it will do scant good if he nominates Supreme Court Justices who continue to ignore facts in preference to procedure, and who undercut education by making every school disciplinary action a judicial matter or permit disgruntled students to challenge grades in court. Science will not prosper if he signs legislation that strips funding from research to fund entitlement programs, or saddles science with ever more burdensome regulatory requirements.