A Tenth Planet, and a Martian Lake

Two big stories in space tonight.
First, a beautiful picture of frozen water in a Martian crater. What a wonderful resource for future colonists. Not quite warm enough for swimming, but a great source of water, fuel, and oxygen.

Also, a big story. This discovery of a new planet at least one and a half times the size of Pluto renews the debate about defining exactly what a planet really is. How many more like this are there out there?


One of the best sites around for all the late breaking info on both of these stories is Bad Astronomy. The webhost is actually a very good astronomer, but he goes after all the fun, but nutty bad astronomy floating around the internet.

One more thing: While looking for Bad Astronomy, I came across Bad Astronomer, a fascinating look at the death of the Orion Project, one of the great "might have beens" in manned space flight.

Air America-gate

My oh my. If you haven't heard this story, you will.

It begins with former Air America CEO Evan Cohen, who resigned last year from the network after some of its more infamous early debacles. You might remember Cohen was a key part of an HBO documentary, detailing its first days.

Cohen also happened to serve on Gloria Wise's board and convinced club leader and community activist Charles Rosen to "invest" at least $480,000 in the upstart political talk network.

Rosen has recently resigned from the board, according to New York Nonprofit Press.

The money, intended as a loan to be repaid with interest, was agreed to by Rosen after being sold on the idea of stretching their grant money further, according to one account. Part of the deal included promotional consideration of Gloria Wise's activities on Air America's programs.

Did that ever occur? If so, what was the benefit to Gloria Wise?

More importantly, has Air America paid back any of the money to date?

There are many more questions than answers at this point, but New York City's Department Of Investigation (DOI) is leading the effort to find out where the money went. Will indictments follow?

So far, the activity programs have been saved as other non-profit agencies scrambled to pick up the slack, while investigators look at Gloria Wise's records.

Cohen may be long-gone from Air America, but who else still at the network might have knowledge of this "investment"?

Has there been a media cover-up? In the Radio Equalizer's view, yes.

This has all the makings of a huge blogstorm. Hugh Hewitt is all over it, as is Michelle Malkin.
But the blogger who broke the story is Brian Maloney, at The Radio Equalizer. We'll see if the MSM jumps on this one. I wonder if it would get any coverage if these allegations were made about, oh, say, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity? I'm thinking you would have heard the story by now if it had.

And here's an editorial from the Washington Times explaining all this.

The Muslim World is on Fire

If you've not read this peice, or heard it on talk radio, yet, read it now. I first heard it on The Laura Ingrahm show early this morning. Let's pray it's true:

DUBAI The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both of them on.

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

He then lists the bombings in Iraq, in London, in Madrid, in Palestine. And the supposed causes?:

The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq.

Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.

And the consequences for the Islamo-Fascists:

Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that they will force the US Army and British troops out of Iraq by killing hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman.

The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students, with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their countries to preach against those countries under the guise of political refugees.

It looks like the jig is up:

Well, that is all over now. Time has become for the big Western vengeance.

Visas for Arab and Muslim young men will be impossible to get for the United States and Western Europe. Those working there will be expelled if they are illegal, and harassed even if their papers are in order.

Airlines will have to right to refuse boarding to passengers if their names even resemble names on a prohibited list on all flights heading to Europe and the United States.

What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed.

I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.

In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity.

Unless the mythical "moderate" muslims take a firm, and vocal, stand, Mr. Ibrahim's editorial will stand as a prophetic standard in the current war. A powerful statement indeed.

Why We Fight: Tony Blair

There has been no better explanation of the enemy we fight, and what is at stake than Tony Blair's speech on 7/16/05. Here is the text of that speech, in full:

The greatest danger is that we fail to face up to the nature of the threat we are dealing with. What we witnessed in London last Thursday week was not an aberrant act.

It was not random. It was not a product of particular local circumstances in West Yorkshire.

Senseless though any such horrible murder is, it was not without sense for its organisers. It had a purpose. It was done according to a plan. It was meant.

What we are confronting here is an evil ideology.

It is not a clash of civilisations - all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it.

This is the battle that must be won, a battle not just about the terrorist methods but their views. Not just their barbaric acts, but their barbaric ideas. Not only what they do but what they think and the thinking they would impose on others.

Religious ideology

This ideology and the violence that is inherent in it did not start a few years ago in response to a particular policy. Over the past 12 years, Al-Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26 countries, killed thousands of people, many of them Muslims.

They have networks in virtually every major country and thousands of fellow travellers. They are well-financed. Look at their websites.

They aren't unsophisticated in their propaganda. They recruit however and whoever they can and with success.

Neither is it true that they have no demands. They do. It is just that no sane person would negotiate on them.

This is a religious ideology... Those who kill in its name believe genuinely that in doing it, they do God's work; they go to paradise.

They demand the elimination of Israel; the withdrawal of all Westerners from Muslim countries, irrespective of the wishes of people and government; the establishment of effectively Taleban states and Sharia law in the Arab world en route to one caliphate of all Muslim nations.

We don't have to wonder what type of country those states would be. Afghanistan was such a state. Girls put out of school.

Women denied even rudimentary rights. People living in abject poverty and oppression. All of it justified by reference to religious faith.

The 20th century showed how powerful political ideologies could be. This is a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa, are from Christianity. But do not let us underestimate it or dismiss it.

Those who kill in its name believe genuinely that in doing it, they do God's work; they go to paradise.

'Legitimate targets'

From the mid 1990s onwards, statements from Al-Qaeda, gave very clear expression to this ideology: "Every Muslim, the minute he can start differentiating, carries hatred towards the Americans, Jews and Christians. This is part of our ideology. The creation of Israel is a crime and it has to be erased.

"You should know that targeting Americans and Jews and killing them anywhere you find them on the earth is one of the greatest duties and one of the best acts of piety you can offer to God Almighty. Just as great is their hatred for so-called apostate governments in Muslim countries. This is why mainstream Muslims are also regarded as legitimate targets".

At last year's (Labour) party conference, I talked about this ideology in these terms.

Its roots are not superficial, but deep, in the madrassas of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life.

This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion.

The extremist propaganda is cleverly aimed at their target audience. It plays on our tolerance and good nature.

It exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world, as if it is our behaviour that should change, that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil, that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs. This is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order.

Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to.

And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy. But we should lay bare the almost-devilish logic behind such manipulation.

'Callous indifference'

If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?

If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first ever election? If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi government?

What was September 11, 2001 the reprisal for? Why even after the first Madrid bomb (in March 2004) and the election of a new Spanish government, were they planning another atrocity when caught?

In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.

Why if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them, do they kill so many with such callous indifference?

We must pull this up by its roots. Within Britain, we must join up with our Muslims community to take on the extremists. Worldwide, we should confront it everywhere it exists.

Next week I and other party leaders will meet key members of the Muslim community. Out of it I hope we can get agreed action to take this common fight forward. I want also to work with other nations to promote the true face of Islam worldwide.

Round the world, there are conferences already being held, numerous inter-faith dialogues in place but we need to bring all of these activities together and give them focus.

Defeating the threat

We must be clear about how we win this struggle. We should take what security measures we can. But let us not kid ourselves.

In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.

That means not just arguing against their terrorism, but their politics and their perversion of religious faith. It means exposing as the rubbish it is, the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam.

It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance and respect for others. It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong.

The idea that elected governments are the preserve of those of any other faith or culture is insulting and wrong. Muslims believe in democracy just as much as any other faith and, given the chance, show it.

We must step up the urgency of our efforts. Here and abroad, the times the terrorists have succeeded are all too well known.

Less known are the times they have been foiled. The human life destroyed we can see. The billions of dollars every nation now spends is huge and growing. And they kill without limit.

They murdered over 50 innocent people (in London) last week. But it could have been over 500. And had it been, they would have rejoiced.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values."

Education Reform is Paying Off

Funny how this has been missed in the midst of searching for The Leak:

For years, nothing helped. America's children weren't reading as well as they should. An achievement gap showed black and Latino students trailing behind their white counterparts in reading and math. Educators and politicians agreed Something Must Be Done, but they made halting progress. Until now.

This month, the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- also known as the national report card -- released good news on long-term educational trends in America. Reading competency for 9-year-olds has reached its highest level since NAEP began measuring progress in 1971.

What is more, the achievement gap is narrowing. The gap between black and white 9-year-olds tested for reading was 44 points in 1971 to 26 points in 2004, while the gap between white and Latino students narrowed from 34 points in 1975 to 21 points in 2004. Half the gap-narrowing has occurred since 1999.

Of course, educrats are scrambling to make sure that no credit goes to President Bush or his No Child Left Behind program. The American Federation of Teachers issued a statement through an official, who noted that efforts that led to the higher scores predate the Bush presidency.

The AFT is right. The reforms that boosted scores predate the Bush presidency

Yes, the reforms started before Bush. But who has fought him every step of the way to keep the reforms, and the progress, going?

Bush packaged his approach under his promise to fight "the soft bigotry of low expectations." For years, educators blamed parents, demographics, money -- you name it -- for poor student performance.

Bush didn't want to hear the excuses -- and his Texas swagger paid off. As Hoover Institution fellow and sometime Bush adviser Bill Evers noted, "There's no doubt that high expectations and trying to hold the system accountable from top to the bottom is having an overall positive effect."

And so the educrats are left with weak criticisms. They complain that No Child Left Behind is underfunded -- even as Bush budgets money for the Department of Education. They argue that students have no motivation to apply themselves when they take tests -- and still the NAEP numbers are up. They note that NAEP high-school scores are flat without acknowledging that they opposed reforms that are helping more of today's 9-year-olds read.

And, they are opposing those reforms being applied to high schools. Go figure.

Mitt Romney on Abortion

This is a must read editorial from the Governor of Massachusetts, and a likely Republican Presidential candidate. He presents his views with compassion, and a depth not often found on either side of the abortion divide.

Houston, We (Still) Have a Problem

It was just like old times. All the networks left the game shows for the launch. Even Oprah and Dr. Phil were preempted for the Return to Flight. And the launch was a thing of beauty.

Until the tile came off. Live. On International television. And the nearest tow truck is still in the hangar. Uh-oh.

NASA is working with technology from the '70's. Does anybody have anything left in their house from the '70's? I may have an old Superman comic book stashed away from that period, old and fading, crumpled around the edges, but that's about it.

That comic book and the Shuttle program have alot in common. Both are falling apart, and being maintained with tape and chewing gum. The difference is my comic book is stashed in a closet. The Shuttle is on TV, with men and women aboard her. Men and women who may be younger than the craft they are flying.

It's time to start over. It's time to jettison the worn out bureaucracy of NASA, and invest our space dollars where they can be effective. The X-Prize gave us a look at the future of space flight. Private enterprise can do it better, cheaper, and safer. An influx of funds from the Federal Government could jump start the private space industry with technology from this century. It would also get us to the Moon, and Mars much faster than a plodding NASA ever could.

It's time to reach for the stars by looking forward, instead of back to a bloated government entity long past it's glory days. It's time for private enterprise to take the lead in manned space flight. It's the best way to fulfill the dream so many of us have held dear for so long.

Update: 5:00pm
It looks like the debris did not hit the shuttle. That's good news, but doesn't change the fact that 40 years into manned space flight, we are still parked in low Earth orbit making sure 30 year old technology hasn't led to another disaster. A far cry from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 dream.

Update: 7:30 pm

All Shuttle flights have been grounded until further notice. The peice of foam could have caused the same catastrophe as Columbia. It keeps getting worse for NASA.

On a more positive note is this.

British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, has teamed up with aerospace designer, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company. The new firm will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft.Called The Spaceship Company, the new entity will manufacture launch aircraft, various spacecraft and support equipment and market those products to spaceliner operators. Clients include launch customer, Virgin Galactic—formed by Branson to handle space tourist flights.The Spaceship Company is jointly owned by Branson’s Virgin Group and Scaled Composites of Mojave, California. Scaled will be contracted for research and development testing and certification of a 9-person SpaceShipTwo design, and a White Knight Two (WK2) mothership to be called Eve. Rutan will head up the technical development team for the SS2/WK2 combination.

Space flight is coming. Just not the way NASA had planned.

Standing on the Grassy Knoll

In case you haven't heard this story:

On Saturday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette broke the story about Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Catherine Baker Knoll's uninvited attendance at the July 19 funeral of Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, who was killed in Iraq on July 10. According to the paper, Knoll passed out business cards during communion, and told a grieving relative, "I want you to know our government is against this war."

Good Lord. And here's the rest:

Reading the story carefully, what stands out to me is this: the Light Governor really thought she was saying something comforting.

That's more shockingly revealing, in a way, about how the liberals just don't get it than supposing she was being a mean-spirited bitch of the Michael Moore genre. Moore, who as columnist Jack Kelly reminds us in a column on Knoll's gaffe, disgracefully used footage from the funeral of an Air Force officer in Fahrenheit 9-11, doesn't give a rat's necktie who he offends and makes a (damned good) living off being a political shock jock.

Knoll, on the other hand, is just a wimpy liberal sap. She may have outstanding academic credentials and must have come from something like a normal background, having been the wife of a postmaster (since deceased), but she's been so sucked in by left-wing propaganda that she imagines any family which has lost a loved one in the Iraqi War would be comforted to know that "our government is against this war."

Okay, passing out your buisness card is tacky. Telling a grieving family that our government is against this war is just plain stupid. But pretty typical of someone immersed in the rhetoric of the left. She assumes everyone thinks like her and Michael Moore. She couldn't be more wrong.

An End and a Beginning:

The New Oklahoma Democrat is no more. His final post is worth reading for many reasons, not least for what it says about the current Democrat Party. Joe's leaving bodes ill for Dean, Hillary, and friends.

The Democrat's loss is our gain, as his new site, The Independent Liberal will become a must read blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Good luck with the site, Joe!

Fault Lines: Robert's Religious Faith

Big 'ole hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for this one. Among other things, this New York Times story catches Senator Dick (Durbin) in a big time lie.

An opinion-page article in The Los Angeles Times on Monday by Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, included an account of Mr. Durbin's question. Professor Turley cited unnamed sources saying that Judge Roberts had told Mr. Durbin he would recuse himself from cases involving abortion, the death penalty or other subjects where Catholic teaching and civil law can clash.

A spokesman for Mr. Durbin and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who spoke to Judge Roberts on Monday about the meeting, said Professor Turley's account of a recusal statement was inaccurate.

But in an interview last night, Professor Turley said Mr. Durbin himself had described the conversation to him on Sunday morning, including the statement about recusal.

Whatever the conversation in the senator's office on Friday, Mr. Durbin's question hit the fault line between liberal anxiety about theocratic intolerance and conservative fears about hostility to religion.

I agree with Hugh. Judge Roberts would do well to have a witness present during any conversations with Democrats over the next few months, especially with Senator Dick.

Shoot to Kill: Makes Sense to Me

A successful attack, over 50 dead
A second attack, only foiled through the ineptness of the terrorists.
Then this:

When it was obvious he was getting off at Stockwell Tube station, the team on the bus alerted a three-man team of marksmen to move in. The decision was taken at Scotland Yard that he must not be allowed to get to the platform.

The marksmen were told: "If you think he has explosives under his coat and he fails to heed shouted warnings, then you must shoot to kill." As the three plainclothes officers closed in, they say they screamed their first warning that they were armed police. They say he turned, ran into the station concourse, vaulted the ticket barriers and reached a waiting train before they could catch him. They shot him five times in the head when they believed he was trying to trigger a bomb.

His cousin, Alex Alves, claims Mr de Menezes was "playing around with a friend in a game of chase outside the station".

The police insist he was alone during the entire journey.

Sorry. You don't play "chase" in a zippered padded jacket on a summer day in a train station the day after the second terrorist attack, and then wonder why the police shoot you. A tragedy? Yes. Understandable? Most certainly.

A Whimper, Not a Bang: Michael Barone

Michael Barone on the Summer stories:

This summer, one big story is replaced by another -- the London bombings
July 7, the speculation that Karl Rove illegally named a covert CIA agent, the
nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, more London bombings last week.
But beneath the hubbub, we can see the playing out of another, less reported
story: the collapse of the attempts by liberal Democrats and their sympathizers
in the mainstream media -- The New York Times, etc., etc. -- to delegitimize yet
another Republican administration.

The desperate attempts, and ultimate failure of the Left, despite having the MSM on its side, to bring down the Bush Administration during wartime may well be one of the big stories of this decade.

A Reason to Be Suspicious of Roberts: Bobby Byrd Supports Him

But then again, it may just be that Senator Byrd may actually face competition for his seat for the first time in a century.

Free Serif Software

So, do you want a nifty drawing program, or maybe a photo editing program, but don't have four or five hundred dollars just laying around to spend on photoshop? If so, take a look at this site. The drawing software is really quite good, as is the photo editing software. And it's all free.

Well, you do have to give them an email address, but other than that, you can't beat it. I've not played around with the publishing or the website software, but if it's anything close to the drawing programs, it'll do the job. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Is It Just Me...

or has anybody noticed the worldwide increase of the terrorists the past few weeks? I'm hoping this isn't just the prelude to what's coming here in the good 'ole United States.

Rick Santorum: A Great Senator

Good look at what Rick Santorum said, and why he said it.
Sen. Santorum is the latest target for the hysterical left, and even the not so hysterical left.

As for a Moral Impact Statement to determine the extent of damage such a fundamental change would cause: none. The court in Massachusetts ordered no studies or hearings. It simply, by undemocratic, authoritarian brute force, told the people of Massachusetts that marriage as we all know it is over. In fact, it declared that anyone who holds to the traditional definition of marriage is “irrational,” since there is no “rational basis” for the traditional view.

And what do the village elders in Congress today say to all of this? What do the liberals who have never met an issue that didn’t need “solving” by legislation say about the role of Congress? They say, “It’s a state issue: they can handle it.” Or they say, “It’s a judicial issue: they can handle it.” Let me translate: “We can’t come out in favor of same-sex marriage since it is too unpopular. So let’s let the unelected judges on the state and eventually federal courts do the dirty work for us.” The fact is, I could substitute the words “in the 1960s” for the word “today” in the first sentence, and the word “abortion” for the words “same-sex marriage” in the previous sentence, and you now see the strategy laid bare. This calculated plan is undemocratic, it’s an abuse of power, it savages the moral ecosystem in this country — and it worked once and is working again.

The good news is that while it is rare, Supreme Court decisions are sometimes overturned. We are now only a little more than thirty years on from Roe v. Wade. But it took more than sixty years for the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson to be overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. It took thirty years for the ruling in Lochner v. New York to be overturned. It can be done. Just like the health of the Great Lakes and the rivers of Ohio returned, so too, I believe, can our moral ecosystem right itself. All we need is leadership that understands the gravity of the problem and is determined to do something about it. And that is why disputes over nominations for federal judgeships will continue to be among the most bitterly contested matters in the U.S. Senate.

Hopefully the people of Pennsylvania will remember what they have in Senator Santorum, and send him back to the Senate in 2008.

Air America Returns to Chicago...Sort of

Apparently the bills are paid up, and AirAmerica has returned to the Chicago market at WCPT 850 AM. Actually, the station is in Crystal Lake, 50 miles east of Chicago, and they only broadcast in the daytime. They still haven't found the answer to the Right's hold on talk radio, but they're trying.

Now, How Can You Be Against a Guy With Kids Like This?

Here you are, being introduced in Prime Time by The President, and your kid is acting like this?!?!?

Hard for the Wacko Left to paint him as Darth Vader with kids like this...

An Analysis of Foreign Policy

Required reading from Charles Krauthammer. I'm thinking this will not be to The Oklahoma Democrat's liking...

Looks Like Germans Have Had Enough of the Left

Good for them. It would appear Gerhard Schroeder's leftist, anti-Americanism will soon come to an end in Germany. I'm thinking a part of this is continued fallout from the death of the European Union.