The Great Gibson Guitar Raid … Months later, still no charges

3:24 pm

The abuse of power: Months after its raid and confiscation of a half a million dollars worth of property from Gibson Guitars, the Obama Justice Department has still not filed any charges.

Reason.tv recently checked in with Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz to see how the case has progressed. Turns out, the DOJ has filed no charges. That means Gibson hasn’t had its day in court to defend itself — and the government still has all that confiscated property.

Are we beginning to sense a pattern here with this administration and how it treats the citizens of the United States?

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Fifteen questions the press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican

1:36 pm

Fifteen questions the press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican.

I especially like the last three:

13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?

14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. Many prominent economists have concluded the stimulus plan was a total failure. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?

15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we’ve had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn’t that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?

These, as well as the other 12 questions, are all perfectly reasonable and are exactly the kinds of questions any good journalist would be itching to ask any elected official with the disastrous track record that Barack Obama has. Unfortunately, we don’t have very many good journalists in the White House press corp or on the major television/cable networks. Instead, what we have are “former” Democratic Party operatives like George Stephanopoulos, disguised as journalists whose only goal is to make Republicans look bad so that Democrats can get elected.

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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, 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.

A federal judge has struck down a Washington state law that required pharmacists to sell contraceptives

9:14 am

A federal judge has struck down a Washington state law that required pharmacists to sell contraceptives.

In his 48-page opinion, [the judge] noted that Washington permitted pharmacy owners to decide they won’t stock certain medications for any number of “secular reasons” – because they drugs are expensive, for example, or inconvenient to dispense, or because they simply don’t fit into the store’s business plan. Yet the rule did not allow pharmacists to assert a religious reason for keeping certain drugs off their shelves. “A pharmacy is permitted to refuse to stock oxycodone because it fears robbery, but the same pharmacy cannot refuse to stock Plan B because it objects on religious grounds,” the judge wrote. “Why are these reasons treated differently under the rules?” The judge also accused the state of enforcing the mandate selectively, noting that regulators had not opened cases against the many Catholic-affiliated pharmacies in the state that also refuse to dispense Plan B.

I would not be at all surprised if we find that Obama’s contraceptive mandate carries with it the same type of selective enforcement.

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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

The fundamental design flaw of all of Tesla Motors’ electric cars.

3:35 pm

The fundamental design flaw of all of Tesla Motors’ electric cars.

A Tesla Roadster that is simply parked without being plugged in will eventually become a “brick”. The parasitic load from the car’s always-on subsystems continually drains the battery and if the battery’s charge is ever totally depleted, it is essentially destroyed. Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn’t receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. After battery death, the car is completely inoperable. At least in the case of the Tesla Roadster, it’s not even possible to enable tow mode, meaning the wheels will not turn and the vehicle cannot be pushed nor transported to a repair facility by traditional means.

This problem could destroy the company, which, believe it or not, might actually have a negative effect on the American space program! Elon Musk, the man behind SpaceX and the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule is also the CEO of Tesla. If Tesla goes down, one wonders if that could have an impact on SpaceX’s effort to get Americans into space.

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A fourteen year old girl has been swamped with death threats after testifying before the Maryland state legislature in opposition to gay marriage.

1:39 pm

Leftwing civility: A fourteen year old girl has been swamped with death threats after testifying before the Maryland state legislature in opposition to gay marriage. A handful of examples:

  • “And now everyone knows her name, so hopefully she will feel what its like to be harassed and bullied…” reads a comment posted on LGBTNation.com
  • From YouTube: “My god I hate people like this. Most (not all) Americans are [expletive] retards. If I ever see this girl, I will kill her. That’s a promise.”
  • Other entries: “Her parents should be exterminated.”
  • “The [sic] is why abortion must stay legal – to prevent little bigots like this from being Born…”
  • “Kill this child and his [sic] parent, for my 11 birthday would be a wonderful gift, thanks.”

The issue here is not gay marriage, but the threatening, hateful behavior of too many of those who support it. She speaks out in disagreement, and the response isn’t to debate the point but to try to shut her up, in any way possible.

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Peter Gleick’s “truly flabbergasting” lapse of judgement.

10:46 am

Peter Gleick’s “truly flabbergasting” lapse of judgement.

Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?

When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right. And if one rogue member of the community does something crazy that provides such proof, I’d say it is crucial that the other members of the community say “Oh, how horrible, this is so far beyond the pale that I cannot imagine how this ever could have happened!” and not, “Well, he’s apologized and I really think it’s pretty crude and opportunistic to make a fuss about something that’s so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.”

After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else. [emphasis in original]

As I’ve said repeatedly, until the climate community stops circling the wagons to protect the liars and frauds that pepper their field, no one is going to believe anything they say, even when they are right. Worse, their dishonesty is continuing to do serious harm to the field of science itself.

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A Jewish congregation’s letter to George Washington welcoming him to Rhode Island in 1790.

9:45 am

On Washington’s birthday: A Jewish congregation’s letter to George Washington welcoming him to Rhode Island in 1790.

Washington had come to Rhode Island in celebration of that state’s ratification of the Constitution. This paragraph, written by these immigrant Jews, speaks directly to today’s far less tolerant government and society that now believes it has the right to squelch religious freedom:

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People ~~ a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance ~~ but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: ~~ deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine.

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One private religious company explains why it can’t go along with the Obama administration’s mandate on contraceptives.

9:34 am

One private religious company explains why it will refuse to go along with the Obama administration’s mandate on contraceptives.

The administration’s supporters say that by opposing the rule, religious employers like EWTN are guilty of trying to coerce our employees and impose our values on them. But we are simply choosing not to participate in the use of these drugs. Our 350 employees, many of whom are not Catholic, freely choose to work here and can purchase and use contraception if they want to. They are aware of the values we practice, and I hear regularly from Catholic and non-Catholic employees alike how much they love working for an organization that is defined by its Catholic beliefs — beliefs that we think result in a better workplace and more expansive benefits over all.

Instead, it is the government — which does not accept EWTN’s religious choice and can punish that choice by imposing fines — that is coercing us. But under the Constitution and federal religious liberties law, we cannot be forced to give up our beliefs as the price of participation in the public square. That is why the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has filed a lawsuit on our behalf seeking to overturn this illegal mandate.

Once again, whether or not you agree with the Obama administration’s policy, the mandate is unconstitutional. The federal government is expressly forbidden from imposing its will in this manner by the 1st Amendment.

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