80% of Mexican territory, including the border regions (natch) is controlled by drug cartels.
There is one, and only one way (or at least it’s a necessary if not sufficient condition) to deal with this: Legalize drugs.
School Shooter Drills
Kids are terrorized pointlessly about lots of things, including climate. Or maybe the point is just to be submissive to the state.
Off The Air
I flew into Detroit Friday evening, then drove up to Grayling in northern MI, stopping in Mount Pleasant to visit a niece who attends Central Michigan University. I got into my motel about 11 AM.
Then, yesterday morning, I make a one-hour drive to Traverse City, where I attended a Michigan Space Symposium. The founder of U.S. Robotics, who is from there, has been incubating space companies and encouraging them to set up shop there, in the hopes of making the state more prominent in the space industry. He has a 27,000 square-foot mansion on the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay, at which he hosted attendees Wednesday night, so I unfortunately was unable to attend. The hope is that they may even have a spaceport in the state.
It was an interesting line up, including retired General David Buck, formerly of Patrick AFB and the Cape, and retired General Wayne Monteith , the new head of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. It was my first opportunity to meet him. The theme of the day was the need for both innovation, and acceptance of failure. I gave both a copy of the book.
There were also several people I knew there (some of them also from Michigan), including Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane, and Jim Ransom, with whom I had worked at Aerospace almost forty years ago, who is a Traverse City native, and has recently retired there.
I drove back down to the Flint area after the event, and today I’m attending a nephew’s high-school graduation in Linden, a small town south of there. Then off to DC tomorrow.
A New Look At History
Color footage of D-Day and the invasion of Europe has been discovered. Seeing it in color really does “color” our perception of that era.
And Bill Whittle has a video making the same point.
Silent Spring
After fifty-seven years, Rachel Carson’s book is not aging well. It will always have its defenders, though.
[Not sure why headline says “at 40.”]
[Thursday-morning update]
OK, it’s because the article is from seventeen years ago. Unlike Carson’s book, though, it does still hold up.
Mueller’s Press Conference
He took no questions because there was a key question he didn’t want to answer.
I don’t want to hear one more word about what a “Boy Scout” Bob Mueller is.
And a reminder that the Clintons were not “exonerated” by the Whitewater report, either. There was abundant evidence of crimes, including obstruction of justice, but not sufficient to provide high confidence of a conviction, in which it would take just a single juror to hang the jury (as happened with Susan McDougal when Starr prosecuted her).
[Update at noon]
“Not exonerated” isn’t, and shouldn’t be the legal standard for this country:
That’s not how it works in America. Investigators are supposed to look for evidence that a crime was committed, and, if they don’t find enough to contend that a crime was a committed, they are supposed to say “We didn’t find enough to contend that a crime was committed.” They are not supposed to look for evidence that a crime was not committed and then say, “We couldn’t find evidence of innocence.”
I’m confident that Mark Levin will be incandescent in his rant about this on the radio later.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mueller inadvertently confirms that Barr didn’t misrepresent his report.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Mueller’s presser proves that this was nothing but a political hit job.
[Thursday-morning update]
Mueller’s damage-control concert:
If you do not understand that the Justice Department is a filthy cesspool of corrupt garbage bureaucrats, you should understand now. Before I get into the Mueller circus yesterday, I want to point out that Mueller and his ilk are running the criminal justice system in this country. Currently, they are going after high-profile targets like Trump and the Trump operation, so there is public interest and press coverage. But imagine what kinds of things they do sotto voce to regular Joes and Janes. I just read Sidney Powell’s book, Licensed to Lie about the corruption at the DoJ and it is horrifying. I highly recommend reading it because you will see that the Trump treatment was just business as usual. Here’s the real story, in my opinion, with Mueller’s press conference: Mueller doesn’t want to be called by Nadler to testify before the House Judiciary because he doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath. Nadler doesn’t want to call Mueller because he doesn’t want Mueller answering questions that undermine the Democrats’ plan to keep a cloud of suspicion floating over Trump until 2020. Mueller and Nadler are communicating because Nadler was pretending to negotiate a Mueller appearance before his committee. Basically, Nadler was like, “I need you to give me something if you don’t want to be called to testify.” And of course, Mueller was more than happy to hold a press conference where he could recapture his rightful status on all those prayer candles after failing to seal the deal against Trump with his report. I should mention that the Senate Republicans can call Mueller to testify, but I have little faith they will do that because they are sad, weak little men.
I wish that Liz would tell us what she really thinks.
Europa
The IG has released its report. Bob Zimmerman is (as usual) unimpressed with our betters in Washington.
Culberson losing his seat may have been the death knell for this mission, at least as it has been planned so far. I think Enceladus is more interesting, anyway, at least from the standpoint of looking for life. I hope that Yuri Milner follows through on that.
Galaxy’s Edge
I’m not sure I’m sufficiently into Star Wars to want to engage in audience participation.
Ben Shapiro
Who knew that an orthodox Jew was encouraging Nazis to bomb synagogues?
LEO Commercialization
NASA has released the study summaries.