Mr. Kilgore pulls out the tactical dull knife of arguementation on Mr. Schaller; Shaller simply doesn't understand. According to Kilgore, centrism is good because it's middle of the road, therefore inclusive and it will be a winning strategy.

Ah, no, it isn't, it didn't and it won't.

Bush did not come to power by running for the middle, he and Reagan before him, declared their strength by taking a stand and daring all others to challenge their rhetoric and their position. Bill Clinton remains popular because he was subject to an attack on his personal behavior in the executive office, not his corruption of the Executive Office. The distraction of impeachment was part of the reason Bill Clinton's administration failed to advance universal health care, to challenge ridiculous homophobic laws and regulations that hinder our national security, to rein in corporate excess and reform taxation, to secure reproductive rights or to create a foresighted energy policy.

Rather than stand up to the Republicans who were yelling about family values while behaving badly themselves, Clinton got caught up in petty denials and a game of linguisitic Twister. It was never of any interest to the country whether or not Clinton was faithful to his wife, but now it will become a question for Hillary. Can a woman who didn't stand up to her husband's infidelity run a country?

If the Dems want an "in" to the South, why not bring up the fact that the South has most of the soldiers in Iraq, that by sending our Reserves, our National Guard to fight overseas, we have no one to defend the home place from these terrorist attacks we are told to believe will come at any time. But no, the DLC and the DNC point fingers at what is wrong with the current administration without suggesting what they would do to fix the mess we, maybe they, will be left to clean up. Not one Democrat has suggested that defining the world solely in terms of terrorism makes economic and political survival impossible.

All this plays into the hands of the currently powerful right wing extremists who understand that centrism leaves no room for consensus, it merely shifts the field of discussion to whichever side holds the most extreme position. By refusing to acknowledge the cruelty underlying the attacks on him and on the Democratic Party, by proclaiming religious faith as a mark of his worth, by talking about the middle as if it were a real position, Harold Ford is choosing power for himself, not power for his party. He and the Democrats are also choosing to let Republicans define the discussion. I still don't know what the Dems stand for, why they offer non-binding resolutions, will not speak to the awfulness and unfairness of this war and why they took their trump card, impeachment, off the table.

Mr. Leonard ignores the core issue behind the availability of scientific information - it costs money. Scientific research has to take place somewhere, it has to be funded. Scientists, researchers and reviewers have to be paid. There are administrative costs, insurance costs, health care costs, electric bills. The editing, transmission, design and delivery systems, whether printed on paper then sent through the mail or delivered electronically, have to be designed and sustained.

The Open Access sites have been sustained by grants. None are self-funded; none are generating their own sustenance. This is no different than a tobacco company giving money to a favorite organization, ostensibly without strings attached, to publish anything without the tiresome issue of having the research and the researcher vetted, examined or judged until after the fact of publication, when the paper is already part of public knowledge.

Open Access and Wikipedia are based on the same premise that grants primacy to the values inherent in a free market economy. A free market is amoral. It does not regard creativity, originality, need, accuracy, inequality of access or even usefulness, only survival. Common knowledge is often superstition and a widely held belief does not mean what is believed is true. In the open access model a published paper, even a bad, ridiculous or dangerous one, is regarded as equal to any other.

Authors have to pay to submit to open access journals. Peer review is supposed to just happen. Both these tasks are work. I don't pay my boss for the privilege of working for him, why should a writer or reviewer pay for the privilege of working? Open Access doesn't remove the work, it just asks for free money to pay some of its own people but no expectation that it pay for what it markets as its own product. Open access journals merely offer a platform then charge scientists to stand on it.

No doubt there is a conflict between the for-profit industries that provide the resource material and the non-profit educational industry. (Make no mistake, like health care, education is an industry.) The issue is partly about the cost and expenses of education or information, but more about how we pay for it.

Publishers pay their writers and editors and the societies whose journals they publish. They negotiate to market and distribute the work they publish. More often than not, they do not own the copyright, but negotiate for shared royalties based on the number of copies read, sold or distributed; the better the distribution, the more the revenue to share. Like newspaper organizations, they provide the environment and support individuals or academic societies cannot provide for themselves. Being a chemist is a different job than creating and sustaining a chemistry journal.

Perhaps subscriptions or textbooks cost too much. Is the cost due to profiteering or a rise in publication costs? Those are legitimate questions, but the answer is not Open Access. The answer is setting a political high priority on funding education and educators, public libraries, electric and electronic infrastructure and demanding that access be equal, then it will be open.