I believe that past media and public possessed a healthy maturity about such matters. Not denying the obvious misgivings, but posessing the wisdom to distinguish between public and private matters.

I have no doubt that if the current media limelight and preoccupation with individual morality were somehow inflicted upon historical politicians, many great men and women would have chosen (as we are witnessing in present-day) to forgo such agony.

The loss would have been ours.

Each of us as individuals have been blessed with the good fortune of a mistake that few or no one noticed – and which we as individuals learned from.

Our political world is NOT made stronger for this kind of – supposedly – moral scrutiny. Instead, the most typical of men and women shy away and I fear that only the most egotistical and arrogant are still willing to pursue a life of public service.

While not specifically about politics, I’m reading Mark Arax’s “West of the West” which provides some fascinating insights into our wonderful State.

‘The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.”

The two MM’s: Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick,
two Canadians who fact-check published scientific conclusions by seekign raw data and codes used for climate models and graphs.

Is this science?

To quote Eric Raymond, one of the founders of the open source movement:

“From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

All you apologists weakly protesting that this is research business as usual and there are plausible explanations for everything in the emails? Sackcloth and ashes time for you. This isn’t just a smoking gun, it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot.”