I'm Getting Really Tired Of These Stalinist Bastards

NASA Chief Michael D. Griffin is calling for "scientific openness" in the space agency (from the New York Times):

It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."

The statement came six days after The New York Times quoted the scientist, James E. Hansen, as saying he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He and intermediaries in the agency's 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters.

As I was reading the above-quoted paragraphs, I was reminded of a book I read a few years ago by Albert Seaton called The Russo-German War: 1941-45. In that book, Seaton gave the following description of the Red Army's commissar system:

The system of military commissars originated at the time of the revolution when trustworthy communists were recruited to keep under surveillance the suspect Tsarist officers re-employed in the Red Army as military specialists. To each officer at all levels of command from battalion upwards was appointed a political commissar of equivalent rank and authority, who was made responsible for the political reliability and military effectiveness of officers and men. This political officer had very wide powers, including that of veto of the military commander's orders.

Although the Soviet commissar organization lost some of its power in the days before World War II, Seaton noted that these commissars could, among other things, be "relied upon to report any deviationists or free thinkers."

It is fairly obvious that the Bush Regime has adopted the Soviet Union's commissar system when it comes to monitoring Federal agencies. And BushCo's commissar over at NASA appears to be a 24-year-old Bible-Beater with no background in science.

The NYTimes article makes several references to this particular presidential appointee, who back in October told a Web designer working for NASA to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang:

The Big Bang memo came from [George] Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose resume says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

Jesus, is it any wonder that the American educational system is in the toilet? Hell, NASA is being censored by a 24-year old kid who probably thinks (1) that the Earth is only 5000 years old and (2) that Jesus survived all those weeks in the desert by eating dinosaur meat.

Of course, young Comrade Deutsch did not respond to any e-mails or phone messages from the New York Times, but the White House did:

On Friday evening, repeated queries were made to the White House about how a young presidential appointee with no science background came to be supervising Web presentations on cosmology and interview requests to senior NASA scientists.

The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said.

Bolsheviks.