Quoting Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net>:
It would have felt so good to hear him come back to one of those "Don't you think you were stupid to put all those live at risk?" questions with something refreshing like, "Look, no one ever said spaceflight is safe. Right or wrong the only way for the US to get people into space just now is with the shuttle. It's an old machine based on even older technology. But it's all we've got. We are humans so we sometimes make mistakes. But we do what we can (and have done some pretty wonderful things) with the meager resources alloted by a bunch of politicians that don't know their butt from a black hole and who can't see past the next election. So back off and let us try again to find and fix the problem."
NASA's MMT segment yesterday had a reporter ask a dumb a**ed question, and the fellow on the panel with the thick glasses, responded "Space flight is not for the faint of heart. If this stuff bothers you, you should probably look for another line of work", and then moved on to another questioner. I thought that was pretty good considering everyone on the panel are highly restrained professionals.