Astronaut Harrison Schmitt is Grounded

I'm sure it had nothing to do with mounting criticism over his misuses of science in what has been called "ArticGate" (Schmitt spelled the word "Arctic" wrong in a paper submitted to NASA--a paper in which this was probably the least of his errors). The official story is that he refused a background check. But whatever the cause, at the end of a week in which bloggers pilloried him for abusing climate science, we now suddenly learn that Harrison Schmitt is stepping down from his previously announced post at the head of New Mexico's Department of Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources. Frankly, to me the official story has a lot of holes. The cited cause of his stepping down sounds awfully trivial. Do you really worry about routine things like background checks if you want to be the head of a major state agency? And note also: This nomination had ...