How Hostile To Science Are Republican Congressmen?
GOP: Moving backwards!!
We started looking at the House Science Committee when a particularly brainless and outspoken freshman teabagger, Sandy Adams (R-FL), since defeated in a primary, started ranting and raving in a Science Committee hearing about how the National Weather Service should be disbanded because cable TV does such a great job, never considering exactly where cable TV gets their information. Another member of the committee told me that even most of the Republicans saw Adams as an embarrassment and as a focus for scorn and derision... and amusement. But not all of them. Long passed are the days when a mainstream Republican like Sherwood Boehlert would dominate and chair the Science Committee and spend his career working on environmental policy and energy efficiency. That kind of agenda has become anathema to today's Republican Party which eschews Science as a liberal conspiracy against their single-minded belief in Greed and Avarice. Today the Science Committee is chaired by the oldest (90) and one of the most senile Members of Congress, Ralph Hall, a former Texas Blue Dog who switched to the GOP after voting to impeach Bill Clinton, getting in on the Abramoff gravy train and endorsing George W. Bush. So what qualifies Hall to be chairman of the Science Committee? He's one of Congress' leading Climate Change deniers and has accused climate scientists of concocting the evidence for anthopogenic climate change in order to receive federal research grants. What more evidence could Boehner and Cantor possibly want to give Hall the gig?
GOP: Moving backwards!!