A short diary. I'm pressed for time. But this deserves to become part of the Daily Kos archives (at the very least). From the Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2008
:
Inquisition at JPL
By Timothy Rutten
". . .
"For the last four years, two robot rovers operated from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge have been moving across the surface of Mars, taking photographs and collecting information. It's an epic event in the history of exploration, one of many for which JPL's 7,000 civilian scientists and engineers are responsible -- when they're not fending off the U.S. government's attempts to conduct an intimidating and probably illegal inquisition into the intimate details of their lives.
"Talk about the thanks of a grateful nation. . ."
Link to full column here.
Guess-oh-guess what this is all about!
Keep going . . .
"The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped the Bush administration after 9/11. . . "
Now, I bet that NONE of y'all guessed that!
". . . NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, however, is one of the Bush administration's true believers, and his first reflex always is a crisp salute. He directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's employees complied. The university initially resisted, then caved when NASA threatened to withdraw its contract. Worse, the government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. . ."
This would be the same Michael Griffin who, as NASA's Administrator, is skeptical of global warming (and, no doubt, evolution, gravity and the number 3), to (nit)wit:
"'I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,' Griffin told Inskeep. 'I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.'
Link here
The L.A. Times column continues, and comes to a head, here:
"In other words, as the price of keeping their jobs, many of America's finest space scientists were being asked to give the feds virtually blanket permission to snoop and spy and collect even malicious gossip about them from God knows who."
At any rate, go and read the whole thing. The Bush/GOP war on science and scientists continues. Rutten winds up his column thusly:
"As custodians of a great human adventure, the men and women of JPL deserve better from their own country than to be victimized by a shabby crowd of apprentice Torquemadas.
"
(Emphasis mine)
Bang on.
BenGoshi
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