Tag: politics

Tonight’s testimony and questioning of IRS commissioner John Koskinen concerning the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails in connection with the IRS’s harassment of opponents of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party..

7:30 pm

Cover-up: Tonight’s testimony and questioning of IRS commissioner John Koskinen concerning the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails in connection with the IRS’s harassment of opponents of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party..

An outraged Issa insisted that Americans should be able to know “they’re being honestly treated by your employees, especially somebody at such a high level. Isn’t that in fact a priority that should have allowed for full retention?”

“If we had the right resources, there would be a lot of priorities,” Koskinen shot back.

“So the American people should believe that if they don’t have the resources to pay their taxes, they shouldn’t pay their taxes,” Issa jabbed, “because if the IRS doesn’t have the resources, it won’t keep records? That’s pretty much what you’re telling us here tonight, is that resources are a question of whether or not you retain key documents.”

When Tennessee Republican Rep Scott DesJarlais asked Koskinen how much money it would take to replace the IRS’s computer systems in order to prevent another major data loss, he answered that it would cost between $10 and $30 million. In a tense moment, DesJarlais then reminded him that the IRS paid $89 million in bonuses last year, including $1 million to agency employees who owed back taxes.

Be sure the watch all the videos at the link. If you do and you still believe John Koskinen is telling the truth and is not a political thug who is doing the bidding of the White House to cover-up its use of the IRS to harass its political opponents, then you are probably so naive you believe Nigerian emails.

More information about tonight’s hearing here.

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The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

10:28 am

The mainstream press finally notices: The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

I reported on Steve Goddard’s work back in January. Though these mainstream journalists are very slow in getting the story, it is good that some of them are finally waking up.

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In searching for three kidnapped teenagers, Israel has uncovered dozens of tunnels, weapons caches, and explosive labs hidden throughout the Palestinian-controlled Hebron region of the West Bank.

10:17 am

In searching for three kidnapped teenagers, Israel has uncovered dozens of tunnels, weapons caches, and explosive labs hidden throughout the Palestinian-controlled Hebron region of the West Bank.

Some of the tunnels were found by soldiers inside the homes of Palestinians, under large pieces of furniture and laundry machines. Using their specialized equipment, Yahalom (diamond in Hebrew) forces participated in dozens of raids on the homes of Palestinian activists across the West Bank, confiscating caches of weapons and explosives. The unit’s forces discovered some 20 laboratories for manufacturing improvised explosives devices (IEDs) hidden in homes they searched. “We would arrive at a suspicious home and find a family living on the first floor and a laboratory with explosives on the third floor,” said a senior officer in the unit. We also discovered underground spaces in the Hebron area which we had not known about previously,” he added.

The important take-away from this is that Hebron has been under Palestinian control since the early 1990s as per the Oslo accords. Instead of using that control to build a prosperous and independent state that would be a peaceful neighbor to Israel, the evidence once again shows that — like Gaza — the Palestinian leadership and population used the opportunity to instead wage war and to kill and kidnap Israelis.

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The IRS cancelled its emailing archive service only weeks after Lois Lerner’s computer crashed.

10:02 am

Cover-up: The IRS cancelled its emailing archive service only weeks after Lois Lerner’s computer crashed.

Lois Lerner’s computer allegedly crashed in June 2011, just ten days after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in targeting of nonprofit groups. Two months later, Sonasoft’s contract ended and the IRS gave its email-archiving contractor the boot.

IRS official and frequent White House visitor Nikole Flax allegedly suffered her own computer crash in December 2011, three months after the IRS ended its relationship with Sonasoft.

The timing is too perfect for anything but a cover-up. They were blatantly working for Obama’s campaign and the Democratic Party, and realized they needed to destroy the documents that proved that fact.

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Left wing activists demand but fail to prevent someone from videotaping an open public event they had scheduled at a college.

9:55 am

Fascists: Left wing activists demand but fail to prevent someone from videotaping an open public event they had scheduled at a college.

Watch the video below the fold. You will be amused when the leftists try to block the videographer’s camera and somehow think this prevents him from recording their actions. If anything, it allows him to document forcefully their lack of respect for free speech.
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To be fair, let’s watch a montage of the Democratic representatives and their statements during today’s House hearing of IRS commissioner John Koskinen.

6:20 pm

To be fair, let’s watch a montage of the Democratic representatives and their statements during today’s House hearing of IRS commissioner John Koskinen.

Watch it, please. For those who are old enough to remember the Watergate hearings, you will be strongly reminded of the Republicans then defending Nixon. It was pitiful when the Republicans did it then, and it is pitiful when the Democrats do it now.

The IRS has admitted it wrongly harassed conservatives. It is also clearly participating in a cover-up. To make-believe these things didn’t happen and that the victim here is the IRS is beyond shameful.

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The superintendent at a Connecticut school that blocked access to conservative websites while allowing access to comparable liberal sites has finally issued a response to the charge.

6:04 pm

The superintendent at a Connecticut school that blocked access to conservative websites while allowing access to comparable liberal sites has finally issued a response to the charge.

Superintendent Jody Goeler posted a response this morning to the school’s website, blaming the Dell SonicWall service they use. Goeler wrote, “As interest in this topic has expanded, the district has pressed Dell SonicWall for more information about how websites are assigned to categories and why there are apparent inconsistencies, as discovered by the student, in classifications particularly along conservative and liberal lines.” Goeler added, “The district is trying to determine the reason for the inconsistency and if the bias is pervasive enough to justify switching to another content filtering provider.”

Goeler concluded her letter saying, “Once we receive a statement from Dell SonicWall clarifying its process for assigning websites to categories, I will post it on our website for your review at www.ctreg14.org.

Blaming the filtering company is interesting. It is possible they are the source of the bias. I remain skeptical and wonder if the school knew and went along with it without comment — until they got caught.

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Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed ten days after the chairman of the House Ways & Means committee sent a letter to the IRS asking the agency was engaged in targeting.

2:16 pm

Here’s another tidbit about Lois Lerner’s lost emails: Her hard drive crashed ten days after the chairman of the House Ways & Means committee sent a letter to the IRS asking the agency if it was engaged in targeting.

What a coincidence! She discovers that Congress is interested in what she has been doing and suddenly her hard drive crashes, destroying all the emails she has written about this very subject. Do you smell a rat?

In addition, Congress last week discovered through other subpoenaed emails that Lerner was having conversations at that time with Department of Justice prosecutors about investigating conservative nonprofits. The evidence thus continues to suggest strongly that the White House was intimately involved in the decision use the IRS to harass its conservative opponents.

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More revelations from today’s IRS hearings, this time indicating evidence of White House involvement.

10:35 am

More revelations from today’s IRS hearings, this time indicating evidence of White House involvement.

The evidence remains circumstantial, but very damning nonetheless. The White House needs to explain exactly what happened in a meeting between the IRS chief counsel and President Obama exactly two days before that chief counsel changed IRS criteria for approving tax exempt status in a manner that increased the harassment of conservatives.

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More video from IRS commissioner John Koskinen testimony today during House hearings.

10:21 am

More video from IRS commissioner John Koskinen’s testimony today during House hearings.

Koskinen is so full of crap I think I could fertilize half the farm fields in the state of Iowa with it. This response from Kevin Brady (R-Texas) sums it up quite cogently.

“The IRS denied for two years targeting of Americans based on their political beliefs. That wasn’t the truth. They said it was a few rogue agents in Cincinnati. That wasn’t the truth. You said you were targeting liberal organizations. That wasn’t the truth. Then you assured us you would provide us all the emails in May and that wasn’t the truth. And today, you are telling us out of thousands of IRS computers, the one that lost the emails was a person of interest in an ongoing congressional investigation. And that is not the truth either. This is the most corrupt and deceitful IRS in history.”

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The head of the Clinton library in Arkansas has banned researchers from a conservative media outlet.

9:33 am

Leftwing tolerance: The head of the Clinton library in Arkansas, also a donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has banned researchers from a conservative media outlet because it used that research to publish stories critical of Hillary.

Library dean Carolyn Henderson Allen informed editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti in a June 17 letter that the library had “officially suspended” the Free Beacon‘s research privileges. The Free Beacon published the Hillary Papers, drawn from the archive of the late Clinton confidante Diane Blair, in February. Those papers are also housed in the special collections at the University of Arkansas.

“I am writing you to direct you and the Washington Beacon Press to cease and desist your ongoing violation of the intellectual property rights of the University of Arkansas with regard to your unauthorized publication of audio recordings obtained from the Roy Reed Collection,” wrote Allen.

Not only did the library ban the researchers, it wants to squelch the results of their research so that no one can read it. How open-minded and tolerant of them!

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“They just got rid of it. … It really looks bad and I’ve got to say it looks like a cover-up to me.”

9:15 am

“They just got rid of it. … It really looks bad and I’ve got to say it looks like a cover-up to me.”

The quote comes from a House hearing today where lawmakers blasted the head of the IRS for claiming it has lost two years worth of Lois Lerner’s emails.

Update: I think it worthwhile to include video of this exchange between Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The arrogance of Koskinen is, to use Ryan’s world, unbelievable.
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In a speech in Singapore, the head of Arianespace said that the company urgently needs to overhaul its Ariane 5 rocket in order to meet tough competition from SpaceX and Russia’s Proton rocket.

8:50 am

Recognizing the competition: In a speech in Singapore, the head of Arianespace said that the company urgently needs to overhaul its Ariane 5 rocket in order to meet tough competition from SpaceX and Russia’s Proton rocket.

“We have a newcomer in America with SpaceX. Yes, competition is increasing, but when competition is increasing, we need to be more and more agile,” said Israel. While recognising that Arianespace was the market leader, “we have to ask ourselves one question: what should we do to remain the leader? Europe is very serious about launchers, and Europe will not give up when it comes to launchers.”

For Arianespace this speech is a very good thing, as it demonstrates again that Israel — and the company — are aware of the competitive challenge put forth by SpaceX and are not making believe it doesn’t exist.

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The late arrival of Russia’s first private satellite

8:43 am

The competition heats up? The Dnepr rocket launch of 37 satellites yesterday also included the launch of the first private Russian satellite.

TabletSat-Aurura owned by the company SPUTNIX weighs 26.2 kg and is made to operate for one year. It is intended for remote Earth sensing in the interests of a private company. The satellite was made using Russian technologies and a minimum of foreign components. Its cost is about one million US dollars.

Igor Komarov, the head of the United Rocket and Space Corporation, said “the launch of Aurora, the first Russian private satellite, is a successful example of public-private partnership in the field of space exploration as private companies clearly cannot fulfill their strategic tasks without the state. ,,, I am confident that cooperation between the state and private aerospace agencies in designing and manufacturing high-tech craft will become an important stimulus for further development of Russian competitive technologies.”

SPUTNIX Director-General Andrei Potapov said his company’s plans included “creating a cluster of small spacecraft and craft for super high-definition aerial video surveying and imaging with a resolution of down to one meter per pixel”. [emphasis mine]

Why do I have doubts about this Russian achievement? The reasons are twofold.
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Why the Redskins trademark ruling should terrify you.

10:43 am

Why the Redskins trademark ruling should terrify you.

This ruling isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a slope we’ve already slid down: bureaucrats in Washington are now empowered to make subjective decrees about what is offensive and what will be tolerated, based on pressure from a small clique of Washington insiders. Anyone who runs afoul of these decrees, anyone branded as regressive and politically incorrect, is declared outside the protection of the federal government.

And what do we call people who like to wield that kind of oppressive power? I call them fascists. They hate it when I do that, but I am actually not name-calling but applying a very accurate description to their behavior.

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At hearings in the Senate Ted Cruz sharply criticized the proposed Democratic proposal to amend and restrict the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

10:23 am

At hearings in the Senate Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sharply attacked the proposed Democratic proposal to amend and restrict the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Cruz even offered to replace the Democratic proposal, which would allow Congress to limit spending on political campaigns, with the first amendment itself. All the Democrats rejected that change, illustrating that they reject the first amendment itself.

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Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) today expressed concern on the Senate floor over the budget language inserted by Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) that many think will cripple the new commercial manned space companies with high costs and extensive paperwork.

10:59 pm

Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) today expressed concern on the Senate floor over the budget language inserted by Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) that many think will cripple the new commercial manned space companies with high costs and extensive paperwork.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) took to the Senate floor June 18 and tapped the brakes on a powerful appropriator’s plan to subject NASA’s commercial crew program to strict federal accounting standards the agency waived when it solicited bids for crew transportation in November. Nelson, the chairman of the Senate Commerce science and space subcommittee, said NASA’s commercial crew program to fly astronauts to and from the international space station aboard commercially designed spacecraft needs “the right mix of oversight and innovation” to start ferrying crews by NASA’s target date of late 2017.

The senior senator from Florida was alluding to a directive Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, personally fought to include in a report appended to a spending bill now awaiting debate on the Senate floor, and which would if signed into law require NASA to either comply with section 15.403-4 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, or risk a legal mandate to do so. Nelson said he wanted to work with Shelby “as the bill goes to the conference committee to make sure that we have the right mix of oversight and innovation in how NASA contracts for this competition.”

While Nelson was apparently very careful in how he stated his public criticism of Shelby, he also made it clear that he wants the language changed. As the article noted, this gives opponents of Shelby a powerful ally in the Senate. Expect the Shelby language to be significantly watered down.

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In 2010 the IRS illegally provided the FBI with confidential tax information totaling 1.1 million pages.

10:43 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: In 2010 the IRS illegally provided the FBI with confidential tax information totaling 1.1 million pages.

[O]n June 4, DOJ told the committee that its prior assurance was inoperative: the disks actually include confidential taxpayer information that was give to the FBI in violation of federal law. This is a serious matter; violation of the applicable statute carries a penalty of five years in prison.

The obvious inference is that the IRS didn’t just send the FBI a bunch of publicly available Form 990s filed by non-profits. Rather, the IRS included Schedule B to those forms–the documents that name the organization’s donors, and provide their addresses and the amounts they contributed. Donor information contained in Schedule B is confidential. Illegally communicated, it would give the FBI a checklist of individuals who could be investigated and potentially criminally prosecuted, much as Dinesh D’Souza was prosecuted for a chickenfeed election offense a few years later.

But don’t worry, there’s not a “smidgen of corruption” according to Obama in this IRS scandal.

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A Connecticut high school student discovers that his school firewall has been set up to specifically block access to all conservative sites while allowing access to liberal ones.

1:03 pm

Free speech for me but not for thee: A Connecticut high school student discovers that his school firewall has been set up to specifically block access to all conservative sites while allowing access to liberal ones.

Andrew Lampart, a senior at Nonnewaug High School, discovered that he couldn’t get on the National Rifle Association’s website while on campus as he was doing research for a classroom debate on gun control in May. “So, I went over to the other side,” Lampart told WTIC. And I went over on sites such as Moms Demand Action or Newtown Action Alliance and I could get on these websites but not the others.”

The 18-year-old decided to investigate further by broadening his search terms to political parties in Connecticut. “I immediately found out that the State Democrat website was unblocked but the State GOP website was blocked,” Lampart said. The student took it a step further and looked at websits focusing on abortion issues and religion. He discovered that “right-to-life” groups were blocked by the firewall but that Planned Parenthood and Pro-Choice America weren’t. Lampart even tried to explore websites like Christianity.com and the Vatican’s site but they were both blocked. However, Islam-guide.com was not blocked. “They’re trying to, in my opinion, shelter us from what’s actually going on around the country and around the world by blocking these web sites,” Lampart explained. “It should be the other way around. The websites should be unblocked so that students can get different viewpoints from different sides of each argument.”

The superintendent of Woodbury schools was notified by Lampart, but nothing was done to fix the problem after a week. He decided to take his concerns to the Board of Education on Monday.”

The lack of action by his superintendent I think proves that this partisan blocking was not an accident but was entirely intentional. But remember, the left is the tolerant and open-minded movement!

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A Massachusetts judge has released a 16-year-old Connecticut girl back to her family after Massachusetts child welfare authorities seized her 16 months ago.

3:57 pm

A Massachusetts judge has released a 16-year-old Connecticut girl back to her family after Massachusetts child welfare authorities seized her 16 months ago.

No apologizes from the Massachusetts authorities, who seized the girl against the wishes of the parents and her Connecticut doctors and held her almost literally in prison while they imposed their preferred medical treatment. It is unclear from the article whether the treatment by the Massachusetts doctors has worked, or whether they have discovered they were wrong. In either case, they were fascists to kidnap the girl as they did. One more reason to stay away from this oppressive area of the country.

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The IRS now claims it has lost emails from six other key employees involved in the agency’s effort to harass conservatives.

9:35 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS now claims it has lost emails from six other key employees involved in the agency’s effort to harass conservatives.

The Internal Revenue Service says it can’t produce e-mails from six more employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups, according to two Republicans investigating the scandal.

The IRS told Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany that computer crashes resulted in additional lost e-mails, including from Nikole Flax, the chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal.

How convenient: These six employees just happened to have computer crashes destroying these key emails.

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The long range medical study of 100,000 children from birth to adulthood that Congress mandated fourteen years ago and has already spent a billion dollars without even getting started has just been delayed again after an outside review has raised new questions.

9:14 am

Pigs in medicine: The long range medical study of 100,000 children from birth to adulthood that Congress mandated fourteen years ago and that has already spent a billion dollars without even getting started has just been delayed again after an outside review has raised new questions.

I’ve reported on this project before. The idea is laudable but the implementation has been nothing but pure pork. Fourteen years and a billion dollars merely to design the study? Hey, if you believe this has anything to do with medical research I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you real cheap!

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The lawyer for True The Vote — one of the groups targeted by the IRS and other federal agencies for harassment — has just issued a very blunt letter to the Department of Justice that puts them and the IRS very much in the hot seat.

6:11 pm

The IRS time bomb ticks some more: The lawyer for True The Vote — one of the groups targeted by the IRS and other federal agencies for harassment — has just issued a very blunt letter to the Department of Justice that puts them and the IRS very much in the hot seat.

Read it all. The legalities here are not in favor of the Obama administration and the IRS. They are very exposed. The last few paragraphs of MItchell’s letter illustrate this quite starkly:

In addition to seeking responses to the questions in this letter, we also seek your consent to immediately allow a computer forensics expert selected by TTV to examine the computer(s) that is or are purportedly the source of Ms. Lerner’s “lost” emails, including cloning the hard drives, and to attempt to restore what was supposedly “lost,” and to seek to restore any and all “lost” evidence pertinent to this litigation.

We also seek access to all computers, both official and personal, used by any and all of the Defendants from and after July 1, 2010, in order to ensure preservation of the documents of all Defendants in this action.

We wish to resolve our concerns amicably but, absent your consent, we will file such motions as deemed necessary and appropriate asking the Court to require that you respond to the questions contained in this letter, and to permit such forensic examination described herein and for such other relief as may be appropriate for this egregious breach of legal authority and professional ethics.

Due to the time-sensitive and urgent nature of this request, please respond by noon on Wednesday, June 18, 2014.

These demands are entirely legal and routine in lawsuits with circumstances such as this. Even the most partisan Democratic judges in the courts are going to find it very difficult to protect the IRS and the Obama administration here.

As was said over and over and over again during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, it wasn’t the crime so much as the coverup that destroyed Richard Nixon. It looks like the same thing might be happening to Barack Obama.

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The ticking IRS IT department time bomb.

9:34 am

The ticking IRS IT department time bomb.

It’s one thing to get a political hack to lie under oath or to take a fall to keep himself viable in that world, it’s quite another to get the non political people who have no real skin in the game to be willing to perjure themselves before congress in an attempt to claim incompetence.

These guys simply aren’t going to take the fall for a bunch of political hacks.

The clock is ticking, as soon as the IT guys are under oath the IRS scandal is going to explode and that blast is going to take a lot of people with them.

The only way this bomb will go off, however, is if the Republicans in Congress light the fuse. They have to push the issue, forcing these lower level IT people to testify. Sadly, these Republicans too often act like they are afraid of their own shadow, thus letting the worst acts of corruption slip without so much as a peep.

Hopefully the results of the November election will give these guys some backbone.

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The IRS claim that two years of Lois Lerner’s emails were lost when her computer crashed is simply not believeable.

4:24 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS claim that two years of Lois Lerner’s emails were lost when her computer crashed is simply not believeable.

More here. And here a Democrat demands a special prosecutor.

I have been traveling so I missed posting the original story about this absurd claim by the IRS. It is a downright lie and a coverup and should be answered with prosecutions and imprisonment.

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Sierra Nevada has announced that it plans to do additional test flights in 2014 of its prototype Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle

4:51 pm

Sierra Nevada has announced that it plans to do additional test flights in 2014 of its prototype Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

This is the same test vehicle that skidded off the runway during its first flight when one of its landing legs did not deploy. The company has never released any images of that smashup, but has said the craft was salvageable. I imagine this announcement is part of the continuing lobbying campaign by all the companies (SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada) competing in NASA’s commercial manned program. NASA is supposed to down select to two companies, maybe only one, by the end of the summer.

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What Cantor’s loss and Graham’s win mean.

12:08 pm

What Cantor’s loss and Graham’s win mean.

I think Trende’s analysis here is the best I’ve seen of this ongoing primary election cycle. These three paragraphs especially pinpoint why things are happening as they are:

We are in a deeply anti-Washington environment, both throughout the country and in the Republican Party in particular. In this environment, representatives who pay insufficient attention to what is going on in their districts are in grave danger of losing. There are two components to this explanation.

First, analysts need to understand that the Republican base is furious with the Republican establishment, especially over the Bush years. From the point of view of conservatives I’ve spoken with, the early- to mid-2000s look like this: Voters gave Republicans control of Congress and the presidency for the longest stretch since the 1920s.

And what do Republicans have to show for it? Temporary tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, a new Cabinet department, increased federal spending, TARP, and repeated attempts at immigration reform. Basically, despite a historic opportunity to shrink government, almost everything that the GOP establishment achieved during that time moved the needle leftward on domestic policy. Probably the only unambiguous win for conservatives were the Roberts and Alito appointments to the Supreme Court; the former is viewed with suspicion today while the latter only came about after the base revolted against Harriet Miers.

His second component notes that the politicians who understand this environment win, while those who do not lose. Read the whole thing. It will help clarify not only what has happened but what will happen in the coming months.

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