Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

An Impeachable Offense

July 25, 2015 Rand Simberg 56 Comments

But it’s not like it’s his first impeachable offense. The Founders would be aghast at a Congess that has let a president get away with so much. But it happened because the separation of powers becaame severely weakened with the development of political parties (that most of them hoped would never happen), in which loyalties to one’s own party, even in another branch of government, has superseded loyalties to the institution of Congress and its Constitutional prerogatives. Plus, while electing Barack Obama was clearly an act of color blindness, impeaching and removing him over his repeated abuse of his power would obviously be racist (do I need a sarcasm tag on that one?).

Ultimately, of course, as we saw with Bill Clinton, what constitutes a “High Crime And Misdemeanor,” even when it involves multiple federal felonies and flouting of one’s oath of office, is a political judgment. So we’re stuck with him for another year and a half.

[Monday-morning update]

“The Lawless Underpinnings of the Iran Nuclear Deal”:

Rivkin and Casey are right about the Constitution’s treaty power being circumvented, with the unfortunate blessing of a cowardly Congress. They’re also right that the Administration’s decision to obtain a speedy U.N. Security Council resolution prior to the Corker-Cardin congressional vote is a blatant and reckless end-run around U.S. sovereignty, bypassing our national legislature in favor of a multi-lateral, extra-sovereign body. Any future President wishing to unravel the Iranian nuclear deal–which Secretary of State has assured us repeatedly is “not legally binding“– will now be branded by the U.N. as an international “law breaker,” a point I made back in April.

I hope States do, indeed, continue to refuse to do business with companies doing business with Iran. The financial impact probably won’t be enough to trigger an Iranian accusation that the Obama Administration isn’t enforcing the deal, however, and consequently the Administration is unlikely to march into court claiming that the Supremacy Clause trumps States’ actions. So I doubt States’ doing this will “prompt the [nuclear] deal to unravel.” Nonetheless, this is one interesting and creative way that States can constitutionally push back.

The States need to start reasserting their rights in general, and restore the 10th Amendment and federalism from a federal government run amok (with the aid of both Democrats and Republicans, for decades).

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Remember Memogate?

July 23, 2015 Rand Simberg 7 Comments

The makers of a new Dan Rather documentary apparently don’t:

Now, I say “probably,” because I can’t exclude the very remote possibility that in the early 1970s Bush’s commanding officer, for reasons lost to history, decided to type up these memos himself (even though his wife said he couldn’t type) rather than getting his secretary to do it.

I can’t prove that he never got his hands on a rather exotic typewriter instead of using the ones that were in his office, spent some time working on it with a soldering gun, and managed to coincidentally produce a document that looked exactly like what you would get if you opened up Microsoft Word 2003 and started typing.

I can’t rule out the possibility that he, for reasons known only to himself, wrote these documents using Army jargon in several places rather than the terms that would have been used in the Air National Guard.

I can’t rule out the possibility that these documents somehow escaped from his office, roamed around in the wild for several decades, and eventually ended up in the possession of a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, who had an ax to grind against both the National Guard and one George W. Bush.

I also can’t rule out the possibility that somewhere in this vast universe of ours, there is a planet composed entirely of marshmallow, where the rivers run with honey.

This document ended up on the air because neither Rather nor his producer did their jobs right. They ignored glaring red flags about the source of the document, including the fact that he kept changing his story and finally settled on an implausible and uncheckable version about a mysterious woman who wanted the originals destroyed because … um, why? (Mary Mapes, the producer, speculated that she might have been worried about DNA evidence. Too bad she did not settle on the more likely scenario: that they were destroyed to conceal their creation on a laser printer.) Rather and his producer ignored experts who raised problems with the document.

They rushed the documents onto air, and then, when the story exploded in their face, they spent an unconscionably long time attacking the people who had pointed out the glaring issues with their source material. They clung to theories along the lines of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian assiduously fiddling with the margin stops on his typewriter, such that they coincidentally lined up exactly with the defaults in as-yet-uninvented Microsoft Word. For two weeks, they dragged their network through a professional embarrassment of a scale that has rarely been reached again, because they didn’t do the most basic thing we’re paid for: properly vet their story before they started hurling serious, potentially election-altering accusations at a sitting president.

I find it amazing that there are still people who believe that document was genuine. This was my take, at the time, on the stupidity of Mary Mapes.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX (Et Al) Update

July 8, 2015 Rand Simberg 57 Comments

An update on the ISS situation from the Space Access Society. Singing my long-time tune:

NASA should develop contingency plans to accelerate readiness of at least one Commercial Crew vehicle in a Soyuz availability emergency. At a House Appropriations hearing last March, Administrator Bolden stated NASA policy in the event of a cutoff of Soyuz access would simply be to evacuate Station (news story, video of testimony).

The statement was made in the context of a political rather than mission-failure Soyuz cutoff, but given the spate of other launch failures and an apparent recent general deterioration in Russian space vehicle reliability, we think it’s becoming obvious that NASA urgently needs a backup plan should Soyuz go down for an extended period.

If the US Commercial Crew contractors haven’t already been asked by NASA to lay out how much each could accelerate its first crewed Station flight in an emergency, what resources it would need to do so, and what increased risks might be involved, they should be, immediately. (Regarding the question of risk, there is nothing sacred about NASA’s current protracted Commercial Crew safety certification process. Some parts of it no doubt do provide cost-effective safety improvements – others, perhaps not so much. Given what would be at stake with a Soyuz failure, a hard look at which is which is warranted.)

Yes.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Here’s a detailed story on Elon’s remarks in Boston yesterday.

Meanwhile, ESA has learned their lesson, and isn’t letting the incident make them complacent:

Gaele Winters, who is expected to ask ESA’s check-writing body on July 16 to approve a nearly $3 billion contract with Airbus Safran Launchers to develop Ariane 6, said the June 28 Falcon 9 failure in no way changes ESA’s assessment of SpaceX.

“We have seen the outstanding success of Falcon 9,” Winters said. “Despite the issue of about a week ago, it is a fantastic track record for this launcher.”

Yup.

[Bumped]

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