On 16 May 2010, UCLA Public Policy Professor Mark Kleiman posted The Party of Knowledge vs. the Party of Ignorance.

Not only do the conservative movement and the Republican Party hate new knowledge, they hate the people who produce it. The latest maneuver in the House – where the Republicans used an obscene little trick to kill a bill to provide more funding for research and for science education – illustrates the point.

The bill was ready to pass the House when the Republicans offered a “motion to recommit with instructions.” The minority is allowed one such motion per bill. So the Republicans offered a motion that would have gutted the bill by freezing all the increased funding until the Twelfth of Nev – until the Federal budget was balanced. Easy to defeat, no? Not when the Republicans also included a change to fire federal civil servants who view porn “including child pornography” – at work. (…)

Obviously, the GOP didn’t want to debate science funding on its merits, so they resorted to a dirty trick. And none of the folks involved seems to want to talk to the press about it. The Democrats pulled the bill, and will try to regroup next week.

-RichardH