Oops

CNN.com reports that a $273 million NASA satellite crashed minutes after takeoff. Says program manager John Brunschwyler, "Certainly for the science community, it's a huge disappointment."

Well, I can't speak for the science community, but "huge disappointment" doesn't really do justice to the feelings of the taxpayer community. All we hear about is how grave the economy is right now, and we just blew up a quarter of a billion dollars. I'm sure they'll spend the $1.2 trillion they just authorized really well, too.

Dialogue With Darwinists

It's the month that marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, so rather than sticking a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish on the back of your car, take a few minutes reading Marvin Olasky's article in the new issue of World and think about how to frame an intelligent conversation with your Darwinist friends.

HT: Tim Challies

Abortion and Intellectual Cowardice

I'm not a fan of Barack Obama's views on abortion, but I haven't really posted on the topic here - mainly because other bloggers have already flooded the blogosphere with information. However, after watching Obama at the Saddleback Forum, I have to post his cowardly dodge of Warren's tough question about human rights. I have little respect for one who will support the killing of the unborn yet intellectually runs from any tough questions about the issue. Over at Between Two Worlds, guest poster James Grant passes along this ironic collection of quotes from First Things...

"Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic): “By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School): “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”

Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania): “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.”

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, “the Father of Modern Genetics” (University of Descartes, Paris): “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence.”

Rick Warren: At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?
Sen. Barack Obama: Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. "