Brownie Points

John Judis writes in The New Republic that scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are being muzzled to obscure the increasingly self-evident connection between global warming and the frequency of intense hurricanes. Given all that's been written recently about how we may be approaching a disastrous "tipping point" in planetary climate, this would seem almost criminally negligent; instead, it seems to be yet another instance of the Bush administration inserting its ideological enforcers in positions of authority in government agencies. And a heck of a job they're doing too.