"Trust Me"? On what conceivable basis?

[deadparrot]

It's a few days old, but it's from my hometown paper, with which I've just been catching up:

Five years down and three to go, George W. Bush declares that his desperate, laws-be-damned tactics are working against international terrorism, and he pleads for patience with his wayward war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Bush’s minions have been waging war much more quietly — and much more effectively — against the very concept of public service in government here at home.

Over the weekend, one of these domestic battles erupted, uncharacteristically, into view. James E. Hansen, a widely respected climate scientist who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times that Bush political appointees have ordered PR flacks to squelch his public comments about the dangers of global warming. Hansen apparently believes that as a scientist working for the government, his obligation is to tell the public what he learns about issues of public importance.

Hansen’s charges were denied by NASA executives but backed up by Leslie McCarthy, a PR official, and others who work with Hansen at the Goddard facility in upper Manhattan. McCarthy told the Times about pressure she’s received about Hansen from George Deutsch, a Bush political appointee at NASA headquarters in Washington. Deutsch told her that his job was “to make the president look good,” McCarthy told the Times. “I’m a career civil servant, and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That’s not our job. That’s not our mission.”

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/ericmink/story/AD1705B83EA056FD86257108000D2F36?OpenDocument

[Skittles]

1. on the basis we are all brain-dead morons like freepers

THAT basis