I don't know if it's the best system, but it's what we have. The entire political structure of the United States is based on federalism, in which the states are the sovereign entities, giving only limited authority to the national government. Additionally, many of the states outside the original 13 were set up during a time when travel was arduous, even dangerous, and communication wasn't always reliable. Thus, they devolved much of the authority to the local level. This system has become very creaky and should probably be redesigned from the ground up. But since it would affect too many elected officials (and their brothers-in-law, cousins, etc.), it is unlikely to happen. A legislator in Kansas, for instance, has proposed consolidating that state's 100+ counties into less than 25. This would make sense, since many of those counties have less than 5,000 residents. But, since those counties employ such a large fraction of those residents, consolidation is not happening (last I heard).

As I Denver resident who has sort of followed this, I can say that when the red light cameras were installed, someone pointed out that the yellow lights should be timed properly. Apparently, Denver yellows, even before the cameras were installed, were not always long enough per Federal Highway Administration standards. The timing was increased to the standard, at least at those intersections where the cameras were put in.

How about this... The human species has often viewed itself as occupying a privileged position in the universe. Earth, for instance, was often viewed as the center of the universe. Then, the heliocentric model was found to do a better job of explaining planetary motion. Later, it was found that the solar system occupies an undisinguished position in an undistinguished galaxy. Now, we are finding that planets are a dime-a-dozen. Discoveries like this one indicated that habitable worlds may not, in fact, be rare. Thus, the idea that our existence implies that the universe was created for us becomes less and less likely. I would argue that the question of whether humans occupy a privileged position in the universe does affect the decision making of many people.

If you google around, you'll find stuff from Torbjorn Larrson (he's a Swedish ecologist, apparently) criticizing the data analysis in the original papers. He doesn't think they meet good statistical criteria.

Ruse is apparently a philosopher who is an evolutionist but has shown sympathy to creationists. Or something. Got him a warning card from the Dawkins crown, anyway.

As another commenter here has noted, it's being published in a very high-profile journal. It may be contentious, but that doesn't mean it's pseudoscience. It may turn out to be wrong, but that alone doesn't make it pseudoscience. And conspirationism? Does he believe Melott is looking for conspiracy theories? Or merely drawing an analogy to the various types of data manipulation that conspiracy hunters use to "prove" their theories. I guess the latter, but it is something of a stretch. Rather than Torbjorn Larrson's debunking, it's probably better just to go to the Alroy paper he cites. Alroy doesn't find a statistically significant peak in the frequency spectrum at a period of 27 My. I'd call this a scientific controversy rather than "pseudoscience". Sensationalist is probably a fair assessment, as it's the sort of thing that gets notice in places like Slashdot. But it is being published in a respectable journal, which means it passed at least the smell test of some reviewers.

Peer-review does not guarantee accuracy. In areas of evolving science, many papers are published in good journals whose conclusions are later determined to be in error. Some journals (I don't know if MNAS is one) are particularly willing to publish papers with novel or contentious conclusions in order to further debate on the matter.

I think the key phrase there is "philosopher of biology" (quotes in original). I don't think the author of the comment thinks much of philosophers in general. And a little google will show you that Michael Ruse is quite controversial among evolutionists. Personal attacks have been part of the evolution-creationism debate since the beginning. But to dismiss an argument because the author made a mild (for these debates) personal attack in a parenthetical is not playing by the rules of logic, either.