Carnal Reason

The Bush censorship machine needs a tuneup. The Washington Times reports:

A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn’t want his message to get out.

But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. “We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. Mr. Hansen responded: “For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed of my expertise.

Mr. Hansen is bloodied, but not bowed. He stands tall, still speaking truth to power.

Mr. Hansen refused to denounce earlier comments he made referring to the White House as a “propaganda office,” and saying, “It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States.”

Assume for a moment that Mr. Hansen works five days a week, fifty weeks a year. That’s 250 workdays per year. If he gave an interview every single working day, after five years he would have given only 1250 interviews. Yet Mr. Hansen has given over 1400. The man is practically in a gulag. Totally muzzled.

Posted on March 20th, 2007 by pwyll
Filed under: BDS