It is bad enough when unqualified pundits offer dumb opinions about science, but bad legislation can cause real damage. The COVID pandemic has given rise to some real legislative doozies from politicians at both the state and federal levels.

I've written, for example, about a proposed Idaho bill that would make it a misdemeanor to "provide or administer a vaccine developed using messenger ribonucleic acid [mRNA] technology for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state." As bizarre as it seems, administering an FDA- or USDA-approved vaccine to prevent a potentially lethal disease would be a crime.

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It is bad enough when unqualified pundits offer foolish opinions about science, but bad legislation can cause real damage. The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to some real legislative doozies from politicians at both the state and federal levels.

I've written, for example, about a proposed Idaho bill that would make it a misdemeanor to "provide or administer a vaccine developed using messenger ribonucleic acid technology for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state." As bizarre as it seems, administering a vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration or Department of Agriculture to prevent a possibly lethal disease would be a crime.

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Protection from attacking threats is a constant game of measure and countermeasure that has been going on for millennia. Its technological sophistication ratcheted up during World War I, when tanks were first deployed as a means of breaking the stalemate of trench warfare and the futility of massed infantry attacks. Those early tanks had to protect mainly against machine gun bullets and artillery-shell fragments, so less than a half-inch of steel armor protection was sufficient.

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James Freeman's "San Francisco Cleans Up for Xi. Why Not for Thee?" (Best of the Web, Nov. 13) poses the question of whether, after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, San Francisco can seize the "opportunity to reset the narrative on a city that has become a national punchline." The answer is evident from the details of preparation for the event, and here's the real punchline: In the area of the summit, the city has created what is, in effect, a small Potemkin village.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

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