One sign that the fading Bush administration knows that they’ve been on the wrong side of reality is that they’re now busy scrubbing the archives, trying to change what was said in the past. Chris Mooney catches a blatant attempt to rewrite the administration’s history on global warming.

Man, the GW Bush Presidential Library is going to be a real work of art, isn’t it? Maybe it should be called a “propaganda archive” rather than a “library”.

If this is true—that the Edwards campaign has caved to pressure from the right wing—he has lost my vote.

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps — John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan “anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

I’ll want to see some confirmation from the targets of this rumor first, but if it’s true that Edwards would rather heed the screams of right-wing sleazebags like Michelle Malkin and Bill Donohue than the people he’s supposed to represent, then he has lost. We don’t need another timid Democratic candidate who flits away at every gust of noise from the Republican slander machine.

Zuzu says more, much more. Jebus, but I’m tired of craven Democrats.

Alan Sokal—who has a history of criticizing the irrational Left—and Chris Mooney—who has come down hard on the anti-science Right—have teamed up to write an op-ed that makes suggestions to keep both sides from falling into the same trap again.

I think the root cause of the problem is that we have a democracy in which education is an insufficiently high priority, and either party can succumb to the temptation of going for votes by appealing to the most uneducated segment of the electorate. The Republican party has thrived in the past by going the other way, and building its base in the wealthy elite (which, unfortunately, has no certainty of being coupled to reason and education); they’ve long since learned that religion is a handy bridge to get votes from the most irrational side of the population, and have ridden the crazy train to power.

Democrats have long been populists, but I suspect that the focus on labor has at least grounded the party in practical concerns. That focus is fading away fast, and I worry that in an attempt to rebuild a solid majority they are also going to cast a covetous eye on the religious masses (hence my reluctance to support Barack Obama) and get there in the wrong way.

Sokal and Mooney propose some top-down safeguards against the further encroachment of anti-science bias into government. These are good ideas.

To address this new crisis over the relationship between science and politics, we propose a combination of political activism and institutional reform. Congress needs to establish safeguards to protect the integrity of scientific information in Washington — strong whistle-blower protections for scientists who work in government agencies would be a good start.

We also need a strengthening of the government scientific advisory apparatus, starting with the revival of the Office of Technology Assessment. And we need congressional committees to continue with their investigations of cases of science abuse within the Bush administration, in order to learn what other reforms are necessary.

At the same time, journalists and citizens must renounce a lazy “on the one hand, on the other hand” approach and start analyzing critically the quality of the evidence. For, in the end, all of us — conservative or liberal, believer or atheist — must share the same real world. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not spare deniers of evolution, and global climate change will not spare any of us. As physicist Richard Feynman wrote in connection with the space shuttle Challenger disaster, “nature cannot be fooled.”

To avoid nature’s punishment, we must take steps now to restore reality-based government.

I’d just add that we also need more bottom-up preventive measures: more education. I want a reality-based government, and the best way to get there is to increase the pool of reality-based voters.

When will the Democrats learn? We are in an unpopular and failed war, and what a successful presidential candidate has to do is openly and uncompromisingly slam this unjust travesty and the incompetents who initiated it, yet Clinton and Edwards are enabling war fever, if not directly feeding it. Face it, war with Iran is off the table. It is not an option, unless we want to ruin our military and our economy; and the nuclear option is evil and unconscionable, and would utterly destroy our fast-fading moral standing. I wish we had a candidate who would just come out and say that.

I hate to say it, but Barack Obama seems to be one of the rare candidates thinking about doing something against the war. He could still win me over, especially if he continues to make specific proposals like that, but I’m still worried that any presidential race with him in it would turn into a “Who’s Holier?” piety contest, and we simply do not need more religiosity in American politics.

I might be willing to overlook that (for now) if we can just get a candidate who shows some real awareness and concern about policy, is unambiguously against war and torture, doesn’t use the prospect of terrorism to terrify the populace, and is pro-science and pro-education. An anti-George W. Bush, in other words.

Since I mentioned my fondness for Jane Fonda the other day, I think I have to respond to this insane wingnut rant I found via Atrios:

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.

It’s time to stand tall, speak loudly and defend America against these enemies like Hanoi Jane.

She’s back. Are we going to let her get away with it….again????

Atrios rightly points out that this so-called patriot is hoping for another terrorist attack so he can have an excuse to silence the left, but I also have to point out that Jane Fonda was exactly correct on the Vietnam War; we should not have been there, we shouldn’t have thrown away tens of thousands of American lives in that futile, destructive effort. Our wingnut friend is doubly wrong in both hoping for more terror and in rejecting the valid anti-war message of the left.

I’ll also mention that one of my colleagues at UMM has linked to some wonderful photos of a memorial to the Iraq war dead at my alma mater, the University of Oregon. I suspect the hysteria of the right is due to the galling tendency of the left to constantly point out how terribly, tragically wrong the jingo-chanting war mongers have been. Why is Mike Gallagher “driven to the bathroom, becoming violently ill, over something [Jane Fonda] said”? It’s not because of what Fonda has said, but because of the horrors he has supported.