Others have pointed out that a flurry of irrelevant "science" details doesn't answer the questions of conservative anti-science bible thumping and "it must not be true because it would cost me money" and "once it leaves my factory it's not my problem" thinking. But the "science" in the column is false also.

Being able to hit one prescheduled missile on a known path is not a missile defense. It's not missile technology that's the problem it's time, speed and error. The Alaskan system has never even been turned on. The system has a few minutes at most to decide to try to shoot something down and there are a lot more airliner than missile flights. Nor has anyone come up with a solution to the fact that decoys are cheaper than antimissle-missles.

At one time I though nuclear was the only option on a sufficient scale to reduce carbon emmissions, but there is good evidence that nuclear energy is not economical without the huge subsidies built into American law. Wind and Solar would blow nuclear out of the water with subsidies that big. Reactor metal inevitably embrittles from radiation damage and a dead reactor is nearly as expensive to maintain as a live one. Reactors remain a possiblity but there is no evidence conservatives are making scientific decisions to support them rather than just supporting any big power plant. Meanwhile, Can we talk about "drill baby drill?" This is science? Science means counting and measurement. How many days worth of oil consumption is the Alaskan wildlife refuge?

A old friend is(was?) working on GM's hydrogen car project, as such, he's a leading expert in the field. He gave a talk 3 years ago: "after fifteen years of work we don't know to contain it in the car, how to transport it or how to make it safe." High pressure tanks weigh too much and absorption in chemical or metal matrices is not dense enough.

Electric cars we can do now,although the batteries still suck for long travel. Instead, Bush wasted 8 years on hydrogen.

The dismissal of climate change has no facts to challenge.

On stem cell's Bush's move was a rearguard action against greater support of stem cells following the shift in control of Congress. Similarly the Orwellian-named "clear skies initiative" delayed and weakened scheduled pollution standard improvements.

W, like Clinton and Papa Bush, proposed substantial increases in science, but the money never happened. During years of Republican control of Congress it was not even actually included in the bills put before Congress. Talk is cheap. There is new money for science in the Obama stimulus package reaching scientists now.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory and other satellites designed to measure precipitation, albedo and other factors critical to verifying global climate change predictions were all delayed under Bush. Sending more human flesh to the space station, or the moon or (in Bush's dreams) Mars is not science. The only science to come out of manned space travel has been to learn how quickly humans become sick without gravity and how short a time they can endure and be supported. The space station and proposed manned programs are just big defense civil engineering boondoggles in space and the astronauts just the guy leaning on the shovel. Meanwhile cheap, efficient, 24 hour a day, running for years, robot systems have provided more pictures and data than a hundred human flights could provide.

At the same time, under Bush the political leadership of the EPA, Interior, Foresty. FDA and commerce departments all overruled the consensus of their own scientists to fit policy. The contempt for science was palpable.

The question is whether Wingnut is this ignorant or just a bold liar.

Since it's the way FOX news defines it, let's use "Leftist," along with "Socialist," "Communist," "Fascist" and "traitors" to mean "Democratic party members and representatives" and "Right," "Conservative,"Center-right" and "Right-thinking American Patriots" to mean "Republicans."

How many of your anti-science leftist citations do you have left? Can you count as high as zero?

How many Creationist, drill our way to energy independence, carbon dioxide only matters in my beer, science is for woosies, Republican Congressmen and talking heads do we have remaining?

The historical religious view of human life was that the soul and life appeared at quickening, when the baby moved. Abortion was legal up to birth within the Catholic Church to about 1895. Similarly death was defined by the breath and heartbeat.

We now know that the beginning and end of life is an evolution rather than an event. At the beginning, cells multiply and a brain is gradually formed that becomes more and more cognitiant as pregnancy progresses. Similarly death can be gradual and indefinite with the modern state definition being cessation of brain function.

Somehow the anti-abortion/anti-stem-cell-research religions learned about half of the story. They moved the onset of life and the arrival of the soul up but never encorporated a moral mechanism or understanding to deal with the reality of the need for brain function to distinguish a baby from an embryo or even a tumor.

Is God the biggest abortionist and is heaven populated mostly by blastocysts and embryos? (80% of fertilized eggs die before birth, about 30% by detectable miscarraige the rest don't implant.) How do the brainless unborn commune with the Holy spirit as they ebb and flow around the feet of God? Where and when do identical twins get the second soul? What if one twin is reabsorbed into the other? What if a baby is born without a brain? (Such babies die quickly.) Cloning requires no fertilization at all - would such babies be alive/have souls?

These religions seem to have sought certainty and clarity over reality. The problem with this is that when reality clashes with theology one side has to lose. Too often it seems to be reality.