On January 16, the Los Angeles Times revealed that anti-science bills have been popping up over the past several years in statehouses across the U.S., mandating the teaching of climate change denial or "skepticism" as a credible "theoretical alternative" to human caused climate change came.

The L.A. Times' Neela Banerjee explained,

"Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom."

What the excellent Times coverage missed is that key language in these anti-science bills all eminated from a single source: the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has launched a new website, ALECExposed.org, to help consumers understand more about the secretive business group that is helping craft industry-friendly legislation. CMD has obtained more than 800 model bills that were crafted by ALEC for state governments across the country. From a CMD press release:

At an extravagant hotel gilded just before the Great Depression, corporate executives from the tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, State Farm Insurance, and other corporations were joined by their “task force” co-chairs — all Republican state legislators — to approve “model” legislation. They jointly head task forces of what is called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC).

There, as the Center for Media and Democracy has learned, these corporate-politician committees secretly voted on bills to rewrite numerous state laws. According to the documents we have posted to ALEC Exposed, corporations vote as equals with elected politicians on these bills. These task forces target legal rules that reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink.

The Center obtained copies of more than 800 model bills approved by companies through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center. Those bills, which the Center has analyzed and marked-up, are now available at ALEC Exposed.

Speaking of fake videos created by ExxonMobil-friendly spin doctors, according to Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy, in June 2006 , the broadcast PR firm Medialink Worldwide put out a video news release (VNR) titled, "Global Warming and Hurricanes: All Hot Air?" Apparently, the segment was aired over WTOK in Mississippi. The firm identified "TCS Daily Science Roundtable" as the client behind the segment. But Medialink didn't disclose that TCS Daily is a website published by Tech Central Station.

We have met the enemy—and it's our own PR machine.

You may remember that we recently posted an interview with John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and  Democracy and author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Well, fans of his work – and of SourceWatch and PRWatch – will be interested to know that he recently published a new book. The Best War Ever is a look at the US involvement in Iraq, and what the Bush administration's reliance on spin has to do with it.