I'm against all three!

No really, these and other topics are often an echo chamber even here on salon. Don't get riled up--I'm with you all, really, but that doesn't mean there isn't sometimes some nuanced change in the facts on the ground that should have us revisit our assumptions.

Take Larry Summers. I don't have his quotation in front of me, so I can't defend it, but honestly, what if there actually was some empirical evidence that demonstrated some superior neural circuitry in male brains where the math stuff happens? My question is, would everyone here dismiss it out of hand without any scrutiny at all? I'm not talking about junk science; I'm talking about neuroscience.

What if that recent PIPA poll (that showed 75% of FOX News viewers got objective answers wrong on a current events test related to Iraq) had actually discovered a similar misinformation figure for NPR listeners? I know I would personally have trouble eschewing Diane Rehm, Neal Conan, and Karl Kastle, and yet intellectually I know it's ridiculous to be loyal to a news outlet. If you're cheering for it, then perhaps they are telling you what you want to hear.

As for global warming, there's so much dang stuff out there that it's hard to think anything at all, and given the long-term nature of it, it's not really something you can check on yourself. That's one I suppose we simply have to take the word of the majority of scientists on, which I have happily done. But when a scientific concept gains a religious-like loyalty, I worry that a lack of inquiry among the scientists themselves will result.

The New Republic has a current story lambasting the NYT for its soft stories on abortion. It's not pro-choice enough, having dared to discuss ideas like when fetuses feel pain. That gave me serious pause. I flipped out when my OBGYN wouldn't give anesthesia to my first son for his circumcision, claiming "they don't feel pain this young." Well, at the second son's birth 4 years later, Doc was offering anesthesia as an option, and I wondered what had changed. By the third son, it was no longer an option but routine, someone apparently having decided along the way that in fact babies feel lots of pain (which I knew from the post-trauma of my firstborn). I kid you not; if I discover that 18-week-old fetuses feel the kind of pain that we do, I cannot in good conscience accept that a woman is free to choose to pull him apart limb by limb.

I'm not saying I think this now; I'm saying that if the facts on the ground change, we have to adjust. Most "experts" say that the hallmark of intelligence is flexibility.

Are we flexible enough to go to YouTube and listen to McCain's actual words about wanting 100 more years of war and risk discovering that he didn't really say that at all or at least mean it in the way that it's often used against him?

I'm just asking.

And how about Iraq? I'm one of those who staunchly argued against the war, ravaged the politicians who caved for political expediency, read everything from then till now proving my case. Furthermore, I'm voting in Ohio on March 4 based on the prescient judgment of Barack Obama on that very issue.

But that is not connected in any way to what I think should happen now in Iraq. There was some tipping point--perhaps when Cindy Sheehan first made news or maybe when Murtha was big--that it became accepted that all liberals wanted the troops home yesterday.

What to do in Iraq now is an entirely separate issue from whether we should have invaded in the first place. Why does every media story relating to the nominees today accept that the Democrat's position should be get the troops home asap as though that follows directly from our having thought the original idea was immoral and the execution was flawed?

I don't know what I think should happen in Iraq; let me get that out there right now. I have thought for a long time that I'm not obligated to have a coherent plan, given my outrage at the thing to begin with. I do know that I worry about a complete and immediate withdrawal; I don't like the recent blaming of the Iraqis themselves (a favorite of Hillary I think)--they need to step up to the plate, blah, blah, blah--that just doesn't feel fair given that we've bombed their infrastructure, creating appalling living conditions and fragile security at best. Think Katrina aftermath. Should we have told them to just step up to the plate?

Jesus, I need to go to bed.

@richhein:

I'm totally with you that torture and a general relinquishment of civil liberties follow from the thinking Glenn describes.

My own frustration regarding THE torture hypothetical--that there's a bomb about to go off in Los Angeles in 45 minutes--comes from the fantastic nature of it. Antonin Scalia unbelievably used this cliche in his interview with the BBC last week--one would think a sitting SCJustice would be a little more rigorous--and lamely defended the "unlikely" nature of the scenario as reasonable justification on which to form public policy.

Let's recap the GIVENS of this famous scenario, shall we?

We know that there is a bomb in Los Angeles. We know that it will explode in 45 minutes. We happen to have in custody the very man who can make it stop. We happen to know which particular man in custody this is.

(Remember, all this is necessary for the hypothetical to work because--and this is so important to torture apologists--we would never torture anyone unless 1. we knew for certain the threat was immanent and 2. the torture was applied only to the source of relief of the threat.)

Back to the pure fantasy of the hypothetical:

If we know all that, we know where the frickin' bomb is.

corollary.