Good News Overload

I've gotten so used to depressing news, I'm not sure I can stand it. They're gonna find me slumped over at my desk with big-ass smile on my face. Dead at 29 from acute optimism.

Item 1: Nature Magazine is reporting that Pope Benedict the whatever-th will come out against intelligent design, following meetings with a philosopher, a Jesuit priest and a molecular biologist at his annual retreat. (Link is subscription only, unless you're on a university network.) The proceedings will be published later this year. According to the article:

...discussions at the meeting suggest that the Church will probably affirm a form of theistic evolution, which posits the general principle that biological evolution is valid, although set in motion by God. At the same time, it seems likely to reject the fundamental intelligent-design principle that God was a watchmaker, intervening in the details. "Intelligent design as an intervention of God during evolution will not be an outcome," predicts Schuster [The above-mentioned molecular biologist, and also the president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences]. "I got the impression that there was general agreement that evolutionary biology is a undeniable science and not a hypothesis."

Item 2: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has postponed the vote on Bolton's nomination to the UN. Richard Lugar, a Republican Senator from Indiana (Grrrrr) has not said why the vote was postponed, but you don't have to read too far between the lines. In fact, it's so easy, I'll do it for you: (From the Reuters article)

Given Democratic opposition to Bolton's nomination, all Republicans on the committee would have to back him in order to send his name to the Senate with a full endorsement. Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is locked in a tight re-election bid, has not publicly said how he would vote.

Wow, fascism sure is hard when rubber-stamping the president becomes a political liability!

via Kos and Atrios, a.k.a. 'The Big Dogs'.

Isn't that nice? That's what it feels like when every day doesn't bring a fresh excursion into the depths of bowel-twisting dispair!