Category: Points of Information

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

A University of Denver professor plans to teach the same course next spring that, because of two anonymous complaints, caused him to be suspended for more than 100 days.

10:49 am

Standing up for his rights: A University of Denver professor plans to teach the same course next spring that, because of two anonymous complaints, caused him to be suspended for more than 100 days.

“I did not do anything wrong,” Gilbert said. “If I cave in on this, it would be terrible for academic freedom,” he said, explaining the decision to carry on teaching the class despite the trouble it had caused for him.

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The Gingrich gamble

9:29 am

Another perspective: The Gingrich Gamble.

Yet for the all sloganeering and invective, the truth is that voting for Gingrich or Romney is not so much an ideological as a personal choice, and one that says as much about the psychological make-up of the individual conservative voter as it does about the choices before him. The risk-takers, romantics, and ideologically pure have concluded that Gingrich unleashed is worth the gamble, and that it is better to win big or lose big than to plan on just squeaking by. They welcome the unending contact sport that we could expect from a President Gingrich, who would not just beat Obama, but repudiate Obamism itself. These are the guys who like passing on third down on their own ten-yard line with a seven-point lead; to them, going on fourth-quarter defense is not only not smart, it is a sure way to lose. In contrast, the more calculating know that romance and rhetoric can often disguise reality, and that it is always wiser to down the ball and run the clock out when you’re ahead.

And I must admit, I prefer the gamble. I’ve had enough of “safe” Republican candidates designed to please the moderates who only end up losing because they can’t express what they believe in with any clarity or force.

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Explaining Newt

9:22 am

Explaining Newt.

[W]e have a president who wants us to stay there, who is banal, irritating, humorless, reactionary, self-righteous, and narcissistic all at once. He hasn’t said one interesting thing or proposed one creative idea since being in office.

Unfortunately, the Republican candidates aren’t much better. Romney, Perry, Santorum, Bachmann, Huntsman, even Paul, are no more than critics of a system gone moribund. They do not inspire us. Their ideas, even when worth investigating (flat tax, etc.), are no more than rehashes of proposals we have heard for decades.

Only Newt dances. Only Newt, on occasion, is original. Only Newt — and here is the important part — has the capacity to wake us up. What attracts me about the man is the very thing that Romney criticized, the part that wants to explore the moon and stars, maybe even mine them.

Sure Gingrich has an idea a minute, many of which are bad, but at least he has ideas. At least he is thinking. And — guess what — he says what he thinks. Politicians aren’t supposed to do that.

Read the whole thing.

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Testimony at a Senate hearing about the theft of customer funds at MF Global revealed today the Jon Corzine did know of the theft, contrary to his own testimony before Congress.

10:00 pm

Testimony today at a Senate hearing about the MF Global scandal revealed that Jon Corzine, the former Democratic New Jersey governor and a fundraiser for President Obama, was aware of the theft of customer funds, contrary to his own testimony before Congress. More here.

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Rutan, Allen, Musk, Griffin team up to develop an air-launch rocket system to fire hardware and humans into orbit.

12:30 pm

Superstars of space: Rutan, Allen, Musk, and Griffin have teamed up to develop an air-launch rocket system to fire hardware and humans into orbit.

Their concept calls for Rutan, a noted aircraft designer, to create a carrier jet with a 385-foot wingspan and six engines to ferry a liquid-fueled, 120-foot-long rocket built by SpaceX and outfitted with five main engines to altitude where the winged booster will be released for launch into orbit.

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An open letter to Eric Holder from an ATF agent in Mexico

10:05 am

Truth to power: An open letter to Eric Holder from an ATF agent in Mexico.

So this is the “Most Transparent Administration” in history? Well, on that issue, that’s right. With your performance in front of the Committee, and your obstruction of justice and obfuscation of the issues, you were completely transparent. Everyone could see right through you. And you’re refusing to release any more documents? What could be more transparent than that? Wow!

It seems to me that Holder and anyone else involved in Fast and Furious should be prosecuted as accessories to murder, whenever one of the guns they allowed to go into Mexico is used to kill someone.

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Southwest orders 208 Boeing 737s valued at $19 billion

9:49 am

Some good news: Southwest Airlines has ordered 208 of Boeing’s 737, a deal valued at $19 billion. Plus this:

Last month, Boeing said Indonesia’s Lion Air committed to pay $21.7 billion for 230 Boeing 737s. Lion Air also has options for 150 more planes, valued at $14 billion, bringing the deal’s total potential value to $35 billion. But the Lion Air deal is not a certainty; it still has to complete the order. Also in November, Emirates Airlines ordered $18 billion worth of 777s.

Maybe Boeing should pump some of those profits into building the CST-100 manned space capsule and thus win more profits in the space tourism industry.

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A Maryland post office bans Christmas carolers

9:46 am

A Maryland post office bans Christmas carolers.

“He told them that they had to leave immediately because they were violating the post office’s policy against solicitation,” Duffy said. “He told them they couldn’t do this on government property. He said: ‘You can’t go into Congress and sing and you can’t do it here either.’”

I like this from the comments:

So our freedom of speech is suspended upon entering government property?

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Sir David Attenborough admits to shooting fake polar bear footage for a BBC documentary

9:38 am

Another global warming activist who fakes it: Sir David Attenborough admits to shooting fake polar bear footage for a BBC documentary.

What’s worse is that he sees nothing wrong with what he did!

But wait, there’s more! The BBC, also in the tank for global warming, has also now admitted that a great deal of the footage in its nature documentaries is staged.

In a further blow to wildlife fans, corporation bosses yesterday confessed that staging footage was standard ­practice in natural history programmes. They insisted such editing tricks were necessary to create the ­documentaries, and added the programme met the expected editorial standards.

A spokesman said: “While the great majority of footage for Frozen Planet is filmed entirely in the wild, on occasion certain sequences need to be filmed in controlled conditions – otherwise we wouldn’t be able to bring these stories to our audiences. “This type of filming is standard practice across the industry when creating natural history programmes.”

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CERN announces an update on the search for the Higgs Boson

8:59 am

Not there yet: CERN announces an update on the search for the Higgs Boson.

The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.

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Deal reached on Defense authorization bill that had included language allowing the military to hold U.S. citizen indefinitely

10:01 pm

A deal has been reached on a Department of Defense authorization bill that had included language allowing the military to hold U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge, both in and outside the U.S.

Not surprisingly for a modern journalist (who routinely miss the lead in their own stories), this article really doesn’t tell us whether that language is still in effect.

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Long faces in Durban

2:56 pm

They might have cobbled together what they call a deal, but nonetheless (and for good reasons), there are long faces in Durban.

I like this quote best:

The leading alarmist among American scientists, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been as spectacularly wrong as Mr. Gore. Mr. Hansen said in a 1988 interview the sea level off Manhattan would rise 10 feet within 40 years (if atmospheric CO2 doubled). In the 23 years since, the sea level has risen just 2.5 inches. Sea levels fell over the past year.

But alarmism has been good for his pocketbook. Mr. Hansen failed to report $1.6 million in outside income, much of it in violation of NASA’s rules, according to Power Line’s John Hinderaker.

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Orbital Sciences has renamed its Taurus II rocket the Antares rocket

2:49 pm

Orbital Sciences has renamed its Taurus II rocket the Antares rocket.

To clear up any marketplace confusion and provide clear differentiation between this new launch vehicle and our Taurus XL rocket. Antares is significantly different – it serves the medium-class space launch market and its liquid fuel first stage technology is major departure from previous Orbital space launch vehicles. In addition, a project of this scale and significance deserves its own name like Orbital’s Pegasus®, Taurus® and Minotaur rocket programs that have come before it.

I think they have also realized they needed to distinguish Antares from the Taurus XL rocket’s recent problems, failing twice to put NASA climate satellites into orbit.

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Doug Ross notes the fawning lack of any real questions to President Obama during an interview by a CBS journalist.

9:39 am

Pravda reborn! Doug Ross notes the fawning lack of any real questions to President Obama during an interview by a CBS journalist.

Kroft apparently had a brief case of amnesia and forgot about a few mildly important issues:

  • The increasing calls for Eric Holder’s resignation and/or impeachment for Operation Fast and Furious, etc.
  • The newly revealed Obamacare emails that appear to show Elena Kagan lied under oath
  • The catastrophic failure of MF Global, headed by none other than one of Obama’s leading fundraisers, John Corzine
  • The billions in “green energy” funds that went to Obama’s fundraisers and political cronies, Solyndra being only the most visible example
  • The “historic” $4.2+ trillion budget deficits thanks to Obama’s disastrous stimulus debacle and the Democrats’ failure to pass a budget for 1,000+ days

Ross provides links to each of these scandals, none of which are trivial and all of which are true.

Sadly these kinds of pointless how-can-I-make-a-Democratic-President-look-good interviews are the rule from the mainstream almost-exclusively-Democratic press.

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A thoughtful analysis as to why tea party supporters are breaking to Gingrich

10:36 pm

A thoughtful analysis as to why tea party supporters are breaking to Gingrich.

Much of what Bill Quick writes parallels what I have said previously: Gingrich might have said or done some disagreeable things, but he was able to win Congress and force the spendthrifts from both parties to produce a balanced budget. And when it comes time for him to face Obama in the debates, Gingrich alone among these Republican candidates appears capable of handing the situation strongly, with skill. To me, that combination appears to be a winning combination, both for the election and the nation afterward.

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