Replies

Well now you are disparaging the right of citizens to have a say via the public square as to how their money is spent, with a condescending remark that folks with views different than yours have a trailor trash mentality,

No insult intended. But if you ask for mob rule, you get mob rule. Would you prohibit illiterates from voting on basic research grants? Mental patients? Sciencephobes? Kerry supporters? Where do you draw the line?

posit fraud that cannot be checked so let's just make it all nice and legal,

Not necessarily fraud at all. The same basic research (especially biological research) can fit into a wide variety of research grant categories. And if the research has already been started, few scientists are stupid enough to flush it down the drain for purely political reasons.

and suggest that the US needs to do it just to compete, or somebody else will get the brass ring (no doubt we should fund cloning, and a host of other things to facilitate and expedite unbottling assorted and sundry genies for the same reason, in a race to the lowest common denominator).

If you prohibit basic research, you fall behind in more ways than just the research itself.