This is beyond frightening. Remember it the next time some leftist talks about the “war against science” from the “right.”
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Leftist Union Thugs In Wisconsin
…have lost, and Breitbart is calling them out. Unfortunately, I expect this to get uglier, because they’re going to continue to ramp up the thuggery.
The Chinese Will Conquer Space
But they may have to do it with American rockets:
Declining to speak for attribution, the Chinese officials say they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services offered, and concede they could not match them with the Long March series of launch vehicles even if it were possible for them to launch satellites with U.S. components in them.
I don’t think that people realize yet just what a game changer SpaceX is, not just for American spaceflight, but for the global market.
Are Productive People Mutants?
…and if so, what does it say about social welfare policies? Thoughts from Sarah Hoyt.
Go Make It A Hit
Amy Holmes interviews some folks at the Washington Atlas Shrugged premiere. I hadn’t realized that the actor who plays Rearden is British. We may go see it in Rolling Hills this weekend.
[Update a while later]
What if audiences shrug? An interview with the producer.
[Update late afternoon]
More interviews from Amy Holmes:
(Hot conservative women alert)
[Update Saturday morning]
Francis Porretto has some ruminations on the book, faith, charity and epistomology.
Fake Animal Cruelty
Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on vegan diets and their attempts at meat simulation:
…if one is to take the arguments of the ethical vegans at face value, isn’t it a bit disgusting or immoral to make products that look like the foods they consider most evil? Fake hamburgers are really a marvel, but while they still come up short on the taste front, they certainly look like hamburgers. If meat is murder, why hawk products that look like the mutilated corpse? Consider our views on cannibalism, then imagine selling faux human flesh in, say, the form of human thumbs — “It tastes just like a missionary!” Wouldn’t that still be in poor taste?
Technology advances are going to make this even more complicated in the future. I suspect that at some point cloning technology will enable us to grow meat in a vat, and probably pretty good-tasting meat at that. What does this do to the vegan argument against animal cruelty? Or to extend Jonah’s example, if we could grow long pork without harming any sentient humans in the process, would it be wrong to eat it? Should it be illegal? For that matter, would it really be human flesh? If so, what would make it that — just the DNA content of the cells?
This seems similar to child pr0n, in that one has to separate the act of consumption from the act of production. It’s pretty clearly wrong to produce child pr0n using actual children, but if it’s computer animated, who does it hurt? Yes, I understand the argument that we should discourage the consumption as well, lest it lead to a demand for supply, though I don’t think that the Supreme Court agrees. But how many vegans would eat animal flesh if it weren’t produced from whole animals with brains and nervous systems? Judging by the repeated attempts to replicate the carnivorous experience from vegetation, quite a number, I’d imagine.
A “Reinvigorated” Justice Department
Here’s what it looks like:
…under Holder’s “reinvigorated” CivDiv, DOJ has prevented Amazon from debuting the Kindle because it was not in Braille; attacked South Carolina for providing special treatment to inmates infected with AIDS; and demanded that the city of Dayton hire black police officers who had failed the competency examination.
Moreover, remember the case we recently heard about in which DOJ decided to sue an Illinois school district on behalf of the rookie teacher — a Muslim — who demanded three weeks off at the end of the semester to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca? Turns out the lawyer DOJ tapped to lead the case, Varda Hussain, came to the CivDiv from the Venable law firm in Virginia, which permitted her to volunteer 500 hours of her time bringing wartime lawsuits against the United States on behalf of three Egyptian terrorists held as enemy combatants at Gitmo (a feat for which Venable gave her an award in 2006).
DOJ has also tapped Aaron Schuham of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a rabidly anti-religion organization, to take the helm at a CivDiv unit in charge of … protecting religious liberty.
Further, DOJ has tapped Jonathan Smith, formerly of Prisoners Legal Services and the D.C. Legal Aid Society — groups Adams describes as anti-police and anti-prison guard — to head the unit that brings civil rights lawsuits against police departments and prisons.
The news just keeps getting better and better.
US History
…as taught (or not) at Bowdoin College. Sadly, I suspect that it’s not alone in that regard.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a long-overdue idea: No repayment plan, no student loan:
Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, will soon require students to go above and beyond Education Department requirements to receive federal loan funds. Starting next fall, students who want the college to certify their eligibility for student loans must complete personal budget worksheets, outlining a “realistic picture of their financial situation” both before and after graduation, and a student loan repayment plan estimating how their monthly payments fit into those budgets.
As Glenn says, “If this were to catch on, it would have devastating effects on certain colleges and majors.”
Yeah, like maybe history majors at Bowdoin.
The NASA Earmark
The pork marches on, in the NASA budget. I discuss this in a blog post at the Washington Examiner today.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more at the Taxpayer Protection Alliance:
it looks like at least two NASA earmarks have made their way into the continuing resolution. On pages 214-215 of H.R. 1473 (the continuing resolution) there is language that states, “Of the amounts appropriated by this division for ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Exploration’, not less than $1,200,000,000 shall be for the multipurpose crew vehicle to continue existing vehicle development activities to meet the requirements described in paragraph (a)(1) of section 303 of Public Law 111-267, and not less than $1,800,000,000 shall be for the heavy lift launch vehicle system which shall have a lift capability not less than 130 tons and which shall have an upper stage and other core elements developed simultaneously.”
This is important because Congress made a pledge of no earmarks and these particular earmarks would be used to salvage the Constellation Program that the President has tried to cancel.
The President signed into law legislation cancelling major components (the Ares I Rocket) of the Constellation program in 2010. But, because of a provision in NASA’s fiscal year (FY) 2010 Appropriations Act, NASA will spend an estimated $500 million on the Ares I rocket. On January 2, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “in the last days of last Congress they funded five hundred million dollars for a rocket program at NASA that’s already been shut down. That can’t be too hard to undo.”
Apparently, it’s a lot harder than Congressman Issa thought.
[Update a while later]
Where did the 130 tons come from? It looks like Mike Griffin decided he hadn’t already done enough damage.
Why Houston Didn’t Get An Orbiter
Wayne Hale says that it’s because they didn’t care enough.
While I’m sure he’s right that they could have made a lot more of an effort, and did have a sense of entitlement about it, I’m not sure that even if they’d fought for it they’d have gotten one.