Tom Petri

As so often happens with Washington scandals, it isn't the original scandal that gets people in the most trouble - it's the attempted cover-up.

In big science, the role of the individual scientist must be carefully preserved. So is the one of original ideas and of contributions.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

I generally don't follow domestic news that much aside from how it relates to the stories I'm covering abroad, like what Americans think of the War in Afghanistan.