Last year, Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) told reporters that there is “a far Left-wing fringe group that wants to disclose all our vulnerabilities. I don’t know what their motives are but I think they are very dangerous to our security.”
More hating on Wikileaks? No, Senator Bond was actually talking about the Federation of American Scientists, after we disclosed the inadvertent publication on the Government Printing Office website of a draft declaration on U.S. nuclear facilities.
Needless to say, we did not recognize ourselves in any part of Senator Bond’s confused comment. But he reminds us that much of what passes for political discourse is little more than pigeonholing of others into friends and enemies, heroes and villains. It is hard to learn much that way.
Somehow it comes as no surprise to discover that Senator Bond is the last Senator to have been “slugged” on the Senate floor, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out on Tuesday. It is maybe a little surprising that the person whom he drove to violence was none other than the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In his farewell remarks to the Senate, Sen. Bond briefly discussed the “little scuffle I had with Pat Moynihan. I never talked about it. We never said anything publicly until now. Later on, as we became fast friends, he used to tease me about setting up boxing matches so we could raise money for charity. But when I looked at his height and his reach, I didn’t take him up on that.”
Without a robust education system that prepares our youth for future careers in key sectors, our national security and competitiveness are at risk.
The Federation of American Scientists applauds the United States for declassifying the number of nuclear warheads in its military stockpile and the number of retired and dismantled warheads.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) takes its role as a beacon and voice of the scientific community very seriously. We strive for a world that is both more inclusive and informed by science, and are committed to the idea that the path to that world starts by modeling it within our organization.
To understand the range of governmental priorities for the bioeconomy, we spoke with key agencies represented on the National Bioeconomy Board to collect their perspectives.