On this day, forty-four years ago, man walked on the moon.
Those who participated and those who watched were thrilled to witness and share in the beginning of the greatest human adventure ever undertaken. In Armstrong's words,
"...one giant leap for mankind."
Several additional moon missions soon followed. And then the world turned it's back on this exhilarating proof of man's soaring, adventurous spirit.
Never again has man left earth orbit.
We have not left our solar system. We have not colonized the planets. We cannot even build a fully-functional, comfortably-habitable orbiting space station.
Worst of all, almost no one seems to care.
On this day the US Supreme Court rendered its decision in the matter of
GEORGE W. BUSH, et al., PETITIONERS v. ALBERT GORE, Jr., et al.
For the first and only time in the 212 years since the adoption of the US Constitution, the President of the United States was determined not by the electorate, not by the Electoral College, not by Congress, not by any elected official - and not by any mechanism laid out in the Constitution.
Democracy as we know it was thwarted in a 5-4 decision by the appointed justices of the Supreme Court. In effect, the deciding vote of a single, nonelected Supreme Court Justice brought an end to the tradition of democracy in the United States.