PALMEIRO’S STEROID USE: It’s all Bill Clinton’s fault!

Put me down as unpersuaded.

MORE KELO BACKLASH, this time in Alabama:

Alabama yesterday became the first state to enact new protections against local-government seizure of property allowed under a Supreme Court ruling that has triggered an explosive grass-roots counteroffensive across the country. . . .

The backlash against the judicial ruling has not received much attention in the national press, although legislative leaders in more than two dozen states have proposed statutes and/or state constitutional amendments to restrict local governments’ eminent-domain powers.

Besides Alabama, legislation to ban or restrict the use of eminent domain for private development has been introduced in 16 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas.

Legislators have announced plans to introduce eminent-domain bills in seven more states: Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Dakota, South Carolina and Wisconsin, and lawmakers in Colorado, Georgia and Virginia plan to act on previously introduced bills.

In addition, public support is being sought for state constitutional prohibitions in several states — Alabama, California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey and Texas.

I guess my prediction (“I suspect that this decision — somewhat like Bowers — will cause a lot of activists to shift their focus to state legislatures and state courts”) has been borne out. (More on that here.)

IRAQ SENDS A FEMALE AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT: And here’s something else I had missed — the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq has weighed in in favor of women’s rights in the new Iraqi constitution: “On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged the framers to protect women’s rights as a ‘fundamental requirement for Iraq’s progress.'”

JOHN KERRY is seriously unpopular, according to the latest poll data. Brendan Nyhan has thoughts on what that means.

CLIVE DAVIS: “At some point in the next few days, I suppose, someone in the moral equivalence industry will try to argue that the dropping of the atomic bomb was an act of terrorism.”

Max Boot: “It is hard to imagine how many more GIs and Tommies would have perished in 1944-45 had Anglo-American leaders flinched from using all the means at their disposal to hasten the end of the war. Indeed, if the U.S. had staged a blood-drenched invasion of Japan while holding back its atomic arsenal, President Truman would have been indicted for that decision too.”

PUSHBACK: A few years ago we saw a raft of anti-technology stuff — Bill Joy’s article in Wired, Frank Fukuyama’s anti-posthumanist screed, various pronouncements by Jeremy Rifkin, Leon Kass and Daniel Callahan, etc.

I notice now that we’re seeing more from the other side. You’ve got Ramez Naam’s More Than Human : Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, Ron Bailey’s Liberation Biology, Gregory Stock’s Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, Joel Garreau’s Radical Evolution : The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human,and, of course, Ray Kurzweil’s forthcoming book, perhaps the most ambitious of the lot.

This confluence — together with poll data and other recent indicators — suggests to me that Joan Vennochi is giving the Democrats good advice on stem cells:

Democrats should also do with stem cell research what Republicans did with gay marriage: present the issue for a vote on every possible state ballot. Republican Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader from Tennessee, just demonstrated the power of the issue. Frist’s surprise endorsement of a bill that would approve federal funds for new lines of stem cells enraged the right. But Frist knows the political center supports it, and the political center is where a presidential contender wants to be. In stem cell research, Democrats, for once, have an issue that fires up their base and cuts to the center, across diverse demographic groups.

I think that’s right. This is an issue where the GOP is tied to its base, and where swing voters go the other way. Interestingly, there’s plenty of opportunity for the GOP to weaken this assault by supporting other kinds of life-extending and life-improving research — into aging, for example — to blunt efforts to tar it as the party of Luddites and fundamentalists. Will they be smart enough to do that?

UPDATE: Reader Randolph Resor emails regarding Liberation Biology:

I’ll probably end up reading the book, but I wanted to mention a PBS special of a few months ago called “Harvest of Fear”. It dealt with genetically modified plants, and considering the ominous-sounding music, appeared to be an attempt to raise questions about GMOs. However, the pro-GMO folks came off as intelligent, literate, and genuinely interested in helping people, while the opponents looked like a bunch of crazies.

Most impressive was a black South African botanist, a woman, discussing genetically modified sweet potatoes. When asked about opposition to GMOs, she said, “These people have never been hungry in their lives. Who do they think they are, telling me I can’t help my people feed themselves?”

Indeed. The opponents of scientific progress on both the left and the right seek to clothe themselves in moral superiority, but it’s pretty much a sham.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In response to a couple of reader emails, I should note that the “opponents of scientific progress” that I’m referring to are the Kass/Fukuyama/Rifkin sort mentioned at the top — not necessarily opponents of embryonic stem cell research, whom I regard as wrong, but not necessarily Luddite or immoral.

Meanwhile Phil Bowermaster has some further thoughts on pushback:

One could make the case that this is cyclical — that there’s a Kurzweil for every Fukuyama, but that there will be a Leon Kass for every Kurzweil and then a Ron Bailey for every Leon Kass and on and on it goes. But I doubt it. I think something else may be at work here.

Maybe in spite of all the hype and scare stories and just plain bad information, the idea is getting through that we really can expect technology, in the coming years, to make unprecedented changes in what human life is and can be. . . .

So why the switch from Fukayama to Kurzweil? Well, as Stephen points out, some of these major, world-shattering changes promise to show up right on schedule. We may look for direction from someone like Joel Garreau, who can discuss both the pros and cons of inevitable change. But a Kass or a Fukayama…arguing against change istelf?

Sorry, we just don’t have time for that any more.

Read the whole thing.

MORE: Brendan Nyhan thinks that state initiatives are a bad idea on policy grounds, regardless of their political uses.

THE CARNIVAL OF GAMERS is up!

MICHAEL YON offers combat-photoblogging from Mosul. As always, it’s a must-read.

I DEFEND THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY from some rather half-baked criticism, over at GlennReynolds.com.

MAN BITES DOG: Brian Micklethwait notes a Hollywood actress talking sense about poverty.

KELO UPDATE:

States across the country are rushing to pass laws to counter the potential impact of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that allows state and local governments to seize homes for private development. . . .

The issue has spawned an unusual alliance among conservatives opposed to the principle of government seizing private property and liberals worried that poor people would be the most likely victims.

I’m glad to hear it.

BEYOND BORDERS is a new blog about immigration from Southern California.

ROBERT KC JOHNSON has thoughts on academic freedom.

IS ANN COULTER faking it?

THOUGHTS ON TERRORISM AND BIRD FLU: Here, and here. I, of course, worry about both.

The good news is that in many ways, preparations for the two overlap. In particular, developing technologies to produce vaccines and antiviral drugs much more rapidly and effectively would drastically reduce the dangers from both.

RON BAILEY THINKS that bio-conservatives may be mellowing.

JOHN BOLTON’S FIRST DAY ON THE JOB, as reported by James Lileks.

MICHAEL BARONE has a blog! And, unsurprisingly, it’s good.

“WHY NOT TRY FOR THE POPULARITY CONTEST?” I never knew that Moore could be so funny. Or give such good advice.

IN RESPONSE TO STEVEN VINCENT’S DEATH, reader Eric Boyer emails:

I’m anxiously awaiting Linda Foley’s statement condemning the “number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature” of the insurgents toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.

Aren’t we all.

UPDATE: Some ways to honor Steven Vincent, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this moving post at The Mudville Gazette.

I FINISHED RON BAILEY’S BOOK the other day, and he’s certainly hard on the anti-GMO folks:

Why would leaders of these African nations risk starving millions of their citizens over fear of food that 290 million Americans have been eating safely since 1996? Because antibiotech activists such as [Vandana] Shiva and nongovernmental activist groups such as Greenpeace have been misleading the public about the alleged dangers of genetically improved crop varieties. . . .

Scientists trying to help the world’s poor are appalled by the apparent willingness of biotechnology opponents to sacrifice people for their cause. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 2000, Ismail Serageldin, then director of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research posed a challenge: “I ask opponents of biotechnology, do you want two to three million children a year to go blind and one million to die of Vitamin A deficiency, just because you object to the way golden rice was created?”

The answer, basically, is “yes.”

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW what I think about the Hackett / Schmidt election in Ohio. Not much (though this was amusing). Pundits and press always try to turn these by-elections into big leading indicators of the next election, but they’re usually one-offs of no enduring significance. I think this was one of those. And no, my “silence” didn’t mean that I was covering things up, or in denial (about what?) or, well, anything except that I didn’t have much to say.

As Bob Somerby said to one of his critics: ” A column doesn’t become ‘disingenuous’ if it doesn’t address ‘the main issue’ for you.” Or a blog. Jeez.

UPDATE: Jason van Steenwyk, on the other hand, has an opinion or two.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So does the now-blogging Michael Barone, whose opinions on this sort of thing are worth a lot more than mine. He agrees that partisan swings in by-elections don’t mean much, but he does suggest bad news for the Republicans nonetheless:

The reason is that in the present state of polarization of politics, turnout is the key to winning elections. Turnout in 2004 was up 16 percent over 2000—a historic rise. John Kerry got 16 percent more votes than Al Gore, but George W. Bush got 23 percent more votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. That’s why the Republican percentage for president rose from 48 to 51 and the Democratic percentage dropped slightly.

The results in the Ohio 2nd go the other way. According to the latest results I have before me, 112,375 people voted in the special election. That’s just 34 percent of the 331,104 who voted in the district in 2004. Republican Jean Schmidt’s vote total was only 27 percent of Bush’s. Democrat Paul Hackett’s vote total was 46 percent of Kerry’s. Democrats did a better job of turning out their vote. . . .

In this week’s election, Democrats apparently were able to motivate their Bush-hating core to go to the polls. Republicans, who demonstrated such prowess at turning out their voters in November 2004, did not do nearly as well in motivating their base. Turnout will be much higher in November 2006. But this result will give heart to the www.dailykos.com Democrats who argue that all they need to do is to turn out Bush-haters. And it should give pause to Republicans and raise the question as to whether the Republican base—much larger in this district than the Democratic base—will turn out in record numbers in November 2006 as it did in November 2004.

Judging from what I read in a lot of blogs, I think that Bush’s fair-weather federalism and general lack of enthusiasm for small government means that a lot of the base is less motivated. And I can see why.

BAD NEWS ON ADULT STEM CELLS: “Such cells are seen as the potential key to the treatment of certain muscle diseases. However, a study currently being conducted at Bonn’s University Clinic has produced some sobering findings: although the cells are able to migrate into the muscle fibres, they do not generally take on any tissue-specific functions. This, according to the Bonn medical scientists, means the cells would not serve as a substitute for defective muscle cells.”

There’s still a lot of stem-cell science to do before people can claim that one approach or another is clearly the best. Which is why we should be doing the science.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON SCIENCE-BLOGGERS from The Scientist. Derek Lowe is the centerpiece, but the article has links to a lot of other science bloggers, quite a few of whom were new to me.

NORM GERAS has posts on terrorist “Apology and its Modes.” Here’s one and here’s the other.