Now see this news from Kelly Field in the Chronicle of Higher Education News blog:
In an effort to avert a presidential veto, Senate leaders have stripped language from a pending appropriations bill that would have expanded federal financing for research on human embryonic stem cells....
The move to drop the controversial language came this afternoon [October 17]....The Senate is expected to debate the bill for the rest of the week.
“We wanted to show that we are willing to compromise,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat of Iowa, in a floor statement. “We’re willing to try to meet the president halfway.”
But it’s unclear whether the concession will satisfy Mr. Bush, who has also threatened to veto the bill over its spending level....
Comment. In yesterday's SAP, the White House outlined several grounds for the President's "strong opposition" to the bill. The stem-cell provision was one of those --and the provision on the NIH was not. If the Senate passes the bill in its new form, it's certainly possible that the President will still veto it. But the very interesting possibility that he would not veto it has just become a couple of degrees more likely. We'll see.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/18/2007 03:38:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
