The 29 September issue of the Wall Street Journal (p. 18) has a short editorial (subscription required) that observes:

“We’ve long been skeptics about the science behind the political campaign to regulate greenhouse gasses, so imagine our surprise to discover that some of the global warmists seem to agree. How else to read a paragraph that was included in a recent Senate spending bill exempting climate programs from having to pass scientific scrutiny? The legislative language excuses any “research and data collection, or information analysis conducted by or for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” (the agency charged with monitoring climate change) from the Data Quality Act, a new law that requires sound science in policymaking. This is the sole exemption in the bill.”

I have no information on this requested exemption other than what the WSJ reports, however, if their interpretation of events has some truth to it …

“Nobody is rushing to take credit for the proposed exemption. But our sources say it was included at the request of Democrats on the Senate subcommittee that wrote the spending bill in question, but that now the exemption is getting the attention of Chairman Judd Gregg, who says he intends to remove it.”

… then whatever the underlying justification, the mere act of trying to win an exemption from the DQA is likely to enhance the legitimacy of the DQA as a “filter” on science and, in my view, may enhance rather than reduce the politicization of science. Stay tuned.