The Hemmer-Beaumont Family Blog

They should throw the book at the Mayor-for-Life. What an embarrassment for D.C.

Marion Barry's Tax Sentencing Postponed

By Carol D. Leonnig and Yolanda Woodlee
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 9, 2006; B01

An irritated federal judge called off yesterday's planned sentencing in the tax case against D.C. Council member Marion Barry, complaining that he had not promptly filed his tax returns, arranged to pay his outstanding tax debt or provided other required paperwork.

The former four-term mayor pleaded guilty in the fall to misdemeanor charges stemming from his failure to file local and federal income tax returns for six years. He had hoped at his sentencing hearing yesterday to ask the judge to let him avoid prison time. But his effort to seek the court's leniency -- already threatened after he tested positive for cocaine and marijuana use in a court-required drug screening in November -- was put in further jeopardy yesterday when he tried the patience of the jurist who will decide his fate.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson expressed surprise and frustration upon hearing that Barry had waited until Tuesday to finally file the overdue tax returns. Even then, she said, he did not provide copies to the court. The judge also complained that Barry has not made arrangements to pay whatever he owes, though he was required to do so under the plea agreement he signed in October.


Marion Barry's Tax Sentencing Postponed

How corrupt is this Administration? There have always been political appointees - cronies rewarded for service to the Administration. However, the blatant partisan politics that these folks are playing with not only science, but the future health of our children (and their children), brings us to a new low. Here for your pleasure (if that's the right word) is the article from the Post.

The Politics of Science

Thursday, February 9, 2006; A22

IT IS A RARE thing for the biography of a 24-year-old NASA spokesman to attract the attention of the national media. But that is what happened this week when George C. Deutsch tendered his resignation. Mr. Deutsch had, it emerged, lied about his (nonexistent) undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University. Far more important, several New York Times articles over the past week or so have exposed Mr. Deutsch as one of several White House-appointed public affairs officers at the agency who tried to prevent senior NASA career scientists from speaking and writing freely, especially when their views on the realities of climate change differed from those of the White House.

Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good." Mr. Deutsch also instructed another NASA scientist to add the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator."

The spectacle of a young political appointee with no college degree exerting crude political control over senior government scientists and civil servants with many decades of experience is deeply disturbing. More disturbing is the fact that Mr. Deutsch's attempts to manipulate science and scientists, although unusually blatant, were not unique. Just before Christmas, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued "talking points" to local environmental agencies. These suggestions were intended to help their spokesmen play down an Associated Press story that -- using the EPA's own data -- showed that impoverished neighborhoods had higher levels of air pollution.

At the Food and Drug Administration, the director of the Office of Women's Health recently resigned because she believed that the administration was twisting science to stall approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception. Off the record -- because they fear losing their jobs -- some scientists at the Department of Health and Human Services say that Bush administration public affairs officers screen their appearances and utterances more carefully than anyone ever did. Scientists at places such as the Agriculture Department, not a part of the government known for its publicity hounds, have made the same claim.

In every administration there will be spokesmen and public affairs officers who try to spin the news to make the president look good. But this administration is trying to spin scientific data and muzzle scientists toward that end. NASA's Mr. Hansen was right when he told the Times that Mr. Deutsch was only a bit player. "The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies," he said. We agree.

The Politics of Science