BLINDED: EARTH HAS ITS EYES PLUCKED OUT.

I quote from Bob Park's What's New:

One week after a House subcommittee proposed terminating the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA's costly successor to the orbiting Hubble observatory, agency officials told an advisory panel on Thursday that JWST can be launched as soon as 2018, but political realities could delay the mission's start well into the 2020s. "Political realities" could terminate it completely. Meanwhile, the 2012 budget request NOAA sent to Congress in February asked for $47.3 million for the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) and $11.3 million for Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2). The House bill would not provide funding for either. Republicans oppose any mission that would give evidence of global warming. Otherwise celebrity billionaires might be called on to pay taxes at the rate of working people.

I can see delaying the Webb space telescope launch given the pressure of the debt crisis. On the other hand, keeping the tax burden low for the very rich is not worth giving up on the Deep Space Climate Observatory or the COSMIC-2 satellite.