Bush said he was going to increase funding of science education. What he didn’t say was that it was all going to the Discovery Institute. 
A bit of an overreaction here, guys. This fellow is just a flunky public relations dude who got overzealous with his email list. I can’t see him setting direction at NASA, where there are plenty of career scientiists to put this pipsqueak in his place. Just because he wrote an email doesn mean he’s “bossing around Phds in astrophysics.”
Things like this just seem to happen too often. Stem cell research, intelligent design, human/animal hybrids (wtf? furries?). It just seems there are too many attempts to enforce ignorance and either sneeak or force-fit religion into the sciences, for this to just be a coincidence or the actions of one overzealous functionary.
In Bush’s defense (blech, did I just type that?) there is work being done on chimeras. No word on if there’s a scientist named Shou Tucker involved.
Chimeras? Oh shit. Soon we’ll be knee deep in sphinxes and dragons too 
We must enusre our descendant will never need to utter the words:
“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”
Jim
And it’s important to differentiate between withholding federal funds and outlawing research altogether. Stem Cells are a perfect example. Anyone can do stem cell research in the US, they just can’t get federal funding to do it.
The chimera stuff is really challenging, and I don’t think this is a Repulbican/Democrat Religious/non-Religious thing. I like this understatment (emphasis added) from your cite:
“Problematic” indeed!
Your sarcasm meter needs a bit of tweaking, methinks.
As a non-civil servant scientist at Jim Hansen’s facility, I can tell you that the practice of requiring scientists to run all media communications through the Public Affairs office has been in place for some time now, and Jim wasn’t the only person affected by it. The conversation around here has been a mix of kudos to Jim for speaking his mind, and worries that his outspokeness will prove costly to more junior staff when it comes to getting research funds from HQ in the future (the grant selection process quite frequently having some political pressure exerted upon it).
I was pleased to see that Rep. Sherry Boehlert (R-NY), as head of the House Science Committee, wrote to Mike Griffin and asked his assistance in getting to the bottom of the “stiffling” issue. I was really pleased to see Mike Griffin then speak out so strongly against PAO attempts at control of NASA scientists’ speech. I’m hoping that Griffin means what he says, and will have the ability to fight against future attempts at censorship, or reprisals when that speech runs counter to a Bush Administration stance.
Cool! What muppets did you work on?
<rim shot>
Well, Oscar was my all-time fave, and Miss Piggy was such a bitch.
Also, I meant to say “stifling” earlier, not “stiffling.” No lamp abuse here. 
Bush lost me when he called for a ban on human/animal hybrids. Damnit, my life doesn’t have meaning unless I get a chance to own a genuine Humpanzee or a Manchilla.
And yes, this flunky is way out of line. And Bush’s reflexive antipathy towards cloning is pathetic.
This doesn’t change the fact that overall he’s done more for NASA than Bill Clinton ever did. Let’s not forget that Dr. Griffin, who everyone is praising in this thread, is also a Bush appointee.
IANA NASA expert, but aren’t they supposed to be R&D? The laws of physics that allow rockets to fly aren’t disallowed by religion are they?
Not that I think the statement was appropriate…
Has anyone asked this knobhead how else he explains the galactic redshift and cosmic background microwave radiation? The Big Bang is as true as the roundness, the continual emergence of new species over billions of years, or the reality of the Holocaust.
roundness of the world, beg pardon.
Blind pigs/acorns. You know the drill.
And now that I think about what you just said----WTF? Do you have some kind of DEWLINE system that alerts you to a chance to bring up Bill Clinton’s name in response to ANY mention of something that is currently spewing forth from the Bush Administration?
At least you didn’t claim that the two Bushes did more for NASA than any other presidents in the past forty years!
I guess you my not have heard the news, but the process has already begun to put chimpanzees into our genus, homo due to the fact that it is far more similar to us than most things grouped under the same genus elsewhere in the animal kingdom. So you can just get a regular chimp and call it a humpanzee (though, if you want one worthy of the name regardless of what genus it’s in, get a bonobo)
Humpanzee in action (only not work safe if you live in that office full of chimps)
http://www.geocities.com/willc7/images/19980514-bonobosex1.jpg
I agree to some extent. I don’t think Bush is necessarily a step forward or back when it comes to religious matters: he’s the only President in recent memory to both mention atheists and not denigrate them when mentioning them.
But the cronyism issue is simply not going away: it’s too widespread and has delivered too many big boo boos like this. And the mere fact that Bush has poured some more money into any government program, NASA in particular (a lot of which has gone to, guess who, a trend towards the military industrial complex/K Street side of things rather than physics research) doesn’t really impress me, especially when I find the purported goals (man on the moon again, man on mars) so prematurely pointless, and it doesn’t mean that he should be applauded for appointing one non-idiot when the goal should be to not have any idiot cronies. This kid should have ended up in some Republican press think tank, not in charge of bossing scientists around. But loyalty amongst Bush people seems to extend to giving utterly incompetant and unqualified people jobs, from important ones to minor ones.
In summary, from an administration that has a terrible track record on science, its going to take a lot more than tossing some dollars that benefit Bush’s political buddies as much as they benefit science to convince me that he’s turned over a new leaf. He wants better science education? He should start with himself.
Good thing I never made that claim at all, ever.
So let me get it straight - if a Bush appointee steps out of line, it’s Bush’s fault. If a Bush appointee does good things, well, it’s sheer luck. Is that about it?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I’m not a ritual Clinton basher. I rather like the guy. I think he was a pretty good president. I’m simply pointing out that Bush’s record on science is not completely dismal. He HAS reinvigorated NASA. His two appointments of director, Sean O’Keefe and Michael Griffin, have been demonstrably better than Clinton’s appointee, Dan Goldin.
Yes, Bush is wrong about infant stem cells. It doesn’t change the fact that his is the first administration to fund ANY stem cell research.
The injection of religion pisses me off. The apparent stifling on ‘non-correct’ scientific opinion REALLY pisses me off. The apparent intimidation of scientists by government officials enrages me. So i’m not apologizing for the Bush administration - I’m merely trying to keep the record accurate. He hasn’t been a total disaster for science. The record is mixed, like it is for most administrations.
Okay, hang on a minute. This kid ISN’T supposed to be bossing scientists around. He’s a PR flack. A pretty harmless job. If he’s sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong and making changes the scientists didn’t authorize, why is that Bush’s fault? Isn’t PR Flack for government agencies exactly the kind of job that usually winds up being doled out by patronage? And besides, if this kid was some kind of star in the campaign, might someone actually have thought that he had talent that could be put to use in a PR job?
Who is this kid’s superior? Should that person be issuing the big smackdown? Did he? Michael Griffin has weighed in pretty strongly against this, which may be enough to curtail the zeal in the future. If not, well, the kid should be canned.