A Brown Shirt Witch Hunt

In the high-stakes politics of climate change, science seldom fares well, writes Holman W. Jenkins in the WSJ. “… it’s bizarre to watch green campaigners attack anybody who questions the thinly based science that keeps down our best carbon-free energy choice.”

From the editors at NRO on the fraud case involving Exxon:

On March 29, a group of mainly Democratic attorneys general announced at a press conference (with former vice president and green-energy profiteer Al Gore in attendance) that they would seek to transform U.S. policy on climate change by “creatively” and “aggressively” deploying their prosecutorial powers. That, in and of itself, should raise an entire May Day parade’s worth of red flags: Prosecutors are in the business of enforcing the law, not rewriting it, and the open, naked promise to use prosecutorial powers as a political weapon is a prima facie abuse of office. In a self-respecting society, every one of those state attorneys general would have been impeached the next day.

What is at stake here isn’t Exxon’s share price. Exxon can afford to lose a lawsuit. What’s at stake here is nothing less than the rule of law and the maintenance of a free society, one in which people, think tanks, and businesses are not subject to prosecution for political activism on contentious public-policy questions. This is an attack not only on the First Amendment but on the entirety of the political process itself.

And as NRO’s Kevin D. Williamson notes:

Kamala Harris, Eric Schneiderman, Claude Earl Walker, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch should not resign — they should be hounded from office, and from polite society. Prosecuting political institutions and businesses for political activism is brown-shirt business, plain and simply and ugly and heinous.

Read more here about how members of Congress and the Obama administration are bullying climate skeptics.

Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, and practicing yoga.