Administration Officials Brace for Departures:
Important Bush Administration officials are ready to leave the government rather than undergo two years of hell from Democratic committee chairmen in Congress. Leading the exodus are officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fearing investigation by two chairmen, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI).
Apparently they really believed all the noise about creating a permanent Republican majority, and acted as if there would never be a demand for accountability. So the poor babies are doing what they always do, dump the consequences of their plans, the short-term gains at long-term costs, on the next slob. Alas for the President, he will be stuck with the consequences for two years, and forever in the history books.
Snark aside, there's a lot of oversight to be done. Between the abuses cataloged in Chris Mooney's book and right here at TfK, there's a lot of catching up to do, plus a whole lot of new abuses that will undoubtedly come to light when new appointees start opening file folders full of evidence of abuses.
It'll be an interesting few years.
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Ask David Baltimore what kind of friend John Dingell is to science.
Or just read this.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V10/42/lewis-a.html
I find it depressing how so many bloogers on scienceblogs.com are apparently partisan Democrats first and pro-science a distant second.
I don't recall the details of the Baltimore case, so I can't speak to that specifically. In reading about it at the link above and elsewhere, I see no indication that Chairman Dingell targeted anyone out of malice, merely that he was interested in seeking out scientific misconduct, which is laudable and arguably quite pro-science.
Fortunately, the charges against Baltimore, et al. were wrong. Unfortunately, that means Dingell was wrong. People have also expressed concerns about Michigan Congressman Dingell's reticence to take on oil and auto manufacturers. On the other hand, current Energy and Commerce chair Joe Barton has been an ally to Senator Inhofe in attacking climate scientists and obfuscating the evidence on climate change. He's actively attacked the work and credibility of scientists not out of some sense of actual impropriety, but out of a desire to hound the people who release politically unpalatable results. If we're in a competition of who is more pro-science, there's no way Dingell beats Barton, who famously said that "as long as I am chairman, (regulating global warming pollution) is off the table indefinitely."
Whether or not Rep. Dingell is your ideal Chairman for the Energy and Commerce Committee, he is unquestionably better than what we had before.
Given the level of hostility that the Republican party has shown towards science the last quarter of a century, the scientists that I've been around have found themselves forced to take a keen interest in politics.
Besides, how fair would it be to say that it's depressing to see how many bloggers on religion are apparently partisan Republicans first and pro-religion a distant second?
Or that it's depressing to see how many bloggers on big business are apparently partisan Republicans first and pro-big business a distant second?
I could go on, but you get the point.
Besides, how fair would it be to say that it's depressing to see how many bloggers on religion are apparently partisan Republicans first and pro-religion a distant second?
No, because I expect nothing of the religious, so they can't depress me. In contrast, I expect scientists to be rational.
A lot of scientists like myself gravitated towards conservatism in the late 1980s early 1990, because of the hostility of the left, particularly the academic left, to science. Dingell was a classic populist anti-intellectual, who resents people like Baltimore because they're smarter than him, but then you had moonbats like Sandra Harding and the feminist left, the unilateral-nuclear-disarmament left, the anti-GM left, the animal rights left, etc.. The GOP has been conspicuous mostly because they've been in power; once the Dems get some power back, we'll just have a different flavor of lunacy.
Don't worry, as it all develops, I'll be around to say 'I told you so'.