On the floor of the Senate last night, on the eve of Earth Day, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse went after the Cato Institute—among others, including the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal—for our having accused the senator and his friends in the environmental movement of “having a widespread faith in the government’s ability to solve problems.” We plead guilty. Not only do we believe those folks are of that faith—the evidence is plain, even if the evidence supporting the faith is lacking—but we believe also that it is a self-serving faith, because it drives them to find ever more problems to solve, problems most of us never knew we had.

But it’s a letter that then-Cato President John Allison recently sent to Sen. Whitehouse and others in Congress that seems most to exercise the good senator. As the C-SPAN transcript puts it:

cato also sent us a letter in response to our inquiry, telling us we cannot use the awesome power of the federal government to cow cato and others. cow? according to the “wall street journal” editorial page, which, sadly, has become a front for the fossil fuel industry, we were – quote – “trying to silence the other side.” although i have to confess, mr. president, it is not clear how the other side would be silenced by simply having to reveal whose payroll they’re on, which is all we asked. let’s be clear our letter didn’t suggest that industry scientists should be silenced, just that the public should know if those scientists are being paid by the very industries with a big economic …

Ah. There we have it. We’re in the pockets of Big Oil. Never mind that the facts show otherwise, that Cato’s donor base is wide and composed almost entirely of individuals animated by the idea of a free society under limited government.

But that’s not the main point, not really. Rather, it’s the assumption of Sen. Whitehouse and his friends that they, whose outlook depends so much on government funding, fairly dripping with the taxpayers’ blood, have the cleanest of hands and the purest of motives. Yet why should we believe that the avaricious individuals these folks call on government to check, suddenly become virtuous when they have the monopoly power of government in their grasp, to say nothing of the public till at their disposal? If ever scrutiny were warranted, I should think it on that side of the ledger.