The Separation of Science and State

There is a fairly well-documented tendency by the current White House
administration to make political appointments to various science-related
agencies, such as EPA and NASA. While this may be not a novel practice,
what is novel is how brazenly some of these appointees are pushing a
decidedly political and non-scientific agenda at these agencies.
Luckily, a few of these appointees seem to be even less qualified than
their credentials suggest, like Mr. Deutsch at NASA, who lied about
receiving his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fahd/misc/news_archive/20060207_NYT.pdf

It is one thing to debate whether Supreme Court nominations should be
made based on ideology. It is another thing to assign political hacks
and lackeys to ensure that scientific output from government agencies is
twisted to fall in line with the Executive branch's desires.

I'll see if I can find more of these stories, and attach the links to
this post.