Failing to prevail in the free and fair arena of ideas contested openly, Al Gore and the Democrats have resorted to atempting to silence global warming skeptics who defy their orthodoxy. The Washington Times reports that prominent global warming skeptic and Virginia State Climatologists Patrick Michaels was pressured to step down from his post over the summer. The Times writes:

"Mr. Michaels has been a leading skeptic of global-warming theories. Although he thinks global warming is real and influenced by humans, he contends it is caused primarily by natural forces.

The administration of Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, asked Mr. Michaels last year to refrain from using his title when conducting non-state business because of fears his views would be perceived as an official state position. The governor's office said Mr. Michaels, appointed by Gov. John N. Dalton, a Republican, was not a gubernatorial appointee, contending that the climatology office became UVa.'s domain in 2000.

Mr. Michaels, 57, called his resignation a sad result of the fact that his state climatologist funding had become politicized, compromising his academic freedom. "It's very simple," he said. "I don't think anybody was able to come to a satisfactory agreement about academic freedom."

In one of those delicious coincidences, Investor's Business Daily revealed in an editorial that Dr. James Hansens claims that he was being silenced by the Bush administraition was a big charade orchestrated and underwritten by George Soros' peversely named "Open Society:"

"How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely 'NASA whistleblower' standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute, which gave him 'legal and media advice'?

"That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship 'philanthropy,' by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's 'politicization of science' program."
 

"That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly 'censored' spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda. "