Romney: Professor backwards, sideways and forward

Funny how older news keeps turning up as newer news in a presidential campaign.  I refer to a report on Mitt Romney's  somersaults over abortion that was wickedly documented in a report by William Saletan  first published in Slate Magazine on  Feb.22. It's not that we weren't aware that Romney had a revolving  position on abortion for every occasion.  Rather, Saletan tracked it for 20 years with video clips that showed up on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program last night - a startling indictment of a candidate who manuevered through  campaigns for governor, the U.S. Senate and now his second presidential effort.  With so much on film it will be difficult for anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt today that he is what he says  he is on abortion, whatever that is.

Here's how Saletan summarizes his investigative report that you can read on-line:

"When you see the story in its full context, three things become clear.  First, this was no flip-flop.  Romney is a man with many facets, groping his way through a series of fluid positions on an array of difficult issues.  His journey isn't complete.  It never will be.  Second, for  Romney, abortion was never really a policy question.  He didn't want to change the law.  What he wanted to change was his identity. And third, the malleability of Romney's core is as much about his past as about his future.  Again and again, he struggled to make sense not just of what he should do, but of who he has been.  The problem with Romney isn't that he keeps changing  his mind.  The problem is that he keeps changing his story."

As I mentioned at the start , there can be no denial that he's been all over the lot on abortion.    It's all on video and audio, folks.  In his voice.

The anti-science conservatives increase in number

YOU REALLY DON'T have to be a rocket scientist nor a neurosurgeon to know why political conservatives are assailing global warming as a phony threat to civilization. The opponents are down on science despite scientific research that tells us the planet is getting warmer, ice caps are thawing and ocean levels are rising. We see some of these changes with our own eyes.

Not good enough , say those people who are in denial against the warm warriors. Why? Because scientists are behind the crazy notion and who can entrust scientists to know anything about anything, for God's sake. Against evidence to the contrary, these same naysayers insisted that a curve ball doesn't...well, curve, because they were never asked to hit one. Or maybe they heard a damning reference to it on Fox News. Or from their preacher. Or Republican county chairman.

A study published in American Sociological Review, which reached me via Slate Magazine, confirms that opposition to science is rising dramatically among conservatives. Sociologist Gordon Gauchat of the University of North Carolina, who led the study, reports that only 35 pct. of conservatives have a "great deal" of trust in science, well below the 63 pct. who trusted it in the mid-1970s.

His explanation in U.S. News:

"Science has become autonomous with government - it develops knowledge that helps regulate policy, and in the case of the EPA, it develops policy. Science is charged with what religion used to be charged with - answering questions about who we are and what we came from, what the world is about. We're using it in American society to weigh in on political debates, and people are coming down on a specific side."

In other words, conservatives like McRick Santorum and his legions of conservative supporters are telling us that you can't believe both science and religion. A fellow named

Galileo could have vouched for something like that.