Is Barbara Boxer too stupid to represent California??

[gsvol]

The LA Times has declined to endorse Barbara (Senator, not ma'am, please) Boxer for re-election on the ground that she's failed to exhibit intellectual leadership.

From one of the internal links;

Boxer and Jackson’s statements, in addition to being a striking change in policy, are problematic because U.S. climate science is very closely tied to the IPCC reports.

The statements by Boxer and Jackson followed Senator Inhofe’s release in his opening statement of a minority staff report documenting many flaws in the IPCC report and the other evidence revealed in the Climategate files.

Both Boxer and Jackson appeared to be trying to distance the EPA from the IPCC report. Boxer said:

"In my opening statement, I didn’t quote one international scientist or IPCC report. … We are quoting the American scientific community here."

When Inhofe directly asked Jackson if she still considered the IPCC report the “gold standard,” she answered:

"The primary focus of the endangerment finding was on climate threat risks in this country."

Jackson also noted:

"The information on the glaciers and other events doesn’t weaken … the evidence we considered [to make the Endangerment Finding on CO2.]"

The EPA has specifically cited the IPCC AR4 report as the primary source from which it drew information to make the Endangerment Finding on CO2 as a pollutant.