Folks are still scratching their heads about the US House of Representatives' vote on Thursday to scuttle legislation extending the 2007 America COMPETES Act, which called for a doubling of research funding in the physical sciences. Democrats had already scaled back the bill in response to concerns about the federal deficit, but they were surprised to see pornography (among other things) convert what had been a fairly bipartisan effort into an election-year campaign issue. House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (Democrat, Tennessee) offers a quick summary of what happened here, but the Tennessean nicely captured Gordon's anger during the debate. Here's an outtake: "Everybody raise your hand that’s for pornography. Come on, raise your hand. Nobody? Nobody is for pornography? Well, I’m shocked." more »

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times. The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars. more »