Take NASA, which—despite a 2-year-old Freedom of Information Act request asking for research detailing its historical data—continues to ignore taxpayers.
Americans honor the courageous informant, the gutsy citizen who stands against the savagery of the profit-mongering conglomerate. Well, sometimes. It appears, believe it or not, that there are those who aren’t religiously tethered to this sacred obligation.
For now—because of revelations of the ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails revealed discussions among top climate scientists about the manipulation of evidence—Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in Britain, has stepped down from his position. Michael Mann, architect of the famous “hockey stick” graph, is now under investigation by Pennsylvania State University. Similar inquiries should follow.
Yet Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is off hunting bigger game.
“You call it ‘ClimateGate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,'” Boxer clarified during a committee shindig. “We may well have a hearing on this; we may not. We may have a briefing for senators; we may not.” Boxer, as steady as they come, went on to put the focus where it belongs: on hackers. She warned: “Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated. … This is a crime.”