George Deutsch seems determined to become my personal Cindy Sheehan:
George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday amid claims that he had tried to keep the agency’s top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself publicly yesterday.
…Speaking to a Texas radio station and then to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of warming and tried to cast the Bush administration’s response to it as inadequate.
Mr. Deutsch also denied lying about having a college degree and trying to inject religion into some NASA Web presentations.
Not so nutty? look at a couple of paragraphs that Josh Marshall excerpted from the NYT piece last night:
…In the interview, Mr. Deutsch said that Dr. Hansen had partisan ties “all the way up to the top of the Democratic Party,” and that he was “using those ties and using his media connections to push an agenda, a worst-case-scenario agenda of global warming.” He said that anyone who disagrees with Dr. Hansen “is labeled a censor and is demonized and vilified in the media — and the media of course is a willing accomplice here.”
Mr. Deutsch contended that although Dr. Hansen was a scientist, he wanted to talk about policy as well as science. “He wants to demean the president, he wants to demean the administration and create a false perception that the administration is watering down science and lying to the public,” Mr. Deutsch said. “And that is patently false.”
Yes, the dude’s a grade-A nutjob. I went to the NYT to verify the quotes and…strange, they don’t seem to be there anymore. Did Josh Marshall fabricate two paragraphs from scratch?
No, he didn’t. The radio station that conducted the interview has some excerpts available online and, what do you know, it’s in there. Probably nothing nefarious going on, web stories get edited fairly often, but bear in mind that any disconnect between Marshall and his source is the source’s fault. Listen to the audio for yourself to get a sense of the fringe actors that represent the best and brightest of today’s Republican Youth.
Dismissed Doofus Denounces Dastardly DemocratsPost + Comments (24)