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From Rev. Moon's Washington Times:

A leading player in the Terri Schiavo debate is a Florida judge whose fame began five years ago when he ruled that no compelling evidence showed Mrs. Schiavo wanted to be kept alive.

Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, 63, has held firm on that ruling, despite a sea of death threats, angry e-mails, phone calls and criticisms from disability rights groups and others that he is biased in favor of Mrs. Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo.

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Breaking news! Scientific American has decided to give up science reporting and take a stab at, um, "real journalism":

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either—so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.

The rest is quite funny too.

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In blog-time, it's practically ancient history by now, but back last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report (pdf) on prewar intelligence failures over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The investigation, notably, focused mainly on the agencies responsible for the failures, without getting into thornier questions of administration involvement. At the time, I trawled through the report and noted that it didn't answer several still-glaring questions about administration pressure on various analysts and agencies to push the intelligence in a direction more congenial to Iraq hawks, or how the White House used the intelligence it received.

Those questions and others were supposed to be answered in a follow-up Senate report, conveniently scheduled to be released after the 2004 election, which would deal primarily with how the Bush administration used the intelligence it received. But now, as David Corn reports in the Nation, the Senate Intelligence Committee has decided to punt on that second report:

In mid-March, [Republican chairman of the intelligence committee Pat] Roberts declared further investigation pointless. He noted that if his committee asked Bush officials whether they had overstated or mischaracterized prewar intelligence, they'd simply claim their statements had been based on "bum intelligence." Roberts remarked, "To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a postelection environment--we didn't see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it."

Um, no, everybody does not "pretty well get it." There are two reasons why this second report is important. One, if the White House did in fact pressure agencies or distort intelligence on the march to war in Iraq, the public deserves to know about it. Period. But on a more practical note, inquiries like these help policymakers figure out exactly whether and how the lines of intelligence and decision-making are broken, so that they can be fixed.

Over the next four years the White House will need to prepare to deal with nuclear programs in both Iran and North Korea. Having good and proper intelligence on both countries—and being able to use that intelligence clearly and honestly—will be hugely important for setting the proper policy and persuading allies to sign aboard American strategy. Already there are signs that the White House has fudged intelligence on both North Korea and Iran, and the mistakes of the past, if not being exactly repeated, are certainly creating disturbing echoes. An investigation into how and why this is happening is not, whatever Pat Roberts might think, a trivial matter.

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In a sign that the financial markets are starting to take climate change seriously, investors are now demanding to know how the energy industry plans to react to impending CO2 emission regulations, and how those reactions will affect their bottom lines, according to the Wall Street Journal. This year, shareholder groups have put out 31 resolutions at 20 different energy companies asking the firms to divulge their internal deliberations on the matter. Six of those companies, including Chevron-Texaco, have already persuaded shareholders to drop their resolutions in exchange for promises to address climate change directly.

This month, moreover, the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that ExxonMobil Corporation—the world's largest publicly-held company—is obligated to provide its shareholders with explanations of its position on global warming, as well as its plans to meet Kyoto Protocol emissions cuts at its overseas facilities. The ruling is unique in that it demands the company reveal details of how its management uses scientific data to formulate climate change policies. Over the years, Exxon has repeatedly and publicly regarded the science of climate change as "inconclusive", a stance it has used to justify its resistance both to curtailing emissions and investing in alternative and renewable energy sources.

In light of the fact that other companies have begun to pursue voluntary emissions-reduction programs, the resolution against Exxon-Mobil asks that the company's board of directors estimate the difference in costs between immediate, voluntary action and the potential cost of new regulations, should they be enacted in the future. The assumption here is that if it's cheaper to begin reducing emissions voluntarily, it would be financially irresponsible for the company not to do so.

This is all an early sign that the Kyoto Protocol, which has been criticized as weak and ineffective, is already starting to influence industry behavior. Still, many believe that the industry response will be slow, and Exxon's past behavior, which also includes financial support for a new action plan (PDF) aimed at debunking the science of climate change, should continue to receive increased scrutiny.

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