The Instapundit is afraid of bacterial exchange between Earthlings and Martians.  Why is the prospect of life on Mars causing Mr. Reynolds such anxiety?

Of course, the discovery of life on Mars would be a stunning scientific advance, solving once and for all the question of whether life is unique to our planet. But the price we would pay for that discovery might well be the loss of an entire new world for humanity. Mars is Earth’s closest twin in the solar system, a planet that many scientists think could be modified to become a suitable second home for humankind.

Selfish humans want the land for themselves!  They have their own world, but they screwed that up, and so now they want ours.  I smell the very first inter-planetary war brewing.  I’ll keep you posted.

Normally, a story about teenagers getting drunk and trashing a place wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy, except to remind everybody that it’s Friday night. Still, if there’s one thing you can count on to make news, even when it comes to everyday teenage behavior, it’s sweet, delicious hypocrisy.

Drunken teenagers at a party funded by a high school’s anti-drink-driving group have trashed a rural Southland hall.

Bottles were thrown at passing cars and into a children’s playground during the out-of-control party, organised by high school pupils using money from the St Peter’s College SADD (Students Against Driving Drunk) committee, last Friday.

Damage to the Waimumu Hall, near Gore, has disgusted locals and prompted police to warn parents against providing alcohol to young people going to parties, The Southland Times reported today.

It’s the little things in life that amuse me, I have to say…

Hilarious!

I read an awesome article somewhere on how the basis of the American government is not necessarily rooted in Christianity.

In the spirit of this, I’d like to point out that the Founders are not the only figures important in our history who may have acted not on the base of faith, but on the principles of good governance.

Richard Miller wrote a pretty good article explaining how religious skepticism helped shape Abraham Lincoln’s point of view.  Lincoln eventually leaned towards Christianity in his latter years, but it’s safe to say that his skeptical viewpoint helped shape the most important decisions of his life, and thusly, this country.

A point should be taken that skepticism is healthy and seemingly necessary in the process of moral decision making.  Literalism and absolutism tend to be impractical.  Religions seem to be the most ardent proponents of both, and as a consequence, are incompatible with the inherent dynamic mechanisms of our form of government.

Hunter shoots deer.  Deer mauls hunter.

The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called “15 seconds of hell.” The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots.

I sincerely hope the hunter in this case is ok.  But there is something eerily just here, right?  Perhaps for the intentional infliction of pain in animals we all deserve a little buck-kicking now and then.

The conservative Media Research Center has created the “Free Speech Alliance”–an organization dedicated to fighting the revival of the Fairness Doctrine.

The Media Research Center today officially announced the Free Speech Alliance, a gathering of a multitude of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens dedicated to ensuring that the Censorship Doctrine, mis-named the “Fairness” Doctrine, is never again reinstated.

This move appears to have genuinely puzzled virtually every left-wing blog I read, due largely to the fact that there doesn’t appear to be anybody in the Democratic Party who is at all interested in reviving this doctrine at all.

To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama’s position–and it turns out that he doesn’t want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement.

Personally, given the staggering losses that the Republican Party saw in 2006 and 2008, I think the reason for creating this organization is obvious. It’s been created for the same reason why Division I basketball teams play Division II teams early in the season: it’s an easy win. And that easy win lets the D-I teams puff up their Win-Loss records so they look better when they seek alumni fundraising. (”Support us! We’re already 5-0!”)

Given the current political climate, conservative wins in the next two years are going to be few and far between. So conservative lobbying organizations are going to need a lot of funds to get anything accomplished. But it’s hard to raise money when it looks like you’re losing all the time. The solution? Raise money by fighting a policy that nobody supports! The continued lack of a Fairness Doctrine is the MRC’s ticket to “proving” that their being effective with their donations. All they have to do is harp in their fundraising letters that they’re being “successful” in fighting the Fairness Doctrine, and voila! Instant comparative advantage!

(cross-posted to Outside the Beltway)

Apparently, Kentucky law requires that the Kentucky Homeland Security office is to credit God for keeping the state safe.

The law that organized the Homeland Security office first lists Homeland Security’s duty to recognize that government itself can’t secure the state without God, even before mentioning other duties, which include distributing millions of dollars in federal grants and analyzing possible threats.

The religious language was tucked into a floor amendment by Riner and passed the General Assembly overwhelmingly. It lists the office’s initial duty as “stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

Included in the law is a requirement that the office must post a plaque at the entrance to the state Emergency Operations Center with an 88-word statement that begins, “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

I’m sorry, but silly primitive expressions of religion like this always remind me of this Calvin and Hobbes strip.

First off, let’s look past the fact that this is a clear violation of separation of church and state. (Sorry folks, but not everybody believes in a personal, interventionist god.) What really galls me is that this is just really bad theology. Even for Christians, what does reliance on God have to do with maintaining the security of the state? According to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, God himself has instituted secular authority, so such reliance is, from a theological perspective, a given. There’s no need to acknowledge it. Secondly, it seems to undermine the role of human action in preventing violence. That just strikes of Calvinism to me.

But I digress…

NASA, in a joint venture with the European Space Agency, will send a probe to investigate whether Jupiter’s moon Europa contains life in the liquid water oceans beneath its icy crust.

The Europa-Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) calls for one spacecraft to orbit Europa and another to orbit Ganymede, another large moon of Jupiter that also may have a liquid ocean locked beneath an icy outer layer. 

EJSM would be a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency, with ESA in charge of the Ganymede orbiter and NASA directing the Europa orbiter.  Working together, the two spacecraft also would be able to conduct limited studies of the large moons Io and Callisto, as well as the planet Jupiter. 

What makes Europa so special, is that even though it is slightly smaller than the Earth’s moon, it is significantly dense with an iron core and its atmosphere is primarily oxygen.  It’s also rather certain that there is a liquid water ocean beneath the smooth icy crust.  These are all factors that are important to sustain life.

If this mission is successful, and life is found, however basic, then it will be the most important find to date.  The implications would be huge.

When people start talking about prospects for 2012 Presidential candidates, the correct response is not to soberly consider possibilities. The correct response is to plant your fingers firmly in your ears and sing “Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala…” as loud as you can.

At least until January, anyway.

Speaking about the prospect of Chris Matthews running for Senator in Pennsylvania in 2010, Oliver Willis has what I feel is the correct reaction.

If, God forbid, Chris Matthews runs for senate and wins the Dem primary, I think I’ll support and donate to Arlen Specter. We have more than enough idiots in congress as is.

There’s nothing really to add to that, is there?