John McCain, Not A Friend To The Animals
Posted by Mike Gehrke on March 12, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Well, at least not the grizzly bears:
Senator John McCain loves to present himself as a fighter against waste and pork-barrel spending. His fusillades against the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska and other such projects were well justified. But his jabs at a study of grizzly bears in Montana are way off the mark.To hear Mr. McCain tell it in his presidential stump speech and campaign ads, the government has squandered $3 million (actually more like $5 million) to study the DNA of bears in Montana. “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal,” he jokes, “but it was a waste of money.”
A report by Joel Achenbach in The Washington Post makes clear, however, that this was not really a study of bear DNA but a study that used bear DNA to determine whether the grizzly bear was still a threatened species or had rebounded. Mr. McCain and his staff either failed to realize that or chose to distort the facts for political effect. Either choice is not encouraging.
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