This was recently brought to my attention through the Bad Astronomy blog by the astronomer Phil Plait. Representative Conyers (D-MI) wants to make it impossible for federally funded scientists to publish papers except in scientific journals, and specifically ban open access. In other words, that NIH study you payed for with your tax dollars? Yeah, you're going to need a subscription to the journal it was published in to read it. Phil Plait has details here and here, and I've taken this video featuring Lawerence Lessig from Phil's blog and embedded it below. Ed Brayton has written an excellent article here as well.
