(Congress)Man of Science

Sherwood Boehlert, the moderate Republican legislator from New York, will retire from the House of Representatives this year after nearly a quarter-century of service. An interview with the congressman appeared in the Science section of the New York Times this week. Why? As chairman of the House Committee on Science, Boehlert has been a champion of both the sciences and the environment as well as a stalwart proponent of ratcheting up fuel economy standards for cars and trucks -- positions that have put him at odds with the party leadership. Washington, he tells the Times, "is a town where everyone says they are for science-based decision making — until the science leads to a politically inconvenient conclusion. And then they want to go to Plan B."