Friday, July 8, 2005 | 4:59 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
WEEKEND EDITION
July 9-10, 2005
BULL'S-EYE!
I wanted to talk about President George W. Bush's upcoming appointment to the Supreme Court because I thought it may help frame the issue in more realistic terms than just a what-if scenario that jumps up every four years during a presidential election.
You know what I mean. The fact that the election of a president brings with it the ability to determine the direction of the Supreme Court of the United States for decades into the future, far beyond any one or two terms a particular president might serve. Each time, however, that issue gets submerged beneath more pressing matters like the economy, a war in Iraq, the war against terror, and other issues which are far more immediate in the voter's mind. The result, of course, is that people who are concerned about the rulings of the highest court in our land often vote just the opposite of that concern. Mostly it is because one issue is immediate and the other might not ever happen.
Well, guess what? It has happened and will probably happen another time or two within the next year. So get ready for the fight. Of course there doesn't have to be a fight -- just like there wasn't when President Ronald Reagan appointed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman and a conservative who received a unanimous vote in a highly partisan United States Senate when she was approved more than 30 years ago -- if President Bush chooses well like the man who gave life to the conservative movement.
But, I digress because I am not going to write about the Supreme Court today. There is bigger news. NASA hit the bull's-eye.
Can you imagine, in a world in which the entire armed forces of the United States and some allies cannot hit Osama bin Laden (proving how difficult it is to find the man who planned and pulled off the 9-11 terrorist attacks), scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration found a comet 83 million miles away!
I am also not going to mention the audacity of the United States of America which -- in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that we are doing far more than our share to help melt the polar ice cap and the entire Antartic, causing a few islands to disappear, a great deal of the world's animal population to find new homes and a general warming of the Earth faster than what Mother nature would prefer -- chooses to do the greater part of nothing. Rather than lead the world in this most vital effort we choose to ignore the science. Nevadans know what that is all about!
I remember visiting the White House of the former President George Bush only to be told by his top adviser that global warming didn't exist and was a figment of the left's imagination. Now that all the science is in to prove that mankind is its own worst enemy in the fight against greenhouse gases and the overheating of the planet, the current Bush administration continues the stall. Why?
That answer will have to wait because NASA hit its mark.
Can you imagine hitting something that is 83 million miles away? Something that you tried to hit? Something that was hurtling through space at 23,000 miles per hour?
Well, that's what our country did the other day. We sent up something called a Deep Impact spacecraft some six months ago on its way toward the outer reaches of our solar system so it could collide with a comet. Scientists think that they can learn more about the creation of our solar system as well as information that could save the Earth should a large comet start heading our way. Both good reasons to plan a collision.
On July Fourth, our Independence Day, NASA caused some fireworks of its own when it separated the Deep Impact craft into two -- one to ram into the comet and the other to take the pictures -- and, like clockwork, caused the "impactor" to slam into the comet, called Tempel 1, from a distance of 83 million miles!
Did I say how far away we were from that comet? I guess I keep repeating myself because it seems so incredible that our space scientists can be that talented that they can hit what they are aiming at so far away and our leaders here on Earth have trouble hitting anything besides each other.
And to think that Congress just a few years ago was trying its best to do away with NASA and its exploration of space. Hope that thought gets deep-sixed by the American people, who have to be so proud of our technology and the people who accomplished that direct hit.
Maybe next week we can talk about the Supreme Court or global warming or some other matter that threatens our planet and our way of life. But, for today, let's just enjoy the enormity of the success the United States achieved on Independence Day.
Maybe that achievement will start our country toward some independence from its mind-boggling, small-minded thinking, an affliction more surely to doom us than an errant comet.
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