[Paladin2b]

"heart-breaking"? Perhaps to Proxmire's family; my heart goes out to them.

However, I think we would all do well to remember just what Senator Proxmire's public career was like with respect to scientific research. Yep, he was a big enemy of funding R&D, with his stupid "Golden Fleece" awards that never seemed to be awarded to crummy social welfare boondoggles, but always to some group of scientists on a federal grant that were guilty of thinking outside the box, pursuing research in some way that Proxmire didn't or couldn't understand. NASA alone has never recovered from his career.

And so he now sits in a fog of unknowing blankness. Who's to say that we might not have made some huge advances in understanding Alzheimer's decades ago from some research he helped s***-can? If we might have, then his fate might not be poetic justice, but it is still ironic.

[Calvin Locke]

NASA alone has never recovered from his career.

I remember a quote that "NASA neglected to figure out a way to run the rockets on either milk or cheese" with regard to Sen. Proxmire.

Don't forget about all the farm subsidies that never got the golden fleece either.

Great observation about starving R&D. It is very poetic. And just. He practiced short term politics, rather than long term common sense and planning.

Wasn't he one of the first to have hair transplants? I wonder how grants for that suffered under his reign.

I'll have a emphathetic thought for his family.