It should come as no surprise that the Senate’s version of the “stimulus” bill is being kept under lock and key by the Appropriations Committee, lest the opposition — let alone America’s great unwashed as a whole — get a chance to pick away at the litany of new, unstimulative spending programs. After all, the government can’t go about its business of doing what it knows is best for us in spite of, well, us, if they have to spend all their time actually answering questions and explaining themselves to the mindless rabble that makes up the majority of the unenlightened U.S. population.

Despite the heavy security measures, the folks at ReadTheStimulus.org managed to get a hold of a copy — and I stress the word copy — of the Senate bill. It should tell you something that the only copy we were able to obtain was a paper duplicate which was Xeroxed at least once, then scanned to a computer.

Oh, and the file we finally obtained was corrupted, meaning it can’t be put online and converted into a searchable database as was done with the House version over at ReadTheStimulus.org. Well done, Senate — you’ve created a secret, corrupt bill that simply can’t be made accessible to the American people.

As Andrew Moylan wrote over at the NTU’s blog, “Maybe all those toxic earmarks it was stuffed with corrupted the file once and for all.”