Nowak’s attorney says she wasn’t wearing diapers.
What difference does it make? I guess maybe there’s a tiny chance that this could put a jury over the edge, but it doesn’t seem very relevant to me. But maybe NASA PAO will be slightly relieved.
[Saturday morning update]
Maybe the theory is that if the diapers don’t fit, you must acquit.
Here’s an interesting story about how cats became domesticated. Apparently it only happened once.
Our current feline companion, Jessica, is less cat-like than many others I’ve known. She’s very affectionate, and even though she has a door, she rarely goes out, and never leaves the yard. She does, though, as the article points out, have the standard feeling of ambiguity about which side of the door she wants to be on.
Mike Griffin doesn’t read blogs.
On the surface, I’m sure that he could make a good argument for why he shouldn’t, that many would find compelling. He’s a busy guy, he’s got plenty of other things that he needs to read, why waste time watching a bunch of Interweb people arguing about stuff they know nothing about, yada, yada.
The problem is that, in the twenty-first century, if you ignore the blogosphere, you can get blind sided, as more than a few Senators discovered yesterday.
The administrator may not think much of what people are saying out here, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no significance to it, or that it has no effect on policy and public mood. The blogosphere, and that includes the space blogosphere, may not have as large a readership as the Washington Post, but its readership is not without influence. Congressional staffers read it, and when they do, and read about problems that they’re not necessarily hearing about from NASA, they have to wonder if they’re getting the straight story when Code L comes up to the Hill. What’s being said in the blogs is often a canary in a coal mine of a potential political imbroglio, that is ignored at a bureaucrat’s, or politician’s peril.
If Mike isn’t reading blogs, he’d better make sure that someone he knows and trusts is, and is keeping him abreast.
I agree too:
By all appearances, we need more remedies for illegal conduct by officials. And if damages are inappropriate, Congress can always legislate an appropriate scheme.
I’ve always found it absurd that the only penalty for illegally procured evidence or prosecutorial misconduct was to throw out the evidence. Of course, it’s not always practical to get damages, but perhaps if North Carolina had to pay damages for what Nifong did, they’d be a little more careful about how they hire prosecutors. And the notion of electing them seems (again, from the same case) problematic…
It seems to me that the other loser in this amnesty fiasco is the MSM, which has been fawning over and worshiping the “bi-partisan” “grand bargainers” that were trying to slip this stinker through with no hearings, review or debate. It was alternate media that led the charge against it, and the victory was much greater than they could have hoped. But I think that the two politicians hurt most by it are McCain and Lindsey Graham. The former can stick a fork in his presidential campaign. The latter may still face a strong primary challenge, and I wouldn’t bet that he’ll win it. As one of his constituents said, they expect him to negotiate with the Democrats and Ted Kennedy, but not to become one.
Note, my comment is independent of my views on immigration. This is a case where I objected much more to process than (necessarily) product. Of course, it’s hard to object to a product when you don’t even have time to read it, debate it, or think about it.
[Update]
I agree with Captain Ed:
The immigration bill is dead, yet again, after the Senate rejected cloture by fourteen votes. In the end, the compromise could not even gain a majority in support of what conceptually may have been a passable compromise, but in reality was a poorly constructed, poorly processed mass of contradictions and gaps. Many of us who may have supported a comprehensive approach to immigration found ourselves amazed and repulsed by both the product and the process of this attempt to solve the immigration problem.
Read the rest.
[Evening Update]
Bill Quick has put up a triumphalist post. He may be right, but he may also be premature. Don’t be cocky. And as is pointed out in comments, the left has been very strong in the blogosphere as well, if not stronger. The difference in this case was that is was a weak-tea compromise, that would appeal to no one except “moderates” who had no idea what was going on.
[Evening Update]
Kate O’Beirne describes how far out on a limb the president was with his own party:
The lopsided vote against the Senate bill by House Republicans (114? to 23) overstated House GOP support. According to a leadership aide, “The President actually had half that number (12?!) in favor of his bill.” And, the president’s team wound up with only 12 Republican senators. Ouch.
Ouch, indeed.
But the clueless persist in believing that George Bush is a conservative. And a Republican.
Henry Cate’s experiment seems to be thriving. Emily Lakdawalla (about whom I’m always curious as to what country of origin her last name is) is hosting this week’s edition.
As Clark notes, a lot of Mojave space workers live up in the mountains west of town, including Jeff Greason, head of XCOR. Here’s hoping that they, and their families and belongings stay safe.
Here’s a good article on some of what’s going on in Wyoming on the space front, from the Laramie paper (which is unaccountably called the Boomerang). Articles like this, and the recent Popular Science piece on space diving, are more signs that the giggle factor is gone, and that the media is starting to take personal spaceflight seriously.
Hillary’s campaign doing push polling? Surely it can’t be true!
Hillary’s campaign doing push polling? Surely it can’t be true!