President Bush is playing Whack-a-Mole with scientific reports that he doesn't like:
Uncomfortable facts about global warming pop up in an environmental report card. Whack!
Yellowstone National Park staffers tell a world treasures watchdog that the park is in trouble. Whack!
The Environmental Protection Agency discovers a senator's clean air bill is more effective than the President's. Whack!
But the moles are popping up faster than the Bush team can beat them back. Information is leaking out. A pattern of deception is emerging.
Despite their constant talk about "sound science," Bush administration officials keep manipulating or suppressing scientific information for political reasons. This censorship limits the ability of Congress and the American people to make informed public-policy choices. It needs to stop.
The latest flap involves the EPA's withholding of a key comparison of air pollution bills. EPA is acting as little more than the White House's propaganda puppet, churning out Clear Skies press releases. Before debating power-plant cleanup, the Senate will need to turn elsewhere for factual analysis of pending bills.
Two weeks ago, the EPA had to omit the entire global-warming section from its "Draft Report on the Environment," a 30-year statistical snapshot of the U.S. environment, after the administration tried to replace solid findings with "pabulum," according to outgoing EPA administrator Christie Whitman. As a partial substitute, the White House wanted to insert a reference to a study partly financed by the petroleum industry. Whitman rightly said no. But the administration has edited global warming out of numerous other reports. That's ignorant.
President Bush talks a good deal about "sound science." Apparently, his definition of the term is: science that supports his political agenda.
It seems like hot stuff, only because the rest of the SCLM is so lazy and flaccid.
Go Inky!
NOTE: We saw the same thing in Iraq, where the Bush malAdministration removed people with technical qualifications in favor of Self-Identified Christian activists who didn't know the country or the language. Whack!