A politician who proposes politicizing a jury would rightly be pilloried by the court of public opinion and should never hold political office again. And yet the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, has been proposing to do this to scientists.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House Science Committee on Tuesday defended his controversial draft legislation that would subject the National Scie...

It's shocking to me that the Mitt Romney campaign is now lurching around, daily trotting out new "studies" and "solutions" to their tax plan's math problem -- "we'll broaden the base (but can't say how)"... "we'll cap deductions at $17,000"... "whoops... that doesn't work... we'll cap them at $25,000." The Romney team clearly threw out their tax plan -- 20 percent cuts across the board -- without any of the requisite spade work to see if it actually made sense. And now that real studies are challenging it, they're veering from "just trust us" to setting the evidentiary bar down so low that anything with numbers on it can clear it. Not surprising, given the beating the facts have taken in this election cycle, but not so good for democracy, not to mention the truth.

Since when we have ever required judges to disclose the details of the personal lives in such a manner? On what basis does one's sexual orientation affect his or her ability to determine the legality of matters?