&^%$@!

The post title is an exact quote from Kathryn Jean Lopez, over at The Corner. I concur. That was also my response to learn that “Underperformin’ Norman” Mineta will remain Secretary of Transportation.

I wish we’d had better choices last month.

[Update at 2:30 PM EST]

Michelle Malkin isn’t happy either, and she has a lot of quotes to illustrate why.

You know, if we really think that the blogosphere has any power, this ought to be the next view through the crosshairs.

Victory?

Henry Vanderbilt, of the Space Access Society (who has been following this closely), just left a post at sci.space.policy indicating that the launch legislation just passed the Senate (miracle of miracles), at the last possible minute.

While I think that this legislation is flawed, it’s better to have it than nothing, in terms of investment, and the flaws can perhaps be fixed in the future.

More when I get more.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not new info, but I just got an email from Henry to the same effect.

I should note that I claim victory because this is now almost as good as law. It only requires the president’s signature, and the White House has never expressed any opposition to this legislation. And if he were to veto it, it would be the first bill that he vetoed since taking office.

It’s a done deal.

[Another update at 10:43 PM EST]

Keith Cowing, of NASA Watch, confirms.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Alan Boyle (as usual) has the details. Apparently it rode on some other legislation at the last minute. Kudos to whatever Senate staff tactician managed to pull it off.

Clark Lindsey and Jeff Foust have thoughts and links as well.

2004 continues to be a great, perhaps watershed year for those opening up the high frontier.

Chutzpah

There’s a story over at The Hill that there were some Swift Boat ads that Fox refused to run during the campaign, because they were “too negative.” Amusingly, CNN had no problem with them. Of course, they’re probably much more desperate for ad revenue over there these days…

But the part of the story that broke my irony meter was the very last bit:

Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, however, characterized the Swift boat campaign as neither fun nor moving, calling it the

Get Out The Popcorn

I shall savor the sight of federal Marshals dragging Mary Frances Berry, kicking and clawing at the carpet, off the premises of the Civil Rights Commission.

“…We expect this to get ugly real fast, but we don’t care. She has served her term. We will thank her, and she will be expected to leave. Now.”

And if she doesn’t?

“That is one reason why they have U.S. Marshals,” says the source. “And we have been told that if we need to use them, we can. We will not allow this woman to hold this Administration hostage.”

The Republicans will be able to sell videos of it for fundraisers for years.

Why Is This Moron

…still in charge of the Federal Air Marshall Service?

Thomas Quinn, director of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), paid a surprise visit to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thanksgiving to thank the law-enforcement officials for their holiday work. He reportedly was angered when nearly 30 marshals deplaned and only one was dressed satisfactorily.

In response, supervisors are being assigned to airports nationwide to inspect the air cops before and after flights to make sure business suits or sports coats are being worn, according to numerous memos issued last week and obtained by The Washington Times.

I wish we’d had a better choice last month.

Picked Up By The MSM

Holman Jenkins has a column in today’s WSJ about the launch legislation being held up in the Senate (link may be subscription only–I’m not sure). With the title, “The ‘Final Frontier’ May Be a Senate Waste Basket,” he’s clearly not impressed with that body. He makes an analogy with what happened to the general aviation industry in the eighties (in which it almost went under from fear of lawsuits and costs of insurance), that was only revived in the nineties by farsighted legislation limiting liability for aircraft makers. He also asks an interesting question, that I’ve been wondering about as well:

For a pair who say they want to spend $100 million making space tourism a reality, Messrs. Rutan and Branson have displayed an odd indifference to the legislative battle. Either Sir Richard is peddling vaporware and doesn’t really intend to fly — or he’s making an improbable bet on the FAA’s willingness to let paying clients fly in an “experimental” spacecraft in violation of every rule in the book.

My guess is that Branson is taking his cue from Burt, who wishes that AST would dry up and blow away. He wants to be regulated by AVR. He should be careful what he wishes for.

Planetary Park System

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad idea, but I do think that it’s extremely premature–a couple of European scientists have come up with a plan for conservation parks on Mars.

I think that their concern here is vastly overblown:

“It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape,” they write in the latest edition of Space Policy.

Mars is big. Mind bogglingly big. It has about as much surface area as the land of the earth. The likelihood that you’ll see any traces of humanity over most of it for the next century or two is vanishingly small. They seem to be dramatically overestimating the amount of potential activity there, and by the time we get around to sending enough spacecraft for it to even start to be a potential problem, we won’t be “crashing” them there. The notion of destroying a sufficient number of probes for them to become an eyesore anywhere one goes on Mars is ludicrous, logically and economically.

But he’s not a total moonbat (or in this case, Marsbat):

But Cockell argues that if a planetary parks system were in place, it would free up the rest of the planet for exploitation and claim-staking, which might encourage these nations to sign up to the system.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!