Sage Grouse direct

PM Bryant over at B and B left a comment thanking me for bringing up his post on the Interior Department undermining sage grouse science. He also left a direct link to that post so you don't have to wade through a lot of his other posts (which I'd recommend reading) to find it. Bryant said he had forgotten about that one, a comment which prompted memory of another incident of scientific data running counter to Republican goals: elimination of the Fish Passage Center. From the Washington Post article:

In a surgical strike from Capitol Hill, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) has eliminated a little-known agency that counts endangered fish in the Columbia River.
The Fish Passage Center, with just 12 employees and a budget of $1.3 million, has been killed because it did not count fish in a way that suited Craig.

Like PZ Meyers said: it's worse than we thought. But perhaps we should take these efforts as a back-handed compliment for science - proponents of the current administration must ultimately think science is the only worldview with any meaning, otherwise why would they go through such efforts to change the data, hide the data, eliminate science agencies, underfund science, fund non-scientists to do research, ridicule scientists, create false data to compete with scientific data, or push fairytale "alternatives" in science education? Ultimately, they must be realizing science is actually on the right track... unfortunately their policies are heading in the opposite direction.