Bart Gor­don, chair­man of the House Sci­ence com­mit­tee, and Brad Miller, chair­man of that com­mit­tee’s inves­ti­ga­tions sub­com­mit­tee, will be dig­ging into a memo restrict­ing com­ment on polar bears and cli­mate change. The memo told gov­ern­ment scientists:

Please be advised that all for­eign trav­el requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future trav­el requests involv­ing or poten­tial­ly involv­ing cli­mate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears will also require a mem­o­ran­dum from the Region­al Direc­tor to the Direc­tor indi­cat­ing who’ll be the offi­cial spokesman on the trip and the one respond­ing to ques­tions on these issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly polar bears, includ­ing a state­ment of assur­ance that these indi­vid­u­als under­stand the Admin­is­tra­tion’s posi­tion on these issues.

The con­gress­men have asked Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or Kempthorne to explain the order, writ­ing that the memo “appears to be the lat­est effort by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion to block a full and free dis­cus­sion of issues relat­ing to cli­mate change by the sci­en­tif­ic community.”

Get­ting seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions into these sorts of abus­es is one of the many ben­e­fits of win­ning the elec­tions last November.

Integri­ty of Sci­ence points out anoth­er ben­e­fit, a bill pro­tect­ing sci­en­tists who blow the whis­tle on exact­ly this sort of abuse.