Follow-up: Exposing the Locke Foundation's war on climate policy

Our report yesterday on the North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation and its efforts to derail state climate policy is generating a lot of attention -- and ruffling a few feathers.

The Raleigh News & Observer's Under the Dome blog -- which looks at key issues in state politics -- covered the report today. Blue NC and ExxonSecrets have more.

But most interesting is the debate heating up at Ed Cone's excellent blog, where none other than Locke Foundation president John Hood himself took time out of his busy day to pen a (rather cranky) 578-word "rebuttal."

We'll have a lengthier reply soon, but for the moment note that Hood never challenges one of the central arguments of the Institute report: that one of the Locke Foundation's key lines of attack against the centrist Center for Climate Strategies is that they take money from supposedly "environmentalist" funders -- which, according to Locke, taints the Center's entire program.

Yet Locke sees no conflict in collecting more than $126,000 in money from outfits directly tied to ExxonMobil and other energy interests as they weigh in on climate policy.

Hood and the Locke Foundation can't have it both ways -- just like they can't dismiss as "anti-Christian bigotry" the seeming disconnect we found between their calls for "harder science" and the interesting End of Times beliefs of their staff (see end of story).