The New Republic Tries To Will News into Existence

by William Yeatman on November 25, 2008

Over at The New Republic’s Environment and Energy Blog, “The Vine,” Bradford Plumer has written a post about how the Bush Administration is supposedly placing GOP loyalists in upper level science positions in the civil service.

Here’s Mr. Plumer’s snarky intro:

“You know what the federal government needs right now? A bunch of Bush appointees without any sort of scientific background getting slotted in key science-related civil service positions, that's what…”

Mr. Plumer’s source material is an article from Sunday’s Washington Post. He quotes from the article at length, yet I doubt he read it, because his assertion that these are “key, science related civil service positions” is way off base, at least according to the material he cites.

In fact, the article names three political appointees who have been promoted to three positions: a non-science administrative role at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; a non-science administrative role at the Department of Energy; and a job at the Drug Enforcement Agency, which is hardly a scientific agency.

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