About time the Republicans started exerting their power and dealing with the Fascist Left.

Zitat

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Call it a tit for tat over subpoenas, one that escalates an ongoing spat over what the biggest U.S. oil company knew and when it knew it.

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) said Wednesday his committee was issuing subpoenas to the New York and Massachusetts state attorneys general, who have issued their own subpoenas as part of probes into whether ExxonMobil misled the public and investors about what it knew about the dangers of climate change decades ago.

ExxonMobil and its defenders have asserted that the company has merely been exercising its free speech rights with respect to climate change.

In a joint news conference, Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.) called the attorneys general a “posse” and said “since when did it become a crime to hold an opinion?” He said the attorneys general “have veered away from enforcing the law to environmental activism.”

Smith said the committee was also issuing subpoenas to eight environmental organizations to obtain documents related to their efforts to encourage the state attorneys general to pursue their Exxon investigations.

That triggered outcries from environmental groups, who said the committee subpoenas were designed to inhibit the very free speech the House members were claiming to protect.

“Chairman Smith’s subpoena is an abuse of power that goes way beyond the House Science Committee’s jurisdiction and amounts to nothing more than harassment,” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “It’s also just plain wrong to investigate a nonprofit for doing its job — in this case, providing public officials with science and evidence to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for deception on climate change, one of the world’s most pressing problems.”

Kimmell said that the Union of Concerned Scientists, in response to a letter from Smith last week, had just offered to brief the committee’s staff about UCS activities.

“UCS has been completely transparent about our efforts to inform state prosecutors,” Kimmell added. “We won’t apologize for trying to expose this deception.”

He said Smith was abusing the House Science Committee’s subpoena power.

“It’s beyond ironic for Chairman Smith to violate our actual free speech rights in the name of protecting ExxonMobil’s supposed right to misrepresent the work of its own scientists and deceive shareholders and the public,” he said.

But five GOP members of the committee said that the attorneys general were abusing their subpoena power to intimidate ExxonMobil.

“Every individual corporation … has the right to conduct scientific research and formulate opinions, their own opinions, free from the threat of prosecution,” Weber said.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ener...climate-change/

Oh, the sweet irony of these Leftist totalitarians to whine about their free speech when they have been doing all they can to deny it to others.