Celebrating Lincoln and Darwin Day

I rather like how this Feb. 12 "Our View" turned out ...

As a prime example of the aberrant synchronicities that punctuate our otherwise chaotic universe, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin shared a birthday 200 (or 10-score and zero) years ago today. For the past few months, this random conjunction of two 19th-century Aquariuses has had many 21st century pundits and public intellectuals sparring over which man had the more profound impact on the world as we now know it:

• The politician or the scientist?

• The emancipator of slaves or the observer of evolutionary processes?

• The man who saved the union or the man who shook faith itself to the core?

Adam Gopnik, in his new book, "Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life," clearly favors Darwin in this political-scientific smackdown -- calling Darwin a "world maker" because of the far-reaching consequences of his legacy. And we, in agreement with President Obama's Inauguration Day call to "restore science to its rightful place," don't mind admitting that the legacy of America's greatest president plays second fiddle to that of the British author of "Origin of the Species" -- a book that turns 150 this year.

But that slight qualification doesn't take away from how much our current leaders could stand to learn from the example of our 16th U.S. president. The man contemporaries once dismissed as a "first-rate second-rate man," now gets hailed as America's greatest leader. As pragmatic politician, Lincoln sought to have his fellow citizens substitute dispassionate reason and obedience to the law for the zeal and "culture of honor" violence that too often defined mid-19th-century politics. And as a martyred leader, one we remember more for his poetic outbursts than for his complex legal arguments, Lincoln managed to surpass the cultural limitations of his day and to help move America closer toward that "more perfect union."

As Henry Louis Gates Jr. recently wrote in answer to the question, "Was Lincoln a racist?":

"He certainly embraced anti-black attitudes and phobias in his early years and throughout his debates with Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Senate race (the seat that would become Barack Obama's), which he lost. By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was on an upward arc, perhaps heading toward becoming the man he has since been mythologized as being: the Great Emancipator, the man who freed -- and loved -- the slaves. But his journey was certainly not complete on the day that he died. Abraham Lincoln wrestled with race until the end. And ... his struggle ultimately made him a more interesting and noble man than the mythical hero we have come to revere" (www.theroot.com).

Lincoln's complicated legacy isn't one for the angels, but it is one for the ages.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley is right on waste, wrong on science

Here's a draft of the Press-Citizen Editorial Board's "Our View" for Monday:

We’re pleased that Sen. Charles Grassley represents Iowa so well when it comes to ferreting out misuses of tax-exempt status.

When Grassley questions how university athletics departments give out luxury box tickets in exchange for large “donations,” and when he begins scrutinizing televangelists for how they use the millions they rake in, he brings his Iowa common sense to bear on potential tax abuses. (It almost lets us forgive his attempts to secure a nearly $50 million earmark grant for the failed rain forest project.)

And we want Grassley to speak out when he discovers such an egregious example of government waste as one senior staff member of the National Science Foundation spending as much as 20 percent of his time during a two-year period at lurid Web sites and in sexually explicit chat rooms. According to a semiannual report that described numerous investigations into the misuse of the Internet by foundation employees, that time cost taxpayers more than $40,000. Other employees were alleged to have watched, downloaded and e-mailed porn over years.

We’re glad that Iowa’s senior senator takes his watch-dog responsibilities so seriously that he sent a letter to the NSF’s Office of Inspector General asking for all the documents it has related to the inappropriate use of the foundation’s network. Grassley understands that sometimes these abuses are so widespread that there needs to be an investigation into “the culture of an organization where this occurs.”

But Grassley goes too far when, in interview with the Associated Press Thursday, he called on Congress to reconsider the $3 billion in funding to the NSF that’s included in the current stimulus bill. He wants Congress to wait on the funding until his questions are answered.

Because the NSF provides about 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by the nation’s colleges and universities, it hardly seems appropriate for Grassley to try to hold up funding for researchers throughout the nation because of the bad Internet habits of foundation employees.

And it hardly seems a productive way to “restore science to its rightful place,” as President Obama said in his inaugural address.

Besides, spokesman Jeff Nesbit said the foundation is cooperating and already has taken steps to address the inspector general’s report. Several employees have been disciplined and at least three staffers were fired because of their inappropriate use of the Internet.

“NSF immediately implemented additional IT systems controls to focus in particular on enforcement of the foundation’s long-standing policy prohibiting the use of its IT systems to access sexually explicit, gambling and other inappropriate Web sites,’’ Nesbit said in a written statement.

Any employees found to have broken this policy — especially as blatantly as the report alleges — should be fired. But the broader cultural change we’d like to see involves the entire federal government, not just the NSF. It’s time to ensure that the government’s stances on topics ranging from abstinence-only education to stem-cell research are based on scientific rigor rather than on pre-determined ideology — as they were during the Bush administration.

If “science is restored to its rightful place,” then maybe those in charge of allocating scientific funding would recognize that they have much more important things to do with their time than watch Internet porn.