A Justice department official today refused to rule out the possibility of passing a law that would criminalize speech against any religion.

11:59 am

A Justice department official today refused to rule out the idea of passing a law that would criminalize speech against any religion. With video.

The exact wording of the question: “Will you tell us here today that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”

Despite being asked the question four times, the official consistently refused to answer the question directly. In other words, the Obama administration would consider criminalizing speech against religion. Or to put it more bluntly, they don’t believe in freedom of speech.

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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, 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 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

Congress is on a pace this year to pass the fewest laws in a single year since World War II.

10:15 am

Gridlock is good! Congress is on a pace this year to pass the fewest laws in a single year since World War II.

Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2 percent of all proposed laws, according to a USA Today analysis of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk’s office.

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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.

Three astronauts have safely returned to Earth from ISS.

9:23 am

Three astronauts have safely returned to Earth from ISS.

More important, the Russians have now delayed the next Soyuz manned launch to ISS for a week due to “some malfunctions [that] have appeared in one of the devices of the decent module.”

They also say the delay is to avoid a flight conflict with the next Dragon mission on October 15. This is interesting in that the last word we had from NASA was that the Dragon launch could occur as early as October 5.

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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

“Sequestration would come at ‘great cost’ to NASA.”

8:06 pm

Another whining article about sequestration: “Sequestration would come at ‘great cost’ to NASA.”

Let’s be blunt. An 8.2 percent cut in NASA’s budget will not destroy the agency. It will hurt them, surely, but it will only bring their budget back the agency’s 2005 budget. Considering the deficit and debt, this is hardly a draconian cut.

If the Republicans are serious about getting the budget under control — as they say they are — then these automatic cuts imposed by sequestration should not give them heartburn.

As for the Democrats, no point in caring what they think or do. We already know they aren’t serious about getting the budget under control, considering the budgets Obama has proposed, all of which were rejected unanimously by both Houses of Congress, and the refusal of the Democrats in the Senate to even offer a budget for the past three years.

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Obama cracks down on free speech.

8:24 pm

Obama cracks down on free speech.

In order to spare themselves the sort of critical scrutiny to which they are unaccustomed, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have fallen in with the absurd claim that violence has broken out in eleven Muslim countries, and terrorists armed with RPGs and (reportedly) mortars carried out a military operation to assassinate a U.S. ambassador, as a result of a 14-minute YouTube video. As always, Obama’s first priority is to point the finger of responsibility elsewhere.

So the Obama administration cracked down on the Christian who made the film–essentially an amateur production–which is critical of Islam, but no more so than many Hollywood productions have been of Christianity. The federal government sent Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to bring the filmmaker into custody on the pretext that his uploading the movie trailer to YouTube may have violated the terms of his probation on a bank fraud conviction. That led to the famous photo of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula being taken into custody.

Shameful, disgusting, and inexcusable. The Obama administration is essentially attacking American citizens for the evils committed by Islamic radicals half a world away.

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The Obama administration has delayed deployment of 50 Marines to protect its embassy in Khartoum because of objections of the Sudanese government.

2:49 pm

The Obama administration has pulled back the deployment of 50 Marines to protect its embassy in Khartoum because of objections of the Sudanese government.

In other words, the Obama administration is more willing to obey the orders of the Sudan government than it is willing to protect the lives of U.S. citizens abroad.

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Disgrace in Benghazi.

9:22 am

Disgrace in Benghazi.

The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.

For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. “Libyans carried Chris’s body to the hospital,” said Mrs. Clinton. That’s one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens’s body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cell phones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cell-phone camera an inch from the ambassador’s nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like “carrying Chris’s body to the hospital” and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.

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The first results from the two GRAIL space probes have revealed the Moon has a much thinner crust than previously believed.

6:01 pm

The uncertainty of science: The first results from the two GRAIL space probes have revealed that the Moon has a much thinner crust than previously believed.

These preliminary results have also found that the Moon’s surface topography closely matched the variations in the gravitational field, and that there appears no evidence in the gravitational field of the giant ancient impact basins that scientists have for decades assumed were there, based on surface evidence. This last result is especially surprising, and will force an almost complete rewrite of the Moon’s geological history.

Interestingly, these results are only peripherally related to GRAIL’s main research goal, which was to map the Moon’s deep structure and core. I suspect there are even more surprises coming when this data gets released.

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The science cuts from sequestration

3:47 pm

The journal Science today published this detailed look at the cuts that would occur in all the federal government’s various science programs should the automatic budget cuts outlined in the sequestration legislation occur on January 2, 2013.

Not surprising, the article includes a great deal of moaning and groaning about the terrible harm the cuts would have on science research should they occur. From the Obama administration:
» Read more

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Germany announced yesterday that it has approved funding for the design of an in-orbit test of a robot satellite servicing mission.

10:04 am

Germany announced yesterday that it has approved funding for the design of an in-orbit test of a robot satellite servicing mission.

The DEOS project will for the first time demonstrate technologies for the controlled in-orbit disposal of a defective satellite. In addition, DEOS will practice how to complete maintenance tasks – refueling in particular – that extend the service life of satellites. DEOS consists of two satellites, a ‘client’ and a ‘servicer’. The client acts as the satellite requiring maintenance or disposal. The servicer carries out the necessary work on the client. The two satellites will be launched together and brought into orbit at a height of 550 kilometers. According to current planning, DEOS will be ready for launch in 2018.

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“Those who produced the movie should be tried and killed.”

8:28 am

Islamic tolerance and justice: “Those who produced the movie should be tried and killed.”

Notice he didn’t simply say “Put them on trial,” which would have been bad enough, arresting someone for something he said. He wants them “tried and killed.” In other words, no trial in an Islamic nation is worth the electrons we use to read about it. They are merely kangaroo courts. If an Islamic preacher declares that you are guilty, you are guilty.

Which makes his other statements calling for peaceful demonstrations completely worthless and absolutely bullcrap. What is really going on is that they are now terrified that all that good U.S. money is going to be cut off, and want to placate the naive idiots in the U.S. To quote Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky):

“My position is not one penny more for Libya or Egypt or Pakistan until they act like our allies,” Paul said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Some say we’ve got to keep sending it. Fine. Let’s send it when they act like our allies. Let’s send it when they start behaving like civilized nations and come to their senses.”

As they used to say in the 1960s, “Right on!”

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