John, the put-their-fingers-in-their-ears-and-hum reaction of the White House is, if nothing else, ironic. Remember, this was the crowd that excoriated the Bush administration for buying into the groupthink of every Western power that Iraq was in possession of WMDs. No excuse! The fix must have been in! The excuse that there was unanimity among Western intelligence agencies and our own intelligence professionals carried no weight. And this was also the crowd that was going to take “politics out of science” — the inference being that only Neanderthal conservatives could question certain scientific truths or stand in the way of “progress.”

Now that we have overwhelming evidence of the danger of groupthink and of the triumph of ideological preconceptions over data collection, the Obami want to hear none of it. It is, if nothing else, an example of how dearly the liberal political class clings to the security blanket of “science” to push its big-government agenda. It’s not enough to want to lessen our dependence on foreign oil or create jobs by developing domestic energy resources. There had to be a crisis to create a sense of urgency and justify huge taxes and regulatory controls. So it’s not surprising that when the “science” justifying the “crisis” is called into doubt, those pushing the extreme green agenda want to run the other way.

Unfortunately, as you point out, the cat is out of the bag, and there is a full-fledged scandal. And the Obami couldn’t even release the news on a Friday. It seems the social engineers will have their hands full trying to convince us that there is nothing to see after all. Just move along.