Meet Lamar Smith: SOPA author, climate change skeptic, and Congress' next science boss

Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX). He’s controversial (especially in Internet circles), and he's just been appointed to lead a committee in Congress — making him a key power player in crafting the nation’s science and technology policy.

In the days since he was chosen for the job by his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives, some have condemned the selection, questioning Congress’ preservation of the committee’s status quo and its ability to make appropriate appointments to positions that are considered vital to the nation’s future. Rep Smith is set to take over his new chairmanship of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology next year, but it’s not the veteran lawmaker’s first time sitting at the head of the table in Congress. He’s leaving the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, where in 2011 he proposed a copyright enforcement bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act. (SOPA did not go well for Representative Smith, or for the bill’s corporate backers that wanted some legislative C4 from Congress to blow up the internet.) But while SOPA’s controversy burns bright in recent memory, it’s just one data point of many. Since 1980, for nearly half of his life, Representative Smith has been a professional lawmaker — and most of those years have already been spent on the committee he’s about to lead.