Am I the only one who thinks that this is an hilarious story?
Prosecutors can’t read Libby’s handwriting
Ex-Cheney chief of staff asked to decipher notes in Plame case
Talk about Keystone Kops.
It Says, “Fitzgerald Is A Wienie”
Am I the only one who thinks that this is an hilarious story?
Prosecutors can’t read Libby’s handwriting
Ex-Cheney chief of staff asked to decipher notes in Plame case
Talk about Keystone Kops.
Aliens Having S3x
This is a pretty funny cartoon, and as Professor Volokh points out, it shows how the whole “can’t show pictures of Mohammed” thing has descended into self parody.
So now, the perennially offended muslims are offended by a cartoon of which there’s no way to tell from the image itself whether it’s Mohammed or not–one can only tell from the context of the joke.
It reminds me of the story a few years ago about the bar in Colorado that had to stop selling teeshirts that depicted two aliens having s3x because they were too lewd for the town elders. I (and no doubt others) pointed out that if they were aliens, there was no way to tell whether or not the activity in which they were engaged was s3xu@l (sorry–I don’t want to get top-listed on google for the search “aliens s3x”). They could, for example, simply have been feeding each other, or communicating somehow. One occasional commenter here, in fact, emailed me at the time that it reminded him of the old “Life in Hell” strip when Binky (or one of the other one-eared rabbits) is being chastised for smoking, and he says “I’m not smoking–I’m sucking p00p through a straw.”
That’s the point to which this idiocy has devolved. Eugene is right:
Well, I have to admit: The folks who are offended by this have a First Amendment right to be offended. They should feel entirely free to be offended.
The rest of us should feel entirely free, as a matter of civility as well as of law, to say: Your decision to be offended by this particular cartoon gives you no rights (again, as a matter of civility as well as of law) to tell us to stop printing it.
More on the underlying conceptual issue
OK EA (Oklahoma Spaceport Environmental Assessment)
The FAA Oklahoma Spaceport Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) is available for download (6 MB). I haven’t read it yet, but I can already say it is very similar to the Mojave Spaceport one. That’s because there is an XCOR Xerus on the front cover. They are soliciting comments and will have a public meeting in Oklahoma on March 9.
Space Elevator Progress
Liftport has had a successful test.
Epstein’s Tap Dance
Richard Epstein weighs in on the wiretap issue on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal with Executive Power on Steroids. While claiming to be for legal wiretaps, he is strongly against illegal ones:
The major danger with presidential surveillance does not lie in this particular overreaching of executive power. It’s what comes next. If President Bush can ignore FISA, then he can disregard a congressional prohibition against the use of nuclear force.
Perhaps too melodramatic to be convincing. When I did Oxford debate in high school, every plan from water quality to farm policy ended with nuclear war. But there are myriad ways that presidential powers could become tyrannical if a Jacksonian president took the law into his own hands. I may not like Jackson as chief magistrate, but he sure knew how to give a good speech.
Epstein’s Tap Dance
Richard Epstein weighs in on the wiretap issue on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal with Executive Power on Steroids. While claiming to be for legal wiretaps, he is strongly against illegal ones:
The major danger with presidential surveillance does not lie in this particular overreaching of executive power. It’s what comes next. If President Bush can ignore FISA, then he can disregard a congressional prohibition against the use of nuclear force.
Perhaps too melodramatic to be convincing. When I did Oxford debate in high school, every plan from water quality to farm policy ended with nuclear war. But there are myriad ways that presidential powers could become tyrannical if a Jacksonian president took the law into his own hands. I may not like Jackson as chief magistrate, but he sure knew how to give a good speech.
Epstein’s Tap Dance
Richard Epstein weighs in on the wiretap issue on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal with Executive Power on Steroids. While claiming to be for legal wiretaps, he is strongly against illegal ones:
The major danger with presidential surveillance does not lie in this particular overreaching of executive power. It’s what comes next. If President Bush can ignore FISA, then he can disregard a congressional prohibition against the use of nuclear force.
Perhaps too melodramatic to be convincing. When I did Oxford debate in high school, every plan from water quality to farm policy ended with nuclear war. But there are myriad ways that presidential powers could become tyrannical if a Jacksonian president took the law into his own hands. I may not like Jackson as chief magistrate, but he sure knew how to give a good speech.
All The News Not Fit To Print
An Iraqi mayor gives thanks to America and its troops:
Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi
A Precious Quote
From Henry Spencer, over at sci.space.policy:
As various people have pointed out in the past, to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets — exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.