by Robert M. Traxler

During a Senate hearing March 10, Attorney General Loretta Lynch did not even come close to ruling out a Federal Bureau of Investigations case investigating people who deny the existence of global climate change under the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The Attorneys General of New York and California are currently pursuing criminal charges against corporations that fund studies that they feel will not toe the politically correct line that the science is settled and above question.

In this august publication, my friend Ranger Rick and I have spoken out questioning the validity of the global warming industry’s assumptions of fact. Do we and the editor of the Town Broadcast (for allowing us to question our government) need to be terrified of our own government kicking in our front doors and dragging us away in hand irons?

While growing up, and for the first 45 years of my life, the politically correct fact was that man evolved from monkeys. Teachers in grade school, high school and college darn near 100 percent of the time said only a very stupid, unenlightened person could be a denier of that fact. The monkey and man both have opposing thumbs and a close look at the two species will leave any person with half a brain believing man evolved from monkeys. Anyone who denied evolution was an idiotic fool; then came DNA testing, proving man did not evolve from monkeys.

The American establishment media has a constitutional duty to protect free speech; where are they? Our establishment media has become a left-wing extension of the order of the holy temple of the politically correct, a religion that includes the unquestioned belief in global climate change.

Two of our largest states and the Federal Government are now or are in the process of investigating, under criminal statutes, businesses or individuals who fund studies that attempt to uncover flaws in the scientific methods used to prove man-made global climate change. I may be wrong, but should not a scientist welcome peer review? A research scientist who makes broad assumptions should not be surprised the assumptions are questioned. Criminalizing disagreement will have a chilling effect on the peer review process and it will not further the scientific method.

The RICO laws were designed to be used against organized violent crime families and large murderous drug cartels, not American citizens who commit the felony crime (in the eyes of our government) of disagreement with the left wing Holy Grail of climate change.

Do we dare even read a document that challenges the validity of climate change? Is free speech not chilled by the pending indictments of those who dare question our government? Why are the left wing protectors of free speech in the media not up in arms? Whatever happened to a nation who prided itself on the principle of “I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it?”

American colleges and universities have “safe zones,” places designed to limit free speech and ensure students do not hear things they may disagree with or not approve of. Institutions of higher education should be a place of free and open unfettered thought and speech; however, a generation of Americans is coming into adulthood believing political incorrect speech must be treated as a criminal act and punishable by law.

Where are the self-appointed protectors of free speech, the media and college professors? Perhaps they are the ones building the scaffold and tying the hangman’s knot. Two terms of a very politically correct government have emboldened the radical left, who will use governmental power and the Department of Justice to jail those who dare disagree.

Criminalizing climate change denying is a first step towards shredding the Constitution. This nation is turning upside down, with the right championing free speech and the left-wing media and colleges denying the First Amendment to all who disagree with the politically correct orthodoxy. Hell just may be freezing over, or is saying that denying global warming is a crime?