The Mahablog: Bombs Away

Looks like the Bushies have found another creative way to funnel taxpayer money to their biggest campaign contributors. In today's Los Angeles Times, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin write about the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Atomic Bomb was born.

Sixty years ago, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the World War II director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, proved that there are some things that government-university partnerships can do better than any private-sector entity. In just 27 months — from April 1943 to August 1945 — Oppenheimer and his team of scientists produced a combat-ready atomic bomb. The military head of the Manhattan Project, Gen. Leslie Groves had awarded the contract for the new laboratory to the University of California because he understood that no private corporation was capable of attracting the talented scientists needed to meet this challenge.