Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, has long used vast amounts of fossil fuels to rail against climate change, and has long attempted to use his power as an elected federal official to go after those who fail to share his Cult of Climastrology viewpoints. Well, he’s still doing it
(Washington Times) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse wants newspapers to stop publishing “extreme†and “phony†op-eds written by climate-change skeptics, blasting such articles as “industry propaganda.â€
The Rhode Island Democrat said he was stunned by the “extraordinary barrage of opinion pieces†that followed his May 2015 op-ed recommending that Attorney General Loretta Lynch investigate fossil-fuel companies and their supporters for possible civil violations of federal racketeering laws.
He blamed the flood of what he described as “error-plagued criticism†on “the climate denial apparatus†and urged newspapers to reject such opinion pieces in the future.
“The breadth of the op-ed assault suggests that a new level of critical scrutiny will be needed at honorable editorial boards to make responsible choices between legitimate and honest opinion and clever, made-to-order, industrial-scale dissemination of industry propaganda,â€said Mr. Whitehouse in a Tuesday op-ed in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Here’s a sitting U.S. Senator calling for censorship by the news media of people he doesn’t agree with. Regardless of the notion that most journalists and their parent companies are left leaning, they should be appalled at Whitehouse attempting to tell them how to do their job, and telling them what they should and shouldn’t print.
Imagine this was a Republican telling the media what they shouldn’t print: can we easily imagine the collective apoplexy form the media? And from Democrats? That Republican would be smeared as a fascist, against democracy, and against the 1st Amendment. They would go ballistic. But, they’re good when their folks do the same. Even when the threats are against themselves.
