Senior analyst silenced

Fox News:

A Defense Department analyst who authored a report critical of a controversial multi-billion dollar weapon system, alleged that his analysis was ”buried” by senior DoD officials on the eve of a crucial Congressional vote to authorize funding for the new program. 

Alan Carlin, an economist for nearly two decades with the Office of the Secretary of the Army, wrote a 95-page internal study this past spring that found that the planned weapon offered little–if any–improvement over existing platforms, was based on shaky science and immature technologies, and did so at a cost more than twenty times that of the weapon it is intended to replace.  Knowledge of Carlin’s report might have swayed the close Congressional vote last week when the House of Representatives approved funding of the new program by a mere eight votes amidst a storm of protest.

According to internal emails, after Carlin produced his study he was “forcibly reassigned” to a different department and ordered not to discuss his findings.  The emails only came to light pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request by a defense watchdog organization.

In a written statement, Senator Coburn (R-OK) lambasted Army officials, in addition to many of his own colleagues, whom he says are “actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify an unaffordable and unworkable pork barrel project.” 

You would think that a story like this should deserve to break through the relentless onslaught of Michael Jackson coverage.  That it does not just goes to show how much power the military-industrial complex has over Congress and the mainstream media.

No wonder they are dying

52 professional media outlets have asked to attend an arraignment hearing for some singer accused of beating his girlfriend . . . meanwhile the world depends on amateur footage to get honest reporting from Iran. 

Where Rosie O’Donnell and neo-nazis join hands

Up on Drudge right now are two juxtaposed stories that demonstrate what I’ve long said about politics.  The two stories are about the gunman who killed at least one at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.  One report says that he is an “89-year old white supremacist;” the other notes that he was a “9/11 ‘Truther’.”

Politics is not a linear spectrum; it’s a circle.  And on the dark side of the globe is where loony left and loony right meet.