The secret campaign of the Bush administration to let polluters determine US climate policy

All of your suspicions are true and you can now find them in an article that is intensely compelling and distressing.  It’s the current edition (June 28, 2007) of Rolling Stone.

It’s not every day after all that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell.  But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science–especially when it comes from international experts.  So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming

We’re going to see a big debate on it going forward,” Cheney told ABC news, about “the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it’s caused by man.”  We know today, he added, is “not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy is going to” solve the problem.”  Even former White House insiders were shocked by the vice president’s see-no-evil performance.

The Rolling Stone article argues that the White House has actively worked to distort the findings of climate scientists, playing down the threat of global warming.  This investigation by Rolling Stone goes further, however.  It reveals that

these distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, and a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on environmental quality and enforced by none other than

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Obstructing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

This is a detailed article by Expose, starting off with some of the excuses reporters hear: In 2005, the Associated Press collected and published a list of novel excuses government officials used to deny FOIA requests, many of which failed the "my dog ate my homework" test. The list included,…

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The Manichean worldview of George W. Bush

Why has the Administration of George W. Bush made so many enemies?  It comes from an early intellectual decision to view the world in terms of Good versus Evil.  This article in by Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely.  Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as…

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Does anyone want to be the new Editorial Page Editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch?

Are they looking for someone with a conscience who will lead a team that will speak with passion and conscience?  Are they looking for someone who bases his or her writing on deep principles, letting the chips fall where they may?   Keep in mind that this is the modern version of the Post-Dispatch…

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A peek inside of the corrupt beltway media

At Salon.com, Glen Greenwald describes it like this: If even our Beltway media -- rather, especially them -- argues that criminality by government officials should not be punished, and that light should not be shined on what they do, then pervasive government corruption and deceit are inevitable. That is just…

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