Marie-Claire Shanahan points out the media ‘round here really have been a mite thin on the ground re coverage of concerns re the Harper government’s muzzling of Canadian scientists.

My personal take: this is probably partly general inattention and the difficulty general audience media have covering science-related stuff to begin with, and some media, of course (cough the Sun chain cough), really are cheerleaders for and cronies of these slimeballs anyway, but Harper and Co. have also been very good at shutting down discussion of what they don’t want talked about just by making it difficult, reducing the ability of media that might raise critical points of view even to get access or, of course, comment. They don’t comment if they don’t like where it might go, and, of course, they’re muzzling the hell out of anyone who might be able to comment from inside (as in: this is the whole point of this story), so there ya go: the control these control freaks always wanted.

Which, yeah, isn’t pretty. Take home lesson: authoritarians of this stripe really should never be given the reins of power. It’s like handing someone who already has poor impulse control a bottle of hard liquor and a large, heavy mallet. It’s just not a scenario at all likely to lead to much good.