About the time the Petraeus Dog and Pony Show rolled into town, Bush was considered all but irrelevant. He's screwed up everything he touched (and even some of the things he didn't touch) and people were happily ignoring his speeches to focus on Hillary and John and Barack and Rudy. That must've hurt: to be the "most powerful man on Earth" (I'm sure that phrase is stitched on all Bush's underwear) and to be this irrelevant.

The best way for the guy to become relevant again? Play the crazy card. Oh lookie here! We've another Muslim nation we can threaten and maybe even (gasp!) attack. Suddenly, everyone remembers who he is again. The hawks are rolling their eyes in ecstasy (yes! another war! we're STRONG!), the doves are suddenly realizing that the beached shark can still bite and are really scared. And of course there's a flurry of bills and resolutions that can be sent to Congress to keep the wavering Republicans in line and give the Democrats another test of spine, which most will fail. Not to mention all this material about WWIII, evil, freedom, 9/11 and the honor of our men and women in uniform.

Rejoice America! (Or be afraid, whichever.) Bush is in the news once more!

Independent, supported by his own money, pursuing risky far-flung research that may or may not be a benefit to society, but will definitely benefit him... Venter sounds like a Bond villain to me, complete with a floating laboratory. Be afraid, world, for there's no licensed to kill MI6 agent who will take him out.

Keats compares Venter to Darwin. That's a fallacy of the highest degree, not only because Darwin is an entrenched hero of mainstream biology, while Venter is a "maverick". Darwin, you see, was never a maverick, at least not on purpose. His research into the origin of species was driven by the desire to understand the natural world, not to stroke his ego by "starting a new era". Have anyone noticed that new eras have never been started on purpose? Darwin was in opposition to the establishment only because he had to be: he lived in the reality-based community that contradicted the official dogma. Venter seeks controversy, it brings him notoriety and funding.

Note, Venter used shotgun sequencing not because the NIH approach would not have yielded the human genome sequence, but because the shotgun approach was FASTER. He caused untold drama and raised the specter of gene patenting so that he could shave a couple of years off the finish date. It also gave him the chance to claim sole ownership of the victory; if he stayed with the NIH, he would've been a cog in a vast machine, while at Celera he was the hero, he could make the announcement.

This isn't science. This is scary. If Venter is indeed "the future", then the future is in the hands of rogues who choose fame and money over knowledge. As government funding for research dries up (and it's quite dire these days) more and more educated professionals will join these "mavericks" just to make a living, and that prospect should frighten anyone who thinks that today's publicly-funded science is too speedy and result-oriented. If Venter gets his way, it's about to get far, far worse.

I'm sure it's no fault of Mr. Grieve's, but I'm a little rattled by the phrase "accusing Obama of being a Muslim". Since being a Muslim is so far not a felony (or even a misdemeanor) in the United States (though this may quickly change), one cannot be accused of following Islam. Accusation requires a crime, you see, or my grasp of English is flawed.

(It will be difficult to find a phrase that quickly communicates how noxious these rumors are in the current atmosphere of xenophobia, but I think the effort is necessary, lest we quickly fall into thinking that Islam is a crime.)

I love it when pundits shoot themselves in the arse with their own arguments. Let's reverse this: so illegal immigrants are like bloggers... which means one thing: we'll never keep them out. Ever. If we try, we'll only look stupid to the rest of the world, at best, and piss a lot of people off to boot.

By the way, while nativism is not new to this nation, somehow I don't think the nativists of the 19th century minded the influx of immigrants so much, as long as these immigrants built the railroads and suchlike. Maybe I'm wrong. In either event, the much more vigorous (and unrestrained by political correctness) nativists of those days couldn't do squat to change the very nature of this nation: its openness to new people. And I don't think today's nativists could, either. So it's kind of funny to watch them try, except for a little voice at the back of my head that says: what if? George W. came pretty close (and keeps coming ever closer) to dismantling our Sacred Constitution (tm), and WE LET HIM. Would the nativist joke be on the rest of us normal people?

Eek.

Okay, with today's digital technology, I think this can be done: take some video of Reagan, plonk it on a pulpit in front of the Capitol building in Sacramento and have him intone: "I believe in States' rights!" Yeah, suck on that, assholes!

In all seriousness, Arnold has come a long way from cheerleading Bush's 2004 re-election, to threatening to sue Bush's EPA. I sincerely hope that his GOP arse-kissing was a political ploy, while his work for California has been at least in part an expression of a genuine desire to get something done. I'm an idealist, see.