i thought we might get through a couple more election cycles before we heard again from a Bush, at least of Dubya's generation

Got my latest National Geographic yesterday and they discussed exactly that in an article about twins.

What was additionally interesting is that kdog (I think) and I riffed on this idea and wondered maybe genetics has something to do with religiosity.

Well, the Nat Geo article hit on that same idea as well, maybe they montitor us here at TL! ;-)

I guess the article also helps explain some of the rather heated responses the topic raised...

Over two decades 137 sets of twins eventually visited Bouchard's lab in what became known as the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. The twins were tested for mental skills, such as vocabulary, visual memory, arithmetic, and spatial rotation. They were given lung-function tests and heart exams and had their brain waves measured. They took personality tests and IQ tests and were quizzed about their sexual histories. Altogether, each twin was bombarded with more than 15,000 questions. "We threw the kitchen sink at them," Bou­chard says.

Armed with this mountain of data, Bouchard, Segal, and their colleagues set out to unravel some of the knottiest mysteries of human nature: Why are some people happy and others sad? Why are some outgoing and others shy? Where does general intelligence come from?

[...]

When they looked at the data on twins' intelligence, Bouchard's team reached a controversial conclusion: For people raised in the same culture with the same opportunities, differences in IQ reflected largely differences in inheritance rather than in training or education.

[...]

This ran counter to the prevailing belief of behaviorists that our brains were blank slates waiting to be inscribed by experience.

More alarming to some, the suggestion that intelligence was linked to heredity evoked the disgraced theories of the eugenics movements of the early 20th century in England and the United States, which had promoted improvement of the collective gene pool through selective breeding.

"The far-left groups on campus were trying to get me fired," Bouchard says.

The researchers also questioned how much parenting affects intelligence levels. When they compared identical twins raised in different families, like the Jim twins, with those raised in the same family, they found each pair's IQ scores to be similar. It was as if it didn't matter in which family the twins had been raised.

That didn't imply, Bouchard and his colleagues were quick to point out, that parents have no impact at all on their children.

[...]

Another study found that the strength of an individual's religious fervor was significantly shaped by heredity, though one's choice of affiliation--whether to become, say, a Methodist or a Roman Catholic--was not.

The report said that there was more focus on drilling and profits than on the need for preparedness and oversight. However, since the disaster there have been new safety procedures and the minerals and management service has been renamed and reorganized and its new leaders have vowed to protect the public and environment not the industry they are charged with regulating.

While acknowledging efforts, panelist Roger McCathy of McCarthy Engineering says the industry still treats BOP capabilities as proprietary secrets and they lack independent certification despite the Gulf disaster.  McCarthy says that you can't buy a circuit breaker that has not been independently certified and a BOP is a circuit breaker for the ocean.  

Prosecution witnesses also testified that a file allegedly deleted from one of Manning's work computers contained more than 100,000 State Department cables. And a May 2010 e-mail that was sent to an acquaintance -- and that Manning apparently thought he had encrypted -- said, "I was the source of the 12 July 07 video from the Apache weapons team which killed two journalists and injured two kids."

The steady disclosure of evidence was highly damaging, experts said, as prosecutors attempted to paint a picture of a leaker who knew he was breaking military rules.

"You add it up, add it up, and eventually it gives people something approaching a moral certainty" that Manning committed the crimes, said Eugene Fidell, a visiting lecturer in military justice at Yale Law School. "I would be surprised if the defense was sipping champagne this evening. Private Manning is in serious trouble."

SNIP

On this fourth day of the hearing, investigators said they recovered from one of Manning's work computers a deleted file containing four assessments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; a corrupted, deleted file containing 10,000 State Department cables that apparently was never sent to WikiLeaks; and a deleted file with more than 100,000 diplomatic cables that had been compressed for apparent ease of transfer.

The chats between Manning and Assange, whose user name was "pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de," were recovered from Manning's laptop, prosecutors said.

"The substance of the chat was predominantly discussion of government information and specifically sending or receiving that information," said Mark Johnson, a contract forensic examiner with the Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit. He said Assange and Manning discussed WikiLeaks and assessments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

He also said that Manning's laptop contained evidence that a secure file transfer connection had been set up between a Verizon Internet address registered to his aunt's home and a secure server associated with a Swedish Internet service provider known as PRQ, which has been affiliated with WikiLeaks.

Johnson said Manning's laptop password was the same as the one he used to log on to his secure work station in Baghdad: TWink1492!!

Investigators also recovered from Manning's laptop an instruction to "Acquire and Exfiltrate the Global Address List of United States Forces Iraq" and "thousands" of e-mail addresses for soldiers in Iraq, Johnson said.

He said Manning erased data from his laptop twice in January 2010, making it impossible for investigators to retrieve any information before that month.

Johnson examined an external hard drive belonging to Manning that had been in his quarters in Baghdad. It included a document titled "wl-press.txt" created on Nov. 30, 2009, around the time Manning is said to have initiated contact with WikiLeaks. That document included the message, which was projected on a courtroom screen:

"You can currently contact our investigations editor directly in Iceland at 354 862 3481, 24 hour service, ask for Julian Assange."