A Division of the House

There is division at the conservative website National Review Online, and it's over, of all things, Darwinism. Andrew Ferguson has a good essay on the cordial dispute in The Weekly Standard.

You can also find more on the matter here.

I expect there to be much tension in the conservative movement in the years ahead, especially if conservatives get hammered again in '08. There will be a lot of finger-pointing and one of the targets will be Christian conservatives. Secular conservatives will blame the Dobsons, Falwells, and Robertsons for any electoral misfortune and the ID/Darwin issue will probably become part of the recriminations.

This would be wholly inappropriate since the matters in contention should be judged on their own merits, independently of any political use to which one side or another has sought to put them. I fear, though, that they won't be.

RLC

Pardon Our Hiatus

Woe beset us here at Viewpoint this week when my computer decided that, having outlasted its warranty, it would simply die. Being without a machine I was unable to post on Viewpoint or respond to e-mail for the past four days.

I am now, however, the proud owner of a new computer, a Dell Optiplex 320, which, I'm assured by the guy I bought it from, is far superior to the old Compaq Presario which now rests in a computer morgue. I have no way of knowing whether he's correct about that, but at least I'm back on line and hope to be able to keep Viewpoint going.

RLC

Shoe Bomb

Here's video made by the FBI who tested a "shoe bomb" such as Richard Reid tried to detonate on an airliner. The FBI wanted to see exactly what an explosive device like the one Reid sought to employ would do to a plane. The video is chilling. Had the passengers aboard that plane not overpowered Reid, who is serving a life term in prison for his crime, 197 people would today be dead.

The test simulates an explosion in a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet.

RLC