Glenn Greenwald is primarily responsible for the failure of progressive legislation since 2008.

The reasoning's simple:  Greenwald's part of the left, just like Obama and the Democrats who controlled the House and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for a while.  Greenwald's side failed to pass enough progressive legislation, therefore Greenwald's primarily responsible.

If you don't like this reasoning, complain to Greenwald:  he used the same reasoning to say voters will determine that Republicans are not primarily responsible for the failure to pass progressive legislation, laying responsibility instead at Obama's feet, especially with repeated reference to the 60-person Senate majority.  Greenwald does some really good work on civil liberties but mixes it in with this terrible reasoning.  Fault lies primarily with the Republicans, secondarily with the Democratic Senators (and some Representatives) who refuse to vote in defense of the middle class and for scientific reality.  Obama is not a Prime Minister.  Maybe somewhere Greenwald has laid out how he thinks Obama could've pushed legislation through, but he certainly didn't make that point when I listened to him.

That's not to say Obama is blameless - Greenwald rightly points to the HAMP mortgage modification failure as a self-inflicted wound.  On legislation though, he and we have to deal in reality.

Speaking of reality and legislation, we might want to look ahead.  A best-case scenario in 2012 elections will bring Obama back along with marginal control of the Senate and House.  I'm guessing more likely that Obama returns and we only get one of the two congressional houses, and even worse scenarios are very plausible.  The  best case scenario, in other words, still has us in worse position than 2009-2010.  Things generally get worse in mid-term elections for the majority party, and the majority party starts getting tired and often corrupt after many years in office.  

I think the best chance to pass climate legislation for another four years was the one that we had before the 2010 elections.  It really is a shame that many enviros failed to push for cap-and-trade, because as marginally, politically viable as it was, it was the best shot for years to come.  A national carbon tax was not politically meaningful and will take a lot more changes of political fundamentals before it will be.  Some enviros missed the boat last time.  We can still work together though do things on a piecemeal basis and at the state and local level instead, and gradually enforce carbon regulation through the Clean Air Act and other laws.

Obama good, Obama ungood

The good news is decision that gay rights and human rights "are one and the same" in a speech by Hillary Clinton, one that states the Obama administration will work for this concept internationally, and put some money behind it.   They also acknowledge imperfections here in American, while being studiously silent on gay marriage.

The foreign policy realists would say this will cost us internationally, just as any other human rights effort will cost us.  They'd be correct in some areas, although other places like Europe it should actually help our image and soft power.  Long run is a different story though, as history kind of arcs somewhat toward justice.

How this gets reflected in domestic politics will be interesting, because people who are somewhat conservative on gay rights domestically, say hypothetically a political science professor who supports civil unions, would fall on the far left of the spectrum of the countries with the worst discrimination.  The natural Republican reflex of opposing everything Obama does will then start looking pretty awful in the context of horrible abuses overseas. Rick Perry lost no time decrying "special rights" promotion, but the actual Republican nominee will probably lose votes while irresolutely dodging the issue.  Score one for the good guys.

The ungood side is the decision to overrule FDA's authorization of selling the Plan B contraceptive as a standard over the counter item.  Double plus ungood not because of the politics but the false claim that the science gives any reason to do this.  To the FDA's credit, they more or less stated their disagreement and weren't suppressed from doing that.  This is standard, almost, Republican-style War on Science.  Chris Mooney's book on the subject noted the Democrats were guilty too of this offense, but just not nearly to the same extent.  One strike against the Obama Administration in this regard.

I don't want to end on that note, so I'll add another piece of good news.  Younger Americans are significantly more accepting of climate science than older ones.  Now consider that even some Republicans acknowledge their antipathy to gay rights is a dying cause.  The very few scientists who don't accept climate science are also aging out (page 12) and not being replaced by anyone except lawyers, so the younger generation is being educated the right way.  I'm not sure how many demographically-challenged positions the Republicans really want to take, but maybe they should reconsider.


UPDATE:  Chris Mooney on Plan B here.  Similar grasp of the obvious.

Godfather's Pizza and Al Gore

The graph shows a partisan change in approval of Godfather's Pizza since Herman Cain declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination (context here).  Republicans like his former company a lot more now, and Democrats a lot less.

I have in the past been pretty dismissive of claims from right-leaning and other analysts that Al Gore's prominence in climate change activism has much to do with Republican denial of climate reality.  Godfather's Pizza argues in favor of those claims, though.

Obviously, opinion on cheap pizza and on the fate of our climate involve different levels of moral responsibility.  If Republicans react poorly to Gore's warnings, that reflects poorly on them and not Gore.  Still, efforts like the We Can Solve It campaign might need a lot more reinforcement:

Of course, Gingrich has backed off of his earlier interest in reality.  There's only so much you can do, if the Republican leadership is so unwilling to do much anything at all.  Maybe there are a enough younger Republican leaders, people like Chris Christie (or maybe others like Romney and McCain if Romney loses next year), to join in the leadership on the climate movement.  Otherwise it's up to the public.

Eight percent increase in belief in climate change in the US

Up to 83%, and the Stanford analyst thinks the Republican presidential denialism may be part of it:

As Americans watch Republicans debate the issue, they are forced to mull over what they think about global warming, said Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University.

And what they think is also influenced by reports this year that global temperatures in 2010 were tied with 2005 to be the warmest year since the 1880s.

"That is exactly the kind of situation that will provoke the public to think about the issue in a way that they haven't before," Krosnick said about news reports on the Republicans denying climate change science.

I sure hope he's right. The debates were skewed with 1.5 candidates arguing for sanity and the rest denialists, playing to a skewed-conservative audience. If that still helped climate realism, then bring on the national campaign. The increasing recognition of Republican leadership being anti-science is probably sinking in somewhat.

I wonder though if it's more just the particular time, right after record heat and weather disasters. The previous poll was done in early June rather than the end of summer heat. Or maybe fading memories of the made-up nonsense over the stolen climate emails.

Anyway, modest progress for realism.

Human Events takes anti-Renaissance views seriously

New Yorker covered Michelle Bachmann's anti-Italian Renaissance ideology with her favorite documentary by Francis Schaeffer:

The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo’s “David” and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world

This conclusion by Nancy Pearcey that Bachmann supports also demonstrates her thought process:

There may “be occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while nonbelievers get it right,” she writes in “Total Truth.” “Nevertheless, the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false—for if the system is not built on Biblical truth, then it will be built on some other ultimate principle. Even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world view.”

Bachmann doesn't care if she's wrong on such things as science and history, and has no interest in corrections, because her overall thought system is infallible.

Human Events appears to fall in the same category. They're pumping a (somewhat doubtful) claim of malfeasance on drowning polar bears that Eli has checked, and found this expert conclusion:

“I think it’s very illustrative of the problems with government research on endangered species, and raises the question as to whether government should be in the business of science,” Ramey said.

I think Dr. Rob Roy Ramey and some government-supported madrasas in Pakistan should share notes. Incidentally, Dr. Ramey sez the survey was only intended to look for whales, when the protocol was actually to record all sightings:

ERIC MAY: Okay, you mentioned earlier other mammals, so are all mammal observations recorded in that database?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Yes.

ERIC MAY: Okay, so give me an example, what other mammals?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Bearded seals, walruses, ringed seals, polar bears, beluga whales, gray whales. That's sort of the big ones.

Also they took photos:

ERIC MAY: When you did take the photos, were you able to tell what they were?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Most of the time, yeah. We saw some dead polar bears at one time, and it was pretty obvious with the naked eye what it was. But the pictures, they just kind of turned out to be a white blob in the photos. And I can't remember, we probably took three or four pictures, and it's sort of white blob floating in the ocean, so it's pretty hard to tell.

A certain Coyote Blog couldn't handle the truth on that one, saying the resulting study was produced without "even getting a picture of them." I'm also impressed by Coyote's assertion that white bears swimming at the surface are harder to see than grey-colored whales that swim below the surface and only come up every few minutes to breathe.

Not to worry though, the denialist overall worldview is infallible. Or maybe is S Molnar is right, and Bachmann and pals will bring us back to pre-Industrial Revolution, pre-Renaissance economies.

Republican climate cladistics

Might be useful to have some categories for Republican leaders:

Genus: Science Believers

Species: As good as typical Democrats

examples: Arnold the Governator, the eight Republicans who voted for cap and trade in Congress in 2009, Bush promises during the 2000 campaign (more or less)

notes: functionally extinct, unless McCain starts getting mad at fellow Republicans again.

Species: Proactive, but not as proactive as Democrats

example: Chris Christie. Others??

notes: they'll do something, maybe even without having to be forced to do something. But not as much as Democrats, which in turn isn't enough.

Species: Embracing science, rejecting acting on the science

examples: Mitt Romney, John Huntsman. Maybe Bush post-2005.

notes: this is the leftist side of the Republican Party mainstream. Might actually do something, very limited, if elected to office.

Genus: Wafflers

Species: Incoherent action rejecters.

example: Tim Pawlenty. Plenty of others I'm too lazy to track down. McCain on some days.

notes: results will likely vary if elected to office - they won't do much anything to be helpful, but the resistance they have to sane efforts by others could differ from case to case. Might have something to do with what they "really" believe, although considering that issue is a road to madness.

Other waffler species?

Genus: Denialists

Species: Conspiracy True Believers

examples: James Inhofe, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry (Morano-approved)

notes: I suppose you could try to distinguish between the ignorant and the express conspiracy supporters, but it doesn't work too well. These folks will only do what they're legally bound to do, after they've been sued for failing to do what they're legally bound to do.

So the Republican nomination is a battle between action rejecters and conspiracy true believers. Wonderful.

Congressional Republicans admit they can't handle the truth

I meant to comment on this a while back:

A group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives is proposing to shift funds from NASA’s climate change research coffers to the agency’s manned spaceflight program, an effort they say could preserve what they described as the agency’s core mission even as the new GOP-controlled House seeks to make good on vows to roll back federal discretionary spending this year.

It's not just moving money from the most scientifically-useful part of NASA to the least useful, although that does nicely symbolize the Republican hatred of science. Most Republican leaders admit that the planet's warming, but they usually say the case for it being anthropogenic is unproven. Trying to deny information that would provide further proof is a solid indication that they can't handle the truth. I suppose they could claim that they have definitive proof that the warming's not human-cased, and that the proof is so solid that there's no longer any need to study the subject, but that makes them all the more idiots.

I recall this happening before, and I'm sure it'll happen again. The second-level question though is why do they bother? The evidence that we're changing climate is mountainous and they ignore it, so why do they bother trying to stop still more evidence from coming in?

Checking for next steps in House Republicans science denial

Talking Points Memo reports that none of the 31 Republicans on the House Energy Committee will admit that climate change is real and caused by people, directly repudiating both the real world and their own 2008 presidential campaign.

The more constructive side of my personality thinks they should be asked if temperatures will continue to go up in the next ten years at the rate predicted by the IPCC, then will they change their minds. I can't imagine how much trouble we'll be in if there's still serious resistance to action ten years from now, but there probably will be, so we might want to start blunting it.

The more political side suggests seeing how far we can test these geniuses. I bet many would reject an amendment declaring that CO2, methane, and other gases have globally increased in concentration and humans are responsible. A commenter also suggests testing them as to whether the earth is over 6,000 years old, which could be done by an amendment declaring that the earth is many millions of years old and therefore a study of the paleoclimate over the millions of years helps us understand modern climate.

Let's see how far they'll stick their heads in the sand. Showing how the Republicans can't acknowledge reality is a good way to start wedging them apart from any educated supporters.

Someone finally mentions the attack on the EPA will come through budget resolutions

I've babbled for months now that the Congressional Republican attack on environmental protection will be through the budget process, not through Clean Air Act revisionist legislation that would be subject to a Senate filibuster and an Obama veto.

Someone finally acknowledges that, in an Environmental Defense podcast (starting around minute 35). There they call it a potential "rider" or an add-on to an appropriations bill that would be very difficult for the Senate to kill or for Obama to veto. That's very close to what I'm concerned about, but an even more insidious and hard-to-kill action would be to zero out the budget for anything EPA could do to enforce application of the Clean Air Act to climate change issues. So I'm glad it's finally noticed, and the question is how to respond.

Complicating this is the Republican threat to de-fund health care reform. I could easily seeing the Republican controlled House passing a budget that both de-funds health care and prohibits spending money to enforce the Clean Air Act. They will then attempt horse-trading, and I fear the concession that they'll ask for.

I think it's to the Democrats' advantage to say these are established laws that aren't to be part of any games that Republicans will use instead of trying for revocation, and make sure the Republicans are set to take the blame if the Republicans cause a government shutdown over the budget.

Is Obama insane enough to let torture stay legal?

I find it a little hard to believe, but Andrew Sullivan reports "Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight."

Sullivan adds "It's obviously being placed by some Clinton and Bush officials angling for more continuity with Bush's torture regime."

A (still-Obama-hating FWIW) blogger at Talk Left refers to a John Brennan of Bush/Clinton CIA years as Obama's head of intelligence transition issues.

The New Yorker describes Brennan as a supporter of CIA torture techniques even despite the practical problems: "Setting aside the moral, ethical, and legal issues, even supporters, such as John Brennan, acknowledge that much of the information that coercion produces is unreliable."

It's all hard to believe. I'm actually hoping that the torture has even stopped with Mukasey now heading DOJ, so why Obama would want to keep the door open?

I'm seeing some blogs saying, don't criticize Obama until he's actually done something wrong, but what we're seeing is a push from the Democrats' right, and we need to push back.

Somewhat related issue on the other end of the spectrum is the rumor about appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the Environmental Protection Agency. A great environmentalist and fine lawyer, RFK Jr. has not used science appropriately in the whole mercury-vaccine issue and wouldn't be right for the job. Again we're told not to respond to rumors, but again I see a trial balloon sent up by somebody, and it's a problem.

A final footnote: I had read somewhere that RFK was representing mercury-vaccine plaintiffs, although I can't find confirmation of it. If true, it makes it very difficult for him to renounce the claims following new scientific results. I'd give a little slack to a lawyer stuck in the position of being a mouthpiece for his clients, but still....

John Edwards interviewed at Scienceblogs

The interview is here, and blorg commentary here. Some random thoughts:

On who actually answered the questions - it was an email interview, so was it actually Edwards who responded? I'd ask this question if it were Bush, so it's fair to ask here. You decide your own trust level, I guess, but the language style sure sounds like Edwards when he talks. FWIW, I ran some text through Gender Genie, and it scored the author as male.

On politicized science - Edwards says "As president, I will ensure that government professionals charged with the collection and analysis of scientific data--from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to the EPA--are insulated from political influence. Period."

He's trying to make a clear and simple distinction between himself and Bush. That's fine, but he needs to go on and advocate some of the solutions that have been proposed by the scientific community. Even saying something like "no political litmus test for scientific appointments" would be helpful.

Corporate farms and ethanol - he says "We need a farm bill that supports family farmers, but eliminates the massive subsidies that flow to corporate farms with high incomes. Corporate farms making more than $250,000 a year should not get our tax dollars."

That also needs details - it could be dramatically good, or it could be loopholed ($250k net revenue on a per parcel basis?).

"Millions of ethanol-ready cars are on the roads, but only about 600 of the 169,000 gas stations have pumps for E85, a blend of ethanol and gasoline. We will require oil companies to install ethanol pumps at 25 percent of their gas stations and require all new cars sold after 2010 to be "flex fuel" cars running on either gasoline or biofuel."

I'm not convinced yet that corn ethanol is the pure evil that many enviros think it to be, but it's no great thing either. I guess I'm undecided whether this is a useful bridge to cellulosic ethanol.

On manned space exploration versus real science - "We need a balanced space and aeronautics program. We need to support solar system exploration as an important goal for our human and robotic programs, but only as one goal among several. And we need to invite other countries to share in a meaningful way in both the adventure and the cost of space exploration."

Oh well. I think Dems will be only marginally better that Republicans on this, mainly by keeping the stupid Bush-to-Mars budget from intruding any further on the NASA science budget.

On climate change - he wants a 20% carbon reduction by 2020. That's very good to have a short term plan, which I think is more important than the 80% reduction by 2050. The baseline year though is 2010, so the 20% reduction probably takes us back only to mid-1990s levels. The other stuff about selling cabon credits to fund renewables research is great.

(Cross-posted at JohnEdwards.com.)

Volokh Correction #18: The Republican War on Science

When the Volokhs move away from legal analysis and libertarian theory into straight political posts, we often get something like this post by Jonathan Adler (who's one of the better Volokhs): a mix of one part wrong, two parts grossly exaggerated, three parts biased, and one part legitimate point.

Adler is criticizing Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science. I won't critique all of Adler's post, but here are a few arguments:

One of the best examples of the politicization of science by the "left" — and one of the few that Mooney acknowledges — is the treatment of agricultural biotechnology, and the decision to subject such products to more stringent regulatory review than those developed with other methods. This policy has no scientific basis, as the National Academy of Sciences has stated many times.

Hardly a criticism of Mooney when he acknowledges the issue. It's only partly right, anyway. While the left has greatly exaggerated the public health dangers, the danger of contaminating wild relatives of cultivated crops with Frankengenes are real, as are the dangers of creating resistance to the few effective organic insecticides by artificially inserting Bt genes in agricultural plants. And before Adler completely dismisses potential health effects, he should consider the biotech industry position that because it's extensively, legally regulated, it should not be liable to common-law litigation claims in the event something "untoward" happens. If the industry was truly confident it wasn't creating a risk, it would waive that argument.

Another example would be claims by environmentalist groups that pesticide residues on foods pose a significant cancer risk, a claim which the NAS has also rejected.

Talking about alar, maybe? Adler's on shaky ground. Being vague about the subject might help escape specific criticisms, but it doesn't help persuasiveness.

A third would be seeking endangered species listings for the purpose of halting development.

What's unscientific about that? Ulterior motives might give you ground to suspect what a group says, but it doesn't make it unscientific. Pro-life people these days are all interested in the health effects of abortion - there's reason not to trust them or their own studies, but that doesn't by itself make the claim a war on science.

A fourth would be efforts to claim asthma incidence (as opposed to asthma attacks) are related to outdoor air pollution, when there is no data to support such a claim.

The massive increase in asthma, which Adler avoids mentioning outright, is a critical issue in modern public health. I think Adler's outright wrong in saying there's no data, the real issue is definitive proof. Something is going very wrong, and outdoor air pollution, especially the mostly unregulated small particle pollution, is a suspect.

A fifth would be the EPA's second-hand smoke study, which a federal court found was driven to reach a predetermined result.

If anyone cares to bet over whether second-hand smoke causes thousands of deaths annually, I'm open to it. As to whether one particular study on the issue was flawed, who cares. This was an interesting issue for Adler to light on - I've been trying to compare the state of science over global warming to other controversies, and considered second-hand smoke as a decent analogy. My amateur opinion of both fields though, is that we're even more confident about global warming than we are about second-hand smoke.

A sixth would be claims that the "precautionary principle" is a "science-based" approach to risk, when it acutally reflects a normative policy judgment about how to weigh and evaluate risks.

I don't know what he's talking about here - who couldn't figure out that the precautionary principle is a policy method for handling the risks established by science. To establish an abuse of science, Adler must demonstrate lies or deception. He hasn't. Some on the left have articulated a ridiculous version of the precautionary principle that involves proving a negative - but that's just stupid, not a deceptive abuse of science.

A seventh would be the compounded conservatisms that are embedded into many agency risk assessments, such as those conducted for the federal Superfund program.

Funny - sounds like a normative judgment about the appropriate level of risk - how's that an abuse of science?

An eighth would be molding "ecosystem management" to satisfy non-scientific normative preferences about how land should be managed.

Land management typically involves multiple goals. Adler needs to give specifics showing a widespread, leftist policy of using their land management goals in a way that abuses science.

And so on.

One of his better arguments.

In 1993, Princeton University physicist William Happer was fired from the Department of Energy because he disagreed with Vice President Al Gore's views on stratospheric ozone depletion.

Happer was a Bush I political appointee, so Clinton and Gore had every right to get rid of him. I don't recall if Mooney criticized Bush II for firing a political appointee, although maybe I missed that. Anyway, firing an idiot who denies the destruction of the ozone layer is a service to the country. Do I need to offer yet another bet over this issue too?

In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected the finding from the Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health which declared that the intentional creation of human embryos for genetic research was ethical. Clinton simply banned any federal funding for such research.

How is a dispute over the ethical approach an abuse of science? Adler needs to get beyond whatever grievances he has and show deception.

Others include the witholding of agency analyses so as to prevent their publication at poltiically inconvenient times and the gross misrepresentation of scientific findings by agency officials in speeches and media appearances.

The first claim is standard practice, and not really a science abuse unless withholding is delayed for months instead of for the Friday media dump cycle. He doesn't substantiate the second claim.

If we are allowed to consider the plaintiffs' bar as a "left" interest — as corporate groups are considered to be on the "right" — then there are many more examples relating to all sorts of "junk science" tort claims, some of which my co-blogger David Bernstein has documented

This would be a legitimate point except that Mooney isn't attacking corporate lying but the Republican and Bush Administration's political support for their lies. Again, Adler needs to point to prominent Democrat and Clinton administration misdeeds to make his point (and before anyone talks about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and vaccines, I'd note that he isn't even an elected official).

It is certainly possible that the Bush Administration is worse than prior Democratic Administrations, but I don't think Mooney makes his case because he doesn't seriously examine the most serious charges against prior administrations, nor does he consider the broader institutional context.

Adler has not come up with any serious charges. As for institutional context, one point I might agree with is that one should consider overall funding levels as part of the determination of whether the Republicans are at war with science, so I'd disagree with Mooney's decision to exclude that issue from his consideration.

More fundamentally, it is hard to go from the avalanche of science-abusing anecdotes in Mooney's book to a definitive conclusion that the Bush Administration is far worse than previous ones. On the other hand, it's a very impressive avalanche, especially compared to what Adler has just put out. The number of Republicans who are revolted at what Bush has done to science is also indicative. Most persuasive was the one time where Bush and Clinton both took the same position at odds with the science, but Bush lied about the science while Clinton didn't.

So some legitimacy of the attacks on the left, little of which extends to the Clinton Administration, and very little in the way of substantive criticism of Mooney's book.

UPDATE: Welcome, Intersection readers, and thanks for stopping by. My main page is here, and my review of RWOS is here. And just to be a little contrary, I've got an occasionally-updated post linking to right-wing blogs when I think they've got the better argument, and one of them is an Adler post.

The Republican War on Science, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City

I finally had the time to finish Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science. Like everyone says, it's a very important and useful book. While it may be a little inappropriate to compare RWOS to a book I've only heard about but haven't read, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, I was stuck with how both books reference the Bush Administration's insistence on ideological screening of people for job positions that should be apolitical.

I thought the Bush insistence on "conservatives only" for Iraq reconstruction jobs had a clear cause. They refused to allow companies from countries that opposed the Iraq war to compete for reconstruction contracts, and they fought the UN's initial efforts to get involved in Iraq, all because they felt that spoils belong to the winner. It was conservatives who had the brilliant idea of invading Iraq, so non-conservatives had no right to participate in the "spoils" of reconstructing it.

Same thing with science. Conservatives won the 2000 and 2004 election, and so to them belong the spoils of manipulating science. The alternative idea, that they were elected to do the job of serving the voters and their responsibility is to do the best job possible, seems to have escaped them.

A few other thoughts on Mooney's book:

He mentions Dr. David Hager's abuse of science while leaving out Hager's personal scandals. Mooney may be above mentioning that, but I'm not.

On page 253 of the paperback edition, Mooney writes that given the evidence, "we can infer that the Bush Adminstration almost certainly had politicized science to an unprecedented degree." While I think he's right, it's a hard statement to prove, going beyond a bunch of anecdotal observations to actual conclusions. After all, Roger Pielke Jr. put together a bunch of anecdotes saying the media and others overexaggerated the threat from global warming. Did he prove his case?

I think Mooney's best evidence is the number of prominent Republicans he found who criticize the Bush war on science. His second best piece though is on page 255, where he found that both Bush and Clinton took a similar position on an issue that wasn't supported by the science (exchanging needles with drug addicts to prevent HIV). Bush lied about the science, Clinton didn't. Anecdotes like that are powerful evidence, especially in the absence of counter-examples.

Mooney says early in the book that he's not considering funding issues. I would disagree with that decision - if an administration is abusing some science while generously funding science in general, it might be hard to say that it's worse than another administration that only starved science. Still, abusing science is done either for religious or business reasons, and either one involves important societal issues. From global warming to women's reproductive choices, the Bush Administration is screwing up important science, and their general support for science funding doesn't overcome that.

Finally, my one stylistic criticism is that as a visual learner, I could use something eye-catching to reinforce the text - graphics, charts, tables, or even a list of the many repeat characters and their roles. Mooney has another book coming out, Storm World, covering a subject ideal for visual aids, so hopefully we'll get some eye candy inthat book.