Andrew Napolitano has an article at Cato about how the US government is exempt from its own laws (it’s a PDF). He includes a story about Janet Reno of which few are aware (though anyone could have known about it at the time, had they wanted to do the research).
Last Ditch
Sixty years ago today began what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge. It was Hitler’s last, desperate attempt to throw the invaders back across the Channel, or to get them to sue for peace, or at the least, to buy time until he could reconstitute his forces. Initially successful, the battle lasted six weeks, through Christmas and most of January, 1945. When it ended, the Allies had broken the back of the German western front, and all but Hitler himself knew that the war had been lost, though it took another three months to finally occupy Germany.
No More Good Money After Bad
Here’s some evidence that NASA is starting to take the policy to retire the Shuttle seriously.
Only In America
And probably only in the red, Bush-voting portion of it.
Behold, the jet-powered port-a-potty. For when you really have to go…
Hey, I want to see races. We could set up NAOOR (National Association Of Outhouse Racers). The winner would be flush with victory.
A Little Too Optimistic
Alan Binder is too sanguine about the prospects for extracting lunar oxygen in the absence of ice at the poles:
“It
The Millionaire Backing Pete Worden
Is, according to NASA Watch, Bob Bigelow. Makes sense to me, but I don’t know how influential he is with the administration.
This Might Make Me Reassess Rumsfeld
If I gave a damn what John McCain thinks. I’m as mystified at the press’ worship of Senator McCain as I am by worship of Bill Clinton. I really don’t get it.
In Linux Hell
My Red Hat server has not had X running on it for months. Whenever I would upgrade, it would be unable to start the X server, and would give indications of a hardware problem. I bought a new video card for it, with no joy.
I recently decided to upgrade to Fedora. It stopped as it was trying to load the X upgrades, with a fatal error, telling me that it was either bad media (the CD passed a media check), inadequate disk space (it’s an almost-empty eighty gig drive), or a hardware problem. I replaced the motherboard with a different kind, thinking that the problem might be in the AGP section. Same result.
The worst thing is that since it only did a partial install, I can’t boot it any more, except in rescue mode from the CD. All of my data is still there when I mount the partition, so I’m trying to figure out how to back it up and just do a clean install, in hopes that this will finally get me around whatever the problem is. Does anyone have any thoughts as to other options, or just what the issue might be?
[Update a few minutes later]
Is there some way to get it to bypass the X installation, so I can at least complete the Fedora upgrade, and then try to fix X separately? For instance, if I do an install instead of an upgrade, is there some way I could deselect those packages, but still preserve the data in /home?
And Now For Something Completely Different
Bursting bras.
Now these guys (and Glenn) will know what to get her for Christmas.
Weeding The Garden
I’ve started cleaning up my blogroll, and you’ll see some subtle changes over to the left. I updated stale URLs, and promoted NASA Watch and Hobby Space from the outskirts of transterrestriality up into the “Space” section. I’ve also demoted some of the space bloggers for lack of posts. I’ve left Laughing Wolf there for now, even though there’s been little space-related content from him as of late, because I’m too lazy to figure out where else to put him. I’ve also set up an “AWOL” section for bloggers who have claim to have thrown in the towel, or simply disappeared, in hopes that some or all of them may reappear in the future.
I’ve also belatedly added Iowahawk to the humor section, though most of his stuff is about as funny as a screen door in an airlock. By the way, he’s celebrating his first blogiversary, so go over and read his annual report. I’ve also added Treacher and Frank J.
More to come, perhaps when I get time over the holidays.