Tag: government

Today’s blacklisted American: University tells student it will block her speech, even off campus and on her private time

1:56 pm

Elisa Carroll: censored by Villanova
Villanova student Elisa Carroll

They’re coming for you next: Villanova University recently told one of its students, Elisa Carroll, that it has the right to stop her from distributing pro-choice literature or contraceptives, even if she is doing it on a public sidewalk off campus and on her own time.

Carroll, recognizing that as a religious college Villanova would not provide contraceptives for its students, wanted to make them available anyway. She also recognized that she should not do it on campus, in order to respect the university’s stance. Instead, she decided to set up an unaffiliated organization that would offer such things close to but off-campus.

The university decided this was still unacceptable, and moved to forbid it.

Villanova Director of Student Involvement JJ Brown told Carroll the university would prevent her from distributing the contraceptives on a public sidewalk near campus. Brown told her that given the sidewalk’s proximity to campus and because Carroll is a Villanova student, the university could prevent her from promoting any contraceptive advocacy organizations there, including by handing out contraceptives.

In response, Carroll asked for help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which immediately fired off a letter to Villanova, telling it in no uncertain terms the illegality as well as the immorality of its threat.
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ESA invites private companies to build lunar satellites for communications and navigation

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now invited European and Canadian companies to build the lunar communications and navigation satellites that will be needed to serve the many future manned and unmanned missions presently being planned by the U.S. and Europe.

Under its Moonlight programme, ESA is inviting space companies to create these lunar services.

By acting as an anchor customer, ESA is enabling space companies involved in Moonlight to create a telecommunication and navigation service for the agency, while being free to sell lunar services and solutions to other agencies and commercial ventures.

Once Moonlight is in place, companies could create new applications in areas such as education, media and entertainment – as well as inspiring young people to study science, technology, engineering and maths, which creates a highly qualified future workforce.

According to the press release, almost 100 companies have already expressed interest.

It is however unclear how much freedom the companies will have in designing and creating these satellites, based on ESA’s own descriptions of the project. It appears that ESA wants to design them, and is simply looking for private companies to build them. Under this arrangement, ownership will not belong to the companies, even if they are given the freedom to make money selling the capability to others. In fact, past history suggests that in the end, ESA will eventually retract this part of the deal, because of its desire to fully control the satellites it designed.

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NASA names solar scientist as its new science head

9:32 am

NASA today announced the appointment of solar scientist Nicola Fox as the chief of the agency’s science division, taking over from solar scientist Thomas Zurbuchen.

Fox’s actual qualifications for the job are stellar.

Born in Hitchin, Herefordshire, England, Fox received a B.S. in physics from The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, an M.S. in Telematics and Satellite Communications from the University of Surrey, and returned to Imperial College London for her Ph.D. in Space and Atmospheric Physics. She worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center before joining APL in 1998.

At NASA Fox has led its the solar science division, as well as been the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, presently orbiting the Sun.

For the Biden administration and our modern culture that unfortunately always seems more focused on race and gender, the only thing that really matters about Fox however is her sex, a fact that the linked article seems obligated to mention in this manner:

Only one other woman, Mary Cleave, an environmental research engineer and former astronaut, has headed [the science division] in the agency’s almost 65-year history.

How evil! Our racist society oppressed women all those years, holding them back!

In fact, it is actually becoming increasing difficult for any white and heterosexual male to get major management jobs anywhere. The race- and gender-baiters always talk about getting rid of the “glass ceiling,” but in their obsession with giving jobs to woman and minorities, they have simply placed it over others.

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The shift away from government schools, at all levels, accelerates

3:51 pm

Parents are rejecting this in droves
Parents are rejecting this mantra in droves

It has been clear for decades that the public schools in most major urban areas — all of which have been run by Democrats — have been failing badly at their primary task of educating children. Two recent stories underlined this failure.

First, in Baltimore a study found that not one student in twenty-three of the city’s schools was proficient in math.

Through an analysis of 150 Baltimore City Schools, 23 of them, including 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three high schools and two middle schools, no students met math grade-level expectations, according to a report by Project Baltimore. Approximately 2,000 students took the state administered math exams that tested proficiency levels.

…An additional 20 schools in the district had no more than two students proficient in math, Project Baltimore reported. Another three schools in the district, which are for incarcerated students and students with disabilities, had no students that met grade-level expectations.

Essentially, just under one third of all of Baltimore’s public schools failed to teach any of their students math. Period. For any school system to accept this level of failure is beyond disgusting. Everyone who works for Baltimore’s schools should be canned, now.

Then, just days later, another story revealed that fifty-five of Chicago’s public schools were also totally incompetent at teaching math or reading, and should find other work.
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February 24, 2023 Quick space links

5:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

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Where to get legal help if you have been illegally blacklisted

4:39 pm

Today’s blacklist column is a follow-up of an earlier column from August 2022, when I provided a detailed list of the various legal non-profit firms that now take on cases to defend the blacklisted. The number of such firms has grown, and I decided it was time to provide a new more complete list.

These non-profit law firms are all dedicated to fighting the left’s shameless effort to illegally and immorally blacklist, blackball, censor, and destroy its opposition, and have been increasingly successfully in winning their cases. The list, though obviously not all inclusive, describes what appear to be the most active and successful non-profit law firms presently winning first amendment cases nationwide. (Note too that the ACLU is not on the list, as that organization a long time ago abandoned its foundational goal of protecting free speech and has instead become an agent acting to increase the left’s power over ordinary citizens.)

In choosing among these law firms, make sure you review their entire website and the many cases they are handling. Some firms might be less appropriate for your situation, and it is necessary on your part to do the due diligence to figure this out.
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Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority is looking for an operator to run the island’s own spaceport

10:09 am

Ceiba spaceport map
The arrow points to the city of Ceiba

Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority has now issued a call for proposals from potential operators of the spaceport the authority wishes built at an airport in the town of Ceiba on the island’s eastern tip.

The developer — which would operate the Spaceport for several years, depending on the negotiation — would design and build the infrastructure needed for horizontal launches at JAT, using private capital, equity and investment.

…“Vertical launches in Puerto Rico are challenging, considering the population density, among others. However, we want to do a feasibility study for vertical launches in Puerto Rico, with an emphasis on the use of barges and launches in high seas,” the agency stated in the RFP.

Note that the first goal would be to make the airport usable for rocket companies that use an airplane for their first stage, such as Virgin Orbit and Northrop Grumman. The next step would be figure out where a vertical launchpad could be safely and practically established.

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China places classified satellite into orbit using Long March 2C rocket

9:12 am

From one of its interior spaceports China today successfully launched a classified “remote sensing” satellite using its Long March 2C rocket.

No information about the payload was released by China, not even a satellite name. Nor was there any word on whether the expendable first stage landed near habitable areas.

The 2023 launch race:

12 SpaceX
7 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 13 to 7 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 13 to 12. SpaceX on its own is now tied with the entire world 12 to 12.

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Russians launch unmanned Soyuz to ISS

5:34 pm

The Russians today successfully launched an unmanned Soyuz capsule to ISS to replace the capsule damaged by a coolant leak in December.

The new capsule will dock to ISS in two days, on February 25th. Then on February 27th a Falcon 9 rocket will launch four astronauts on its Endurance reusable Dragon capsule. The damaged Soyuz capsule will be de-orbited shortly thereafter.

Because of the new Soyuz was intended to remain in orbit with its crew until September, Roscosmos and NASA agreed to keep the crew from the damaged Soyuz on ISS until then, making the mission of these two Russians and American Frank Rubio about a year long. There is a chance Rubio could set a new record for the longest American mission, depending on the exact day his mission returns.

The 2023 launch race:

12 SpaceX
6 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 13 to 6 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 13 to 11. SpaceX alone still leads the entire world 12 to 11.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Policeman forced to resign simply because he is Christian

1:42 pm

Kersey's forbidden opinion

They’re coming for you next: Rookie cop Jacob Kersey was forced to resign from his new job on the Port Wentworth, Georgia, police force when his superiors demanded he no longer express his own personal Christian beliefs on his own private Facebook account.

The screen capture to the right was the Facebook post by Kersey that instigated his problems. On January 3rd, the day after he posted it, his supervisor ordered him to take the post down. The situation then devolved as follows, as described in the letter [pdf] sent to the City of Port Wentworth by Kersey’s legal representative, First Liberty:
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China’s Long March 3B rocket launches communications satellite

9:19 am

China today successfully used its Long March 3B rocket, launching from an interior spaceport, to place a satellite into orbit to provide “high-speed broadband access services for fixed terminals, vehicle/ship/airborne terminals.”

Little other information has been released, but that description sounds remarkably similar to what OneWeb’s satellite constellation does.

No word on whether the rocket’s lower stages crashed near habitable areas.

The 2023 launch race:

12 SpaceX
6 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 13 to 6, and the entire world combined 13 to 10. SpaceX alone leads the entire world combined 12 to 10.

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The new normal: persecuting an expert witness because he testified for the defense in a political-charged trial

2:29 pm

David Fowler: persecuted by the government for doing his job honestly
David Fowler: persecuted by the government
for trying to do an honest job

They’re coming for you next: It appears it is now considered reasonable in today’s intolerant society to persecute any expert witness who dares testify honestly for the defense in any trial that the narrative demands a guilty plea, no matter what the facts might be.

The trial in this case was against Derek Chauvin, the police officer who in 2020 held George Floyd down by the neck during the arrest in which Floyd died. The expert witness is Dr. David Fowler, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Maryland, who testified for Chauvin’s defense.

The persecution of Fowler was instigated by Dr. Roger Mitchell, former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia, Deputy Mayor of DC, and now Chief of the Department of Pathology at Howard University. Mitchell was outraged that Fowler had dared express an opinion challenging the political narrative that insisted Chauvin killed Floyd for racial reasons, refusing to get off his neck even as the man was dying of suffocation. Mitchell wrote a open letter, signed by 400 others, calling for a full review of all of Fowler’s past cases in Maryland, with the clear intent of punishing Fowler by having his medical license revoked.

Soon thereafter, in April 2021, Maryland authorities agreed to Mitchell’s demand, forming a panel to review Fowler’s work and his right to continue to practice medicine of any kind.
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