Sunday, October 29, 2006

Blogger is Bloggered Today

Apologies to those who posted comments today, and never saw them appear. They're there, we're just waiting for Blogger to heal itself and publish them.

It's a little frustrating, but this blog runs on a free service owned by Google. It's pretty good most of the time ... excellent for the price ... but now and then it gets a little screwy.

I'm sure you'll know when it's working again.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Warning, facts ahead said...

It's not just blogger that's been bloggered. So has science under the heavy hand of Bush Administration idealogues.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published yet another story about a Bush appointee rejecting sound scientific studies in favor of ideology.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900776.html
The American people are sick and tired of this adminstration using politics instead of sound science.

"The dispute is the latest in a series of controversies in which government officials and outside scientists have accused the Bush administration of overriding or setting aside scientific findings that clashed with its political agenda on such issues as global warming, the Plan B emergency contraceptive and stem cell research.

....Hundreds of pages of records, obtained by environmental groups through the Freedom of Information Act, chronicle the long-running battle between MacDonald and Fish and Wildlife Service employees over decisions whether to safeguard plants and animals from oil and gas drilling, power lines, and real estate development, spiced by her mocking comments on their work and their frequently expressed resentment.

Two advocacy groups, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Biological Diversity, provided the documents to The Washington Post. Francesca Grifo, who directs the union's scientific integrity program, said MacDonald's actions are "not business as usual but a systemic problem of tampering with science that is putting our environment at risk."

In a few instances, federal judges have overturned decisions that MacDonald had influenced. After she declared that the endangered Santa Barbara and Sonoma salamanders were no longer "distinct populations" entitled to protection, William Alsup, a judge on the U.S. District Court for Northern California, ruled that MacDonald had arbitrarily instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to downgrade the two species even though an agency scientist concluded that "genetics state otherwise."

"This is not to suggest that the Secretary of Interior has no role in the ultimate decision," Alsup wrote. "If the Secretary wants to re-assess the evidence, he may choose to do so, but, in doing so, he must set forth a discernible rationale."


"Discernible rationale"? Sound science? This adminstration can't be bothered with such details because they're too busy *liberating* Iraq into a quagmire.

America can do better.

October 31, 2006 7:54 AM  

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