The Obama administration once again shows its strong commitment to free speech:
Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.
Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade — a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade — as a means to fight climate change.
On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions. . .
Their bosses in San Francisco approved the effort by Williams and Zabel to release the tape, but after an editorial they wrote appeared in the Washington Post, EPA Director Lisa Jackson ordered the pair to remove the video or face disciplinary action.
Specifically, the administration’s chief environmental official did not want Williams or Zabel mentioning their four decades with the EPA — time spent studying cap and trade.
What you have here is the EPA director, a presidential appointment, silencing career EPA employees who speak publicly in their area of expertise. The administration is insisting that the couple not tell the viewer the one thing that sets their video apart from countless others, the fact that they have relevant expertise in the field.
The video is here. For now anyway.
UPDATE: Williams and Zabel aren’t the only ones. (Via Instapundit.)
Internet Scofflaw 