Ten crazy and unconstitutional demands made by the IRS to conservative organizations in its effort to harass opponents of the Democratic Party.

10:47 am

Ten crazy and unconstitutional demands made by the IRS to conservative organizations in its effort to harass opponents of the Democratic Party.

All of the examples above are taken from actual IRS correspondence received by ACLJ’s 27 clients. There were many versions of the in-depth questionnaire sent to different organizations, suggesting there was more than one agent or one office involved. Though IRS officials blamed “low-level” employees in the Cincinnati office, which is the central IRS office in charge of tax exemptions, French said the abuse was far more widespread. ACLJ’s clients dealt with inquiries from IRS offices from “coast to coast.” Of ACLJ’s 27 clients, 15 finally had their status approved after 6-7 months with legal help. There are 12 groups whose status remains in limbo.

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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 or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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

Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

The IRS admitted today that it targeted conservative political organizations during the 2012 election campaign.

10:14 am

The IRS admitted today that it targeted conservative political organizations during the 2012 election campaign.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

The IRS also claimed that this action was “initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell them.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Astronauts today spotted an ammonia coolant leak in ISS’s left-side power truss.

10:51 pm

Astronauts today spotted an ammonia coolant leak in ISS’s left-side power truss.

They are monitoring it, but have so far not made any decision about what to do about it, if anything.

This problem is a perfect illustration of why a flight to Mars is more complicated in terms of engineering than first appears. We might at this time be able to build that interplanetary spaceship (with the emphasis on the word “might”) but could its passengers maintain it millions of miles from Earth? Right now I’d say no. We need to learn how to build an easily repaired and self-sufficient spaceship. ISS is neither. It is also not a very good platform for testing this kind of engineering.

Update: The astronauts on ISS are preparing for a possible spacewalk on Saturday to deal with the problem. More details here.

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The words of those government officials who falsely blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on an obscure YouTube trailer, and were then willing to abandon the First amendment to defend their lies.

9:09 am

The words of those who falsely blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on an obscure YouTube trailer, and were then willing to abandon the First Amendment to defend their lies.

Yesterday’s dramatic congressional testimony about the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. interests in Benghazi, Libya convincingly corroborated what was widely reported within days of the attack: that senior American officials on the ground knew immediately, despite the Obama administration’s storyline to the contrary, that the assault did not arise out of a “spontaneous” demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in protest of an obscure YouTube trailer of a homemade anti-Islam movie called Innocence of Muslims.

Falsely assessing partial blame for the violence on a piece of artistic expression inflicted damage not just on the California resident who made it—Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is currently serving out a one-year sentence for parole violations committed in the process of producing Innocence—but also on the entire American culture of free speech. In the days and weeks after the attacks, academics and foreign policy thinkers fell over themselves dreaming up new ways to either disproportionately punish Nakoula or scale back the very notion of constitutionally protected expression.

The article then shows us who in American politics was willing to abandon freedom of speech for political reasons. If we have any courage, we should throw these words back in their face again and again and again and again.

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House Republicans have refused to recommend anyone to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), labeled “the death panel” by some.

8:57 am

House Republicans have refused to recommend anyone to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), labeled “the death panel” by some.

“We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire health care law,” the Boehner and McConnell letter reads.

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SpaceX is moving its Grasshopper test program to New Mexico’s spaceport.

1:04 am

SpaceX is moving its Grasshopper test program to New Mexico’s spaceport.

The move confirms big plans for the test bed. Flights to date have been conducted at SpaceX’s engine test site in McGregor, Texas. SpaceX received a waiver from the FAA to fly Grasshopper up to 11,500ft from McGregor, but Spaceport America is an FAA-certified spaceport where no where no waivers are required. “Spaceport America offers us the physical and regulatory landscape needed to complete the next phase of Grasshopper testing,” says SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.

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Japan’s entire space program faces a major overhaul.

12:59 am

Feeling the heat of competition: Japan’s entire space program faces a major overhaul.

In the last few decades Japan has not done very well in space when compared to other Asian countries like China and India. Thus, this overhaul. Yet, based on this article, it doesn’t seem to me that they are making the real changes they need to do to successfully compete. If anything, it sounds instead like the actions of a bureaucracy that is merely rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, in the hope that this will somehow save it.

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Jonathan Edwards – Sunshine (Go Away Today)

6:01 pm

An evening pause:

How much does it cost, I’ll buy it.
The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it.
But he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine.

The irony of this song is that it was written during the Vietnam War as a protest against the war and the draft. Today, most of the same anti-war protesters that sung it then, now want that same government to run our lives, even though it can’t run its own.

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A new research study finds that every time someone imagines the economic system of Socialism working, it does so as much as 98 percent of the time!

1:57 pm

Heh: A new research study finds that every time someone imagines socialism working, it does so, as much as 98 percent of the time!

“There’s no ambiguity about our findings,” said Dr. Halbert Thursday, “we have proved beyond a doubt: every time someone imagines the economic system of Socialism working, it does. Regardless of what time in history, too,” continued Halbert, “if someone imagined that Socialism has worked in the past, it did. If someone imagined it working currently, it does. And if a person imagined it will work in the future, it will. It’s the most amazing thing…Truly remarkable.”

The study consisted of interviewing 5000 economists and ordinary citizens around the world, from socialist and non-socialist countries alike. No matter where in the world, people realized the repeatedly attempted 200-plus-year-old social and economic system operated fairly, efficiently, and humanely nearly every time they fantasized it would. Said Dr. Halbert, “The people in North Korea we were allowed to interview were the most enthusiastic. They not only declared their economic system the best in the world, but the best ever in the solar system.”

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The 2000th show

12:45 pm

Tonight David Livingston will air the 2000th episode of The Space Show, what has become the world’s leading media outlet for the discussion of space exploration and the aerospace industry.

The Space Show began in June 2001, and in the ensuing dozen years David has interviewed almost every single big mover in the business of space exploration. I myself have been honored to appear on his show more than thirty times, a fact for which I am deeply grateful, since there are people far more important than I in this field.

It is difficult to measure the significance to space of David Livingston’s effort during these past twelve years. When the Space Show began, SpaceShipOne had not yet flow, the X-Price had not yet been won, and the idea of private space and space tourism were considered wild and absurd ideas. Twelve years later, these ideas are now common knowledge and are likely to be main path for the human race into space. By giving a forum to supporters of commercial space, the Space Show under David’s leadership made this paradigm shift possible.

Thank you David! When the solar system is finally settled, the colonists should remember that without his important contribution their journey to get there would have been far more difficult.

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The European Union’s program to reduce carbon emissions is in disarray.

12:08 pm

The European Union’s program to reduce carbon emissions is in disarray.

The article at the link is probably one of the worst written stories in the history of journalism. It is incoherent, disorganized, and confused. Moreover, the authors are so in favor of the regulations to limit fossil fuels that they are unable to even consider any reasons which might explain why Europe’s carbon credit market is collapsing and why the EU’s legislators rejected a rescue plan to save it.

In fact, because of their biases, the authors buried the real story, which is this:

Parliamentarians on April 16 voted 334 to 315 for blocking the carbon market rescue.

“This is the first time I can remember when parliament has put economic survival and jobs ahead of green orthodoxy,” said Roger Helmer, a member of the U.K. Independence Party who has been in the parliament for 14 years and opposes emissions trading. “It marks an absolute watershed.”

The bad economy and high debt in Europe is making the idea of raising taxes and adding more restrictions on fossil fuels very unappealing to politicians.

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