Last week, Jon Huntsman began to call out Governor Rick “4 Pinocchios” Perry and others in his party for being anti-science.  He started with the tweet above that went viral.

On ABC’s This Week, Huntsman went even further, explaining that being anti-science would harm his party — and America’s future:

TAPPER: These comments from Governor Perry prompted you to Tweet, quote:  “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.  Call me crazy.” Were you just being cheeky or do you think there’s a serious problem with what Governor Perry said?

HUNTSMAN:  I think there’s a serious problem.  The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem.  We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.  When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.

The Republican Party has to remember that we’re drawing from traditions that go back as far as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, President Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush.  And we’ve got a lot of traditions to draw upon.  But I can’t remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a – a party that – that was antithetical to science. I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.

Whether it’s bad for the Republican party remains to be seen — that would require President Obama and his team (and other progressive politicians) to push back in the general election the way Huntsman has in the GOP race.

But there’s no question that having one of the two major political parties in the most powerful country in the world being anti-science is a disaster for the nation and the world (see WashPost stunner: “The GOP’s climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion”).  I’ll be expanding on that position in the coming weeks, but what is interesting is that in the full online interview with ABC (video below), Huntsman himself starts to explain just how counterproductive and self-destructive it is for the party:

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Bill McKibben sends this message from jail:

The only thing we need in here is more company. We don’t need your sympathy, we need your company.

The U.S. Park Police have decided to take a get tough attitude with those protesting the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline:

On a phone call late this afternoon, U.S. Park Police told organizers of the sit-in that the jail time was expressly intended as a deterrent for future participants.

The Park Police were especially concerned that sit-ins would continue during the week of events beginning on August 28 surrounding the dedication of a new memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest exponents of creative nonviolence.

In multiple phone calls and in person meetings before today’s sit-in, the Park Police had previously assured organizers that participants in the protest would be facing a “post and forfeit” situation, meaning they would pay a $100 fine and be released the same day. While participants in this morning’s sit-in were trained the evening before to prepare for the worst, many were operating on the “post and forfeit” assumption due to police assurances.

How much better to clamp down hard on those trying to avert catastrophic global warming, than, say, those who are working to accelerate it (see “Tar sands: Still dirty after all these years” and Hansen slams Keystone XL: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts”).

You can get updates at Tar Sands Action.  Here’s the latest, More Arrests “Lighting a fire”:

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I’m liberal. You, you aristocrat,
Won’t know exactly what I mean by that.
I mean so altruistically moral
I never take my own side in a quarrel.

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd ends her evisceration of President Obama’s fecklessness with that quote from Robert Frost’s poem “The Lesson for Today.”  The poem is satirical (and not as easy to find online as one might expect — try here).

Frost read the poem at Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society seven decades ago — June 20, 1941.  Plus ça change.

My thought for the day:  Progressives are liberals who will take their own side!

Like so many Frost poems, the poem has a great ending:

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