Few people understand this yet, but there is a thread tieing together most public issues in our time.

That thread is science, the issue represented best by comedian Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Thus the headline.

This Administration, and its acolytes, oppose science. But science is our only hope for solving real problems. As a result America's competitiveness is disappearing.

• In the Schiavo case, Bush is ignoring the science showing the death of the brain is the real death, not the beating of a heart.
  
• In the case of Alaskan Oil, Bush is ignoring both the sciences of global warming and of hydrogen replacement.
  
• This Administration favors the ignorance of "intelligent design" over the science of evolution.
  
• The isolation of scientists from political decision-making guarantees ignorant decisions.
  

It is becoming increasingly difficult for this Administration's supporters to point to an issue, or a decision, or a controversy, where their side supports real science. Instead, science itself is increasingly politicized.

The idea that science is under direct attack remains inchoate in the American electorate. Despite repeated political calls by real scientists for more science education, and a greater use of science in decision-making, those involved in technology remain reluctant to brand George W. Bush their enemy.

It will take some specific, defining issue to cause that break. But it is coming. Democrats can move that day forward by campaigning affirmatively for more science funding, more science teaching, and more real science in the schools, in the media, in the culture, and in society. They can also do so by opposing ignorance within their own ranks.

Such a campaign would give Democrats an affirmative issue, it would generate explosive opposition, and I think it would cause the issue to coalesce more quickly.

But quickly or slowly, I think this is where politics is going.