Don't know his gun views, but ...

[Standing Wolf]

...some research has no short-term payoff, and can't be done without big money. Particle accelerators are an extreme example, but the same is true for many many other types of important research.

Research is a wonderful thing. When the market is ready to pick up the tab for it, it will be done. Until the market is ready to pick up the tab, I have to believe it will wait. We've managed to get along without research programs A., B., and C. for billions of years, so a few more years are no big deal.

From what I've seen of him he would come out in favor of eating babies if he believed doing so would get him the White House.

Frist and most of the other federal trough feeders in Washington, D.C.

 

[Kurush]

Research is a wonderful thing. When the market is ready to pick up the tab for it, it will be done. Until the market is ready to pick up the tab, I have to believe it will wait. We've managed to get along without research programs A., B., and C. for billions of years, so a few more years are no big deal.

Markets are good at making many types of decisions, but I can't go along with only market-driven research. If it weren't for the government-funded ARPANET we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

OK, I'm going off topic but everyone HAS GOT to see this photo that just came out: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_1.html
Looks like the questions of whether there's liquid water on Mars or not just got settled in a BIG way

 

[Marshall]

Pretty damn cool! I don't remember seeing that before and we're past Feb 4, 2005 by quite a bit. Is it just now being released?

 

[Kurush]

I think that means the probe took the picture in Feb, it takes them a while to transmit them back to Earth and look through them and so on.

EDIT: I'm using the high-res pic as my desktop

 

[GunGoBoom]

I'll simply note that another Senator from Tennessee who was anti gun and ran for president in the recent past did not even carry his own state.

 

[beerslurpy]

There are conservative senators who are progun and pro stem cell research.

The south koreans are kicking our asses in biomedical research right now. As are the japanese and indians. The chinese will probably catch up sooner or later. This is the economic argument for keeping the bible thumpers out of this whole field of policymaking.

Frist is an accomplished doctor who understands these medical issues in detail and thus lacks the ideological purity on fetus issues that ignorance might grant him.

Even if you are against "killing unborn children" a clump of cells certainly doesnt meet the more ancient definition of child. English common law (at the time of the founding) did not recognize the fetus as a person until it had "begun to stir in the womb." Certainly a blastocyst lacks limbs with which to stir in a womb. But that isnt going to matter to someone who considers using a condom to be a sin on par with murder and rape.