Opinion
Preachers of junk science
By Michelle Malkin
Pushing back against Democrats' attempts to frame him as a religious menace, Rick Santorum forcefully turned the tables on the White House: "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones."
Scrutiny of the anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time. It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone XL pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work -- destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism.
Take President Obama's director of the National Park Service, please. While serving as the Pacific West regional director of the NPS, Jon Jarvis was accused of at least 21 instances of scientific misconduct by Dr. Corey Goodman, a high-ranking member of the National Academy of Sciences. Extensive information about Jarvis' alleged role in cooking data about a California oyster farm's impact on harbor seals at Point Reyes was withheld during the 2009 nomination process.
And given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's role in manipulating science while building his case for the White House offshore drilling moratorium -- actions for which several federal judges spanked Salazar in the past two years -- it's no wonder he's looking the other way. Two years ago, Salazar and former Obama eco-czar Carol Browner falsely rewrote the White House drilling-ban report to wholly manipulate the Obama-appointed panel's own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.
Then there's the war over Delta smelt. The endangered fish and its environmental protectors continue to jeopardize the water supply of more than 25 million Californians. Federal restrictions have cut off some 81 billion gallons of water to farmers and consumers in Central and Southern California. Previous courts have ruled that the federal biological opinions used to justify the water cutoff were invalid and illegal.
Last September, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California admonished two federal scientists for acting in "bad faith." The judge's blistering rebuke of the Obama administration scientists concluded that their slanted testimony about the Delta smelt was "an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting what is not only not the best science, it's not science."
In Siskiyou County, Ore., officials and residents have announced that they intend to sue Salazar and Team Obama over the potential removal of dams on the Klamath River.
Salazar is expected to make a decision by the end of March on environmentalists' demands that four private hydroelectric dams be demolished to protect salmon habitats and "create" demolition and habitat-restoration jobs. Opponents say Salazar already has predetermined the outcome. Green activists blithely ignore the massive taxpayer costs (an estimated half-billion dollars) and downplay the environmental destruction that the dam removals would impose.
People of faith aren't what's bedeviling America. Blame the high priests of eco-destruction in Washington who have imposed a green theocracy on us all.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).
Commentary
Michelle Malkin laying it out as it should be
Scrutiny of the anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time. It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone XL pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work -- destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism.
Take President Obama's director of the National Park Service, please. While serving as the Pacific West regional director of the NPS, Jon Jarvis was accused of at least 21 instances of scientific misconduct by Dr. Corey Goodman, a high-ranking member of the National Academy of Sciences. Extensive information about Jarvis' alleged role in cooking data about a California oyster farm's impact on harbor seals at Point Reyes was withheld during the 2009 nomination process.
And given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's role in manipulating science while building his case for the White House offshore drilling moratorium -- actions for which several federal judges spanked Salazar in the past two years -- it's no wonder he's looking the other way. Two years ago, Salazar and former Obama eco-czar Carol Browner falsely rewrote the White House drilling-ban report to wholly manipulate the Obama-appointed panel's own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.
Then there's the war over Delta smelt. The endangered fish and its environmental protectors continue to jeopardize the water supply of more than 25 million Californians. Federal restrictions have cut off some 81 billion gallons of water to farmers and consumers in Central and Southern California. Previous courts have ruled that the federal biological opinions used to justify the water cutoff were invalid and illegal.
Last September, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California admonished two federal scientists for acting in "bad faith." The judge's blistering rebuke of the Obama administration scientists concluded that their slanted testimony about the Delta smelt was "an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting what is not only not the best science, it's not science."
In Siskiyou County, Ore., officials and residents have announced that they intend to sue Salazar and Team Obama over the potential removal of dams on the Klamath River.
Salazar is expected to make a decision by the end of March on environmentalists' demands that four private hydroelectric dams be demolished to protect salmon habitats and "create" demolition and habitat-restoration jobs. Opponents say Salazar already has predetermined the outcome. Green activists blithely ignore the massive taxpayer costs (an estimated half-billion dollars) and downplay the environmental destruction that the dam removals would impose.
People of faith aren't what's bedeviling America. Blame the high priests of eco-destruction in Washington who have imposed a green theocracy on us all.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).
Commentary
Michelle Malkin laying it out as it should be
