Just a few minutes ago the AP reported that Obama has nominated two excellent candidates for his environmental team.
Obama selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration.
Chu, 60, is director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases by developing new energy sources.
The selection of Chu, a Chinese American who shared a Nobel Prize for physics in 1997, received widespread praise on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he looked forward to "confirming Dr. Chu as quickly as possible."
Carol Browner was a reasonably effective EPA Dir, although sometimes quite a bit too quick to believe what industry told her and often not as heavy-handed as certain situations required. Still, as a presidential advisor she'll be playing to her strengths.
It's the selection of Chu that's startling.
I think this is the most in-your-face appointment Obama has made. He made that plain in his statement when he went straight at Bush.
"His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action," Obama said at a news conference in Chicago.
(emphasis added)
Take that, Shrub.
It's going to be a hard one for the Pubs to handle. Chu is a Nobel Prize winner - how do they attack one of those?
Major points for this one, as much for the way it was done as for the choice itself.
On the negative side, there's some concern - especially after the Gates retention - that Obama will hold other military over who we'd be better off rid of. At Talk to Action, Chris Rodda is particularly worried that Obama's overt Christianity might react favorably to certain religico-military personalities. Sec of the Army Pete Geren, for instance.
In 2004, Geren participated in the infamous Pentagon Christian Embassy video, a promotional video filmed inside the Pentagon that, at the request of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), led to an investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General. In July 2007, the IG issued a 45-page report finding seven officers, including four generals, guilty of violating a number of DoD ethics regulations. But, because of the IG's narrow choice of which regulations to focus on, the civilian DoD officials who appeared in the video, including then Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Geren, got off scot free. The civilian officials, of course, were not subject to the ethics regulations regarding the endorsement of a non-federal entity while in uniform. Geren was also exonerated of the charge of using his official position to endorse a non-federal entity because the video did not identify him by his precise title, but only as the "Honorable Pete Geren, Presidential Appointee." The IG also chose to completely evade the issue of religion in its investigation by plucking the catchall words "non-federal entity" from the regulations that were violated, although those same regulations do specifically name certain types of entities that cannot be endorsed by DoD personnel, including sectarian religious organizations. So, even the charges against the military officers who were found guilty were essentially placed on the same level as endorsing a car dealership or some other miscellaneous private enterprise while in uniform. Apparently, the IG just didn't see what the prohibition of government promotions of religion had to do with DoD personnel participating in a fundraising video at the Pentagon promoting a religious organization and a particular religion.
The Christian Embassy endorsed by Secretary Geren in the video is an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), a fundamentalist Christian organization whose far reaching Military Ministry has become entrenched in every part of the military. Geren, who was a Congressman from Texas from 1989 to 1997, first became involved with Christian Embassy through their Capitol Hill branch. He continued this relationship when he came to the Pentagon in 2001, joining the organization's Senior Executive Fellowship.
This is NOT a guy we want, a theocrat who likes the idea of warrior Xtians running around with guns. That whole Bush-allowed confusion of religion with Xtianist aims needs to be cut out of the military altogether, and Geren would be a good place to start.
This is NOT a guy we want, a theocrat who likes the idea of warrior Xtians running around with guns.
But it's all we've come to know.
Posted by: eRobin | December 15, 2008 at 08:35 PM