Republicans are evil, part 6289
It’s official: if you are a Democrat-supporting scientist, you are not fit to represent American science abroad.
I have no words.
OK, I have some words. The last time American citizens were banned from scientific bodies for their political party affiliation was during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s. However, McCarthy at least had a couple of excuses. First, he only hunted communists — a relatively minor political force in America of the time. Second, the United States had a reasonable fear of Korean War escalating into all-out World War III (remember, Stalin was alive at the time), which might have theoretically justified some additional security measures.
However, banning supporters of a party supported by half of the US population, and essentially during peacetime, from a purely engineering international conference, is completely unprecedented and outrageous. Such behavior is expected from Soviet block countries and third-world dictatorships, not from (a nation that calls itself) a democracy.