Political Commentary

Speaking Of Democrat Space Enthusiasts…

I wonder if this Paula Berinstein is this Paula Berinstein?

Let those Democratic leaders who think their party should show more religious faith and moderate its stand on abortion know this: If the Democratic Party does so, it will lose millions of lifelong members like me.

Moving to the right is not the answer. The Democrats got 48 percent of the vote in the 2004 presidential election. They don’t need to change their positions. They need to take control of the debate, get their voters to the polls and make sure that Republicans don’t pull dirty tricks.

If the Democratic Party moves to the right, I will defect to the Green Party, as will many of my friends and family.

Paula Berinstein
Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nov. 17, 2004

That’s the problem that the Dems have. They may not be able to gain in the center without losing more heavily their base.

[Via Jim Geraghty]

Space

Picking An Important Nit

Glenn has a piece at his MSNBC site wrapping up last week’s arguments over safety and the coincidental passage of the new launch regulation legislation by the House. It’s a good roundup, but when he writes:

That’s how we took aviation from an expensive and risky activity, mostly the province of governments, to a safe and reliable means of transport.

He’s mistaken. Actually (and fortunately), aviation has never been mostly the province of governments, starting from the beginning with the Wrights. Had it been, we’d probably still be arguing about whether to build National Air Transportation System II (after the necessary technology had been proven out), or whether to just increase the fleet size of the current, dangerous “Air Shuttle” from three to five…

He also says that the legislation passed on Friday afternoon. Actually, it didn’t happen until Saturday.

Political Commentary

Pot-Kettle Alert

This line in Richard Morin’s column about the election exit polls has bent the needle on my irony meter hard to starboard.

…rather than flog the bloggers for rushing to publish the raw exit poll data on their Web sites, we may owe them a debt of gratitude. A few more presidential elections like this one and the public will learn to do the right thing and simply ignore news of early exit poll data. Then perhaps people will start ignoring the bloggers, who proved once more that their spectacular lack of judgment is matched only by their abundant arrogance.

I wonder if he’s ever accused Dan Rather of arrogance? In a sane world, his picture would accompany the dictionary definition of the word.

Space

A Lunar Crusade

I know that this proposal by Greg Zsidisin isn’t serious, but it does demonstrate just how deranged some otherwise intelligent people have become at the prospect of Democrats no longer being in power. It’s not particularly clever satire. I think it’s just sad.

And by the way, Greg, perhaps in your conspiratorial dreamworld in which the new Inquisition with corporate sponsorship by Enron and Halliburton will start any day, Tom Delay is a senator, but in this universe, he’s the majority leader of the House.

Space

Launch Legislation After-Action Report

Things were a little too frenzied in the past few days to actually spend much time analyzing the legislation, but now that the shouting is over, Nathan Horsley has an analysis of the legal effects of the launch legislation passed by the House this weekend. I agree with it, and share his concern that the compromise language inserted in the bill may cause the good people at FAA-AST to be more (and possibly too) concerned about passenger safety, to the detriment of a fledgling industry.

As Nathan says:

Well, shouldn

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