Ron Paul & Sherry Boehlert-- Republicans Without A Home

Maybe Ron Paul Will Get Luckier On His Third Try

No matter what you want to say about Ron Paul, you can't deny the man is an independent thinker who has made some valuable contributions to our political system, certainly more so than most Members of Congress. And, after 2 dozen years in Congress he's retiring now. So he humbly requested that Romney allow him to address the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Romney had some flunky tell him no. Congressman Paul asked again. Romney said no again. I don't agree with everything Ron Paul has to say; in fact I disagree with most of it. But I still think the man deserves to be honored for his service and if Romney won't allow him to speak in Tampa, maybe President Obama should let him have his say in Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Paul is trying one last time-- this time with Democrat Sam Farr-- to move along the road to marijuana decriminalization as part of his keeping government out of people's personal affairs agenda, one that Beltway Establishmentarians have no understanding of.

Sherry Baby

And speaking of Republicans who served for two dozen years, New York mainstream conservative, Sherwood Boehlert, was first elected to Congress in 1982 and decided to retire in 2006. He was respected on both sides of the aisle, he was one of the most dedicated Republican environmentalists, when there was still such a thing as a Republican environmentalist. He was chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee from 2001-2007, at a time before "science" became a dirty word among Republicans-- who most recently showed their contempt for the Science Committee by putting Sandy Adams (R-FL), the clueless teabagger most universally accepted as Congress' stupidest member, on the committee. (She promptly called for the abolition of the National Weather Service, claiming the cable TV channels do it well enough.) Boehlert wrote the acid rain provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, something Republicans-- along with the shady Blue Dogs-- were trying to eviscerate just a few weeks ago. Currently on the board of the bipartisan Alliance for Climate Protection, he's pretty estranged from the current crop of Republican whores serving corporations in Congress. So I doubt many of them were too taken aback by his OpEd in The Hill last week, castigating the power of the right-wing over his old party's congressional agenda and their plan to "shut down the entire regulatory system."

I wish that description were hyperbole, but it is not; indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the sweep and destructiveness of the House bill. The measure (H.R. 4078) would impose a moratorium on the issuance of any and all major new regulations for the foreseeable future...

The bill prohibits not just the issuance of new standards and safeguards but any action that “is expected to lead to” their being proposed.  The legislation might as well just directly order the agencies that were created to protect the public to close up shop (except for enforcement actions) for the next few years. Unhappy that it has been unable to provoke a government shutdown over spending battles or a default on the nation’s debt, the right wing has now come up with a more subtle way to make sure the government can’t do its job. And what should be seen as a strikingly outlandish proposal is instead being treated by the House as a marquee bill.

What would be so bad about having no new regulations for several years? Well, nothing if everything else about the world was going to stand still for that period, but that’s not likely to be the case. Might we want to try some new ways to stimulate the housing market? No new rules to run a program would be permitted. Might we want to respond to recent revelations about the way banks have misreported and manipulated interest rates? No chance. How about protecting consumers from new attempts by banks to impose exorbitant fees? No dice.

It would be the same story for rules to improve health and safety or to protect the environment. Want those new mileage standards that even the auto industry is supporting? They’d be blocked for years, hurting consumers and the economy. How about some rules for new methods of extracting natural gas? No can do, even if industry wanted them to provide certainty and perhaps limit liability. How about applying the lessons learned from the oil disaster in the Gulf? That would just have to wait.

It’s easy to come up with a list of problems that the public would rightly expect government to address over the next few years that would be blocked by this bill.  In many cases, industry would also want some order imposed rather than being in limbo. And what if a President Romney wanted to impose new limitations on what government aid could be used for? That would be blocked, too. What it’s hard to do is come up with a plausible rationale for such a mindlessly broad moratorium.

The bill is titled the “Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act”-- a name that borders on self-parody. There is no indication that this bill would aid job growth. Indeed by blocking rules needed to make the economy run more smoothly-- like ones to protect another financial meltdown-- the bill could harm our economic prospects for years to come.

But this bill is not drafted to deal with any practical concern anyway; it’s designed to codify an ideological fantasy. Bills like this make it harder, not easier to get down to the real work of improving the regulatory system.

The media and the Washington establishment have largely been ignoring the House effort because it seems so far-fetched. But we ignore these efforts at our peril. The state of the regulatory system and the role of government are important issues that deserve serious debate. Each time a bill like this passes, it shifts the debate to the right, makes it harder to work out sensible compromises, and puts members on the record in ways that restrict future action.

The right wing does not have a record of doing things simply to waste time; it is deadly in earnest. Its opponents would be wise to take it seriously.  The Republican leadership is putting this bill forward as a genuine proposal, and that ought to spark sharp debate-- as well as opposition that spans partisan lines.  Those who understand the consequences of this bill, including business leaders, ought to feel obligated to speak out.

Atlas may shrug, but mere mortals should take note.  The right wing is serious about disabling the government.

Speaker Boehner was tweeting up a storm yesterday about how all he wants to do is cut red tape so businesses can... can what? Pollute the environment at will? Poison consumers? Cheat to their heart's content? That's the new GOP ethos. And when Cantor asked the House to consider H.R. 4078 late yesterday afternoon, every single Republican voted yes-- no Sherry Boehlerts in this craven crew-- and they were joined by 9 of the slimiest corporate-asskissing Democrats: Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK, retiring), Democratic Senate candidate Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Gene Green (TX), Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Bill Owens (NY), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR, retiring) and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC, retiring).

Not that anyone would possibly care, but Kissell, McIntyre, and Owens are all on the #1 top spending priority list for the DCCC. Each is on their Frontline list and heavy duty donors are being directed by "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel to max out to these guys. Keep in mind that the next time you send money to the DCCC, you're helping make sure Boehner and Cantor can call their efforts to establish a Law of the Jungle society in America "bipartisan." Better idea: help elect progressives like Rob Zerban, Lee Rogers, Patsy Keever, Sue Thorn, Wayne Powell, Carol Shea-Porter, David Gill and other real-deal Democrats who the DCCC is still stringing along.

Ironically, it looks that because the Republicans put a typo into their bill that completely changes the meaning of it, there won't be a final vote... at least for now. When Democrats find the error, some wondered if Boehner wrote it when he was drink. Since it would requite unanimous consent to change it without starting the whole process all over again-- and that is certainly not something the Democrats are going to agree to, the whole GOP plot has unravelled. “I know Republicans read the bills,” Hoyer said, mocking the GOP for the typo. “My, my, my how carefully they read that bill."


UPDATE: Was Nadler Making Fun Of The Republicans Today?

Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, offered an amendment to the ridiculous bill this afternoon in order to at least exempt nuclear safety from Boehner and Cantor's irresponsible wholesale gutting of regulatory safeguards under the pretext of curbing excessive bureaucracy. The amendment would ensure that Americans who live in close proximity to nuclear reactors are protected in the event of a catastrophic meltdown. Nadler pointed out to the Republicans and their Blue Dogs allies that, in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan, it is critical to ensure the safe operation of all nuclear reactors. He was sure to remind them that it's especially relevant for the New York City area, where some 20 million people live within a 50-mile radius of the Indian Point Nuclear Plant.

“It is rare that the premise of an entire week of legislative work on the House Floor is wrong. But, here we are." There is no evidence to support the position that overregulation is the cause of our slow economic growth and high unemployment rate.

“We are told this is ‘regulatory week,’ during which House Republicans are supposedly working to see that the yoke of oppressive government regulation is thrown off and the American entrepreneur is freed to grow his or her business and increase jobs. In thinking about this view, I am reminded of a famous line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth-– ‘it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’

“We have heard and will continue to hear a lot of sound and fury this week on the House Floor, but just like all of the other regulatory bills the House has passed this year, what we pass this week will die in the Senate as well. So, all of that talk will signify nothing. Like health care repeal, on which we took 33 votes, this too is a tremendous waste of time.

..."My amendment would attempt to make this Frankenstein bill slightly less of a horror show by exempting the issue of nuclear power plant safety from the bill… One accident-- which could be caused by the power of nature, the negligence of man, or the evil of terrorism-– could doom millions of people. Because of the almost unimaginable disaster that could happen at a nuclear power plant, regulations to prevent accidents or meltdowns in advance are critically important.”

And Brad Miller (D-NC) is unlikely to ever get invited into an Ayn Rand club. He spelled it out on the floor of the House today:

Planned Obsolescence-- Is Caveat Emptor All We Got?

Lately, there's no end to Boehner and his House cronies inveighing against the regulatory system. A constant thread is that regulations kill jobs and that particular lie predates Boehner by many decades. The GOP has always been the party of caveat emptor-- let the buyer beware. The breezy Marketplace look at planned obsolescence barely scratches the surface. Key word there is "barely." Is it only former GOP Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert among Republicans who sees the dangers and the folly in this extremism against consumer and environmental protection?

The House is moving forward with three bills that would cripple the regulatory system.  The bills are not going to become law this Congress, but they show how far a party in thrall to its right-most wing is willing to veer from what has long been the mainstream. The critical question is whether and when more moderate voices-- centrist Republicans in Congress, sensible business leaders and the largely centrist American public-- will recognize the damage being done and raise their voices to call it to a halt. Clearly, that’s not going to happen in the House itself.
           
...[T]he bills before the House would prevent the system from working: they are a recipe for failure. The bills are sometimes described with the mild term “regulatory reform” but these measures have as much to do with reform as Communist re-education camps had to do with education.  

In the case of the REINS Act, in particular, the analogy is all too apt: “reform” is simply a euphemism for an effort to break the system and remake it according to ideological prescription that will leave it permanently hobbled.

When the Geoff Davis' deranged REINS Act came up for a vote on December 7, it passed 241-184, not only every single Republican-- including those who pose as "mainstream conservatives"-- voting AYE, but 4 of the most virulently right-wing Democrats joining in as well (corrupt and fanatic anti-consumer Blue Dogs John Barrow, Dan Boren, Mike McIntyre, and Collin Peterson).

When I was 12 I had dinner with Vance Packard, author of The Waste Makers and the friend of a friend's father. I read his book at the time and I'm re-reading it now in light of all that's happened in the intervening 4 decades. A lot has happened, some of it in direct response to Packard's powerful exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals." The Federal Trade Commission and some states have moved in against some forms of deceptive practices by manufacturers-- but I was actually shocked to see how thin the protections are.

A review of Packard's book says it was the first "to probe the increasing commercialization of American life—the development of consumption for consumption's sake. Packard outlines the ways manufacturers and advertisers persuade consumers to buy things they don't need and didn't know they wanted, including the two-of-a-kind of everything syndrome-- 'two refrigerators in every home'-- and appeals to purchase something because it is more expensive, or because it is painted in a new color. The book also brought attention to the concept of planned obsolescence, in which a 'death date' is built into products so that they wear out quickly and need to be replaced. By manipulating the public into mindless consumerism, Packard believed that business was making us 'more wasteful, imprudent, and carefree in our consuming habits,' which was using up our natural resources at an alarming rate." The examples go on and on and some still seem shocking while others are so ingrained into American society that they are barely noticeable today. Last night I was making notes as I read and I want to share a few paragraphs that inspired me to send letters to a few Members of Congress asking if these situations have ever been addressed legislatively.

The ideal of a "lifetime" product, which once was the shining goal of makers of a wide range of home products, was reduced for most to a memory. When we asked Mrs. Brady [editorial director] of Consumers Union for a list of the products still designed to last a lifetime, she responded: "I can think of only one-- the piano... There is no doubt whatsoever that until recently very good rugs have lasted from generation to generation. Today, ten years is the commercially promised life for a good wool rug."

...A part of the trouble with modern carpeting was that the manufacturers had downgraded quality and fought off quality standards. Another problem was the introduction of tufted carpets, which could be made much faster and cheaper than woven carpets. The makers of woven carpets reduced the quality of their rugs in order to compete more effectively with the tufted rugs. Another reason for the deterioration was that much of the carpeting was being bought by big housing developers who tended to install the cheapest floor covering they could in order to increase profit margins.

... An official of the Automobile Finance Association in testifying at a Senate subcommittee hearing told of a survey he had conducted with association members on the state of the automobile industry. He quoted one member as responding: "The quality of today's automobiles does not compare favorably with past years... The price of the product continues to go up and the quality continues to go down.

...Sale of automobile parts soared year after year... because "manufacturers are building them so they'll get to the junk pile faster [according to a V.P. of a Long Island ignition parts manufacturing firm... There was a] reluctance of many of the manufacturers to make a car that would hold the affection of its owner for more than a very few years."

...Automobile mufflers in 1958 had only one half the life expectancy of mufflers bought a decade earlier. Design Sense, published by Lippincott & Marguiles, the industrial-design firm, took note of the shorted life span of mufflers in calling on industry to take advantage of new technologies to give longer life to products. "To take just one example," it said, "a major steel company has had available for some time-- with no takers-- a lead-coated steel which, for just eight cents more per auto muffler, would give a product that would last the life of the car. Instead automakers are still installing mufflers that must be replaced on an average of once every two years at a cost to the customer of $18 to $27 per muffler."

You can do the math. The behavior is clearly sociopathic-- but protected by Republican judicial rulings that favor corporations (including, of course, the big one, Citizens United) and now Boehner and his caucus are making a big push to "cripple the regulatory system"-- in Sherwood Boehlert's words. I don't know if any of them read Packard or not, but he went on to explain that "there was specific indication that evidence of quality obsolescence was not unconnected with the drive to increase replacement sales and to point out a column in Home Furnishings Daily that "noted uneasily in the late fifties that many appliance manufacturers were rushing to get into the field of servicing their equipment. He asked: 'Why all the rush to get into the servicing angle? Is it because the appliance won't stay in A-1 working order too many days after it is installed in the home?'." Louis Cheskin of the Color Research Institute went on the blame the public for this kind of behavior-- as did industry spokesmen in every field. Cheskin:

"Why make the handles on cups so that they won't break off? Who wants to pay ten percent more for dishes so that the dishes will last a lifetime? Most housewives want or welcome an excuse to buy a new set of dishes every year or so. Who wants furniture to last forever? The large American middle classes do not. They want furniture to be in style, not outdated... Furniture, clothes, dishes can all be made to last longer at very little additional cost but neither the maker nor the consumer is interested in this."

Mr Cheskin could have changed his name and reinvented himself, ever so slightly, as any number of anti-consumer fanatics from Don Young (R-AK), Bill Young (R-FL), Jerry Lewis (R-CA) or Buck McKeon (R-CA) to Cliff Stearns (R-FL) or Ralph Hall (R-TX), each of whom was in college when Packard's book was a widely discussed best-seller. And if you're wondering how strong Republicans oppose protecting consumers and to what lengths they're willing to go to give corporations the leeway to cheat and abuse customers (i.e., their own cosntituents) let's look back at the last major Federal Trade Commission bill, Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. It passed the House on May 23, 2007 284-141. Only one slimy corporate whore of a Blue Dog crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP that day, Collin Peterson (MN) but 56 Republicans crossed in the other direction and voted with the Democrats. Who voted against consumer protection? 140 of them and I bet DWT readers will recognize these names:

Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Oily Joe Barton (R-TX)
John Boehner (R-OH)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Buck McKeon (R-CA)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Denny Rehberg (R-MT)
Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Fred Upton (R-MI)

You get the picture... the whole freaking GOP Clown Car-- all their then up-and-comers who diligently serve the interests of the one percent.

Drunken Orange Speaker Gets Another Anti-Jobs Bill Passed-- This One To Gut All Regulations

A few days ago we covered, as we often do, the right-wing, Koch-funded jihad against the rules and regulations that protect workers, consumers and the environment from the deprecations of irresponsible corporations (i.e., the real GOP base). Today Boehner has been tweeting and crowing for hours how his caucus united to pass something so extreme in it's anti regulatory fervor that respected Republican former Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert had to wonder aloud if his party has just gone completely insane.

The House is moving forward with three bills that would cripple the regulatory system.  The bills are not going to become law this Congress, but they show how far a party in thrall to its right-most wing is willing to veer from what has long been the mainstream. The critical question is whether and when more moderate voices-- centrist Republicans in Congress, sensible business leaders and the largely centrist American public-- will recognize the damage being done and raise their voices to call it to a halt. Clearly, that’s not going to happen in the House itself.
           
No one would argue that the regulatory system is perfect or that it’s some holy apparatus from which mere lawmakers should keep their distance.  But overall, it accomplishes what Congress set it up to do-- it protects the public, produces benefits that outweigh costs, and has, according to most studies, a neutral to slightly positive effect on employment. And as we continue to suffer through a bank-induced recession, it shouldn’t take leaps of imagination to understand the harm inflicted when the system fails to do its job.
          
Yet the bills before the House would prevent the system from working: they are a recipe for failure. The bills are sometimes described with the mild term “regulatory reform” but these measures have as much to do with reform as Communist re-education camps had to do with education.  

In the case of the REINS Act, in particular, the analogy is all too apt: “reform” is simply a euphemism for an effort to break the system and remake it according to ideological prescription that will leave it permanently hobbled.                 
           
Anyone who wants to understand what the right wing’s project is truly about need look no further than the REINS Act, sponsored in the Senate, tellingly, by Rand Paul. The bill would require Congress to approve all major rules. This would mean, among other things, that Congress would be the arbiter of each and every significant regulatory matter, no matter how technical, and that a single chamber of Congress could kill any rule. 

It is not hard to predict the result-- a virtual shutdown of the system that will leave the public exposed. Decision-making would be less rational and more random than anything that happens now because the formalities imposed by agency procedures and judicial review would no longer govern.
           
One doesn’t need to guess at the results because we’ve already tried a system like this. The regulatory system developed, starting in the late 1800s, precisely because a system that vested this much daily decision-making in Congress simply didn’t work. 

If you think that the very notion of having, say, a Food and Drug Administration is a mistake, then REINS makes perfect sense.  Otherwise, it’s hard to credit. And it’s hard to see how even business would be better off without expert agencies like the FDA, which provide a degree of predictability and consumer confidence for business.
           
And Congress doesn’t need REINS to control the regulatory system; it can already intervene to block any rule (and is not reluctant to do so), and it writes the laws that determine what gets regulated. And it’s ironic that people who say they got elected to change the regulatory system can at the same time claim that no one holds Congress accountable. Their real complaint is that not everyone agrees with them about how the system should work.
           
The other bills before the House don’t go as far as REINS-- nothing could, short of just eliminating every regulatory agency entirely-- but they are animated by the same attitudes, and it’s no accident that they’re being brought up as a group.

They are all different ways to gum up the works.  And in some ways they contradict each other: REINS seeks to weaken regulatory agencies and to make Congress the locus of all decisions, while the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) gives the agencies and the courts more responsibility. The only straight line between those two opposite points leads to regulatory breakdown.

...The Republican Party should be spending its time trying to improve what is basically an effective system, figuring out how to improve protections and reduce costs. But the House is off on a very different path, ignoring experience in favor of ideology, working to destroy a system that has protected business as well as the public.  It’s high time for those in the center to call them on that.

This piece of crap bill won't pass the Senate. If it did, President Obama would veto it. No difference between the two parties. It passed today 241-184, every Republican voting YES and every Democrats (except for extreme right Blue Dogs-- Barrow, Boren, McIntyre and Peterson) voting NO. Piss you off? Consider helping Blue America defeat Blue Dogs. Last year we took down Bobby Bright, the one with the worst voting record in the House. Next year... well, Barrow's a possibility. Shuler is too. And so are Matheson, McIntyre, Costa, Cooper... If we raise enough money, we'll go after all of 'em.

The drunken Speaker keeps calling it a "jobs bill." An actual jobs bill that he's unlikely to ever allow to come up for a vote is the one introduced by today by Nick Rahall, II (D-WV), ranking Member on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that seeks to strengthen Buy America laws and would require Federal agencies to be more transparent in reporting where taxpayer dollars are being spent. The Alliance for American Manufacturing has been leading the charge for years and their Executive Director Scott Paul told his members that "Buy America laws have been weakened over time by loopholes and other exemptions that result in more of our tax dollars being sent to purchase steel and manufactured goods made overseas. There are also numerous gaps in our infrastructure spending programs where a Buy America preference does not currently exist. As a result, the American public has been shocked to learn that their tax dollars are increasingly being used to source steel and manufactured goods from factories in China and other countries.”

The bill’s introduction comes as Congress is in the midst of writing a new surface transportation reauthorization bill and grappling with ways to create jobs and improve a sluggish economy. Buy America preferences are the best way to ensure that domestic manufacturing companies and American workers benefit when hard-earned tax dollars are being spent on the nation’s infrastructure needs. According to research conducted for the Alliance for American Manufacturing, maximizing the use of domestic content with a Buy America preference yields a 33 percent increase in manufacturing job creation. In addition, polling conducted for AAM earlier this year shows that 91 percent of voters support Buy America policies to ensure that taxpayer-funded projects use only American-made goods and materials. Taking a closer look, support for Buy America was spread evenly across ideological, geographic, and political backgrounds-- from 94 percent among Democrats, to 89 percent among Tea Party supporters.

The Invest in American Jobs Act of 2011 (H.R. 3533) would ensure that, when possible, all of the iron, steel, and manufactured goods used to build and repair our nation’s roads, bridges, highways, railways, and other infrastructure are produced in the United States.

•    Strengthen Coverage. The bill strengthens Buy America preferences that exist for a range of transportation programs, including highways and bridges, public transit, high-speed and intercity passenger rail, and aviation.

•    Expand Coverage. The bill applies Buy America to transportation and infrastructure investments that currently are not normally covered, such as railroad loans and loan guarantees, water infrastructure grants, EDA grants, and FEMA mitigation grants.

•    More Transparency. The bill requires Federal agencies to be transparent and, through annual reporting, provide the public with an accurate accounting of the instances when Buy America is waived, the amount of federal dollars sent overseas, and where that procurement occurs. The bill also would require Federal agencies to post requests for waivers of Buy America preferences on the official Internet website of the agency so that the public can see and give comments. Before granting a waiver, the relevant agency must publish a reasoned justification for the waiver in the Federal Register and respond to any public comments. All of this transparency will bring much-needed accountability to the waiver process and finally let American companies and workers have a say before a waiver takes effect.

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to leap back into a Dark Age of anti-science . . .

Next chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee?

by Ken

The other day I mentioned "Elizabeth Kolbert's incredibly depressing 'Comment' piece in the new (Nov. 22) New Yorker, 'Uncomfortable Climate' [complete with a wrong link; this one should be correct], about the criminally ignorant 'F*@k Science' mentality of the Teabagger-blessed band of can-do sociopaths who'll be in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives come January."

Kolbert began her piece with reference to one of the most egregious of the pre-Teabagger Republicans, from whom we're apt to be hearing way too much in the 112th Congress.

Darrell Issa, a Republican representative from California, is one of the richest men in Congress. He made his money selling car alarms, which is interesting, because he has twice been accused of auto theft. (Issa has said that he had a "colorful youth.") As the ranking minority member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he earned a reputation as President Barack Obama's "annoyer-in-chief." Issa told the Times a few months ago, "You can call me a pain. I'll accept that as a compliment."

Now, with the Republicans about to take control of the House, Issa is poised to become the chairman of the Oversight Committee. The post comes with wide-ranging subpoena powers, and Issa has already indicated how he plans to wield them. He is not, he assured a group of Pennsylvania Republicans over the summer, interested in digging around for the sort of information that might embarrass his fellow-zillionaires: "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear." Instead, he wants to go where he sees the real malfeasance. He wants to investigate climate scientists. At the top of his list are the long-suffering researchers whose e-mails were hacked last year from the computer system of Britain's University of East Anglia. Though their work has been the subject of three separate "Climategate" inquiries -- all of which found that allegations of data manipulation were unfounded -- Issa isn’t satisfied. "We're going to want to have a do-over," he said recently.

Issa’s priorities are, to an astonishing degree, representative of the new Republican House majority. . . .

And she proceeds to serve up some plug-ignorant morsels from soon-to-be Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner ("The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, that it is harmful to our environment, is almost comical," he told George Stephanopoulos last year), and two contenders to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, John Shimkus of Illinois --

At a congressional hearing in 2009, he dismissed the dangers of climate change by quoting Genesis 8:22: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." He added, "I believe that's the infallible word of God, and that's the way it's going to be for His creation."

and Joe Barton of Texas ("one of the House's top recipients of contributions from the oil-and-gas industry"), who --

argues that CO₂ emissions have nothing to do with climate change, and, in any event, people will just adapt. "When it rains, we find shelter," he has said. "When it's hot, we get shade. When it's cold, we find a warm place to stay." (Barton is perhaps best known for the apology he offered, last June, to the C.E.O. of BP, Tony Hayward, for what he described as a "shakedown" of the company by the Obama Administration.)

"The recent election represents a new low," Kolbert writes -- yes, lower even than the aggressively anti-science Bush II regime. "House Republicans and their Tea Party allies, reject even the idea of concern" on the climate-change issue.

Not content merely to ignore the science, they have decided to go after the scientists. Before the election, congressional Republicans had talked of eliminating the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Why, after all, have a panel on energy independence and global warming if you don't believe in either? Now James Sensenbrenner, of Wisconsin, who is likely to become the select committee's chairman, is arguing that it should be preserved. His rationale? The panel provides an ideal platform for harassing the Environmental Protection Agency, which, in the absence of legislative action, is the only body with the power to regulate carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, in today's Washington Post, retired New York State congressman Sherman Boehlert, one of those storied "moderate Republicans" now found mostly in museums and other curatorial situations, sounds an alarm:

Can the party of Reagan accept the science of climate change?

Watching the raft of newly elected GOP lawmakers converge on Washington, I couldn't help thinking about an issue I hope our party will better address. I call on my fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become our party's line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities.

National Journal reported last month that 19 of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers declared that the science of climate change is either inconclusive or flat-out wrong. Many newly elected Republican House members take that position. It is a stance that defies the findings of our country's National Academy of Sciences, national scientific academies from around the world and 97 percent of the world's climate scientists.

Why do so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world's top scientific academies and scientists are wrong? I would like to be able to chalk it up to lack of information or misinformation.

I can understand arguments over proposed policy approaches to climate change. I served in Congress for 24 years. I know these are legitimate areas for debate. What I find incomprehensible is the dogged determination by some to discredit distinguished scientists and their findings.

In a trio of reports released in May, the prestigious and nonpartisan National Academy concluded that "a strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Our nation's most authoritative and respected scientific body couldn't make it any clearer or more conclusive.

When I was chairman of the House Committee on Science, top scientists from around the world came before our panel. They were experts that Republicans and Democrats alike looked to for scientific insight and understanding on a host of issues. They spoke in probabilities, ranges and concepts - always careful to characterize what was certain, what was suspected and what was speculative. Today, climate scientists - careful as ever in portraying what they know vs. what they suspect - report that the body of scientific evidence supporting the consensus on climate change and its cause is as comprehensive and exhaustive as anything produced by the scientific community.

While many in politics - and not just of my party - refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, leaders of some of our nation's most prominent businesses have taken a different approach. They formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. This was no collection of mom-and-pop shops operated by "tree huggers" sympathetic to any environmental cause but, rather, a step by hard-nosed, profit-driven capitalists. General Electric, Alcoa, Duke Energy, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler signed on. USCAP, persuaded by scientific facts, called on the president and Congress to act, saying "in our view, the climate change challenge will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy."

There is a natural aversion to more government regulation. But that should be included in the debate about how to respond to climate change, not as an excuse to deny the problem's existence. The current practice of disparaging the science and the scientists only clouds our understanding and delays a solution. The record flooding, droughts and extreme weather in this country and others are consistent with patterns that scientists predicted for years. They are an ominous harbinger.

The new Congress should have a policy debate to address facts rather than a debate featuring unsubstantiated attacks on science. We shouldn't stand by while the reputations of scientists are dragged through the mud in order to win a political argument. And no member of any party should look the other way when the basic operating parameters of scientific inquiry - the need to question, express doubt, replicate research and encourage curiosity - are exploited for the sake of political expediency. My fellow Republicans should understand that wholesale, ideologically based or special-interest-driven rejection of science is bad policy. And that in the long run, it's also bad politics.

What is happening to the party of Ronald Reagan? He embraced scientific understanding of the environment and pollution and was proud of his role in helping to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. That was smart policy and smart politics. Most important, unlike many who profess to be his followers, Reagan didn't deny the existence of global environmental problems but instead found ways to address them.

The National Academy reports concluded that "scientific evidence that the Earth is warming is now overwhelming." Party affiliation does not change that fact.

The writer, a Republican, represented New York's 24th District in Congress from 1983 to 2007. He is a special adviser to the Project on Climate Science.

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