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The USGS--not "the Bush administration"--has been working on this new internal policy for two years. Compared to most agencies, the USGS has been a gentlemen's club since its founding in 1879. Until science became "politics by other means," the research carried out by the government's geologists was almost never controversial. It is telling that a long-overdue bureaucratic procedure to keep agency leaders from being blindsided by today's manufactured controversies is itself being blown up in the press. Did it ever occur to anyone that the USGS is protecting itself from the White House?
Nobody can win in today's poisonous atmosphere. I look forward to the post-Bush era, assuming we can recover from the damage. Disclaimer: I have served in the USGS and talk to its scientists, although I haven't yet heard their responses to this news.
