"I'm not paying attention to politics."

-George Walker Bush, January 3, 2003, CNN.

Four months ago, I originally wrote about the stalled state of the American economy. With the New Year and another financial quarter behind Americans, the economy continues to wallow in the wake of corporate mishandling of accounts information (i.e. "malfeance" regarding funds) and post 9/11 stock market jitters. While George W. Bush emphatically stated today that the economy is "pretty darn strong" despite the now almost two quarter long financial recession, the Democratic Party and concerned tax-payers have galvanized a reluctant Bush into creating an economic relief package and plan to be unveiled next week.

While I could rail against some of his ideas: focusing on the higher-end job market for career professionals, as well as cutting back taxes farther for the economically advantaged and corporations to stimulate commerce and the stock market...I generally think the outline of his plans have merit. I agree with the Democrats that it's too little too late, but still it has genuine merit.

What disgusts me are the implications of this CNN article, detailing how the Bush adminstration continues to force tighter sanctions on 'sensitive' research and foreign-born scientists and because of a possible terrorist threat.

According to CNN, it used to be that only classified research projects had to obtain government approval in order to publish their findings in a scientific journal. Yet, based on the Presidential supposition that via research science there is "the possibility that we are training future terrorists," government-funded research in fields like avionics, nuclear engineering, demolitions chemistry, etc. must accept new grant stipulations. For example, it is increasingly required that scientists in these fields clear their findings through the National Science Committee before releasing them; this process takes anywhere from several months to several years. Thus, many universities like MIT and CalTech have become increasingly hard-pressed in terms of getting project-specific and 'general' grant funds.

Further, the net of scientific fields that are subject to such scrutiny is spreading. Medicine, pest control, study of infectious diseases/bacteria/viruses, even some aspects of human neuroscience like lie-detection research have to accept increasingly rigorous government control if they get funding from a government source (and as a side note, almost every laboratory in this country gets funding from the NSF, NIH, NIMH and other acronyms). Naturally it isn't stated which research endeavors are scrutinized, but the threat of leaking non-classified information to rogue states and terrorists groups is allegedly of paramount importance. After all, as I earlier quoted Bush as saying, "I'm going to continue doing the job the American people expect, which is to safeguard America and Americans."

And when he means safeguarding Americans, he partly wishes to do so by scrutinizing foreign-born scientists, who could have terrorist connections. Specifically, those scientists from 'suspect' countries, such as China, Russia, Israel and several other surprising ones, must be approved by the government if a given research project is deemed 'sensitive'; not classified, but potentially dangerous. You can imagine the personnel problems in organizing lab assistants, some of which cannot legally handle a dead bacteria sample, for example, or an American team unable to correspond or work in conjunction with foreign colleagues.

What strikes me as ironic is that while there had been a large American media push to emphasize how the terrorists hadn't won, they have achieved at least one of their goals: the progress of western science has, to a greater or lesser degree, been bogged down in key areas by new regulations and the scope of that initiative appears to be spreading.

The President's focus thus isn't Science, and only the economy to a degree, but defense and long-term reactionary precautions that may retard growth. It's a scary time for myself as an out-of-work scientist and as an American.

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