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Lawrence Livermore Lab On The Chopping Block?
guttentag writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bush's Homeland Security plan calls for transferring $1.2 billion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $1.5 billion budget to a new Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge. However, the plan transfers only 4 percent of the lab's employees. Ridge's explanation of the numbers: "I cannot give you the kind of explanation you need to deal with that imbalance." LLNL funded and houses the ASCI White supercomputer, among other cool projects." While Livermore has an impressive research record, we would miss most the laser lab from Tron.
Just another example of the short-sighted nature of the Bush administration. After all, LLNL are already working on things like Anthrax Detection and other Bioterrorist agents.
I doubt that anything organized under Tom Ridge is going to be nearly as effective in bringing advances in the realms of fighting terrorists, let alone helping to make the advances that LLNL have brought to all of science.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
People in Washington are just using terrorism as an excuse to push an agenda that has nothing to do with terrorism and existed long before 9/11. LLNL, for example, has been an irritation for the Bush administration, and that kind of government funded research doesn't fit too well into their philosophy anyway; that's why they like to play football with it.
it's been seized upon and made front page news (particularly on the Left Coast) to make the Bush administration seem inept and disorganized.
Oh, I don't think the Bush administration needs any help in that department, especially since they're already receiving so much from Jerry Falwell and other cross-burning conservatives who use phrases like "Left Coast".
Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?
You have an armed body claiming they have the right to kill four million Americans, who have demonstrated a high degree of lethality to date. Why don't you drop out of your naive fantasy land for a while to hazard some concern for the true physical safety of your children rather than your own patrician sensibilities.