Scientists want research grants, more published papers, and to be listened to by the general public. Bureaucrats want a bigger department and more clout. Politicians want a crisis - any crisis - so they can ride to power with a "solution".

Principals have be to able to fire teachers, or you can't run an effective school.

Some idealists suggest that election campaigns be paid for by the Treasury -- taxpayers would pay for campaigns intended to elect people we don't like. In fact, we DO have public campaign funding but nobody wants to admit it.

Sure, global warming seems unlikely; but if it's true, it's so awful, shouldn't we take action just in case?

A president is supposed to be emotionally stable, not a weeping willow.

The ocean levels are not going to rise by 20 feet by 2100. According to the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, it's more like a single foot, or maybe 18 inches.

Government proposals to fix global warming won't work, at great expense.

Out of every million pounds of atmosphere... we are adding 6 pounds of carbon. That's .0006%.

One of the supreme ironies of our time is that a religiously-motivated US president went to war in the name of God to set up a non-religious state in Iraq to protect Americans against a highly religious movement known as Al Qaeda.

The planet Mars is getting warmer too. As far as we can tell from SEC filings, neither Exxon nor Halliburton have significant operations on that planet; nor does it fall under the authority of the Bush administration.