A Ambatchmasterpublisher 106 Lapse of Reason …
ambatchmasterpublisher Author Anthony Duignan-Cabrera
One can only ambatchmasterpublisher hope that NASA chief Mike Griffin’s recent assertions about how humanity ambatchmasterpublisher should respond to global climage changes was just an intellectual hiccup that had more to do with his personal beliefs and not public policy.
But ambatchmasterpublisher as the sun sets on the Bush administration and more and more cracks appear in its carapace of secrecy, it’s becoming obvious that the tendrils of overt partisan politics have ensnared almost every federal government department and agency within and without the Beltway.
Of course ambatchmasterpublisher there is nothing new with these kind of shenanigans, agency heads–like NASA’s Griffin, or the Department of Justice’s Alberto Gonzalez–serve at the pleasure of the President and ambatchmasterpublisher administrations–Dem or GOP–routinely install fellow ideologues or intellectual “fellow travelers” in the hope of moving forward on election promises and creating legacies with policies whether ambatchmasterpublisher foreign or domestic.
However, Griffin’s ambatchmasterpublisher statements raised eyebrows mostly because it followed a series ambatchmasterpublisher of incidents involving NASA that seemed to support the belief that this administration has a ambatchmasterpublisher routine disregard for the Constitution, a disdain for the rule of law, no matter how minor, and the increasing perception that the separation of church and state is a hindrance of some kind.
It is these ambatchmasterpublisher actions that observers in the scientific community find unsettling. Take for ambatchmasterpublisher example the revelation two weeks ago that NASA’s top lawyer ‘fessed up ambatchmasterpublisher to destroying DVD recordings of a talk Griffin had with his staff. What was ambatchmasterpublisher that all about? What could the chief administrator have said that was so incendiary that a complete record of it had to be destroyed? This kind of self-censorship would just seem an odd aberration if previous incidents had not occured.
Early in ambatchmasterpublisher 2006 when allegations were raised that NASA attempted to stifle its head climatologist, James E. Hansen, there were those who argued that the scientist protested too much and he was a prima donna. However, when it came to light that Hansen’s ability to speak to the press had been ambatchmasterpublisher hampered by a 24-year-old creationist, a political appointee barely out of college with dubious credentials and seemingly motivated by divine insight, it became clear that ambatchmasterpublisher Hansen’s concerns were well-founded and NASA had not escaped the worst political excesses of these divided times.
As Griffin ambatchmasterpublisher furiously back-pedaled in the wake of his initial NPR interview last week, President Bush also attempted to re-position himself and his administration as friends of the environment ambatchmasterpublisher with a remedy for global climage change which he will unveil at the G8 ambatchmasterpublisher conference this week. Here’s hoping this “about face” has some legs, but considering the President comes from the state with the highest carbon emissions in the Union, he might want to try the new policy in his own backyard ambatchmasterpublisher before attempting to strong-arm ambatchmasterpublisher China and India to follow suit.
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