Q&A: Bart Gordon
The incoming chair of the House Committee on Science sets out his stall.
US election: Showdown for Capitol Hill
Can science influence politics in the forthcoming US elections? Nature investigates how Democrats and Republicans are striving to win the hearts of voters.Mid-term squallThe stakes are high for November's mid-term congressional elections: the Democrats need to gain just six seats in the Senate and fifteen in the House to claim majorities. For President George W. Bush, it could mean the difference between a reinvigorated presidency or an unproductive lame-duck period. In a hard-fought election, both parties are occasionally and uncharacteristically turning to science to try to sway voters. The recent presidential veto against embryonic stem-cell research has provided fodder for Republicans and Democrats alike to try to distinguish their candidates. And candidates in three states are challenging incumbents largely on scientific issues — climate change, stem cells and (California, inevitably) on clean energy. A News Feature special this week looks at how scientific issues are playing in the campaign.
Carnival of Shame: Doctorow and the Rosenbergs
“Literature can turn language, for the moment at least, against the sentence of death.” Considering the national and international furor provoked by the sensational early 1950's “atom spy” trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, one may be surprised that these dramatic and traumatic events have not inspired more literary artistry than they have. But a prominent playwright, Arthur Miller, did write The Crucible (produced in 1953) in part as a response to the rabid McCarthyism of that era, and two highly regarded novelists in a later decade composed ambitious novels drawing directly on the Rosenberg affair: E. L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover in The Public Burning (1977). In 1987, Sidney Lumet produced the little noticed film Daniel, based on Doctorow's novel, and still more recently Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels in America, with Ethel Rosenberg as one of the characters, has been playing on Broadway.