Working for the Democratic Party: A new report finds that the EPA has been directly funneling government funds to Democratic activists in the environmental movement.
Theft by government: Homeland Security agents confiscate forty vehicles because they think they violate the Clean Air Act.
The story has this very interesting tidbit: According to the owner of one vehicle “had spent considerable money ensuring her vehicle would pass inspection laws and that it was in compliance with emission rules.” Nonetheless, the feds showed up at her door and took the vehicle.
Some good news: The Sudanese Christian woman who had been threatened with execution because she would not renounce her religion has finally escaped Sudan, arriving in the United States on Thursday.
Go to the link for some joy. Despite the efforts of some in this country to destroy its fundamental freedoms, it still remains the world’s haven for the huddled masses yearning to breath free.
Insanity: A mother has been arrested because she let her 7-year-old son walk alone about ten blocks to a neighborhood park.
The boy had a cell phone which he had just used to check in with his mother.
When I was seven I wandered all over my neighborhood in Brooklyn. In fact, when I was 4 to 6 my parents would rent a bungalow in a resort in the Catskills each summer. There, I would wander the countryside every day completely on my own. The resort, called a bungalow colony, was not fancy and did not really have any organized activities for the kids. We were free to explore, and would go miles in all directions into the nearby farm fields and woods. Interestingly, we knew our limits and always stayed within them.
But that was then, when this culture was free and believed in freedom and teaching independence and self-reliance to its young. Now, such ideas are considered evil and must be squelched.
Fascists: Faced with the publication this year of three unauthorized biographies, the Clintons are demanding that such works “should neither be allowed or enabled.”
The Clintons’ prepared statement is very clear:
Their behavior should neither be allowed nor enabled, and legitimate media outlets who know with every fiber of their being that this is complete crap should know not to get down in the gutter with them and spread their lies. But if anyone isn’t sure, let’s strap all three to a polygraph machine on live TV and let the needle tell the truth. [emphasis mine]
As Ed Morrissey notes bluntly at the link, “Their behavior should not ‘be allowed’? What authority exists to bar these authors and their publishers (one of which is Regnery, like Hot Air a subsidiary of Salem Communications) from engaging in political speech? A better question: What authority do the Clintons propose to stop political speech?” [emphasis in original]
The competition heats up: For the first time in six months SpaceShipTwo completed a test flight today.
The article above is from NBC, which also has a deal with Virgin Galactic to televise the first commercial flight. It is thus in their interest to promote the spacecraft and company. The following two sentences from the article however clearly confirm every rumor we have heard about the ship in the past year, that they needed to replace or completely refit the engine and that the resulting thrust might not be enough to get the ship to 100 kilometers or 62 miles:
In January, SpaceShipTwo blasted off for a powered test and sailed through a follow-up glide flight, but then it went into the shop for rocket refitting. It’s expected to go through a series of glide flights and powered flights that eventually rise beyond the boundary of outer space (50 miles or 100 kilometers in altitude, depending on who’s counting).
Hopefully this test flight indicates that they have installed the new engine and are now beginning flight tests with equipment that will actually get the ship into space.
The evil returns: In Germany a synagogue is firebombed and a rabbi gets death threats merely because they are Jewish.
As one commenter at the website above explained when another commenter asked for an explanation of anti-semitism, “An example of anti-Semitism is where people in the middle east are shooting at each other and an uninvolved Jewish man in Wuppertal gets death threats because of it.”
Reading the comments and the amount of childish hate that exudes from too many of them will certainly depress you.
Black leaders in Fresno, California want to stop the hiring of a teacher merely because his skin color happens to be white.
On Monday morning, a small band of activists showed up in front of the sparkling new school at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Church Avenue. The local press was also there. “We’re just saying what the community wants,” said Rev. Karen Crozier, one of the activists. “We didn’t fight for a white male or female teacher to educate our babies.” Crozier, who appears to be a professor at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary, also suggested that a white person cannot teach minority children in this instance because of racism.
Sometimes the bigotry and blindness of people just leaves me speechless.
In related news, the organizer of a “gay” job fair is outraged that non-gays keep showing up there looking for jobs.
Victory for freedom: On Saturday a federal judge ruled that the DC ban on carrying handguns outside your home was unconstitutional and must no longer be enforced.
Expect the crime rate in DC to finally begin declining.
Update: DC’s police chief today announced that they will no longer arrest anyone who has the legal right to carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, in DC or in any other state. This means they now recognize the gun laws of the rest of the country.
A close look at SpaceX’s launch schedule through the rest of 2014 calls for six Falcon 9 launches, including two before the end of August.
If the company is successfully in maintaining this schedule, they will end any doubts about their ability to transform the launch industry. Every other launch company will have to match their prices, or lose their customers.
One paragraph in the article does tell us that there are limits to the re-usability of the Falcon 9 first stage, even if they do succeed in bringing it back safely to a vertical landing on land.
» Read more
Guess who was both lawless and reckless. I can promise you it wasn’t George Bush.
The competition heats up? NASA is considering a different commercial approach for providing communications to and from its Mars probes.
The purpose of NASA’s request for information, or RFI, released July 23 “is to explore new business models for how NASA might sustain Mars relay infrastructure, consisting of orbiters capable of providing standardized telecommunication services for rovers and landers on the Martian surface, in the Martian atmosphere, or in Mars orbit,” according to a posting on the Federal Business Opportunities website.
According to the post, NASA will use information it receives from respondents to inform its future Mars exploration strategies, but the agency has not decided to pursue a commercial interplanetary telecom initiative. “We are looking to broaden participation in the exploration of Mars to include new models for government and commercial partnerships,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, in a statement. “Depending on the outcome, the new model could be a vital component in future science missions and the path for humans to Mars.” [emphasis mine]
It is important to highlight the fact that NASA has not yet made a decision on this issue. The best thing the agency could do, in my opinion, would be to step back, design nothing, but let private companies bid on providing the service. The expertise at many of the private satellite companies providing communications efficiently and inexpensively to private customers worldwide would easily provide NASA better communications at Mars for less money.
In other words, like manned flight and cargo delivery to ISS, NASA should simply become a customer, and let private companies build and own the products that NASA buys.
A federal judge has denied the motion of the Air Force and ULA to dismiss SpaceX’s suit against their block buy launch contract that excludes competition from any other company.
The judge also required the parties go to mediation to settle their differences. Both rulings give added weight to SpaceX’s main complaint, that the company as well as others should have the right to compete for this Air Force launch work.
In April I taped a half hour television interview with George Noory for his subscription-based video show, Beyond Belief. Below is a clip from that interview, where I describe the terrible state of climate research, and how politics is destroying the very heart of what science stands for. Too many people are no longer open-minded. Rather than relay on the data they push their theories instead.
Robert Zimmerman discusses the truth about climate change with George Noory!
The article begins quite bluntly:
In light of the murderous actions and intentions of Hamas, what would you like Israel to do?
I wholeheartedly concur that the death of even one unarmed civilian is tragic, let alone the death of scores or of hundreds. And I affirm without hesitation that Arab blood is as precious as Jewish blood.
That being said, since Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction, since Hamas initiated the recent hostilities, since Hamas rejected cease fire offers, since Hamas is using civilians, including women and children, as human shields, and since Hamas is actively attempting to infiltrate Israel and murder, kidnap, and maim its people, what do you suggest that Israel does?
Read it all. It is an honest appraisal of the situation.
In the past week there must have been a hundred stories written celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Here’s just a small sampling:
These articles try to cover the topic from all angles. Some looked at the wonders of the achievement. Others extolled the newspaper’s local community and their contribution. Some used the event to demand the U.S. do it again.
None of this interests me much. Though I passionately want humans, preferable Americans, back on the Moon exploring and settling it, this fetish with celebrating Apollo is to me becoming quite tiresome.
» Read more
The power of the purse: The House on Wednesday voted to block the IRS from spending any money on employee performance bonuses as well as conferences.
The amendment passed 282-138-1. Not surprisingly, with their IRS harassment operation at risk of being shut down by these cuts, Democrats voted against them and the Obama administration threatened a veto.
Shades of climategate: An activist has released to the public the correspondence from a Brandeis University listserv devoted to expressing hatred for conservatives, Jews, Christians, and anyone who doesn’t conform to modern leftwing dogmas.
More here. It seems that 92 professors, many from Brandeis but also including academics from other institutions, belong to this listserv and post there regularly. Many also signed the petition that protested Brandeis’s decision, later rescinded, to give Muslim dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s an honorary degree.
Read the articles. The language used by these so-called intellectuals is childish, simple-minded, bigoted, and hateful. It reveals to the world who they are, and what they stand for, and should serve as a warning to anyone thinking of attending Brandeis or who is there now: It is time to find another place to go to college.
Pushback: The House has approved a one third cut to the budget of the National Security Council in response to its mandate that agencies withhold information from Congress.
As I said yesterday, when an agency of the federal government decides to defy Congress, elected by the people, than the best and most effective action for Congress to take is to use the power of the purse to reduce or eliminate that agency’s funding. Without money their power disappears, and Congress takes control.
It has been decades since Congress used its power in this way. The more it does this now, however, the more it is going to realize how powerful it really is.
Claiming that White House officials have absolute immunity from testifying to Congress, the administration today ignored a subpoena issued by a House committee investigating violations of the Hatch act.
The White House warned Issa late Tuesday that David Simas, director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, would not be appearing. White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote that Simas is “immune” from any effort by Congress to compel him to testify. “[T]he committee’s effort to compel Mr. Simas’s testimony threatens longstanding interests of the Executive Branch in preserving the president’s independence and autonomy, as well as his ability to obtain candid advice and counsel to aid him in the discharge of his constitutional duties,” Eggleston wrote. “In light of those principles… Mr. Simas is immune from congressional compulsion to testify on matters relating to his official duties and will not appear at the July 16, 2014 hearing.”
Issa said late Tuesday that he would hold the hearing in the hopes that Simas would appear, and when the hearing started Wednesday morning, Simas was not there. Issa started the hearing by saying he received Eggleston’s “deeply disturbing” letter late Tuesday night, and argued that this decision goes against court rulings that say White House officials are not immune from having to appear before Congress. “A federal judge wrote that senior advisers to the president of the United States are ‘not absolutely immune from congressional process,’ ” Issa said.
Why am I so strongly reminded of Richard Nixon and his claim of executive privilege to prevent his subordinates from being questioned by Congress? As Issa notes correctly, the courts ruled against Nixon, and we eventually found out that executive privilege was merely Nixon’s way of stonewalling the investigation. I suspect this is Obama’s sole reason now for stonewalling.
Fascists: A South Carolina lawyer has been threatened with disbarment by his state’s legal agencies because they want to prevent him from publishing his political opinions.
Todd [Kincannon] is now reporting that the South Carolina governmental authorities responsible for governing the professional conduct and ethics of attorneys have decided that Todd’s conservative political and religious advocacy on Twitter, and elsewhere, is too offensive to be permitted, and needs to be gagged.
Specifically, Todd has written that the South Carolina Commission on Lawyer Conduct and the South Carolina Office of Disciplinary Counsel have informed him that his political and religious commentary is “unethical” to a degree sufficient to warrant legal sanction to the point of disbarment. … More specifically, Todd writes that these governmental agencies have threatened him with disbarment should he proceed with his planned publication of a book advocating conservative political and religious beliefs.
He has been forced to delay the release of this book, as well as stop posting his opinions on line, while he files a lawsuit to prevent his disbarment.
Travel tips for Russian, French, Chinese, and Japanese travelers to the United States.
Read them all. Not surprisingly, the French are the most bothered by American habits while the Russians struggle mightily with our general niceness. All told, however, these tips will each give you warm feelings for the wild, crazy, enthusiastic culture that is America, as seen objectively by outsiders, and best summed up by this Japanese advice:
In Japan, there is great fear of failure and mistakes in front of other people. It is better to do nothing and avoid being criticized than to taste the humiliation of failure. As a result, there are things we wanted to do, but did not, and often regret.
In America, you can make mistakes, fail, and it doesn’t matter. It is a fundamental feeling that to sometimes be incorrect is natural. In addition, rather than thinking about mistakes and failures, American’s have curiosity and say, “Let’s try anyway!”
As noted so wisely in the 1982 comedy Night Shift, “Is this a great country, or what?”
Another Israeli war crime! Even as Hamas continued to hurl bombs at them, Israeli electric workers on Monday repaired a power line, destroyed by a Hamas rocket, that fed electricity to Gaza.
After a day without power, electricity was restored to some 70,000 Gazans when the Israeli government gave the Israel Electric Corp. the green light to repair a high-power line damaged by a rocket on Saturday. … The IEC employees dispatched to repair the damage were accompanied by Israel Defense Forces soldiers and outfitted with bulletproof vests. They wore special helmets as well to minimize the threat of shrapnel injuries.
Can you wrap you mind around this? Not only did the Israelis do the repair, ending a blackout in Gaza, the story makes it clear that this power is supplied to Gaza by Israel. And this is all taking place while Hamas tries to kill as many Israelis as possible, from Gaza.
So, just who is the hate-monger here?
Does this make you feel safer? A TSA agent did not recognize a District of Columbia drivers license and did not know it is part of the United States.
When Gray handed the man his driver’s license the agent demanded to see Gray’s passport. Grays told the agent he wasn’t carrying his passport and asked why he needed it. The agent said he didn’t recognize the license. Gray said he asked the agent if he knew what the District of Columbia is, and after a brief conversation Gray realized the man did not know.
What was unfortunate for this particular agent was that the individual he questioned also happened to be a television news reporter.
The ISEE-3 team will attempt a plumbing repair on ISEE-3 on Wednesday.
They say that further details will follow. If it works, however, they will immediately try to fire the spacecraft’s thrusters to get it into the right orbit for future science operations.
The Republican-controlled House has slashed the IRS’s tax enforcement budget by 25%.
The cuts reflect GOP outrage over the agency’s scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status and frustration over the agency’s failure to produce thousands of emails by Lois Lerner, the official formerly in charge of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.
“The use of a government agency to harass, target, intimidate and threaten lawful, honest citizens was the worst form of authoritarianism,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., author of an amendment to cut the IRS tax enforcement budget by $353 million. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., followed up with an amendment to cut $788 million more.
The Democratic floor leader on the funding bill, Rep. Jose Serrano of New York, opposed the amendments but opted against demanding a roll call vote. [emphasis mine]
This is the right way to deal with the IRS abuse of power. Cut their funds. Use the power of the purse. I also highlight the Democratic position because it illustrates several things:
» Read more
In one word: Yes.
Sadly, the evidence continues to pile up that Americans will continue to meekly accept this horrible abuse of their rights as citizens of a once-free nation.
The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has successfully launched six Orbcomm commercial satellites into orbit.
The six satellites still must be deployed. We will know if this is successful sometime in the next hour or so. Also, no news yet on SpaceX’s effort to recover the rocket’s first stage after a soft splashdown in the ocean.
Update: All 6 Orbcomm satellites have successfully deployed.
Update 2: From Elon Musk as to the first stage recovery: “Rocket booster reentry, landing burn & leg deploy were good, but lost hull integrity right after splashdown (aka kaboom).”
The competition heats up: The government of the United Kingdom today outlined its intention to build its first spaceport by 2018.
The announcement listed eight potential sites, six of which were in Scotland, which is presently threatening to break away from the United Kingdom. This announcement I suspect is less a call for British space exploration and instead a political effort to encourage Scotland to remain in the UK.
If true this is very good news: In the present conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Israel is getting either support or fair treatment from a number of very surprising sources both internationally and inside the Arab community.
These sources include important leaders in Egypt, France, Lebanon, the United Nations (!), and even the press. As the author notes,
In large part the coolness toward Hamas results from the belated realization that Islamists pose a greater threat than Zionists. But media sobriety suggests that, in part, it also follows from a weariness of Hamas’ vile tactics and revulsion against its hideous goal of destroying Israel. As Hamas’ goal in this war is political, this lesser support is of supreme importance to it.
