Free speech for me but not for thee: A college professor, offended by comments on a free speech wall, forces the students to take it down.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: It now appears that Democratic Senator candidate Elizabeth Warren illegally practiced law in Massachusetts without a Massachusetts’ license.
I reserved reporting this at first because, though she never had a Massachusetts’ license, she did have one from New Jersey. Since all her legal work appeared to be federal in natural, she had broken no laws. Now it appears otherwise.
Repeal it! According to a poll of small business owners, more than 60% will either drop their employee healthcare plans or make their employees pay far higher fees when Obamacare goes into effect in 2014.
The worst part of this story however is this:
Pollster Bill McInturff noted that the combination of a bad economy, greater regulations and increased economic uncertainty have forced 24 percent of the firms polled to lay off workers, 23 percent to tap their own savings to stay open and 11 percent to kill health coverage for workers. “The climate in Washington is a concern to them,” said McInturff. Dan Danner, president of NFIB added: “Why would I invest in this environment?”
Those polled were so down on President Obama and Congress that many said they wouldn’t start a business today. Asked if they would start a new business, 55 percent said no. Among the reasons they cited were high taxes, health care costs, regulations and an uncertain economy.
“Brainless fools” is another term I like. Also “Pravda.” “Irresponsible partisan hacks” also comes to mind. Consider this:
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A Texas school district has banned the use of religious signs at football games, even if the signs were created entirely and freely by the students.
[According to Kevin Weldon, the district’s superintendent], legal counsel recommended that religious activities not be carried out, even if the are being organized and implemented by students. “Per the advice of TASB Legal, please do not allow any student groups to display any religious signs or messages at school-sponsored events,” the superintendent wrote in a letter to parents who are involved in organizing extracurricular activities.
So, according to the legal counsel for this school district, freedom of religion and speech is outlawed at any government event. What a crock.
The good news is that the students are refusing to back down, and intend to display even more signs at future events.
We’re more doomed than we know: The cost of government regulation is actually 80 times higher than OMB’s estimate, according to the estimates made by each individual government agency.
“While OMB officially reports amounts of only up to $88.6 billion in 2010 dollars,” said Crews, “the non-tax cost of government intervention in the economy, without performing a sweeping survey, appears to total up to $1.806 trillion annually.”
The $1.8 trillion number comes from looking at the estimates made by each agency and then adding them up.
Gridlock is good! Congress is on a pace this year to pass the fewest laws in a single year since World War II.
Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2 percent of all proposed laws, according to a USA Today analysis of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk’s office.
Obama cracks down on free speech.
In order to spare themselves the sort of critical scrutiny to which they are unaccustomed, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have fallen in with the absurd claim that violence has broken out in eleven Muslim countries, and terrorists armed with RPGs and (reportedly) mortars carried out a military operation to assassinate a U.S. ambassador, as a result of a 14-minute YouTube video. As always, Obama’s first priority is to point the finger of responsibility elsewhere.
So the Obama administration cracked down on the Christian who made the film–essentially an amateur production–which is critical of Islam, but no more so than many Hollywood productions have been of Christianity. The federal government sent Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to bring the filmmaker into custody on the pretext that his uploading the movie trailer to YouTube may have violated the terms of his probation on a bank fraud conviction. That led to the famous photo of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula being taken into custody.
Shameful, disgusting, and inexcusable. The Obama administration is essentially attacking American citizens for the evils committed by Islamic radicals half a world away.
For the past three days there has been a very lively debate by readers of Behind the Black, attempting to figure out the actual cost of launching payload to low Earth orbit by various rockets, including SpaceX, the space shuttle, and the NASA-built Space Launch System.
Three stories published today add some new information to this debate.
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The journal Science today published this detailed look at the cuts that would occur in all the federal government’s various science programs should the automatic budget cuts outlined in the sequestration legislation occur on January 2, 2013.
Not surprising, the article includes a great deal of moaning and groaning about the terrible harm the cuts would have on science research should they occur. From the Obama administration:
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Islamic tolerance and justice: “Those who produced the movie should be tried and killed.”
Notice he didn’t simply say “Put them on trial,” which would have been bad enough, arresting someone for something he said. He wants them “tried and killed.” In other words, no trial in an Islamic nation is worth the electrons we use to read about it. They are merely kangaroo courts. If an Islamic preacher declares that you are guilty, you are guilty.
Which makes his other statements calling for peaceful demonstrations completely worthless and absolutely bullcrap. What is really going on is that they are now terrified that all that good U.S. money is going to be cut off, and want to placate the naive idiots in the U.S. To quote Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky):
“My position is not one penny more for Libya or Egypt or Pakistan until they act like our allies,” Paul said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Some say we’ve got to keep sending it. Fine. Let’s send it when they act like our allies. Let’s send it when they start behaving like civilized nations and come to their senses.”
As they used to say in the 1960s, “Right on!”
Focused like a laser: The murder of four Americans in Libya, including the ambassador, appears to have been the result of failed security.
Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”. Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.
This is a disaster, and suggests incompetence at all levels of the State Department and the White House.
Focused like a laser: Not only has Barack Obama not attended an intelligence briefing since Sept 5, he canceled the briefing yesterday, the day after the attacks on our embassies in Egypt and Libya.
And why did he not have a briefing yesterday? He had a campaign fundraiser he just had to attend in Las Vegas.
We’ve only just begun: The private company Hobby Lobby has sued the Obama administration over the Obamacare mandate requiring them to pay for their employee’s contraceptives.
It’s only money! At the AIAA meeting this week in Pasadena, NASA officials admitted that the Space Launch System (SLS) will likely cost half a billion dollars per launch.
That means that after only two flights this rocket will have cost about the same as the entire manned commercial program, from which three different space companies are building three different methods for getting humans into space. After three missions it will cost more, and after four missions it will have cost double. And this is assuming that the half billion dollar “target” number ends up correct.
We can’t afford this. We never could, which is why the Saturn 5 rocket was abandoned, and why the shuttle never fulfilled its stated goal of lowering the cost of access to space and after thirty years was abandoned as well. Instead, we have got to find a cheaper way to do this, and to my mind, competition and private enterprise is the only hope.
That’s telling ’em! The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, in response to the attack by Islamic protesters today, has apologized to the protesters because their feelings might have been hurt by a film critical of Mohammad.
The full embassy statement is beyond belief:
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
Freedom of speech means you have the right to offend others, with no apologizes. Considering the violence continually perpetrated by Islam, it is perfectly justified to criticize this hateful religion. In fact, to its face I say Islam is a stain on the Earth which oppresses millions while killing hundreds of innocents on a daily basis.
For the Obama State Department to apologize for our country’s belief in freedom of speech, on this day of all days, September 11, is unspeakable. What kind of cowards are these people?
What does this tell us? Obama — too busy to attend half his daily intelligence briefings — has made up for it by missing all of his daily economic briefings.
Focused like a laser, eh?
No wonder the economy is stalled: Under the Obama administration regulations have increased by 7.4%, totaling 11,327 pages of new rules.
I should add that these numbers were only slightly better under Bush or Clinton. In general, our federal government has done everything it can for the past two decades to stifle freedom and innovation.
Repeal it! New regulatory language under Obamacare and just released requires 18 pages of regulations just to define the term “full time employee.”
Theft by government: The Obama administration has extended the power of the ATF to “seize and administratively forfeit property involved in controlled-substance abuses.”
In other words, if the ATF thinks a drug crime has occurred, it now has the right to seize any property involved, without due process. The article gives a particularly pointed example:
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Losing the youth vote: In a boycott that began in Pennsylvania and has now spread to Minnesota, children are refusing to eat the Obama administration’s lower calorie school lunches.
Starting this year, there are strict limits on calories, sodium and meat portions. Whole milk is off the menu altogether, and kids are required to take a fruit or vegetable. As parents with fussy eaters might guess, some student’s aren’t salivating over those options.
In the halls of Rockford High School, a food fight over some simple things — cookies, condiments and milk — has started taking off after seniors Adam Anderson and Zach Guthrie set up a Facebook group encouraging a brown bag boycott. Bags were prepared in advance, bearing messages like, “Where’s the ranch?” and “We want our cookies.” By Thursday, the school served about 150 fewer lunches than it had the day before, and students promise the movement will only continue to grow even though there may be no resolution.
I think it a travesty that modern parents think the federal government should provide their kids lunch. This is the parent’s responsibility, not the government’s.
More reality from the Democratic convention: A reporter asks delegates if we should ban profits.
It is hilarious and frightening in the same breath. Video below the fold.
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A website, ScienceDebate.org, submitted a wide range of questions to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about their plans for science and technology, and the answers, shown in a side-by-side comparison, are interesting, though in general they demonstrate the ability of politicians to speak for a long time without saying much.
This ability to blather is especially apparent to their answers to the question 12: “What should America’s space exploration and utilization goals be in the 21st century and what steps should the government take to help achieve them?” Neither candidate adds much to what was said in the Republican and Democratic party platforms, making it obvious that neither really cares or knows that much about this subject.
Overall, however, the answers do reveal the basic and fundamental differences between the two candidates, which can be seen in their answers to the very first question about encouraging innovation:
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The Democratic Party platform’s [pdf] position on space and NASA is one sentence long.
President Obama has charted a new mission for NASA to lead us to a future that builds on America’s legacy of innovation and exploration.
This is even worse than the Republican Party platform, and is more inexplicable. Considering how much support the Obama administration has given to private commercial space, this was a great opportunity to sell Obama as supportive of private enterprise. Sadly, they do not, which suggests again that Obama and his party really aren’t that interested in it.
The Republican Party, as part of their national convention taking place in Florida this week, yesterday released their party platform for the upcoming election campaign.
Normally, I don’t waste my time with party platforms. No one really reads it, and no president ever follows it. Granted, it can give you a general sense of where a party and candidate is headed philosophically, but this is politics. If you think philosophy is their number one priority then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
However, this document is helpful to us, at least when it comes to the nation’s space effort, as it actually devotes one entire (though short) section on the subject. Considering how vague Mitt Romney has been on what he will do with NASA and space, and how schizophrenic the Republicans in Congress have been, any hint on how they might approach this particular program should they win the election is helpful.
Here is the entire statement of the Republican party platform on the subject of space exploration:
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Russian officials today announced that they will hold additional open cosmonaut recruitment drives, similar to the first held earlier this year, but with revisions.
It appears that the first drive was too short, only six weeks long, and did not get them as many applicants as they would have liked.
The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace has expanded its workforce as well doubled its factory space in response to the commercial contracts NASA recently awarded.
The company just opened a 185,000-square-foot addition, bringing its North Las Vegas plant up to about 350,000 square feet. It slashed its work force from 150 before the recession to 50 during the downturn; now, it’s looking to jump back up to 90 workers by Christmas. It’s hiring structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, as well as chemists, molecular biologists and workers who craft composite spacecraft parts.
Hat tip to Clark Lindsey at NewSpace Watch.
How not to go cave exploring:
An international crew of six astronauts will start training for a caving adventure designed to prepare them for spaceflight. CAVES, an abbreviation of Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills, prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively and solve problems as a multicultural team while exploring uncharted areas using space procedures.
Or to put it more bluntly, overly complicated, bureaucratically organized, and not very efficient. For example:
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