Obama's War on Science

Obama is a liar.  That has been firmly established.  He lied about closing Gitmo.  He lied about Medicare cuts.  He lied about the cost of the health care bill.  He lied about being able to keep your insurance plan under the health care bill.  He lied about lobbyists in his administration.  He lied about making sure that there was enough time for the public to read legislation before it was passed.  I could go on for pages, but everyone has his own favorite list of Obama lies.

One of his most egregious lies is about the abuse of science in the interest of politics.  The Left repeatedly accused the Bush administration of this.  Here is Jonah Goldberg on the subject.

.. all of the Democratic candidates [and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, et al] bemoaned the Neanderthalic "Republican war on science," to borrow a phrase from a popular liberal book. Hillary Clinton, for instance, promised that her administration would "restore scientific integrity by supporting the independent work of government scientists" and end the "open season on open inquiry."

For good or for ill, Obama beat Hillary for the nomination, but he carried the "liberals love science" torch nonetheless. At his inauguration, he pledged, "We will restore science to its rightful place."

Fast forward to the oil spill in the Gulf.

The White House issued a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. Obama cited a report commissioned by the Interior Department that purported to recommend the ban.

"The recommendations contained in this report," declared the document, "have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."

Except that was untrue. In fact, it was such a glaring lie that the seven engineers who peer-reviewed an earlier version of the document felt obliged to come forward to clear the air.

"The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct," wrote the scientists, "but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."

The draft these experts saw was substantively different from the document that bore their names. The draft called for a moratorium on issuing new permits, not stopping existing drilling (a move many experts believe would be unsafe).

One of the experts, Benton Baugh, president of Radoil, told the Wall Street Journal, that if the draft had said to halt drilling, "we'd have said 'that's craziness.'" ...

Needless to say, there is something ugly and hypocritical about glorifying the absolute authority of scientists and sanctimoniously preening about your bravery in "restoring" that authority -- and then ignoring the scientists when politically expedient.

But it is bordering on the grotesque to handpick scientists to give you an opinion and then lie about what they actually said, and implement a policy they don't endorse.

After the election, one in which I was firmly against his candidacy, I wondered if I could have been wrong in my judgment.  I was ready to reconsider if he proved to be a good chief executive.  I now admit I was wrong.  He is proving to me and millions of others that he is worse than we feared.  Brazen lies cloaked in empty rhetoric surrounded by total ineptitude, careless cruelty, and a lifestyle reminiscent of Versailles before the revolution are the characteristics of the Obama administration.  I'm sorry I was wrong.  So is the country.