[thr0wawayf00]

Wait, are you saying that Hacker News is the government? What does having a post getting removed from Hacker News have to do with what the government tells us to say? I'm sorry but I don't follow this line of argument at all.

[sT370ma2]

The article doesn't say the government is the reason children could not have decent chemistry sets in the 1970's and '80's. That's the straw-man argument. However, I can't prove that fear of the government, due to what could be seen as an anti-government article, is the reason Hacker News pulled the post from the feed. I really don't know.

[int_19h]

Given the topics quite routinely discussed here, I very much doubt that. But the article in question is a really short piece, and, so far as I can see, it's strictly politics - what makes it HN front page material? (popularity by itself is not a valid metric here)