The Trib Spins.

From the editorial page from today's Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Granting more than half a million federal stimulus dollars to a professor whose Climategate role prompted a Penn State University investigation is politically motivated misuse of public money at its worst.

Michael Mann received the three-year, $541,184 grant in June, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research, a nonpartisan educational foundation in Washington. Creator of the discredited "hockey stick" temperature graph that purportedly buttressed the case for man-made global warming, he's a key figure in the leaked Climategate e-mails that show data were manipulated and destroyed and contrary research was suppressed to bolster scientifically suspect climate-change orthodoxy.

First off, the NCPPR is hardly "nonpartisan." From their own About Us page:

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.

In 1982, we started The National Center to provide the conservative movement with a versatile and energetic organization capable of responding quickly and decisively to fast-breaking issues. Today, we continue to fill this critical niche through a top-flight research and communications operation driven by results and the bottom line. [emphasis added.]

But this is Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust here - can't expect them to pay any attention to, you know, reality.

But wait, there's more. In an editorial about climate change on the pages of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review you know there's a circle jerk coming.

And here it is. According to Mediamatters.org it turns out that two Richard Mellon Scaife-controlled foundations (Carthage and Sarah Scaife) have given close to $1.1 million dollars to the National Center for Public Policy over the years.

That's almost exactly twice the amount that the Richard Mellon Scaife's editorial board is complaining about.

Funny that wasn't a part of the editorial. I wonder why. I mean, a long history of financial grants for a conservative think tank that criticizes a financial grant for a scientist it opposes might be seen, oh I don't know, as an important part of the story. Perhaps undermining the credibility of the source.

We can always count on Scaife's braintrust for a healthy circle jerk.