Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

SpaceX delays its next launch

8:41 am

SpaceX has decided to delay its next launch for several additional months as it continues its investigation into the June Falcon 9 launch failure.

The next mission on SpaceX’s launch calendar had been a U.S. government ocean-monitoring satellite called Jason 3, but Shotwell indicated that a commercial communications satellite would move to the front of the line. Luxembourg-based SES SA has a contract to fly on the first Falcon 9 rocket that features an upgraded first-stage engine. The upgrade will allow SpaceX to attempt to land its rockets back at the launch site from high-altitude missions so they can be refurbished and reused.

They had originally hoped to return to flight in September. This is now probably delayed until November. However, that their next flight will include the upgraded Merlin engine and it will be a commercial flight means they will once again likely try for a vertical landing of that first stage. Moreover, SES has already said that if the landing is successful it wants to buy that first stage for a future launch. SES hopes to save money this way, while also encouraging innovation in the launch market which it sees as a long term gain for putting its payloads into orbit.

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Anti-establishment non-politicians top Iowa poll

9:11 am

I normally don’t bother reporting on polls. They are notoriously unreliable and often force one to the wrong conclusions. Nonetheless, this poll appears significant because it indicates that it isn’t just Trump that the voters are turning to in their disgust of the establishment political elite community.

First, it is the first poll since late July that does not show Trump with a lead. Instead, Ben Carson ties him. Second, Carly Fiorina with 10% and Ted Cruz with 9% come in second and third.

Finally, and most important, Bush, Kasich, and Rubio, politicians who have demonstrated by their actions that once elected they cannot be trusted get little or no support.

For months I have strongly believed that Jeb Bush was going to go nowhere once the voting began. The Republican base does not want another Bush. Similarly, Rubio’s betrayal of the tea party voters who got him elected by his support of the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration bill is well remembered by those tea party voters. They do not trust him.

Instead, I believe that it will be reliable conservatives or brash outsides like Cruz, Fiorina, Carson, and Trump who will get the votes. This poll suggests I might be right.

Having said this, I must emphasize again my mistrust of polls. It is just as likely this poll is a waste, and tells us nothing.

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Obamacare to punish small businesses for helping employees

8:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: The IRS has announced that the annual fine to businesses — even businesses with less than 50 employees — for helping employees pay their medical expenses will be a mere $36,500.

“We were told over and over during the Obamacare discussions that if you had less than 50 employees there’s no requirement to provide coverage, so you don’t have to worry about any cost factor,” said Ron Aldridge, Mississippi director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. … If a company has five employees, the total tax would be $182,500. A “large” employer with 50 employees that did not provide insurance in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, would be subject to $2,000 per employee, with the first 30 employees exempt, for a total of $40,000, Aldridge said.

And then there’s this gem:

The Mississippi Insurance Department said: “The rule appears nowhere in the Affordable Care Act but was developed by the Obama administration’s regulation writers at the IRS.” [emphasis mine]

Not only is this IRS rule illegal, as it isn’t based on anything written in the Obamacare law, it starkly illustrates the inhumane attitude of the Obama administration and people there who wrote it. The rule demands that employers look the other way if their employees are in trouble because of medical expenses. It also surprises everyone by suddenly imposing Obamacare on all businesses, even tiny ones which had been promised they were exempt from the law.

In fact, based on the information in this article, even an independent contractor like myself could be found in violation of this rule and subject to fines.. Essentially, I am not allowed to use my profits from my business to pay for my medical costs,

In other words, this administration wants to hurt people.

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Russia accelerating development of Soyuz replacement

8:52 am

The competition heats up: The head of Energia, the Russian company that builds the Soyuz capsule, said this week at a space conference near Moscow that they are going to accelerate construction of a prototype of a next generation replacement, capable of launch four astronauts.

We have agreed with the engineers…. to reduce the time for construction and production of the first copy of this spaceship. Despite the fact that we have voiced and agreed on the first launch in 2021, we have set the task to build the prototype by 2019, and I think that we will succeed, ” Solntsev told reporters at the MAKS.

Take this with a grain of salt. Energia has proposed a number of different Soyuz replacements since 2000, none of which ever saw the light of day. At the same time, the situation in Russia has changed, and the government is now committed to financing a robust space program. Previously, Energia had to find private investment capital, which never arrived because, I think, investors did not trust the legal situation in Russia. They had no way of guaranteeing that they would own their shares. In fact, the recent take-over and consolidation of Russia’s entire aerospace industry by the government has proven those investor doubts entirely right.

At the same time, the increased competition in the launch industry and this government takeover might signal something real is finally going to happen.

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New Horizons team picks its next Kuiper Belt target

3:07 pm

The New Horizons science team has picked its next Kuiper Belt fly-by target beyond Pluto.

New Horizons will perform a series of four maneuvers in late October and early November to set its course toward 2014 MU69 – nicknamed “PT1” (for “Potential Target 1”) – which it expects to reach on January 1, 2019. Any delays from those dates would cost precious fuel and add mission risk. “2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen.”

The press release includes some silly gobbly-gook about how the science team can’t announce this as its official target because they still have to write up a proposal to submit to NASA, which then must ponder their decision and decree it valid. We all know this is ridiculous. Will NASA sit and ponder and make them miss their target? I doubt it.

The fly-by itself will be really exciting, because this object will truly be the most unusual we will have ever gotten a close look at, as it has spent its entire existence far out in the dim reaches of the solar system.

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Judge rules IRS must disclose White House requests for private taxpayer information

1:13 pm

The noose tightens: A federal judge today ruled that the IRS must turn over any records showing White House requests for private confidential taxpayer information.

Questions about potential White House meddling in taxpayers’ private information stretch back to the beginning of the Obama administration, when the then-White House chief economist seemed to describe the tax structure of Koch Industries during a briefing with reporters. His description was apparently incorrect, but it left some watchdog groups wondering if the White House had quietly sought information on conservatives, such as the billionaire Koch brothers.

Cause of Action sued in 2013 to get a look at whatever requests the White House, or other federal agencies, had made. The IRS refused, saying even the existence of those requests would be protected by confidentiality laws and couldn’t be released, so there was no reason to make the search. The judge said Friday, however, that the agency couldn’t use the privacy protection “to shield the very misconduct it was enacted to prohibit.”

If evidence is found that the White House was delving into the confidential tax records of its opponents, with IRS help, I think this scandal will finally reach critical mass. People might not go to jail, but the evidence will allow the individuals involved to sue and win in court. For the Democrats, Obama, and the IRS, this will not be pretty.

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New EU tax law puts thousands out of business

11:42 am

We’re here to help you! A major revision to the VAT tax in the European Union tax has caused the shutdown of thousands of businesses because they cannot afford to meet the complex rules and bureaucracy required.

Designed to prevent large businesses locating themselves in VAT-competitive territories, it had the predictable effect of drowning small businesses under a sea of bureaucracy, forcing them to access the data required to prove the customer’s location, figure out which of more than 80 VAT rates to apply, and issue an invoice in the correct language, currency and layout. Unable to afford the costly software required to deal with the regulation, thousands of small business and sole traders have closed or abandoned their enterprises. Most of those who have continued to trade have either moved to third party platforms, losing up to 70 percent of their total revenue (not just non-domestic sales) in commission, or spent thousands on software.

“The human cost to these businesses is vast”, Clare Josa is co-founder of EU VAT Action commented for EU Observer. “The only reason the Digital Single Market is still functioning is because awareness levels are below 5 percent, so most businesses are continuing to trade under the former system. As awareness rises, the damage will soar.”

Read the whole article. The quote above only gives a small taste of the problem caused entirely by government bureaucrats and elected officials who seem divorced from reality. And though this is a European governmental disaster, it is instructive for Americans to learn about it. Like Obamacare, the new VAT tax rules were imposed with the best of intentions, but completely ignored the reality of meeting those intentions. The result is financial ruin for thousands of businesses and individuals.

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Wyoming farmer defies the EPA

8:37 am

Defiant! A Wyoming farmer has filed suit against the EPA for demanding he disassemble a small stock pond he built on his own property, after following all the state’s rules and getting all the proper permits.

The EPA’s fines, $75K per day, have now accumulated to over $16 million. He is challenging the agency, saying that he followed all the rules, that the pond is on his own property, and that the EPA does not have jurisdiction.

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Hawaii Supreme Court hears arguments on TMT constructions

8:15 am

Hawaii’s Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments for and against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea.

Based on reading the various news reports of the hearing and the questioning by the judges, it appears to me that the judges have already decided against the telescope. Race, ethnicity, and hatred of western technology must take precedent over all else.

I repeat: If the court shuts down TMT astronomers should consider moving out entirely. Furthermore, Americans should maybe consider other places for their tourism, considering how hostile Hawaiians now appear to be.

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Comet 67P/C-G goes boom!

7:48 am

Outburst on Comet 67P/C-G

Cool image time! On August 22, just days after its closest approach to the sun, Rosetta caught the outburst, image above, from the larger lobe on Comet 67P/C-G.

The image scale is 28.6 m/pixel and the image measures 29.3 km across. Although the activity is extraordinarily bright even in the original (below), the image above has been lightly enhanced to give a better view of the outline of the nucleus in the lower part of the image, as well as to show the full extent of the activity.

The most interesting images, I think, will actually come later, when the activity dies down and they can bring Rosetta in closer again. We will then be able to compare the nucleus both before and after this outburst, getting a sense of how the comet changes with each close pass to the sun.

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More than half of published psychology papers cannot be replicated

11:51 am

The uncertainty of science: An attempt to replicate 98 different psychological research studies has found that significantly less than half could be replicated.

In the biggest project of its kind, Brian Nosek, a social psychologist and head of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, and 269 co-authors repeated work reported in 98 original papers from three psychology journals, to see if they independently came up with the same results. The studies they took on ranged from whether expressing insecurities perpetuates them to differences in how children and adults respond to fear stimuli, to effective ways to teach arithmetic.

According to the replicators’ qualitative assessments, as previously reported by Nature, only 39 of the 100 replication attempts were successful. … There is no way of knowing whether any individual paper is true or false from this work, says Nosek. Either the original or the replication work could be flawed, or crucial differences between the two might be unappreciated. Overall, however, the project points to widespread publication of work that does not stand up to scrutiny. [emphasis mine]

None of this surprises me. The focus of much science research, especially in the soft sciences like psychology, is statistical in nature and easily manipulated. In fact, most of it isn’t science at all, but an attempt to use mere statistics to prove a point. Science would instead try to find out why something happens, not just demonstrate through statistics that it does.

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States okay big insurance premium increases caused by Obamacare

9:22 am

Finding out what’s in it: State insurance regulatory agencies have been routinely granting the gigantic rate increases requested by health insurance companies due to the costs imposed on them by Obamacare.

It’s the third year in a row for huge rate hikes, all due to the uncertainties built into the mandate-driven system of ObamaCare. The White House explained the hikes after the first year as an artifact of sudden access to care, but by year three that explanation has worn thin. The cost curve isn’t bending downward in any phase of health care, and it’s not even bending upward any longer. It’s skyrocketing, and insurers are reflecting that in their premium hikes.

At the same time that premiums have escalated, of course, deductibles have expanded almost exponentially for some families. Consumers are paying outrageously high premiums for insurance they will almost certainly never access, thanks to the need to spend thousands more out of pocket on top of these premiums before insurers have to cover anything but wellness checks.

Obviously this is the fault of Bush-Reagan and the evil Republicans in Congress, none of whom wrote or voted for Obamacare and in fact opposed it vehemently. Obama and the Democrats, who wrote the law and then forced it through Congress, are obviously innocent of any blame for that law’s disasters. Let’s vote for them again!

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Launch of India’s big rocket a success

8:54 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully launched a military communications satellite using its home-built Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Because of India’s bad habit of not giving distinct names to its space vehicles or spacecraft, I have discovered a bit a confusion about the version of GSLV that just launched. This rocket was built entirely in India, but it is the Mark II, not the Mark III, which is a significant upgrade and has so far only had one test flight.

Nonetheless, today’s Mark II launch is the second success in a row for the India-built version. Considering the number of failures of this version in the past, this success is a significant milestone for India’s space effort.

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IAU balks at some Pluto names picked by New Horizons team

9:12 am

Irritated that the New Horizons team did not consult with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) before it announced its proposed names for many Pluto features, IAU officials are now threatening to reject them once submitted.

“Frankly, we would have preferred that the New Horizons team had approached us before putting all these informal names everywhere,” said Rosaly Lopes, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is a member of the IAU’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.

The group’s chair, Rita Schulz of the European Space Agency, said the New Horizons team has not yet submitted a formal proposal for naming features on Pluto and its moons. “Usually, there are always some features for which this process goes rather fast, some for which more checks and balances are required (which then takes a bit longer) and there are usually also some names or descriptors that cannot be approved and need to be replaced by others,” she told GeekWire in an email.

There has been a conflict between the IAU and the principal investigator for New Horizons, Alan Stern, for years now. Stern also runs the private company Uwingu, which offers citizens the ability to name unnamed craters on Mars for a fee, without asking the IAU. Stern, like myself, believes that the IAU’s claim that it is the only authority that can approve names for every object not on Earth is hogwash. Stern also strongly objects to the IAU’s decision to demote Pluto’s planetary status to a dwarf planet.

These comments by IAU officials suggest that they are being somewhat petty and are threatening to reject the New Horizons names to get back at Stern.

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India starts countdown for the launch of its big rocket

8:57 am

The competition heats up: India has begun the countdown for the third launch of its entirely homebuilt Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.

The launch is set for Thursday, and is attempting for the first time to place an actual payload into orbit, an Indian military communications satellite. Previous launches either failed with earlier versions of the rocket, or were carrying dummy payloads.

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Russia delays first manned Vostochny launch seven years

8:41 am

The heat of competition: Russia has finally admitted that it will not be able to fly manned missions from its new Vostochny spaceport in 2018, and had instead rescheduled that first flight for sometime in 2025.

The reasons were not spelled out, and it was unclear if financial considerations were behind the delay.

Space agency spokesman Mikhail Fadeyev made clear the change of plan in stating: ‘The first manned flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome is scheduled for 2025 with an Angara-AV5 rocket, according to the federal space programme.’ The move reflected the ‘founding principle of Vostochny as an innovative cosmodrome’, he claimed. Under the plan, the first test flight of the Angara-A5B is scheduled for 2023, while the rocket’s first unmanned flight is slated for 2024.

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev recently visited the spaceport, stressing the importance of the first unmanned launch, due in four months from now, being a success. His statement appeared to allow for the possibility of slippage in this timetable also.

Vostochny was first proposed in 2007, so that means it will take Russia almost two decades to get this spaceport ready for manned flights. Only a government operation, designed to create jobs instead of accomplishing something, takes such an ungodly long time to get finished.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to use Baikonur for manned flight for at least one more decade.

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New Hubble image of Twin Jet Nebula

8:27 am

Twin Jet Nebula

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have taken a new image of the Twin Jet Nebula, a planetary nebula officially called PM M2-9.

The M in this name refers to Rudolph Minkowski, a German-American astronomer who discovered the nebula in 1947. The PN, meanwhile, refers to the fact that M2-9 is a planetary nebula. The glowing and expanding shells of gas clearly visible in this image represent the final stages of life for an old star of low to intermediate mass. The star has not only ejected its outer layers, but the exposed remnant core is now illuminating these layers — resulting in a spectacular light show like the one seen here. However, the Twin Jet Nebula is not just any planetary nebula, it is a bipolar nebula.

The bipolar nature of the nebula is thought to be caused by the interaction of a binary star system. I like to say that the orbiting stars act like the blades in a blender, mixing the ejected layers of material to produce the jets and shapes that make planetary nebula so beautiful.

Hubble first imaged this nebula in 1997. This image, using the telescope’s newer instruments, is important because it shows the complex layers within each jet, suggesting multiple ejection events in the past.

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An update on Gaia’s first year of astronomical observations

11:43 pm

European scientists today released an update on the status and scientific observations of their space telescope Gaia, designed to survey the location and distance of a billion stars.

The press release provides a basic summary of the spacecraft’s condition, which appears good, as well as an overview of some of the most interesting observations, though with little detail. This is because the first scheduled release of Gaia hard data will not happen until a year from now, thus giving the scientists who run the project a year to analyze it and publish their own papers.

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Cubesats to the Moon!

5:05 pm

NASA has chosen three cubesat missions to fly lunar planetary orbiters to the Moon, to be launched on the first SLS flight in 2018.

LunaH-Map, along with a number of other deep-space CubeSats, is a candidate to fly to lunar orbit on Exploration Mission-1, the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which will be the most powerful rocket ever built and will enable astronauts in the Orion spacecraft to travel deeper into the solar system. NASA will provide several CubeSat missions spots on the maiden SLS mission. LunaH-Map is a 6U (“6 unit”) CubeSat. One “unit” is a cube measuring 4.7 inches on a side; LunaH-Map strings six of these CubeSat building blocks together and weighs as much as a small child (about 30 pounds). …

“NASA has funded three different CubeSats to learn more: Lunar IceCube, Lunar FLASHLIGHT and LunaH-Map. They all look for water in different ways and provide different types of information,” [said principal investigator Craig Hardgrove].

The article is focused on LunaH-Map, not on the other two cubesats, but the fact that NASA plans to use “the most powerful rocket ever built” to launch the first three planetary cubesats, so small they could almost be launched by a model rocket, illustrates some of the problems of the SLS program. Even though that first SLS flight is likely to happen, I suspect that, should it falter for any reason (something that would not surprise me), these cubesats could easily be launched on another rocket, and will be.

Putting SLS aside, however, the building of these first planetary cubesats is a very significant development. It once again signals the way unmanned satellite engineering is evolving, finding ways to build spacecraft smaller and less costly.

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EPA withholds Colorado disaster documents demanded by Congress

3:58 pm

Surprise! The EPA, when ordered by Congress to release documents describing that agency’s planning prior to the toxic waste disaster it caused in Colorado, has failed to meet the deadline set by Congress for turning over those documents.

“It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the EPA failed to meet the House Science Committee’s reasonable deadline in turning over documents pertaining to the Gold King Mine spill,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “These documents are essential to the Committee’s ongoing investigation and our upcoming hearing on Sept. 9. But more importantly, this information matters to the many Americans directly affected in western states, who are still waiting for answers from the EPA.”

Smith – who frequently spars with the EPA – is chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. EPA director Gina McCarthy has been asked to appear and answer questions about the agency’s role in creating a 3-million-gallon toxic spill into Colorado’s Animas River on Aug. 5. Critics say McCarthy and the EPA have been unresponsive, secretive and unsympathetic toward millions of people who live in three states bordering the river.

The word “coverup” comes to mind, though how could anyone believe that the Obama administration (the most transparent in history!) would do such a thing baffles the mind.

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A breakthrough in creating fusion power?

10:20 am

A privately funded company has successfully kept a ball of superheated gas stable for a record time, 5 milliseconds, putting them closer to producing fusion power.

“They’ve succeeded finally in achieving a lifetime limited only by the power available to the system,” says particle physicist Burton Richter of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who sits on a board of advisers to Tri Alpha. If the company’s scientists can scale the technique up to longer times and higher temperatures, they will reach a stage at which atomic nuclei in the gas collide forcefully enough to fuse together, releasing energy.

Although other startup companies are also trying to achieve fusion using similar methods, the main efforts in this field are huge government-funded projects such as the $20 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), under construction in France by an international collaboration, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s $4 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California. But the burgeoning cost and complexity of such projects are causing many to doubt they will ever produce plants that can generate energy at an affordable cost.

Tri Alpha’s and similar efforts take a different approach, which promises simpler, cheaper machines that can be developed more quickly. Importantly, the Tri Alpha machine may be able to operate with a different fuel than most other fusion reactors. This fuel—a mix of hydrogen and boron—is harder to react, but Tri Alpha researchers say it avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants. “They are where they are because people are able to believe they can get a [hydrogen-boron] reactor to work,” says plasma physicist David Hammer of Cornell University, also a Tri Alpha adviser.

The article does not say how much this success cost the privately-funded Tri Alpha, but it certainly wasn’t in the billions of dollars. Yet, it appears that in less than a decade they have accomplished more than all these big government-funded projects have in the past half century, and for less money.

Does that story sound familiar?

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Boeing lobbies for renewal of the Export-Import Bank

9:37 am

Boeing on Monday told its satellite workers that it will eventually lay off hundreds because of lost contracts due to the failure of Congress to renew the Export-Import Bank.

Boeing Co (BA.N) on Monday told its workers that it expected to cut as many as “several hundred” jobs in its satellite business through the end of 2015 due to a downturn in U.S. military spending and delays in commercial satellite orders. Multiple commercial orders were being delayed by recent failures of launch vehicles and uncertainties about the future availability of financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, whose government charter lapsed on June 30, the company told key managers in an internal communication.

Boeing spokesman Tim Neale confirmed the reductions and said the total number of people affected would be finalized in coming months. Some could find work in other parts of Boeing, he said. [emphasis mine]

This announcement is pure lobbying, no more. They might have to lay off workers, but they haven’t done it yet, and when they do the numbers are likely to be far less than they are implying. And even so, the layoffs will probably be good for the company, making it more lean and efficient.

The reason they have made this public now is to generate support for a renewal of the Export-Import Bank, which Congress allowed to expire last month. Boeing wants it back, because the company uses the low interest loans it provides (using government money) to get contracts abroad. However, they really don’t need it to do that. They could trim costs, work more efficiently, and get loans in the private sector, as every other private company is expected to do.

This announcement is really no different than the doom that was predicted prior to the arrival of sequestration. Those budget cuts were going to cause the destruction of the defense industry and the American military, while causing the airline industry to collapse because the TSA and the FAA wouldn’t have the staff to keep the planes in the air. Twas all a lie. Nothing happened, and by some miracle the government still had plenty of cash to keep things running smoothly. Similarly, Boeing can compete without the help of the government. They just have to stop whining and do it.

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Russia to do all-female simulated Moon mission

9:22 am

The competition heats up: The Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow has announced plans to do an all-female eight day simulated mission to the Moon.

Currently scheduled for October-November 2015, the experiment will differ from the Mars-500 venture not just in duration but most notably in crew composition. For Moon-2015, all the participants will be women, drawn from the staff at IBMP itself.

In their July announcement, IBMP named the ten volunteers from whom the actual crew will be chosen. All have strong scientific, medical or research backgrounds and many have worked in the space or aviation medicine sphere, working closely with cosmonauts before or after visits to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Institute’s focus is medical, so the goal is not to develop engineering to get to the Moon but to study the human body and how it reacts to living in a spacecraft environment. In this case, they can’t simulate weightlessness so the only thing they can study is how the crew interacts with each other in a confined space for a period of time.

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New sharp images of Ceres from Dawn

9:13 am

The Lonely Mountain on Ceres/>

Cool image time! The Dawn science team has released new images of Ceres, including one of a single mountain they have dubbed the Lonely Mountain.

The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with almost no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope with bright streaks. The image was taken on August 19, 2015. The resolution of the image is 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel.

I have cropped the image and posted it on the right. Be sure to look at the full resolution version. Not only does the mountain have no debris at its base, it truly is lonely. There are no similar features anywhere near it. It almost looks like someone took a shovel of material out of the ground to create the crater immediately to the south and then dumped that material to create the mountain.

Note that the mountain is more like a mesa, with a flat top, which suggests it is the remains of a higher elevation surface that eroded away in the distant past. The geological processes that could have done this however remain quite puzzling at this point.

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IRS reveals Lerner used more than one personal email address

7:29 pm

Surprise! The IRS today revealed that it has just discovered that Lois Lerner used a second private personal email account, under a different name, for conducting government business.

IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency. “In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner‘ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Mr. Klimas told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the case.

It is unclear who Toby Miles is, but Mr. Klimas said the IRS has concluded that was “a personal email account used by Lerner.”

There is additional concern that this insecure account, not yet searched, might have been used by Lerner to communicate confidential taxpayer information.

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Wisconsin spends $1.2 million defending “John Doe” prosecutors.

8:43 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The State of Wisconsin has spent more than $1.2 million defending Democratic Party prosecutors who had instigated investigations against innnocent citizens merely because those citizens opposed that party’s agenda.

The courts have repeatedly ruled against those investigations, sometimes with very harsh words. Yet, the state continues to spend money defending them, even though the governor, Scott Walker, is a Republican and the state legislature is controlled by the Republican Party.

This quote from the article sums it up:

“They lost in the highest court in Wisconsin and they still won’t let go. And we are supposed to keep battling them on our dime while the taxpayers pick up the tab for them to harass us in court. And why is the state of Wisconsin paying legal fees for Milwaukee County officials who are being sued for violating people’s civil rights in a Milwaukee County investigation? Let Milwaukee County taxpayers pay to defend their corrupt public officials.”

If Scott Walker is serious about running for President, he should end the funding of these prosecutors now.

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