Freedom of speech alert? I’d like more information. Four protesters arrested on a Texas campus on Monday during a visit by Obama.
Watch the reaction of Democrat Bill Skaggs, the Kansas City mayor pro tem (1st district councilman) and former member of the State House of Representatives when he notices that he is being videotaped on this public street, then ask yourself if this is a reasonable reaction for an elected official.
A plane crash in Alaska with nine passengers included former Alaska senator Ted Stevens and former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. Though five deaths are reported, the identities of the dead and suvivors has not yet been releasted.
Bureaucrats in space! The ministers of the African Union are proposing creating the African Space Agency to “focus on the development of common space policy for the continent .”
Yesterday a sheriff’s deputy from Prince George’s County, Maryland, shot and killed a family dog while trying to serve an eviction notice. This comes two years after a mistaken raid by Prince George’s police of the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights killed his two dogs. Key quote:
[Mayor] Calvo, who is suing Sheriff Michael A. Jackson, alleging his deputies engaged in excessive force when they killed his dogs, said deputies have shown a disturbing propensity to kill family pets. “This is part of a pattern,” Calvo said. From 2005 to 2008, deputies shot at least nine dogs in eight incidents, according to sheriff’s department records.
The real horror of this story for those of us who live in Prince George’s County and own dogs (as I do) is that Michael Jackson is running for county executive, and in some polls, is leading the pack.
Freedom of speech alert. Ohio officials are trying to silence a blogger by claiming that he somehow violated campaign finance laws.
Decline and fall? Out of cash, Camden, New Jersey, is going to close all three of its public libraries on December 31.
In a letter response to the EPA’s effort to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, Texas has essentially told the EPA to go to hell. Three key quotes from the letter:
In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrialized development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacated greenhouse gas regulations — regulations that are plainly contrary to United State law. ….. To encourage acquiesence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcment authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [emphasis mine]
The State of Texas does not believe the EPA’s “suggested” approach comports with the rule of law.
Texas will not facilitate EPA’s apparent attempt to thwart these established procedures and ignore the law.
Government by the stupid. A health inspector in Portland, Oregon, forced a seven year old to shut down her lemonade stand last week or face fines of $500.
The recent history of NASA illustrates a fundamental problem with how our political class thinks.
In 2004 George Bush announced that NASA would have a new goal, that of the exploration of the solar system. The shuttle would complete construction of the International Space Station and then be retired in 2010. NASA would meanwhile build a replacement for the shuttle, designed to return to the Moon and beyond, and have it flying by 2014.
Notice the gap? The shuttle retires in 2010, four years before its replacement is available. Notice also that the plan insisted that ISS would be finished, fully occupied, and in need of significant resupply and maintenance during this entire time, when neither the shuttle or its replacement would be on hand.
Yet, as obvious as this seems, no one at NASA, in the Bush administration, or in Congress, seemed to notice this gap. The Bush plan was implemented exactly as described, so that today we are about to be left with a space station in orbit and no way to reach it for at least four years. (That other countries can reach the station changes nothing: the United States has been left hanging, lacking a method for transporting its crews to its own space station.)
It was as if, among the political and elite class that runs the government, there was great disconnect between the fantasy of the intended plan and the reality of its implementation. » Read more
The coolant system failure on the International Space Station this weekend and the upcoming spacewalks being planned to fix it is a dramatic and fascinating story, capturing the interest of the general public while causing some news pundits to express fear and dread about science fiction scenerios of disasters in space.
The situation is hardly that death-defying. The station’s cooling systems have a lot of redundancy, all of which are being used to good effect. Moreover, the spacewalk repair to install a replacement pump module, though challenging, is exactly the kind of thing the astronauts have been trained to do. I expect them to do it with few problems. I would be far more surprised if they have serious difficulties and fail to get it done.
What this failure foreshadows, however, is the future on ISS. As the years pass and systems age, » Read more
Talk about stupid: It seems the legal eagles at NASA have shut down a website that featured a variety of webcams, showing NASA missions.
War between the elites of our society and everyone else. Key quote:
If this election has a theme, it’s going to be the rejection of the elites and a return to a form of populism with a long streak in American history — the demand of citizens to their government to get the hell out of their lives.
At an airshow on Thursday, July 29, in Oskosh, Wisconsin, Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, made some interesting remarks about the past and future of private space flight. Key quote:
Rutan said NASA should give 10 to 15 percent of its budget to new space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX without regulating how to spend the money. “That would allow them to not (have to) beg for commercial investment, while still working in an entrepreneurial mode.”
The space war over NASA continues. The pushback from commercial space advocates and industry proponents seems to be having an effect. House aides have indicated that the House NASA authorization bill will not be voted on until September.
The space war continues. Jeff Foust has two reports today on the political state of NASA’s budget. First, Congress has approved language that requires continuing funding of Constellation. Second, it looks like the House may vote on the new NASA authorization bill this week.
The General Accountability Office has ruled that the Obama administration’s decision to require contractors to reserve money for the possible termination of the contract, thereby forcing them to cut back early on the Constellation program, was legal.
For the last year Homeland Security and the White House have been investigating the background, political affliations, and motives of anyone making requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that the law forbids such behavior.
Another damning report from the Daily Caller on the now defunct Journolist listserv, showing how high-powered so-called objective journalists teamed up to attack Sarah Palin during the 2008 election campaign.
The British are coming! Today the recently formed UK Space Agency signed deals of cooperation with both the Russians and NASA.
This story about the Department of Energy’s decision in May to suspend payments to the University of East Anglia because of the climategate scandal might very well be a Potemkin village. The story notes that they are placing a hold on $200k. However, Anthony Watts notes that DOE has probably provided East Anglia significantly more funds, in the millions. The suspension in funds then is only about one specific and not very large contract, with nothing said about the other funding. Note also that the hold was placed in May, pending the results of East Anglia’s own investigation. Since that investigation was a whitewash, I expect DOE to release these funds in near future.
Freedom of speech alert: the head of a local North Carolina NAACP chapter was arrested when he tried to attend a local school board meeting to protest its actions. He had been arrested for trespassing at a previous board meeting, and it is unclear if his attempted appearance this time was a trespass as well.
The House Committee on Science and Technology has released the text [pdf] of its NASA reauthorization bill. The committee’s short thumbnail description of the language suggests it is similar to the Senate language. A quick scan of the text also suggests this as well. I hope to take a closer look at both the Senate and House bills later this week and then give my take on both.
Freedom of speech alert: Orders by government officials cause 73,000 blogs to be shut down.
O joy! It’s time to favor gender over achievement at NASA. The Obama administration is considering using governmental authority at NASA and other agencies to guarantee that the same number of women receive science, technology, engineering, and math degrees as men. The actual White House statement emphasizes the need “to ensure equity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education programs.” [emphasis mine].
If you want to be really annoyed, download NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity documentation [pdf] and read how institutions are expected to do “periodic reviews of data broken down by gender. . . to ensure program policies and practices are not having a negative impact on program participation.” [page 5]
In other words, NASA should decide whether to provide education funds to universities, based not on the ability of those universities produce qualified engineers and scientists of any sex but on the number of women in their programs.
This analysis of the Senate budget plan that passed the Senate Commerce committee today hits all the most important points. Key quote (in connection with the Senate’s mandate that NASA start over in building a new heavy lift rocket):
Over the last five years, Constellation has cost at least $9 billion and produced little more than one test flight for a stripped-down version of the program’s Ares I rocket. While the Senate plan instructs NASA to salvage parts of Constellation when possible – and provides $11 billion over the next several years — it will take time and resources to create a new design. Adding to the pressure is the 2016 deadline that Congress gives NASA to have the new vehicle ready.
More coverage describing today’s Senate committee vote on the 2011 NASA budget. Interestingly, the Commerce committee and a number of its members have each issued their own press releases. I get the feeling they are trying to convince us they have acomplished something. Here are two from the chairman and ranking member:
More cave news, this time on Earth. Lockheed Martin, under the direction of DARPA, has developed technology capable of mapping underground mines and caves.
Keith Cowing at NASAWatch reports in detail about the unanimous approval of the amended Senate budget for NASA. The final budget appears to have raised the funding for commercial space development to match the Obama request, while adding one more flight to the shuttle schedule and mandating an immediate start of work on some sort of heavy-lift rocket.
Our freedom is under attack, and it isn’t being destroyed by an evil dictator with storm troopers.
