THE WORMHOLE IN REALITY

In response to yesterday's item, a reader writes: "I'm a Hubble man, too. I noticed that funding for maintenance of the space telescope was eliminated after the president's bullshit Mars project announcement, another coincidental bait-and-switch. There is a wormhole and his name is Bush."

This comes as no surprise to many in the scientific community. As reported even by Bush-friendly Fox News: "President Bush's administration distorts scientific findings and seeks to manipulate experts' advice to avoid information that runs counter to its political beliefs, a private organization of scientists asserted on Wednesday.

"The Union of Concerned Scientists contended in a report that 'the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented.'"

As reported in the Chicago Tribune, "top scientists and environmentalists" backed the report, which said "the administration had suppressed research on global warming, air quality, sexual health, cancer and other issues."

And in case you didn't read that, as reported in The New York Times, the group comprises "more than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates" who maintain that Bush & Company's systematic distortion of scientific fact served "policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad."

It's just Standard Operating Procedure for the White House wormhole: According to the report, "the administration also allowed industries with conflicts of interest to influence technical advisory committees, disbanded for political reasons one panel on arms control and subjected other prospective members of scientific panels to political litmus tests."