Call Your Congress Critter: The Research Works Act

Websearch your CongressCritter and navigate to the email / reply form. Then give him or her an earful (eyeful) about the attempt by Reps Maloney and Issa to discontinue the requirement for public funded science to be made publicly available (by the Omnibus Appropriation passed in Mar 2009).

Please. Put your Critter on alert that this is bad legislation that is bad for taxpayers. Additional detail is after the jump.

Truth Vigilante

A recent editorial by the NYT Public Editor is drawing a lot of fire on the Twitts and blogs.

He asks if journalists should be “Truth Vigilantes” and places it in the context of verifying political assertions. In place of the usual cowardly he-said/she-said stenography that has almost entirely replaced the sadly lost profession of journalism.

Pfaah! I spit on stenographic media.

I invite you, dear reader, to relate your own moments of clarity where the stenographic replacement became crystal clear to you.

For me it was when then President George H. W. Bush came out of the back door of his Kennebunkport retreat and told the media that the best possible, most qualified person to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court of the united States was Clarence Thomas. His blatant falsehood went entirely unchallenged.

Eventually, I was able to close my mouth.