Category Archives: History

Education, History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Who The People?

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Thoughts on the duty of the courts to enforce the Constitution and the law, from Glenn Reynolds. It’s based on new book by Randy Barnett.

[Late-morning update]

Actually, Neil Gorsuch is for the little guy:

It’s hard to see what Hirono, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and all the other Democrats are talking about when they say Gorsuch doesn’t stick up for the little guy. But if you look more closely at his cases and the Democrats’ charges, you realize what the Democrats mean.

First, in Yellowbear, Little Sisters, Makkar, Carloss and the burping case, Gorsuch was ruling against government overreach. In Kelo, he praised the ruling against the government. And there’s the issue. When Democrats talk about being for the little guy, they often mean being for government power. The two concepts are inseparable in the liberal mind-set.

And when they conflict, they go for the government power every time. That’s why they shouldn’t be called “liberals.”

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

The National Space Council

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A brief history.

I don’t know whether or not it will help with the current policy mess. It probably partly depends on who heads it up (that is, the real day-to-day work, not Pence).

This is strange:

According to historians, in 1992, council staff convinced Bush to fire the NASA chief because they thought he would resist their ideas. As is the case in many bureaucratic environments, the dysfunction of the council had little do with national interest or policy, but with office politics.

Truly wasn’t fired because the council staff “thought he would resist their ideas.” He was fired because he was actively sabotaging Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative, and actually having his AA for legislative affairs lobby against it on the Hill.

[Update a while later]

Stephen Smith has a blog post on the (meaningless) NASA authorization ceremony last week. Trump seems remarkably uninformed, but that’s true of most subjects, I think.

[Update a few more minutes later]

Jeff Kluger says that magical thinking won’t get you to Mars. But a) this isn’t an appropriation and b) he seems to think that we can do Apollo again.