Not a bad day at the polls. Despite Ken Mehlman’s attempt to spin them off, the two Democratic gubernatorial wins do seem like a rebuke to the Bushites, especially Virginia, where Bush made a last-minute campaign stop. Kilgore might have been thinking of that as the kiss of death when he woke up a loser this morning.

Perhaps more enjoyable was that the pro-‘Intelligent’ Design Dover, PA school board was roundly turned out of office. (CBS News) And I was very entertained watching all the Schwarzenegger ballot initiatives getting shot down. I share Rafe Coburn‘s disappointment, however, that the ballot question in support of taking legislative redistricting out of the hands of the politicians was rejected, notwithstanding the fact that Democrats opposed it. In my book, gerrymandering is a central challenge to the claim that the U.S. is a democratic state at all, and it has reached epic proportions.

Should all right-minded liberals give generously to the Scooter Libby Defense Fund? Perhaps a vigorous and spirited defense of Libby might go after the real culprits for whom he might have no love lost after being compelled to take the fall? (New York Times )

And:

“Even if the vice president himself is not indicted, imagine the questions he might be asked, under oath, in Libby’s case.” — Sidney Blumenthal (Salon)

Since this advocacy is a searing indictment of the Bush administration’s fiddling-while-Rome-burns, the IRS had better investigate pulling these evangelicals’ tax-exempt status!

If the Guardian‘s rendition is accurate, this sounds absurd. The inventor, after all, is a “Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at (M.I.T.)…” (“I’m not a physicist, I just play one for the venture capitalists…”) The fact that his ‘hydrino’ violates basic tenets about the alllowable quantum states of electrons sugggests to Mills that quantum theory must be wrong. Although I would not think this would find many advocates, Mills claims to have independent confirmation of his theory and the invective is flying. What fun; I think we have just seen the beginnings of a monumental pissing contest between supporters and detractors in the physics community.

Of course the investors Mills claims to have interested are a different matter — all weighing in on just one side of the controversy. Money certainly shapes wishful thinking in the oddest, most tortured ways. I predict those who supported Mills’ claims are going to be massively chagrined people one day in the not too far distant future… and with far less in their bank accounts than otherwise.

“All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena risks losing its tax-exempt status because of a former rector’s remarks in 2004.” First of all, this takes outrageous and egregious license with the tax regulations prohibiting tax-exempt organizations’ advocacy for particular candidates or involvement in political campaigns. The sermon, just before the 2004 election, told no parishioner whom to vote for but clearly asserted that opposition to the war in Iraq was a Christian value that Jesus would have espoused. Second, of course, the church is singled out from among the multitudes in which antiwar sentiments are preached, perhaps because the sermon received conspicuous coverage in the Los Angeles Times at the time? Finally, I daresay that the IRS has not gone after the tax-exempt status of the myriad fundamentalist, evangelical and other conservative churches which have far fewer compunctions against direct solicitation of their congregants’ votes for Bush than liberal churches have against soliciting votes for his opponents. (Los Angeles )Times

‘Surprising’ results of a survey presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Chest Physicians this week in Montreal indicate that there is a widespread misconception that nicotine causes cancer and that this interferes with efforts to stop smoking.

The investigator asserts that switching to “light” cigarettes on the basis of the belief that it will lower nicotine intake and thus reduce cancer risk is specious reasoning, since the carcinogens and other toxins are in the cigarette smoke and not the nicotine. But I don’t get it; it seems to me smokers switching to “light” cigarettes are doing the right thing even if it is for the wrong reason. Despite the mistaken belief that “light” means low-nicotine, doesn’t it indicate low tar and thus less carcinogens? Or is that just a marketing ploy without scientific basis?

In any case, the current study authors point out a more pertinent problem with the mistaken belief that it is the nicotine that causes cancer risk — smokers trying to quit will not use the nicotine patch. And it occurs to me that there is yet another reason why smoking “light” cigarettes would probably backfire. In the psychology of addiction, the belief that you have switched to a more benign product paradoxically encourages increased consumption, often to an extent that more than counteracts the risk reduction of having switched. This happens with food (“It’s ‘lo-cal’, I can have a little bit more…”) and alcohol (“I don’t drink the hard stuff anymore, just beer, so I’m okay…”) as well.

[thanks, Marla]