Name:   GoneFishin - Subject:   EVEN WIX IS MORE QUALIFIED Date:   12/16/2016 9:37:52 PM (updated 12/16/2016 9:38:31 PM)

The Secretary of Energy under George W. Bush, Samuel Bodman, had a doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT. The first man who held that cabinet post under President Obama, Stephen Chu, won the Nobel Prize in Physics. The current leader of the Department of Energy, Ernest Moniz, ran the physics department at MIT.

That doesn't mean they are perfect public servants who knew how manage a huge bureaucracy, but they came equipped with a baseline knowledge of our nuclear stockpile, naval reactors, energy conservation, radioactive waste disposal, and genomics - which are the principal job requirements.

The next Energy Secretary is an oil man and climate change denier who attended Texas A&M - where he flunked Organic Chemistry II, got D's in Organic Chem lab and Organic Chem I, and C's in physics and chemistry - before growing up to believe that the Department of Energy should be abolished.

Science isn't really Rick Perry's thing. There's no shame in that. Certainly, Donald Trump doesn't think so.

But as Rep. Frank Pallone (NJ-6^th) put it, "It is deeply unsettling that our current Secretary of Energy, a renowned nuclear physicist, could be succeeded by a contestant on Dancing with the Stars."