Job security

You may have missed this, so just in case:

You certainly recall Philip Cooney, the White House staffer who engaged in a little creative editing of two government scientific reports on global warming in ways intended to minimize the evidence of a human effect on the climate. In one of those amazing coincidences that occur in Washington, Cooney resigned for of course totally unrelated reasons just after this was uncovered.

Don't worry yourself about him, however. A week later, he had a new job - at ExxonMobil, the oil giant most vociferously denying the scientific facts of global warming. Mother Jones magazine's blog for June 14 said that

An Exxon spokesman, Tom Cirigliano, declined to describe Mr. Cooney's new job. Associates of Mr. Cooney said he planned to move to Dallas. ...

"Perhaps he won't even notice he has changed jobs," said David G. Hawkins, who directs the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group.

But while Cooney has his sinecure which will doubtless involve not much more than making calls to a few old friends, the issue of the report he rigged may not be over just yet. Raw Story reported on Wednesday that

[a]fter reviewing federal laws that prohibit obstruction of Congress and false statements, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to determine the legality of actions taken by a former top Bush administration official who altered government scientific reports on global warming....

"Since the altered reports were requested by, and directed to, Congress, and were prepared by departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, we are seeking your legal evaluation of whether Mr. Cooney's actions violated two laws," the Democratic senators wrote in their letter to GAO Comptroller General David Walker.

"These alterations have severely harmed the integrity of U.S. Government scientific analyses, and the taxpayers who foot the bill for these doctored reports. ...

Reid and Lautenberg also wrote to the Director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Dr. James R. Mahoney, calling on him to immediately retract both of the reports edited by Mr. Cooney until the GAO concludes its investigation.

"Government reports must be based on science, not science fiction," Lautenberg said in a statement. "The Bush administration cannot 'fix' science around their political goals."

I remember when Frank Lautenberg was elected. He was regarded then as a safe, actually dull, moderate Democrat who bought his way into office by putting a fair portion of his personal wealth (he, like virtually if not every other member of the Senate, is a millionaire) into his campaign - all of which was true. However, in the past few years he seems to have become more outspoken and actually to have shifted to the left somewhat. He's no radical by any stretch and never will be, he's a classic liberal, but I have to admit I have a certain liking for him because he is proof positive that, contrary to the old notion, people can get more liberal as they get older.

There's a saying, attributed to Winston Churchill, that goes "Anyone who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart. Anyone who is not a conservative at 40 has no brain." My addendum to that is "And anyone who isn't a left radical at 60 hasn't been paying attention." Here's to Churchill's 40-year olds becoming my 60-year olds.