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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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An appeals court has unanimously decided that Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he tried to make appointments to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: An appeals court has unanimously decided that Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he tried to make appointments to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess.

The Constitution is very clear on this issue (see article I, section 5). It is up to the Senate to decide when it is in recess, not the President. Obama’s attempt to ignore the clear words of the Constitution here is an ugly example of his willingness to place himself above the law, something no American citizen of either party should take lightly.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • D. K. Williams

    Good news.

  • wodun

    What a mess. Does this mean all of their decisions need to be revisited after a legitimate panel is in place?

  • Jim

    Recess appointments by their very nature are temporary anyway, in that they still have to go back to the Senate eventually for confirmation. And if the Senate is so opposed to an individual they will probably still not confirm the appointment. So as this plays out, those positions are still filled. But I think the whole thing is being handled properly, and will probably wind its way to the Supreme Court, which will then actually be deciding on basically the validity of the whole concept of recess appointments, and as wodun says above the validity of decisions they made while in office…after all, if they say that pro forma sessions are valid, then each party will always hold pro forma sessions in order to block appointments. I would think Republicans should understand this. The Democrats have little to complain about since Reid introduced the use of pro forma sessions when Bush was President.

  • JGL

    I read a great description of Obama the other day :

    Obama thinks that the Constitution is filled with suggestions.

  • Pzatchok

    Don’t you find it a bit hypocritical of the democrats and especially this President to start breaking their own rules?

    And thus forcing things to the SC. Which if the republicans had done something like that, it would have been the end of all civilization as we know it.
    The crying and gnashing of teeth would have made 6 year olds jealous. The press would have been calling for street protests.

    Its attitudes like this that make parents wish they could send their kids back from were ever they came from.
    Or at least be able to slap the neighbors kids.

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