But first can we all stop insulting people with disabilities, none of you would say it was a "womanish vote" by congress to cave in on the telescope. Most people over thirty would get the meaning even if it was a rude adjective. Blindness and loss of vision as the number of people using glasses demonstrates, is part of the human condition. Making disability mean something bad or evil, seems to be a cultural carry over from when the church denied priesthood to men with apparent diabilities and also part of the cosmic blackmail con, if you don't give to the religion, god or karma will get you. Disability was a sign of cosmic punishment on the person or their parents.

Aside from complaining about wording, this comment has nothing to do with the original article. Metaphors are useful. Should someone suffering from severe, lifelong depression (me) get upset when the media says were heading for another depression? No. Like I said, metaphors are useful. In fact, my depression is crippling. Does that mean I'm insulting someone who is physically crippled? No. It's a useful metaphor.

On the subject of the article: This is sadly not surprising given that conservatives and tea partiers (who tend to make up a large part of the religious right in governement) are extremely anti-science and I can imagine them being particularly opposed to a project like this - one that might give us clues as to how the universe actually began. They don't want to hear about that. Their god has very few hiding places left. They certainly don't want the "way something rather than nothing" argument (if you can call it that) for god taken from them. I know Lawrence takes this on in his next book, but it seems like the James Webb Space Telescope would provide even more data to explain that question. They don't want that. Add that to their complete and utter failure to do anything positive about the budget aside from a general "take from the poor, give to the rich" plan and it's easy to see their "reasoning" behind cutting funding to a program like this.

Oh how I hate our current congress (the majority at least - a bunch of know-nothing-and proud-of-it twits).