Just say it, you don't have to actually mean it

From the March 20th Daily Times.

Global warming panel makeup questioned
By Nicole Gaudiano
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON -- House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming -- but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.

"I said, 'John, I can't do that,' " Gilchrest, R-1st-Md., said in an interview. "He said, 'Come on. Do me a favor. I want to help you here.'"

Gilchrest didn't make the committee. Neither did other Republican moderates or science-minded members, whose guidance centrist GOP members usually seek on the issue. Republican moderates, called the Tuesday Group, invited Boehner to this week's meeting to push for different representation.

Anyone else's blood boiling yet? No? Well, I suppose we're all becoming pretty inured to this sort of thing. Of course to be fair this may be as much an example of political gamesmanship as Anthropogenic Global Warming denialism, but it's certainly of a piece with current GOP attitudes toward science.

Boehner's spokesman Brian Kennedy said he doesn't comment on the private conversations Boehner has with members of his conference, but "the only criteria set for potential members of the panel was that they must undertake a thorough review of the facts, the empirical data and the science to determine how Congress can craft the best possible legislation going forward."

Okay, now that's standard issue CYA politics. In other words, a lie all prettied up for public consumption.

"Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one."

Close enough for jazz, but not, apparently, government work.