I’m off the air until at least Monday afternoon. Driving up to San Bruno.

It seems to me that the smartest thing the Dems could do would be to get Grayout to resign, and hand the governorship over to Cruz.

There’d still be the recall election, but Bustamante would be running as an incumbent, and would be the obvious pick for Democratic voters. He could even pick up independents with a plea for “continuity.”

Of course, the hard part about this scenario is getting his Grayness to step down. And wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if he did so, and then the recall failed?

But go read Bill Whittle’s latest essay.

It’s, as always, worth the whole read, but readers of this site may be particularly interested in his description of an engine test at a little but growing company up in Mojave, California.

Just as an aside, I hope that they won’t, like many other companies, be chased out of California due to ongoing idiocy in Sacramento.

Just in case you didn’t notice.

Busy with barbecue.

Go read the Declaration of Independence, note that Vicksburg fell a hundred and forty years ago, splitting the Confederacy, enjoy the fireworks tonight, and we’ll talk tomorrow.

Howard Fineman thinks so.

Of course, unlike Mark Steyn, Howard Fineman, being a good Democrat, is scared to death that Dean will get the nomination, because he knows that while few Dems have the slightest hope of beating Bush, Dean has none.

Thus, we’re already seeing the schism within the Democrat Party (including the liberal media) over who’s going to carry their banner next year. We have those who either have no hope or are delusional, versus those who know the odds are low, but want to give it their best shot.

It will be fascinating to see who wins out. It may be almost as fascinating as Chicago in 1968…

I guess he’s figured out, for whatever reason, that he’d better get with the program and apply for a launch license.

To help enable future space tourism, Rutan is willing to work with AST on developing certification standards for manned reusable spacecraft, which don’t exist today, he said.

Translation: I don’t want to deal with this new regulatory environment that I don’t understand, but my funding is based on winning the X-Prize, and they’re apparently so close minded that they’ll disqualify me if I won’t play ball.

He believes such vehicles should be certified like aircraft, to protect passengers and people on the ground.

Yes, that’s nice, Burt, but you don’t want to pay the costs of certification, and there’s no certification regime for space vehicles, so what are you gonna do…?

However, “our program has nothing to do with certification,” Rutan said. “We’re not going to be certifying SpaceShipOne and offering rides in it. I’m in the business of just doing the research and development flight testing.”

Oh, I see. You just want to continue to play your little game of having it both ways.

Anyway, I’m glad that you finally came to your senses, for whatever reason.

According to Dan Weintraub, the recall campaign has submitted enough signatures for an election this fall. They’ll spend the weekend gathering a couple hundred thousand more just to be safe.

According to Dan Weintraub, the recall campaign has submitted enough signatures for an election this fall. They’ll spend the weekend gathering a couple hundred thousand more just to be safe.

According to Dan Weintraub, the recall campaign has submitted enough signatures for an election this fall. They’ll spend the weekend gathering a couple hundred thousand more just to be safe.

Here’s the site for those who really want to know about the weather in space. It has solar activity, upcoming meteor showers, etc. Pretty cool.