"I like it." - Al Gore

Silencing of the Sheep

Democrats like Obama promise transparency in gummint They promise transparency,  but legislate behind closed doors, excluding minority dissent They exclude minority dissent, but complain that the average American has been ignored by gummint They say gummint has ignored the cry of the common man, then impose regulations that make the common man cry. When the common man cries, they look for the source of their discontent When they discover the source of their discontent is them, they seek to ban the airing of factual information that exposes their calumny xLike banning the publication of scientific findings!

“  Rep. Conyers wants science to be secret… or you will pay ” Add to the already long list of outrageous actions by unchecked democrat boobs, and fellow travelers running wild, this from John Conyers. “ Recently, government-sponsored agencies like NIH have moved toward open access of scientific findings. That is, the results are published where anyone can see them, and in fact (for the NIH) after 12 months the papers must be publicly accessible. This is, in my opinion (and that of a lot of others, including a pile of Nobel laureates) a good thing. Astronomers, for example, almost always post their papers on Astro-ph, a place where journal-accepted papers can be accessed before they are published. John Conyers (D-MI) apparently has a problem with this. He is pushing a bill through Congress that will literally ban the open access of these papers, forcing scientists to only publish in journals. This may not sound like a big deal, but journals are very expensive. They can cost a fortune: The Astrophysical Journal costs over $2000/year, and they charge scientists to publish in them! So this bill would force scientists to spend money to publish, and force you to spend money to read them. ” Would you think it churlish of me to suggest that Conyers is acting in the best traditions of certain mid-twentieth century European dictators?  Even if he's doing it for cash money? “ Ironically, this bill is called The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, which is much like the Clean Air Clear Skies Act or the Patriot Act, in that it does exactly the opposite of what its name says. This bill is not fair, it puts a burden on scientists and keeps research from being publicly accessible as it should be. I myself rely on things like Astro-ph to do my reporting here; it could become illegal to post papers there for federally-sponsored scientists if this bill is passed. You can read more about this at Financial Times, Earlham College, and at Lawrence Lessig’s blog. ”