1. IG suggested modifying, not killing Triana (although the "virtual Triana" option is an intriguing idea that's been ignored by Republicans, presumably out of Gore-hatred).

When the cost escalated from $20 million to over $200 million (not counting launch or operations costs), that alone suggested the project deserved to die.

2. Ironically, one IG suggestion was to revert it to the educational mission that Gore had suggested.

$200+ million is a lot to pay for a screen saver generater.

3. The IG report was also written prior to construction - once constructed, the only savings is launch costs.

Launch costs are substancial, as are the range support costs (it isn't at geosynch, so you'll need multiple antennas to receive the signals), mission support team costs (typically several million dollars a year for personnel and equipment), and related expenses like establishing and maintaining a mission operations center. You'll also need to establish or lease the server infrastructure to push out all of those pretty pictures to the kiddies.

4. Commercial Space Act is hardly relevant now, noone could imagine a Shuttle launch at this point.

If the Triana was designed for launch on the Shuttle, it may well be incompatable with another booster. The Shuttle has a particularly smooth and low-G launch profile. Expenable boosters almost always have more pronounced vibration and G loads. You'd have to validate that the Triana's subsystems (particularly the structural subsystem but also the mission payload and other potentially fragile subsystems) can withstand the higher loads. At a minimum, this would require another round of vibration testing. In a worst case scenario, you'd have to reengineer substancial portions of the satellite at substancial expense.

5. Cong. Nethercutt is a complete hack.

And so was Gore.

Meanwhile, the Nat'l Academy of Sciences said launching Triana was a good idea.

Let's see if they think it's a good enough idea to pay for it out of their budget. It's easy for one bureaucratic organization to say that another organization should spend money. It's harder to get them to pay for it themselves.