The arrow points to the desent stage of the lunar module Eagle and its shadow.

For more LRO pictures of the landing sites, go here. Remember, the LRO will be lowering its lunar orbit as it continues to map the surface, so the next series of pictures of the landing sites should have much more detail.

Heck, we’d probably be strolling on Mars by 1980 at this rate, right? Well, as we all know, I was completely wrong there.

The fact that the space program, for all intents and purposes, was killed off shortly after the flight of Apollo 17 by the government budget process is only one of the harsh realities which sully the memory of America’s greatest scientific achievement. The other harsh reality is the existence of the conspiracy theorists who, to this day, claim that man never went to the moon.

Their theories have all been debunked by a plethora of highly-educated scientists and ordinary citizens too. They have been ridiculed for decades, yet they still cling to the belief that the U.S. government of the late 1960′s was able to convince the more than one million people involved with the space program to keep their mouths shut for over 40 years to keep the cover-up secret.

The New York Times talks about one of these whack jobs in an article published on July 13th, 2009:

Mr. Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a Bible, insisting that they swear on camera they had walked on the Moon. He so annoyed Buzz Aldrin in 2002 — ambushing him with his Bible and calling him “a coward, and a liar, and a thief” — that Mr. Aldrin punched Mr. Sibrel in the face. Law enforcement officials refused to file charges against Mr. Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.

In an interview, Mr. Sibrel said that his efforts to prove that men never walked on the Moon has cost him dearly. “I have suffered only persecution and financial loss,” he said. “I’ve lost visitation with my son. I’ve been expelled from churches. All because I believe the Moon landings are fraudulent.”

Well, we may finally be able to put the lie to these nutcases and their wild theories once and for all, thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The LRO was launched by NASA on June 18, 2009 and tasked with:

LRO will spend at least a year in a low polar orbit approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the lunar surface, while its seven instruments find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology.

In addition, the LRO is taking high resolution photos of the surface of the moon, which will include at least some of the Apollo landing sites.

Jesus Diaz: Would the LRO return images of the moon landings when it flies over them?
Grey Hautaluoma (NASA Headquarters, Office of Public Affairs): Yes, it will. We don’t have a timeline yet for viewing the Apollo sites, but it will be in the near future.

My insides tell me that whatever the photos reveal, the crackpots will just come up with another conspiracy theory to explain them away, like they have done with the lunar rock samples. Oh well, at least the normal people will know that they’re full of dung.

Do you really think that the U.S. has lost it’s moral authority by waging a war against people who do things like this for kicks? How about this:

Do you really think that these terrorists are doing these things to promote the President’s “ideological doctrine”? Are you still convinced that the Global War on Terror is just a “bumper-sticker” slogan?

Shame on you.

UPDATE: Both Wizbang! and Michelle Malkin have excellent posts regarding this matter.

What a prick. (Edwards, that is.)

NEW YORK (AP) – Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

In a defense policy speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.

“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set – that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”

Oh. My. God. Where to begin?

The GWoT was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These attacks, along with several others (including the Word Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attack on the USS Cole, etc.) were carried out by a very specific group of people who believe a very specific ideology. That is to say, all of these attacks were carried out by Islamic Fundamentalists in the pursuit of Jihad whose only goal was to kill as many innocent Americans as possible. It is clear that the only “ideological doctrine” at work here is that of radical Islamic fundamentalism.

Next, let’s talk about the “emboldening” of terrorists. Does Edwards really think that the deployment of the majority of the American military is emboldening these guys? I’ll tell you what emboldens these fanatics: its the defeatist Democrats in Congress who shill daily to enact legislation which will tell the terrorists exactly what day we will leave and which also declares that we’ve lost the battle.

As for using the GWoT as a justification for the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, as I recall several military personnel we detained, tried, convicted and sentenced for their parts in that mess. I don’t recall anyone who “justified” that treatment by saying it was okay because we were at war.

Finally, I hate to break it to Edwards, but we are in a clash of civilizations with radical Islam. The leaders of radical Islam have stated that their goal is a world under the thumb of Islamic law, ruled by the religious leaders of their movement, where anyone who doesn’t believe the same as they do is put to death. Now, it has been a long time since grammar school for me, but none of this sounds like the truth, justice, and the American way of life that I was taught about. You know, the ideas that we could worship God in any fashion we deemed appropriate, or not at all, or the ideas that said you can own land and property, and that the government can not prevent you from speaking your mind. These Islamofascists want you to convert to Islam and submit to their will, or die. Does Edwards suggest they are not serious? How many more terrorist attacks and innocent deaths will it take for Edwards to finally realize that these fanatics are not only serious, but have already started to carry out their plans?

Edwards outlined several steps he said he would pursue as president to strengthen the military, including using force only to pursue essential national security missions, improve civilian-military relations, and root out mismanagement at the Pentagon.

Apparently, Edwards does not consider the destruction of terrorists an “essential national security mission.” Also, it appears he is more worried about public relations and possible Pentagon mismanagement than he is the end of Western Civilization as we know it. I guess if you’ve been a trail lawyer all of your life, speaking to dead children during your final statements before the jury and earning millions of dollars off of other people’s suffering you think you’re bullit proof when it comes to terrorism.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Election of this man to the office of President is nothing more than a guarantee of disaster of monumental proportions for both the Nation and the World.

The new study found that temperature rises had a significant impact on the number of pre-schoolers presenting to emergency departments for fever and gastroenteritis.

The two-year study at a major children’s hospital showed that for every five-degree rise in temperature two more children under six years old were admitted with fever to that hospital.

The University of Sydney research is the first to make a solid link between climate changes and childhood illness.

Okay, now look at how this all progresses:

• Two-year study done at one hospital;
• Study uses only pre-school children;
• The only admissions used were for fever or gastroenteritis;
• Therefore a solid link now exists between Global Warming and childhood illness.

You see the stretch they’re making? I never took any kind of statistics class in college, but even I know that this is a very flawed conclusion they have come up with here. If you read a little further, you begin to see how this “study” came up with its conclusions:

The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research, analysed several different climate factors, including UV index, rainfall and humidity, collected from the Bureau of Meteorology in 2001 and 2002.

The International Journal of Environmental Health Research is a part of the International Federation of Environmental Health which made this policy statement in June of 2006:

There is now widespread agreement amongst climate scientists that the earth is warming. It is well-known that human activity such as burning fossil fuels causes emission of CO2 and other gasses to the atmosphere. Other gasses such as Chlorofluorocarbons (mainly caused by industrial activities), Methane CH4 (mainly caused by natural bacterial activity in wetlands, including rice fields, and by burning biomass) and N2O (mainly caused by burning fossil fuels) are even more potent in terms of climate change, compared to CO2.

In other words, they’re already on the Global Warming Bandwagon. Do you realize how easy it is to do a research study when you start with the results in hand?

If you read to the end of the article, you get to this nugget of information:

He said it was still unclear whether the heat directly triggered the illnesses or whether other heat-related problems, like pollution, were responsible.

So, at the end of this study, they don’t know definitively what caused the kids’ fevers, but they do know that it is because of Global Warming. This is what happens when science and scientists settle for consensus rather than definitive fact. True science is based upon verifiable facts derived from the results of repeated and repeatable experiments. These people who claim Global Warming is a world crisis make this statement based upon “widespread agreement” among scientists who are just as biased as the rest of us.

It is well known that many climatologists do not believe that Global Warming is a looming crisis, but rather that the Earth’s climate is going through a natural warming/cooling cycle which has been happening for years. So, since the environmental wackos could not convince everyone to tow the “we’re doomed” line, they now say that they know Global Warming is a crisis because there is “widespread agreement.” They don’t base their position on facts, they just base it on the fact that some climatologists agree that there is a problem.

I think that before you cripple the economy of the greatest country on the planet, you’d better have a lot more that a consensus of a group of like-minded climatologists.

If he wanted to, President Bush could change the tone in Washington with a single syllable: He could just say “ic.” That is, he could stop referring to the opposition as the “Democrat Party” and call the other side, as it prefers, the Democratic Party.

That’s right! We evil Republicans are causing global warming, preventing women from killing their unborn babies and championing racism by refusing to call the Democrat Party what it wants to be called. The entire reason that the two major political parties can not work together on anything is all because George Bush calls the Democrats…Democrats. Apparently all of that stuff about ideological differences was all bunk. If only the President had only called them the Democratic Party. Then, everyone could have hugged and sung Kumbya.

Yeah, right!

But as a matter of simple politeness — something the Bush family is famously good at — it’s rude to call people by a term that makes them bristle, even a seemingly innocuous one. There’s also something grating and coarse-sounding about this abbreviated appellation, like saying “Jew” instead of “Jewish.”

I was unaware that Jews see the term “Jew” as rude. I read many columns written by Jews where they refer to themselves as Jews all the time. I would think that if the term was considered rude by Jews, they would not use it.

There seems to be a pattern here. A few years back, the liberals in the Democrat Party were trying to distance themselves as far away as possible from the term liberal. Instead, they said, they were progressive, not liberal. Now, they want to be called the Democratic Party instead of the Democrat Party. It seems that every time the term used to describe what they are becomes associated with something the electorate despises, they want to change their name. Liberal did not obtain a bad connotation just because conservatives said so. It earned its bad connotation when liberals instituted policies which lead to bad economic policy (think Carter), bad foreign policy (think Clinton), and bad health care policy (think the other Clinton). The word Democrat is earning its bad connotation the same way.

As is almost always the case in politics, if the Democrat Party wants to remove the negative connotations to the word Democrat it should reform it’s policies and pay more attention to what they are doing. Crying about what people call them, especially when what people are calling them is the same thing that they have been called for over a hundred years, is only going worsen the connotation.

Then what are they going to do?

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an “inside job”, according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries.

The claims have caused outrage and anger in the US which marks the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Monday.

But leading scientists say the facts of their investigations cannot be ignored and say they have evidence that points to one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetrated.

Now, if you’re like me, the first question you asked was, “Who are these ‘leading scientists’?” As it turns out, I’ve never heard of any of them, and you probably haven’t either. Seems that the author of this article, someone named Jaya Narain, uses the term to lend credibility to what these morons are saying.

Professor Steven Jones, who lectures in physics at the Brigham Young University in Utah, says the official version of events is the biggest and most evil cover up in history.

He has joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth whose membership includes up to 75 leading scientists and experts from universities across the US.

Prof Jones said: “We don’t believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone.

“We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

In essays and journals, the scientists are giving credence to many of the conspiracy theories that have circulated on the internet in the past five years.

They believe a group of US neo-conservatives called the Project for a New American Century, set on US world dominance, orchestrated the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to hit Iraq, Afghanistan and later Iran.

One trip to the web site maintained by these left-wing nut jobs will tell you all you need to know about their “credibility” on this matter. I mean, come on, this whole “neo-conservative group bent on world dominance” bit is a little long in the tooth, isn’t it? Ever since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 the liberals in this country have worked overtime spreading rumors about “evil neo-conservatives bent on world dominance” and how they were doing things to purposely start a middle-eastern war so we could steal all of the oil. It was crap then, and it is crap now.

Professor Jones said it was impossible for the twin towers to have collapsed in the way they did from the collision of two aeroplanes.

He maintains jet fuel does not burn at temperatures high enough to melt steel beams and claims horizontal puffs of smoke seen during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled explosions used to bring down the towers.

The group also maintains World Trade Centre 7 – a neighbouring building which caught fire and collapsed later in the day – was only partially damaged but had to be destroyed because it housed a clandestine CIA station.

First it was “evil neo-cons,” now it’s the CIA.

I’m no professor, but even I know that jet fuel was not the only thing burning after the two jets crashed into the Twin Towers. The jet fuel ignited a whole host of materials in the building, including office furniture, carpet, paper, plastic, cloth, and many many others, and the temperature was obviously high enough to melt metal.

At least the article quotes on person who seems to have his full mental facilities:

Christopher Pyle, professor of constitutional law at Mt Holyoake College in Massachusetts, has dismissed the academic group.

He said: “To plant bombs in three buildings with enough bomb materials and wiring? It’s too huge a project and would require far too many people to keep it a secret afterwards.

“After every major crisis, like the assassinations of JFK or Martin Luther King, we’ve had conspiracy theorists who come up with plausible scenarios for gullible people. It’s a waste of time.”

Unfortunately, with the prominence of the Internet, these types of morons can easily find an audience for their conspiracy theories and keep them alive for a long time. Then, in an effort to boost readership, the media highlights these clowns and makes them seem more credible than they really are.

The really scary part is to remember that these people not only vote, but they breed.

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

What the NY Times reporters fail to add to the end of that last paragraph is this sentence: “Of course, now that we have informed the terrorist leaders and their financial backers of exactly how America is tracking them down, this program is now pretty much worthless and will no longer enable America to find and eliminate terrorist threats.”

The Bush Administration asked the NY Times not to publish the article, citing continuing operations and the need for air-tight security. The editor of the NY Times, Bill Keller, decided that rather than listen to the Administration that the public had voted into office, he himself would be the arbiter of what was in the best interests of the United States.

Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said: “We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

Translation: If you think I’m going to pass up a Pulitzer Prize just to protect the lives of American military personnel, you’re nuts! The war is illegal and immoral anyway, so their safety doesn’t matter.

Just exactly what is Bill Keller telling people who write in to complain about this? Well, here are some excerpts from a letter that he is sending out:

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government’s anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that’s the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.)

One of the first things he does is to bring politics into play. He thinks by describing the people who are complaining as “conservative bloggers” he can easily dismiss the concerns they raise as noise from a group of nuts. If you read the entire letter, you’ll note that he never once addresses any of these concerns in a meaningful way; he only says things like “the argument was given in a half-hearted way.” Also, notice how he tries to make a moral equivalence between what the NY Times did and what bloggers did. Most blogs, even the most popular ones, have little more than a tenth of the readership of the NY Times. We weren’t the ones who drew attention to this, the NY Times was.

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration’s claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not “why publish?” but “why would we withhold information of significance?” We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it’s the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

The first thing he does here is to paint the government as an entity which thinks its citizens are stupid, and that the NY Times thinks they’re smart. In fact, the opposite is true. You need look no further than the Jason Blair episode to see how the NY Times regards its readers. Next, he tries to justify what the NY Times did by equating it to what happened at the Bay of Pigs. Of course, the GWT is significantly different from the Cold War, but this editor won’t let the facts get in the way of a really neat analogy.

Next, Keller explains that his job is to answer the question “why would we withhold information of significance?” Looking at the SWIFT program, the answer to this is rather obvious to those of us who are on the side of freedom and liberty: you withhold this information to allow the government to continue to use the SWIFT program effectively against terrorist threats and to limit as much as possible the danger to our troops in the field. Apparently, these things are not “compelling” enough to Keller.

It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don’t know about it.

Simply stated, he says that in order for the public to form a judgment on this activity, they must know about it. He completely bypasses the pivotal question of whether the public should know about the activity in the first place. When the public puts in place a government under the system we use, it is understood that the it is going to have the need for covert operations to protect its citizens. It is also understood that said covert operations will not be disclosed to the public until such time as they are no longer is use, in order to protect their effectiveness and to protect the people who are participating in the activity. It is not up to the NY Times, or any other newspaper, to decide which covert government operations to expose, especially in a time of war. Indeed, there is absolutely no good whatsoever that has come of the exposure of this covert operation, unless you’re a terrorist. If you’re a terrorist, you now know exactly how America is monitoring the International Banking System, and you now know exactly what you must do to avoid such monitoring. Keller, of course, dismisses this with perhaps his weakest argument of all:

A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.

So, because he felt the government made this argument in a half-hearted way, he would just dismiss it. I wonder if his arrogance was inherited or learned. In either case, it is clearly clouding his judgment. Remember who we’re dealing with here: terrorists who have waited as long as ten years before carrying out an operation. Efficiency is not their chief concern.

In summation, the editors of the NY Times, in particular Bill Keller, feel that their need to publish a story is more important than the safety of our overseas military personnel and the need for security for our covert operations in times of war. In truth, they don’t care a whit about your “right to know” or some “public interest.” Hell, they can’t even give a clear-cut definition of “public interest.”

I can give you a clear-cut definition of “public interest”: The public interest is that which promotes the welfare, safety, and security of a society, or the people charged with protecting and defending that society. Pretty simple, huh?

Now, show me how what the editors of the NY Times did fits the definition of “public interest.”

This has got to be the worst example of the abdication of personal responsibility I’ve ever seen.

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we’re starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy — but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we’re both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren’t planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn’t result in a pregnancy.

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend — and the end of the 72-hour window — was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids’ school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options — short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book — I figured I’d take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I’m 42. Isn’t it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn’t believe it.

You read that right — this lady acted irresponsibly by engaging in sex without using contraception, and now it’s the President’s fault that she’s pregnant and will chose to have an abortion. Apparently, a serious lack of judgment such as this is only a “momentary lapse” as far as she’s concerned, therefore the pregnancy is not her fault. She is unable to see that her actions, along with her husband’s actions, are responsible for the predicament she’s in. In short, she’s a perfect example of a liberal feminist.

I felt sick. Although I’ve always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

Every drug sold in the United States goes through a lengthy process at the FDA prior to it’s approval.

Moreover, they aren’t even required to tell the patient why they won’t provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn’s receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn’t prescribe Plan B for me. She refused to answer or offer any reason, no matter how much I pressed her. By the time I got on the phone with my internist’s office and found that he would not fill a Plan B prescription either, I figured it was a waste of time to fight with the office staff. To this day, I don’t know why my doctors wouldn’t prescribe Plan B — whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy.

No. No. No.

You were forced to confront this decision because you acted irresponsibly, plain and simple. Had you acted responsibly, none of this would have occurred. It isn’t the doctor’s fault that you had sex without contraception. It isn’t the President’s fault that you had sex without contraception. It’s your fault.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn’t been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn’t even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

Now it’s God’s fault! Just a suggestion, lady: if you really think God’s responsible for your pregnancy, you’d better call the press. The last time that happened over 2000 years ago, it was a pretty big deal.

Not only is this lady ignorant of her situation, she’s also ignorant of her history. Religion has been apart of our politics since before this nation existed. Just because she and her liberal buddies don’t think it should be doesn’t make it so.

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

And to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years.

One more time for those of you who ride the short bus: If you had acted responsibly, by using contraception, you would not have needed “emergency” contraception. If you had taken a moment and used your diaphragm, you would not have gotten pregnant in the first place. You are an adult. You are responsible for your own actions. It is not the government’s place to provide you with a means to allow you act irresponsibly without having to face the consequences of your actions.

As for what your children have to look forward to, at least they’re alive. It’s hard to imagine that, given the fervor that you display towards allowing anyone to kill their unborn child for any reason, including inconvenience. I only hope that someone who can teach them about personal responsibility crosses their paths before they act as stupidly as you did.

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, I confused the Plan B pill with RU486. The Plan B pill is used to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall, and thereby preventing pregnancy, while RU486 is the pill which causes an abortion. The language in this post which referenced RU486 has been removed. My apologies for the error.

Hat Tip: The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

WASHINGTON (CNN) — It wasn’t the price of gasoline, Darfur or the rebuilding effort in New Orleans that preoccupied the White House press corps Thursday aboard a flight on Air Force One.

It was what channel they could watch on the White House televisions, Fox or CNN.

During a briefing led by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as President Bush was traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana, the Washington Post’s Jim VandeHei asked why the White House televisions always seemed to be tuned to Fox News and if it was possible to have them tuned instead to CNN.

“It’s come to my attention that there’s been requests — this is a serious question — to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied,” VandeHei told McClellan, who is soon to be replaced by former Fox anchor and self-described conservative Tony Snow.

“My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?” VandeHei asked.

Source

In what has to be one of the pettiest complaints from the pettiest group of people in the country, a White House reporter is upset because the TV is tuned to Fox News on Air Force One. Even the guy who made the complaint knows this; why else would he preface his complaint with “this is a serious question”?

This whole episode reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek. Whenever one of the Borg were prevented from communicating with the rest of the Borg Collective, it would freak out and not know what to do. In this case, the reporter was cut off from his daily diet of liberal talking points from the Liberal Collective (CNN), and all he can do is squawk about it.

Maybe Tony Snow should reconsider his decision to deal with these people on a daily basis.