Joe Sestak Pushing NYT’s Smear on Willie Soon to Boost Struggling Campaign

Pennsylvania Democrat and likely Senate candidate Joe Sestak tweeted out a link to a dubious New York Times hit piece on Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Wei-Hock Soon.

Soon is often targeted by the climate alarmist establishment for debunking some of climate change’s shoddy science.

Sestak should be more concerned with making friends, not enemies, as even Pennsylvania Democrats don’t seem to think much of him as a repeat candidate in any effort to unseat Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. As reported here just two days ago, Democrats are looking for another candidate.

Pennsylvania was one of the few shining spots nationally for Democrats in November’s elections. But as the contest for U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat draws closer, party insiders aren’t exactly linking arms with the sole Democrat who has declared his intention to run.

Instead, some Democrats are looking for an alternative to former congressman Joe Sestak, who they view as a political loner, reports the National Journal.

Sestak is seeking a rematch after narrowly losing to Toomey in 2010. But some party leaders are holding grudges over his approach in that campaign, when he ran against Arlen Specter (a newly minted Democrat, following his party switch).

As for the latest smear on scientist Soon Sestak touted perhaps as a way to bolster what looks to be an already struggling effort to mount a second campaign against Toomey, James Delingpole took the hit piece apart just yesterday for Breitbart News.

I spoke to Soon last night. He told me that of course he receives private funding for his research: he has to because it’s his only way of making ends meet, especially since the Alarmist establishment launched its vendetta against him when, from 2009 onwards, he became more outspoken in his critiques of global warming theory. Harvard-Smithsonian strove to make his life harder and harder, first by banning him from working on anything even remotely connected with issues like climate change or CO2, then by moving his office away from the astrophysics department to a remote area Soon calls Siberia. What the faculty couldn’t quite do was actually sack Soon because it had no cause: he was producing too many quality papers, and he was also bringing in too much money (40 per cent of which goes straight into the faculty coffers).

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So there’s nothing new or scandalous about this latest New York Times hit job on poor Willie Soon. It’s just a continuation of a vendetta which has been waged for years against an honest, decent, hardworking — and incredibly brave — scientist who refuses to toe the official (and increasingly discredited) line on man-made global warming.