Breach Of Trust
(swiped and paraphrased from an editorial in the Star Tribune. Not my words, but quite good writing)

...the Health Department's distortion of research findings in (an abortion info) brochure. It marks a major breach of public trust -- and the appearance at the state level of the Bush administration's similarly out-of-bounds skewing of scientific research.

(skipping a bit about the abortion issue...we all have our opinions, they all have value, this is a Bush rant)

In politics, and even in governance, the public understands that officials tend to interpret facts in a way that suits their agenda; they put the best face on bad news and tout the good. There are, however, boundaries to this behavior -- boundaries that are critically important to effective decisionmaking by both leaders and ordinary citizens.

A decade ago, President George H.W. Bush said to the National Academy of Sciences, "Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now, more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance."

Any threat to that objectivity, whether it involves actual manipulation of the scientific process or the distortion of scientific conclusions, will result in skewed guidance to policymakers. Such guidance is worse than worthless; ...with very real consequences.

This kind of distortion is very much akin to what happened during the buildup to the war on Iraq. Intelligence analysts' best thinking, based on the available objective evidence, was placed in subservience to the administration's agenda. Findings were exaggerated and distorted -- and now the public is beginning to understand both that the breach of trust occurred, and where it led.

(a report) documented numerous cases in which the administration "manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings."

It happened in abstinence education, "where performance measures were changed to make unproven 'abstinence-only' programs appear effective," in global warming, "where reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on the risks of climate change were suppressed," on missile defense, wetlands policy, and many other issues where objective scientific guidance is imperative, both for policymaking and to have an accurately informed citizenry.

Now it's happening here.