We’ve been over this before:

Two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, a senator said Wednesday. […] In February, House Science Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and other congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee scientific openness. They complained that a public affairs officer changed or filtered information on global warming and the Big Bang. The officer, George Deutsch, a political appointee, had resigned after being accused of trying to limit reporters’ access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and insisting that a Web designer insert the word “theory” with any mention of the Big Bang.

We knew Hansen would be a part of this story the minute we saw the headline. The Bush administration “muzzled” Hansen so effectively, he traveled to Iowa right before the 2004 presidential election and and delivered a speech in which he declared that the policies of George W. Bush would create an environmental disaster, and so he planned to vote for John Kerry. Hansen, who received a $250,000 award from the Mrs. John Kerry Foundation in 2001, next faced the harsh muzzle of the Bush administration when the New York Times and 60 Minutes did puff pieces about how NASA was trying to silence him.

James Hansen is a dedicated <a href=”http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/02/10/a-misinformed-public/-138″>global-warming evangelist who has admitted that “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue…” To the extent that Bush appointees steered reporters away from him, they were doing the public a favor.