The Bush administration long ago secured a special place in history...

New York Times
February 9, 2006
Editorial
Censoring Truth

The Bush administration long ago secured a special place in history for
the audacity with which it manipulates science to suit its political
ends. But it set a new standard of cynicism when it allowed NASA's
leading authority on global warming to be mugged by a 24-year-old
presidential appointee who, quite apart from having no training on that
issue, had inflated his résumé.

In early December, James Hansen, the space agency's top climate
specialist, called for accelerated efforts to reduce industrial
emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming.
After his speech, he told Andrew C. Revkin of The Times, he was
threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for
aggressive action.

This was not the first time Dr. Hansen had been rebuked by the Bush
team, which has spent the better part of five years avoiding the issue
of global warming. It was merely one piece of a larger pattern of
deception and denial.

The administration has sought to influence the policy debate by
muzzling the people who disagree with it or - as was the case with
two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and
2003 - editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.

In this case, the censor was George Deutsch, a functionary in NASA's
public affairs office whose chief credential appears to have been his
service with President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural
committee. On his résumé, Mr. Deutsch claimed a 2003 bachelor's
degree in journalism from Texas A&M, but the university, alerted by a
blogger, said that was not true. Mr. Deutsch has now resigned.

The shocker was not NASA's failure to vet Mr. Deutsch's credentials,
but that this young politico with no qualifications was able to impose
his ideology on other agency employees. At one point, he told a Web
designer to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang.

As Dr. Hansen observed, Mr. Deutsch was only a "bit player" in the
administration's dishonest game of politicizing science on issues like
warming, birth control, forest policy and clean air. This from a
president who promised in his State of the Union address to improve
American competitiveness by spending more on science.

The NY Slimes. Now there's an unbiased source.

I agree. The way they let right-wing hack Judy Miller, clearly in bed with
this Administration, write all those bull**** articles about WMDs in the
lead-up to the war was disgraceful.

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oups.com...
The NY Slimes. Now there's an unbiased source.