Suzi Parker recaps last night’s UCA-based AR-02 Democratic debate. Great stuff in there as per usual, so read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:
[Re: Offshore Oil Drilling] But Speaker of the House Robbie Wills said that drilling should continue and that the 170 rigs currently in the Gulf should be inspected for safety shut-off valves.
“We didn’t cancel the space program after Apollo when those astronauts got killed,” he said. “And we didn’t cancel the space shuttle after the Challenger disaster.”
What he says is true, but it’s not exactly germane to the situation. For one thing, no one is suggesting that drilling should be stopped solely because eleven workers died in the explosion; the call for ceasing offshore drilling stems from the 210,000+ gallons of oil now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day. Neither the Apollo 1 fire nor the Challenger explosion caused massive environmental damage. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the space program was an all-or-nothing proposition — either we were going to try to explore outer space or we were not. In the case of offshore drilling, there are alternative sources of energy that could be used to achieve the same ends. So, I see what Wills was getting at, but I think he whiffed pretty badly on this one.
[David] Boling took a different slant, pointing to how the courts should handle terrorism cases – military tribunals or domestic courts. He pointed to the Arkansas case regarding the recruitment office shooting that killed one and injured one as an example where domestic courts work.
Nailed it.