Tag: oppression

Argentina signs Artemis Accords

9:16 am

Argentina yesterday became the 28th nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

Originally conceived by the Trump as a series of bi-lateral agreements between the U.S. and another country in order to strengthen property rights in space as well as build a U.S. alliance in space, the Biden administration has been more focused on the latter, using the accords more as a tool to increase international cooperation.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

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Pushback: City in Georgia forced to rescind a law that required permits for any protest

1:56 pm


“Terrorist” Jerry Gray holding his terrible sign

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After veteran Jeff Gray was issued a citation and fined for standing in front of the city hall of Blackshear, Georgia, with a sign that said “God Bless the Homeless Vets,” he sued, hiring the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to represent him.

In Blackshear, Police Chief Chris Wright approached Gray and informed him of a city ordinance requiring citizens to obtain a government permit for a “parade, procession, or demonstration” if they wanted to hold a sign outside city hall. Although Wright said it was “kind of silly,” he explained that the ordinance — nearly identical to one struck down by the Supreme Court in 1969 — meant that Gray would need to send a letter to Blackshear’s mayor and city council explaining the purpose of his one-person demonstration and obtain the council’s approval. Gray was issued a criminal citation, which was later dismissed.

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FAA: No Starship/Superheavy launch until we say so!

9:30 am

We’re here to help you! The FAA yesterday stated in no uncertain terms that there will be no additional orbital test launches of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy until it has decided the launch will be safe.

The FAA, which is overseeing an investigation into the April 20 launch, said Wednesday it was still awaiting the report it needs to identify corrective actions SpaceX must take to get the OK to launch again from Boca Chica.

An FAA spokesperson declined to speculate when the agency’s investigation might be completed, saying that “public safety and actions yet to be taken by SpaceX will dictate the timeline.”

“The FAA will not allow a return to flight operations until it determines that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety or any other aspect of the operator’s license,” the spokesperson said. “The mishap investigation is ongoing.”

The implication that the FAA is awaiting completion of SpaceX’s own investigation sounds like an attempt to shift the blame for the delay from the government to SpaceX, even though the company has made it very evident in words and deeds that it is moving quickly and will be ready to launch in August.

This threat of a delay is hardly a surprise. I predicted in late April that the federal bureaucracy is targeting SpaceX, and by late May predicted the the FAA would block this August launch attempt.

It is also important to underline the fact that there is absolutely no one at the FAA capable of or knowledgeable enough to competently assess the safety of the next launch. The only people who can really do that are the engineers at SpaceX. All the FAA can do is reject SpaceX’s investigation — for political reasons — and demand SpaceX take additional actions, based merely on random guesses as to what needs to be done. And it can keep doing this repeatedly.

This launch is likely to be delayed many months. You heard it here first.

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Democrats now favor oppression and censorship by almost 3 to 1

1:57 pm

Key result from Pew survey
Click for original image.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center has starkly revealed the dark oppressive mentality that now dominates supporters of the Democratic Party, and makes possible the enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship by its leadership.

The graph to the right shows the big take-away from the poll, as indicated by the arrows and the red box. Democrats now favor censorship by 70 to 28 percent, a major rise since 2018, when their attitude towards free speech was almost identical to Republicans. Since then, while Republican support for the First Amendment and freedom has remained largely stable and strong, Democrats have almost entirely abandoned these American ideals. As Pew notes:

There was virtually no difference between the parties in 2018, but the share of Democrats who support government intervention has grown from 40% in 2018 to 70% in 2023, while the share of Republicans who hold this view hasn’t changed much.

There is a similar gap between the shares of Democrats and Republicans who say technology companies should restrict false information online. A large majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) support technology companies taking such steps, while about half of Republicans (48%) say the same. The share of Democrats who support technology companies taking these steps has also increased steadily since 2018.

These partisan gaps persist when it comes to restricting extremely violent content online. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that the U.S. government (71% vs. 48%, respectively) and tech companies (83% vs. 61%) should take steps to restrict violent content online even if it limits freedom of information.

I must add that this is not a poll of the politicians of the Democratic Party. It is a poll of that party’s supporters, its rank and file, its grass roots. And though the poll showed a rise in the willingness to censor across all age groups, the cause of that rise is clearly coming from Democrats. As noted by Alex Berenson,
» Read more

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A third spaceport approved in Scotland

10:18 am

Despite some local opposition, a third spaceport has been approved in Scotland, allowing up to ten suborbital launches per year.

During launches, a 155m (250km) exclusion zone will be placed on the seas around St Kilda, the world-heritage site and archipelago north west of the site. It will be the third of its kind in Scotland, after spaceports were launched in Sutherland and Shetland.

The project, spearheaded by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar – Western Isles Council – has been met with opposition from locals with more than 1,000 people signing a petition rejecting the plans.

…Comhairle nan Eilean Siar had previously bought Scolpaig Farm for £1m and is developing it with private military contractor QinetiQ alongside space industry firms Rhea Group and Commercial Space Technologies.

It is unclear if the spaceport will eventually upgrade to providing orbital launch facilities. It will also have to compete with the two other spaceports in Scotland, as well as get launch approvals from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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New Space Force language would give it the power to take over all commercial space assets

10:04 am

A new draft outlining the powers of the Space Force would give it the right to shut down all commercial space activities during any government declared emergency, giving it exclusive control over all space assets, whether built or owned by the government or private companies.

The Space Force’s draft framework for how commercial satellite services could be called up in times of crisis or conflict to support military missions would allow the Defense Department to deny participating companies the right to sell their wares to any other client in times of “war, major conflict, national or international emergency.”

According the draft, the government would also not be required to cover any losses to the companies. In other words, in clear violation of the fifth amendment to the Constitution forbidding the taking of any private property without just compensation, this draft regulation would allow the military to do exactly that. And it won’t require a war, merely a declared emergency, similar to the unjustified emergency declared when COVID arrived.

At this time the draft language has only been issued for industry comment. I suspect the entire space industry will oppose it strenuously. I also expect the government to yield reluctantly, using its financial power to issue major contracts as a wedge to garner some industry compromises.

The result, as with the FCC and the FAA in the two stories below, will be a more powerful administrative state in DC, wielding power the Constitution expressly forbids it to wield.

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Varda blocked from bringing its capsule back to Earth by FAA

9:49 am

Varda has been forced to delay the first return of its capsule from space, loaded with a drug designed to treat HIV/AIDS that can only be manufactured in weightlessness, because the FAA has so far refused to issue “a re-entry license,” a new regulatory power grab the FAA instituted two years ago supposedly to “streamline the launch and reentry licensing process.”

This new language, which I was unaware of and know of no Congressional act approving it, has done exactly the opposite.

A key issue, he said, is that Varda is the first to seek a reentry license under new FAA regulations known as Part 450. Those regulations were enacted by the FAA more than two years ago to streamline the launch and reentry licensing process.

…For the commercial launch industry, the Part 450 regulations have become an area of concern. Only a handful of Part 450 launch licenses have been issued to date as the FAA begins a transition to the new regulations, but those licenses have taken longer to complete than expected, in some cases missing a 180-day statutory deadline. Industry officials raised the issue at a July 13 hearing of the House Science Committee and at a July 11 meeting of an FAA advisory group, the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language says it all. It also suggests these new regulations, apparently written by the FAA and not Congress, might be contributing to the delays being experienced by SpaceX in its attempt to do test launches of its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

Varda is presently hoping to return the capsule in mid-August. It had begun this re-entry licensing process in early 2021 — more than two years ago — and still does not have that approval. Its business plan is to make money by manufacturing things in weightlessness that can’t be made on Earth — such as this HIV drug — and returning those items to Earth for sale.

Such a plan can’t work if the federal administrative state stands in the way.

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House rejects FCC bill because the bill approved FCC’s recent power grab

9:35 am

The full House yesterday failed to pass an FCC bill designed “to reform satellite spectrum licensing regulations” because of opposition to language that provided a backdoor approval of the FCC’s recent power grab that extended its regulatory power beyond its legal statutory authority.

[T]he leadership of House Science Committee opposed the bill because of provisions regarding regulation of space debris and space traffic management. They pointed to language in the bill that directed the FCC to establish “specific, measurable, and technology-neutral performance objectives for space safety and orbital debris.”

In a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to House members ahead of the vote, the bipartisan leadership of the full committee and its space subcommittee argued that the FCC would be overstepping its authority by attempting to regulate space safety. “Congress has never explicitly granted FCC authority to regulate in these areas, and doing so now is a significant policy decision,” the letter stated, adding that the FCC also lacked expertise to do so. “Assigning FCC responsibility to both create these rules and assess an applicant’s compliance would divert resources from FCC’s primary mission of assessing the applicant’s spectrum use.”

While this sounds like Congress has actually decided to exercise its Constitution authority and restrict this maverick agency, don’t bet on it. The vote for procedural reasons required a two-thirds majority. 250 House members voted in favor, and 163 voted against, a clear majority in favor that was only 16 votes short of approval.

Moreover, even if Congress removes the language approving the FCC power grab and then passes the bill, it will have done nothing to stop that power grab. Expect FCC officials under Biden to ignore the law and continue to demand the right to regulate how satellites are de-orbited, something it hasn’t the knowledge or authority to do. Satellite companies will have to sue to stop it, an expensive task that will hinder their operations and cost money. Many will simply decide to go along.

The result will be a more powerful unelected administrative state — beholden to no law — and a weaker Congress unwilling to represent the American citizenry by wielding its Constitutional power.

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The grassroots revolt led by mothers

2:24 pm

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The recent upheavals at school board meetings over the effort by public school officials to insert pornography in elementary schools — against the will of parents — points to a revolution that is likely not to end until either the public schools change drastically, or die because parent cease sending their kids to these schools.

The ramifications however could extend far beyond the classroom.

This revolution is best illustrated by Moms for Liberty, a new organization only three years old that has grown to become a major political factor in school board elections, and thus by proxy a major influence on larger elections on the local, state, and even national level.

Nor have they restricted themselves to protesting at school board meetings. [Moms for Liberty] have endorsed and actively supported parent-friendly candidates for school board seats nationwide. In 2022, they supported 500 candidates, 275 of whom won. Moreover, their candidates took control of 17 school boards in California, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Moms for Liberty has now set its sights on school board elections in 2024, even as the organization enjoys rapidly growing conservative support and donor funding.

» Read more

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Weekend repost: The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

12:26 pm

The effort by Democrats to censor Democrat Robert Kennedy from speaking at a House hearing on July 20, 2023 focused expressly on documenting censorship and blacklisting not only illustrated the ugly totalitarian nature of the Democratic Party, it also illustrated their utter lack of self-awareness as well as their inability to think, in any way at all.

The moment he started talking, the Democrats went into censorship mode by making motions to censor Kennedy, points of order, accusations, and finally a vote to table Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s (D-Fla.) motion to cancel Kennedy’s “testimony and degradation” and put it behind closed doors so the poor American people would not be subjected to words spoken by Joe Biden’s primary opponent.

Their actions at that hearing are not exceptions to the rule, however, they are the rule. In order to make this fact clear, I think it worthwhile reposting an August 2022 essay, which documented their long term goonish storm-trooper behavior. It didn’t just start at that hearing, it has been going on for a long time.

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The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.
» Read more

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The corporate fad to impose racial quotas appears to be fading fast

11:42 am

Coca-Cola's bigoted company policy
Examples of the bigoted educational material
being pushed by Coca-Cola

Here’s some good news to brighten your weekend: The corporate fad that became a steamroller after the death of George Floyd in 2020 to impose discriminatory racial quotas in hiring — all favoring minorities — now appears to be fading very quickly.

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer.

…The number of [Chief Diversity Officer] searches is down 75% in the past year, says Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, which works with Fortune 100 companies to recruit HR and DEI executives, among other roles.

The DEI movement not only demanded that companies hire more minorities, solely because of their race, it also tried to impose the anti-white hatred of critical race theory on all employees, as shown by the powerpoint presentations above that Coca-Cola foisted on its employees back in 2021. Since then the bad press as well as the crushing loss of customers who were offended deeply by these policies (think Bud Light, Gillette, and Target) has apparently hit home with corporate management.

The fight is not over however. Be warned that the leftists running this movement still have gigantic financial and political resources. One need only look to events in Congress yesterday, where Democrats at a hearing focused on the evils of censorship attempted to censor Robert Kennedy — who also happens to be a Democrat running against Joe Biden for president.

These thugs are still in power, and are getting increasingly brazen in how they abuse that power. If Americans let up their guard at this moment these thugs will move in fast to reimpose and even increase their power.

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Real pushback: Stanford Law forces out administrator who aided and abetted a mob

12:31 pm

Tirien Steinbach: in favor of censorship and mob rule
Stanford’s former administrator Tirien Steinbach:
gone because she was in favor of censorship and
mob rule

Bring a gun to a knife fight: It appears that common sense and civilized behavior at Stanford Law School is finally being considered as the only proper behavior for the future and present lawyers that school is supposed to be training.

This story begins on March 9, 2023, when a mob of students and faculty at Stanford, led by Tirien Steinbach, the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion dean, shouted down U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan when he tried to give a lecture about the law for the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society.

At the time the school’s response was weak and inconsistent. Though it sent a letter of apology to Duncan, it also equivocated about punishing anyone who had misbehaved. No students were expelled or suspended, and Steinbach was simply put on leave, even as university officials attempted to portray her as the victim. As I wrote then:

[Law School Dean] Martinez still appeared sympathetic to Steinbach, expressing “..concern over the hateful and threatening messages [Steinbach] has received as a result of viral online and media attention.”

Now, four months later Martinez has finally announced that Steinbach is resigning her post, though even now Martinez appeared regretful that this resignation was necessary.
» Read more

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Pushback: Arizona State University loses major donor for its anti-first amendment actions

1:10 pm

Arizona State University: opposed to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In protest of Arizona State University’s anti-first amendment actions, a major donor, Tom Lewis, has withdrawn an annual $400K donation, used to support the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at ASU’s Barrett College facility that Lewis had contributed more than $2 million to found.

His action was prompted by the hostility and opposition to a February 8, 2023 university event by Barrett College’s faculty, including a petition signed by 37 of 47 members, condemning the event, before it had even occurred. From his press release [pdf]:

Because these were mostly conservative speakers, we expected some opposition, but I was shocked and disappointed by the alarming and outright hostility demonstrated by the Barrett faculty and administration toward these speakers. Instead of sponsoring this event with a spirit of cooperation and respect for free speech, Barrett faculty and staff exposed the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.

After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement, effective June 30, 2023.

Adding weight to Lewis’ decision was the fact that several weeks earlier ASU had fired the Lewis Center’s executive director, Ann Atkinson, as well as Lin Blake, the events operator for the theater where the event was held. Atkinson made it clear their termination was retaliation because they had organized the February conference.
» Read more

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Stanford president resigns due to research fraud allegations

12:07 pm

The president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has now resigned because of allegations of fraud and data manipulation in papers published by him and others.

The report finds that overall Tessier-Lavigne “did not have actual knowledge of any manipulation of research data” and “was not reckless in failing to identify” the problems in the papers. Yet it concludes that he did not respond adequately when concerns were raised about the papers on PubPeer or by a colleague at four different points over 2 decades—most recently in March 2021. For example, it chides him for failing to follow up when Science did not publish the corrections he submitted.

The report also faults Tessier-Lavigne for his “suboptimal” decision not to correct or retract the 2009 Nature paper, despite “vigorous discussions” about what to do; instead, he and colleagues published follow-up papers revising the findings. Without “an appropriate appetite” for corrections, “the often-claimed self-correcting nature of the scientific process will not occur,” the report says.

In other words, he too often looked the other way when associates were sloppy or were found to have faked data.

This story is an addendum to one I posted yesterday, where a researcher in 2020 had found 1 in 4 clinical trials to be either unreliable or fraudulent. His revelation however was ignored by the medical community, just as Tessier-Lavigne ignored fraud or sloppiness at his own lab.

Nor has anything really changed in the medical research community. Though Tessier-Lavigne has stepped down, the actual perpetrators of the fraud are facing no punishment.

Despite the findings of data manipulation, the report does not assign responsibility to any specific members of Tessier-Lavigne’s lab or determine whether the data manipulation fit the federal definition of research misconduct, “fabrication, falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism.” Whether the findings should be reported to the federal Office of Research Integrity will be up to Stanford, Filip says.

It appears we can trust little from the modern medical research community. There is certainly good work being done, but telling the difference between the good and the bad is now very difficult, if not impossible.

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Ohio Attorney General to college administrators: Discriminate and YOU will be personally liable

1:28 pm

Making the law mean something again
Making the law mean something again

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In what is certain to become the most powerful deterrent to leftist bigotry in academia, Ohio attorney general Dave Yost has notified the administrators in his state’s public colleges that “qualified immunity” will not be available to them if they are personally sued for discriminating against any individuals and lose.

Employees found guilty of such practices as employing application essays to discern an applicant’s race “might not be protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that protects public officials from being personally liable in certain situations,” Yost wrote, according to The Dispatch. “Any attempt to invoke that doctrine would likely be frivolous, and my office may be unable to raise any qualified immunity defense on your employees’ behalf,” Yost wrote.

» Read more

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California Democrats retreat on their effort to defend child slavers

12:34 pm

The Democratic Party: eagerly supporting pedophilia
The Democratic Party: caught in the act of eagerly
supporting pedophiles

Pigs fly! After initially killing a bill on July 12, 2023 that would have increased the penalties on child sex traffickers, the Democrats who completely control the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee reversed course one day later and voted to advance the bill.

With a final vote of 6-0, including two abstentions from progressive Democrats, the bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, after which, if it is approved, can move the bill to be voted upon by the entire State Assembly. If passed, SB 14 will make trafficking of minors a serious felony that would qualify under California’s three strikes law, which keeps dangerous, serial criminals off the streets, and make individuals convicted of the crime ineligible for early release. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the two abstentions by Democrats. Even after a nationwide uproar over their willingness to block harsh penalties on those who traffic young children for sexual slavery, these two Democrats, including Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), still could not bring themselves to vote for the bill.

Nonetheless, the reversal by the rest of the Democrats on the committee marks a major event. » Read more

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House committee imposes major cuts to Justice, FBI, Commerce

11:15 am

As had been suggested by its decision to not impose any cuts (or increases) to the NASA budget, the House appropriation subcommittee in charge of Commerce, Justice, Science-related agencies imposed all of the 28.8% cuts required by the House leadership on the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Commerce department.

Overall, the bill appropriates $58.4 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the committee, a $23.8 billion cut compared to the current fiscal year. It eliminates 14 “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the covered agencies, cuts spending on “wasteful” climate change programs, and saves more than $50 million by ending the Biden administration’s plan to replace auto fleets at the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice with electric vehicles.

According to the GOP summary, the Commerce Department would see a $1.4 billion cut in discretionary funding, and the Department of Justice would see a $2 billion cut. Federal science agencies together would face a $1.1 billion cut under the bill.

The FBI’s budget is to be cut $1 billion, or 9% (an actual cut, not a reduction in the increase in spending), with $400 million of that coming from salaries and expenses. It also forbids the agency from spending a dime on its planned dream of a new posh and palatial headquarters in the DC suburbs, twice the size of the Pentagon and costing more than $3 billion.

This is exactly what Republicans should have been doing for decades, and were too cowardly to attempt. If an agency of unelected employees in the executive branch abuses its power and causes harm to innocent citizens, something the FBI and the Justice Department have been eagerly doing since Trump became president, then it is the responsibilty and obligation of Congress to use its power of the purse to cut those agencies’ funding.

Even now, however, no one should be confident these cuts will end up in the final bill. This is only the recommendations of one subcommittee. There are still many Republican cowards in the full House, and even more in the full Senate, who will gladly team up with the Democrats (who are all in favor of the abuse of power and the harm to innocent citizens) to reinstate the cuts.

Nonetheless, this is a start. It indicates that we might finally have turned a real political corner towards reform.

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UK government reluctantly admits its space regulatory framework is a problem

9:36 am

According to a report issued by a committee formed by a number of members of the United Kingdom’s parliament, the regulatory licensing framework for its space launch industry is a problem that needs fixing, and in a hurry.

The report also expressed concern about the licensing delays that led to the Virgin Orbit launch being postponed. Virgin Orbit and some of its satellite customers were critical of the UK regulatory process, which was led by the Civil Aviation Authority.

But the committee concluded there was no evidence that the regulatory system contributed to the failure of the Virgin Orbit. The report did state, however, that there is “insufficient co-ordination between the large number of regulatory bodies involved in licensing launches, and this continues to place unnecessary burdens of complexity and administration on companies”.

The MPs [members of parliament] are calling on the Government to take steps to improve the licensing system of UK satellite launch.

It is amusing how these politicians speak from both sides of their mouths. First they say the regulatory system did not contribute to Virgin Orbit’s failure, but then admit the regulatory system is so complex and messy that anyone can see that it certainly did contribute to that failure. It took that system fifteen months to approve the launch, even though Virgin Orbit expected that approval to come in half that time.

Whether this MP report will force action remains unclear. As I noted earlier this week, Orbex applied for a launch license seventeen months ago for a launch it hopes to complete at the Sutherland Spaceport before the end of this year, and it is as yet unclear if any license has been issued. The UK’s two spaceports cannot compete if it is going to take one to two years for each launch license to be approved

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Repost: Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

4:53 pm

Earlier today I posted a news item about the failure theater of Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz making a motion to “favorably” report the Biden administration’s FCC nominations for a full vote in the Senate, even as Cruz at the same time stated he was against their nomination. This absurd lack of real fight now prompts me to add this quick comment, and a repost of a January 2022 essay.

In that essay I quoted the words that open each volume of Winston Churchill’s memoirs of World War II:

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

Cruz’s actions are typical of our conservative leadership for decades. They are good at magnanimity and good will, but know nothing of resolution or defiance. To them, there is no war, and defeat is really just another word for victory.

We are in a war however, and we have been losing that war now for more than a century. We have reached a point where a sizeable part of the American population thinks it is okay to imprison its opponents, even as it firmly supports censorship and blacklisting.

Fortunately, more and more Americans recognize this, and are no longer easily fooled by Republican failure theater. As a reminder to help strengthen that resolve and to remind the fence-sitters of the real war we are in, a war that now requires resolution and defiance by all who value freedom, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law, I give you my January 2022 essay, which outlined starkly what the other side wants:

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Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

Liberty under siege
Liberty under siege.

For many years I deeply and sincerely believed that many rank-and-file Democrat voters honestly did not know how corrupt and power-hungry the political leaders of their party had become. I thought that if I could simply get them to see the clear evidence of misbehavior and abuse of power that has been going on in the Democratic Party without check since Bill Clinton was president, they would reconsider their voting habits and abandon their support of that party.

I thought that the vast majority of Democrats were decent people who opposed oppression and intolerance and simply were unaware that they were voting for it when they supported the Democratic Party.

I now know unequivocally that I was wrong. Two stories in the past week illustrate bluntly that a large number of ordinary Democrats, maybe even a majority, are eager supporters of oppression and intolerance and dictatorship. They like the corruption and abuse-of-power coming from Democratic Party politicians. They even want more of it.
» Read more

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Enthusiastic censorship and blacklisting at St. Philip’s College in Texas

3:27 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

They’re coming for you next: The university was conceived as a place of where young minds would be exposed to new ideas in order to challenge their youthful assumptions and unbridled certainty, with the determined goal to teach critical thinking. (For those who no longer know what critical thinking is, it is the concept that you question everything rigorously, including most importantly your own assumptions.)

It seems most American colleges no longer practice this. In fact, many now teach the exact opposite. Faced with ideas you don’t like, students are encouraged to complain, and hide in “safe spaces” so they don’t have to question anything.

It also appears that St. Philip’s College in Texas is the poster child of this new “teaching” concept. This semester it fired two different teachers when several anonymous students complained because those professors expressed some basic facts in their classrooms that conflict with the modern queer agenda and the leftist hostility to open debate.

First, Dr. Johnson Varkey was fired in January 2023 because he had the audacity during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology.

Four students walked out of that class in protest, and then complained to the administration. Within weeks it terminated Varkey, with no due process. In its termination letter [pdf] (part of the response by Varkey’s attorney’s at the non-profit legal firm First Liberty), it claimed
» Read more

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Senate committee approves Biden’s FCC nominees

10:13 am

Despite apparent opposition to the Biden nominees by Republicans, the Senate committee involved has approved the three FCC nominees and moved that the process proceed to a vote in the full Senate.

The article also includes these paragraphs, describing absurdities that could only occur in Congress:

[Ted] Cruz [R-Texas] moved that all the nominations, including Damelin and a nominee for the National Transportation Safety Board plus a list of Coast Guard promotions, be favorably reported. There were no objections and the motion was agreed to.

Immediately thereafter, however, Cruz and other Republicans asked to be recorded as no on Gomez and/or Starks and two Democrats as no on Carr. It’s not possible to discern from the webcast who was speaking in all instances, but the bottom line is that all the nominations were approved and now can go to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. The requests to be recorded as no are a signal that the rest of the confirmation process will not be easy.

Cruz moves the nominees should be “favorably” reported, but then announces he and others are against some.

All in all, this appears to be another example of Republican failure theater. Make it sound like you are trying to block Biden’s policies, but then do whatever is necessary to let them to go into effect. Considering that the Democratic Party appointees at the FCC have been pushing for regulatory power beyond the commission’s statutory authority, it seems absurd for any Republican senator (or Democrat senator for that matter) to okay any Biden nominees who would continue that power grab. And yet, the Republicans appear willing to go along.

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Real pushback: Montana’s library withdraws from ALA because it elected a Marxist/Queer leader

11:55 am

Emily Drabinski, now president of the ALA, proudly Marxist and queer
Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA and proudly
Marxist and queer

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Upon learning that the American Library Association (ALA) had voted as its new president, Emily Drabinski, a woman who is not only proudly queer (in her own words), she also is proudly Marxist, the commission for Montana’s state library yesterday voted to withdraw from ALA.

The Montana State Library Commission’s decision came in response to a 2022 tweet posted by current ALA President Emily Drabinski describing herself as a “Marxist Lesbian,” which quickly drew the attention of conservative media outlets nationwide. In his motion to “immediately withdraw” the state library from the association, commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that “our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.”

Burnett was joined by five other members of the commission in supporting the motion, among them state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. Newly seated commissioner Brian Rossmann, who works as an associate professor at the Montana State University Library, cast the sole opposing vote. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained.

» Read more

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Black Georgia Democrat switches to Republican Party

9:05 pm

Mesha Mainor, a black Democrat state legislator representing a largely black district in Georgia announced today that she is leaving the Democratic Party to become a Republican.

“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor told Fox News Digital, asserting that her Democrat colleagues “crucified” her for supporting school choice and standing against efforts to defund police. She said she has always stood as the type of politician who will “work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent.” But her leftist colleagues did not support her.

“They abandoned me,” she said, explaining again that her decision to leave the Democrat Party is not a political decision but a moral one. “For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” Mainor said. “For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90 percent of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one,” she continued.

Such party switches have been going on since 1994, most of which have gone from Democrat to Republican. What makes this switch significant is that it involves a black representative, in a largely black district. When she runs in the next election her presence might cause a lot of blacks to vote Republican for the first time. And all it takes is one such vote for a person to begin to look at Democrats with open eyes.

And if she is defeated by a Democrat, it will tell us that nothing has changed, and the local black population is still on the Democratic Party plantation, afraid to leave.

Thus, the next election in this district could be a significant bellwether on the future trends in politics.

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Citizens are fleeing cities run by Democrats in record numbers

3:40 pm

This story is simply another data point in a well known trend that became very clear during and after the panic over COVID: The populations of cities run by Democrats are dropping faster than ever before, as citizen flee these badly run crime-ridden hellholes where only honest citizens get punished for defending themselves.

The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.

Los Angeles County posted the largest population decline of all counties in the United States in 2022, falling by 90,704 and continuing a downward trend. It lost nearly twice that amount (180,394) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates released Thursday. Cook County, home to Chicago, lost 68,314 people from July 2021 to July of last year.

…The biggest losers were Los Angeles County, California (-90,704); Cook County, Illinois (-68,314); Queens County, New York (-50,112); Kings County, New York (-46,970); and Bronx County, New York (-41,143).

Not surprisingly, the counties with the greatest influx of new residents were in traditionally conservative states, Texas, Florida, and Arizona, though Arizona will probably lose that status as its many refugees from California arrive and continue to vote for Democrats.

Can anyone explain this trend? It seems so puzzling that people would flee cities run by Democrats to go places where Republican rule has dominated.

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Pushback: Parents in droves reject the queer agenda and bad education of the public schools in Iowa

2:10 pm

At the start of this year the Iowa legislature passed a law that made state funds available to parents who wished to use it to pay tuition at a private school, rather than have their kids attend public schools.

The legislature also budgeted $107 million for the program in its first year, assuming about 14,000 students would apply.

Hah! The state received 25,000 applications, almost twice what was expected. It appears parents don’t want their children learning about queers or watching transvestites performing sex acts in the classroom. More importantly, based on the failed and bankrupt reaction of the public schools to COVID, parents also realized that these public schools are failing to provide even a basic education, and want to pick alternatives.

Nor is this phenomenon unique to Iowa.

Many states responded by increasing their school choice options. At least 20 states have enacted new or expanded school choice policies since 2021.

Arizona saw a similar explosion of applications last year when the state massively expanded its school voucher program to every K-12 student. Republican Governor Doug Ducey signed a bill allowing every student to get a taxpayer-funded Empowerment Scholarship Account of about $6,500 per child. In just the first two weeks after Arizona began accepting applications, the state saw about 6,800 new students apply for the school vouchers.

The public schools are bankrupt and dying. The sooner we put them out of their misery and get all kids out of them, the sooner the quality of education in the United States will go up, while ending the left’s use of the schools to indoctrinate little children. It isn’t hard to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Too bad the public schools decided in the past few decades to abandon that fundamental responsibility.

Sidebar note: I continue to be under the weather, so I will post more of these short pieces rather than the longer essay I had planned to write today. No energy for the harder work, even though this is a terrible time to have to reduce my output, during my fund-raising campaign.

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Orbex to expand facilities in Scotland and Denmark

9:57 am

The British rocket startup Orbex today announced that it is expanding its factory and office space in its facilities in Scotland and Denmark, the former at its facility it leases at the new spaceport in Sutherland.

The company is adding an extra 1,500 square metres of factory and office space to its existing 4,750 square metre estate in Forres, Scotland and Copenhagen, Denmark. The additional space will increase the company’s launch vehicle production and propulsion system manufacturing capacity and add an extra software laboratory and an avionics clean room space with ISO 8 and ISO 9 sections. The additional capacity in Forres is just 3km from its test site at Kinloss, allowing for quick turnaround between the two sites, as Orbex ramps up its testing in the countdown to launch.

The press release doesn’t give any information about the expansion in Denmark. I wonder if it is occurring as a hedge against the kind of bureaucratic delays in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit. Orbex’s Prime rocket is presently under construction in Scotland, with its first launch planned for this year out of Sutherland. Whether it can get a launch permit promptly is doubtful, based on the fifteen months it took Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve Virgin Orbit. Orbex applied for the launch license in February 2022 (seventeen months ago) and so far there is no word from CAA about its approval.

Other Scandinavian spaceports are under construction in Sweden and Norway, which suggests establishing facilities in Denmark could strengthen Orbex’s ties to these new spaceports, especially in Sweden as both Sweden and Denmark are members of the European Union. Norway meanwhile as strong trades ties to the EU. Orbex has also signed a deal with Arianespace to launch ESA payloads, and it could be those launches could occur in French Guiana.

It seems wise if Orbex prepares for launch problems in the UK. Today’s announcement could be signalling that preparation.

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ISRO to transfer ownership of its smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company

9:38 am

India’s space agency ISRO has now announced that it is planning to transfer full ownership of its new smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company, with that transfer conducted through open bidding.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon transfer its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to the private sector, after conducting two development flights of the rocket that seeks to provide on-demand services to put satellites weighing up to 500 kg in a low-earth orbit. The space agency has decided to opt for the bidding route to transfer the mini-rocket to the industry, a senior official said. “We will be transferring the SSLV completely to the private sector. Not just the manufacturing, but full transfer,” the official said.

The article does not provide a source, so this story is at present unconfirmed. It does fit with the overall policy of the Modi government, but it also clashes with the power structure in India’s vast bureaucracy that is resisting that policy. It is very possible that the story has been leaked as part of that struggle, likely by bureaucracy to gin up opposition prior to the transfer being implemented.

Up to now under the Modi government’s efforts to force ISRO to give up power, the assets of ISRO that have been used to generate commercial profits — such as its rockets — have generally been transferred to a new separate bureaucracy created by ISRO dubbed NSIL. NSIL supposed to operate like a private company, but it is wholly owned by the government, and is thus structured to retain control within that government.

If this news story is correct, the Modi government is about to bypass NSIL and force ISRO to sell off SSLV. If so this is excellent news, though the devil will certainly be hidden in the final details of the sale.

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The coming rise of an American royal class, as incompetent and as privileged as all past royalists

3:29 pm


A modern Ivy League education: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”

The move by the general public away from public schools and universities has become well documented. I have noted this movement in a number of essays, the most recent of which in February showed with ample evidence that these government schools have done such an excellent job of smearing their own reputations so thoroughly that parents and students are fleeing from them in record-breaking and unprecedented numbers.

Similarly, Glenn Reynolds in an essay last week about the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing the use of racial quotas in universities noted this trend as well, and how the Court’s ruling only reinforced the decision by many to avoid these institutions and their routine bigotry.

[W]ho trusts higher education anymore? At the turn of the millennium, when Grutter [a 2003 Supreme Court decision that narrowly allowed university racial quotas] was decided, American higher ed was at its zenith. Since then a series of scandals – just today a famous “ethicist” at Harvard was charged with fraudulent ethics research – has undermined its reputation for probity (and the Hollywood admissions scandal of a few years back certainly undermined the perceived integrity of its admissions process), even as everything else about universities came to seem less serious. With 57 genders, coloring books and crying rooms for election results, endless crusades against “whiteness” and “heterosexism,” and the like, the notion of deferring to the educational seriousness and expertise of those in charge of the asylums of higher ed seemed much less appealing. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. But higher education has supplied the ridiculousness itself.

Both Reynolds and I missed however a much more fundamental point that was then made by one of the commenters to his essay. It isn’t so much that ordinary people are fleeing established universities for other colleges, it is that ordinary people are deciding in increasing numbers to forego a college education entirely, concluding that it is a waste of time. As this commenter noted:
» Read more

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Taiwan wants and needs Starlink, but local law is blocking a deal

9:46 am

After three years of discussions, negotiations between Taiwan and SpaceX to provide Starlink to that nation broke off in 2022 because of a local Taiwanese law that requires local ownership of at least 51%.

SpaceX would not agree to these conditions, and ended the negotiations. In response, Taiwan has been struggling to get its own communications satellite into orbit, with limited success.

To address that vulnerability, the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) intends to launch its first self-made low-Earth orbit communication satellite in 2026 and at least one more by 2028, Director General Wu Jong-shinn said. Taiwan also will have rockets capable of carrying payloads weighing over 100 kilograms, he added in an interview.

Since the country doesn’t yet have those rockets, this plan remains dependent on foreign launchers. Moreover, to be effective in low-orbit will require not two satellites but a constellation of 20 to 30. Taiwan is years from being to launch such a constellation.

It seems Taiwan is cutting off its nose to spite its face by not changing this ownership law. Its entire internet access is dependent on 14 undersea cables, and China has already demonstrated the ability to destroy these cables when it cut two in February. No foreign operation is going to give up its ownership to make a deal in Taiwan.

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Update on preparations at Boca Chica for next Starship/Superheavy test launch

9:03 am

Link here. The article provides an excellent review of the extensive work SpaceX is doing, especially in repairing and upgrading the Superheavy launch facility.

Overall, SpaceX is moving fast, suggesting that Elon Musk’s prediction that it will be ready technically to launch in August quite believable. I remain doubtful that launch will happen in August, however, as I fully expect the FAA and the Biden administration will not issue a launch license on time, but will delay it.

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