The Senate Attacks the NSF--again.

Senator's Criticism of Science Foundation Draws Fire

Senator Proxmire used to choose the studies that were "wasted" based upon how silly they could be made to appear.

One was a study on why people fall in love--~$16,000. Which sounds a little silly until you consider this: How much power changes hands each day around the world based upon who is currently in love with whom?

Vast portions of the economy depend upon this and the majority are largely invisible--marriage & divorce alone transfer huge lots of resources&power.

One of the points of "pure research" is that you don't know the answers. The same is true of applied research. Much biological systems research uses odd little cheap subjects--for a number of different reasons. Heck, the last supercomputer I saw was build of video games hooked together....

Senators are not chosen for intelligence...or governing ability...or practical experience.

Senators USED to be chosen by State Legislators, which at least keep them from directly being selected upon popularity.

Now they're chosen entirely upon recognition--just like school class presidents were...and that always worked so well.

There's no requirement that anyone in the legislative or executive branches have any constitutional knowledge. But we let them pass legislation and sign it into effect as law without any validation that it is a legal law.

This permits unconstitutional laws to be passed upon what has become a continual basis--fighting such miscarriages is expensive in time and money as well as affecting a possibly huge number of citizens through the prosecution for 'violating' something that, being unconstitutional, never was a law in the first place.

The mere risk of such violations is too high to permit laws to become effective until AFTER judicial review.

Even if no law had ever been passed that was unconstitutional--the risk of violating the rights of the people (the protection of which is the entire FUNCTION of government,) is far too high when such a simple step of review by the third branch of government could, if not eliminate, vastly reduce th chances of illegal laws being enforced.

But the truth is that it HAS happened. Repeatedly. And it has taken GENERATIONS for some of these illegal laws to be found illegal. None of those wronged by such law will or can be restored to the position which they would have acquired had they not been illegally prosecuted.

Enact judicial review of laws before they take effect and protect our rights.

As a side effect, we get an accurate count of how many offenses against the Constitution each legislator an  executive makes...a hard number which defines how well they are doing their job.