The House authorization bill is apparently being voted on today. Call your congressperson and urge a “no” vote.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Jeri Thompson
She just did a segment on Cavuto. She would have been the hottest first lady ever. Probably smartest, too.
Commercial Space
…we have a problem. Thoughts from Jeff Foust on the latest congressional “compromise.”
A Divider, Not A Uniter
Thoughts from (Democrats) Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell on the campaign lies about Obama as a post-racial healer.
Happy 70th Birthday
He doesn’t look a day over thirty. His youthful vitality is particularly amazing, considering that he’s a veteran of the Pacific War. I’m tempted to say we should send him to Afghanistan, but he’s probably too politically incorrect for today’s army.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s his (unembeddable) fifty-first-and-a-half anniversary spectacular from 1991. It seems like only yesterday.
True Science
…versus cargo-cult science:
When the attorney general of Virginia sued to force Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame to provide the raw data he used, and the complete computer program used to analyze the data, so that “you” could decide, the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia (where Mann was a professor at the time he defended the hockey stick) declared this request — Feynman’s request — to be an outrage. You peons, the Faculty Senate decreed, must simply accept the conclusions of any “scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards.” Feynman’s — and the attorney general’s and my own and other scientists’ — request for the raw data, so we can “judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at,” would, according to the Faculty Senate, “send a chilling message to scientists … and indeed scholars in any discipline.”
According the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia, “science,” and indeed “scholarship” in general, is no longer an attempt to establish truth by replicable experiment, or by looking at evidence that can be checked by anyone. “Truth” is now to be established by the decree of powerful authority, by “peer review.” Wasn’t the whole point of the Enlightenment to avoid exactly this?
That old “Enlightenment” thing is for fogies. We’re all postmodernists now.
A Matter Of Definition
Jim Geraghty has a roundup of this administration’s many “defining moments.”
I think that November 2nd is going to be the biggest “defining moment,” yet, but they’re not going to like the definition.
Just In Time For The Election
Stanley Kurtz has a new book
Should be good — he’s a fastidious researcher. Let’s hope wethey won’t get fooled again.
They Should
Dems fear Republican oversight:
I asked Issa’s staff for a list of the issues on which Issa has spent the most time in the 18 months Obama has been in office. First is mortgage giant Countrywide’s favoritism in granting sweetheart loans to lawmakers, congressional staffers and executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Second is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil case against Goldman Sachs. Third is the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill. Fourth is the administration’s handling of the Home Affordable Modification Program, which is supposed to help struggling mortgage holders keep their homes. And fifth is the Treasury Department’s management of TARP money for the so-called “hardest hit” housing markets.
And that doesn’t even mention the lawlessness at the Justice Department.
I Am Developing A Strange New Respect*
…for Lara Logan.
My lack of respect for Katie Couric continues unabated, however.
*This is the phrase that lefty journalists use when a “right winger” adopts the politically correct position.