We've been getting some pretty telling inside looks recently, at the way Washington groups supposedly founded on principle or scholarship are actually willing to put either at the disposal of interest groups for cash.

The latest was tucked away in the Sunday Washington Post profile of Matt Crawford, the inconoclastic "philosopher and gearhead" who authored the new book called Shop Class as Soulcraft - bemoaning the nation's devaluation of technical skill. As it turns out, Crawford, in a previous professional incarnation, had a brief, and unhappy turn seven years ago as executive director of the Marshall Institute, a Washington energy-policy think tank, and had this to say about the place (which he doesn't name in the book):

"The trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. . . . [P]art of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank," Crawford wrote. Marshall Institute president Jeff Kueter told the Post that Crawford's assertion was "completely incorrect."