This Thursday, at 1 pm CST, which is of course 2 pm for the East Coast.

NASA has scheduled a press conference in Washington Thursday to discuss an astrobiology finding that will affect the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

WikiLeaks is reporting that Hillary Clinton already described the newly-discovered space protein in unflattering terms and also directed NASA employees to look into its pornography rental history.

Thanks to Circa.

NASA Now In The Viral Marketing Business? Sharkman posted this trailer for a Marines vs. Alien Invader movie due out in March.

Pretty good effects. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (156)
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Yet another blue ribbon panel that accomplishes nothing.

Well, it accomplished what it was intended to -- to give Obama six months (or whatever) of free time during which he could duck questions on an important issue by saying "Let the panel do its work." That's the point of all these commissions. To buy time, to avoid the decisions they're supposedly their to make.

To force a vote in Congress, 14 of the 18 members of the commission (containing six former members of Congress and twelve serving members) would have to vote in favor of one plan, and no one expects that to happen.

On FoxNews Sunday this week, Bill Kristol was more sanguine, happy that the commission was at least producing some ideas that were receiving some consideration and debate, surprised that a former Clinton official (not part of this commission) proposed a major change to Medicare that was similar to Paul Ryan's approach. (Rivkin's big idea was to reform Medicare from defined-contribution to defined-benefit, which is a key change to protect its solvency.)

I don't know how similar that is to Ryan's idea, apart from that defined-benefit thing, as Ryan is proposing that each Medicare recipient be given an $11,000 (per year) voucher to purchase private insurance. Rivkin's plan would, I imagine, keep Medicare a government program. But Kristol was taking his victories where he could find them.

It's something of a victory that Obama is proposing a federal pay freeze. What we need is a federal pay cut (5% for starters) and a hiring freeze combined with workforce reduction, but Obama was at least spurred to move in our direction. But what he proposes is plainly inadequate.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 AM | Comments (111)
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As Joe Biden would say, this is a "big effing deal".

Scientists are reporting early success at transforming one kind of specialized cell into another, a feat of biological alchemy that doctors may someday perform inside a patientÂ’s body to restore health...

...ThatÂ’s a futuristic idea, but researchers are enthusiastic about the potential for the new direct-conversion approach.

When you can work directly with an afflicted individual's cells and DNA to get a result, all the political drama on both sides is reduced to arguments about as abstract/meaningless to Joe SixPack as those positing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:43 AM | Comments (170)
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Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. District Court judge granted a preliminary injunction that enjoins the State of Oklahoma from certifying the election results in State Question 755, the "Save Our State Amendment." SQ 755 would ban Oklahoma courts from using international or Sharia law in making decisions. It passed with 70% of the vote.

From the decision (PDF):

This order addresses issues that go to the very foundation of our country, our Constitution, and particularly, the Bill of Rights. Throughout the course of our country’s history, the will of the “majority” has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals, an occurrence which our founders foresaw and provided for through the Bill of Rights. As the United States Supreme Court has stated:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. OneÂ’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943).

[...]

Having carefully reviewed the briefs on this issue, and having heard the evidence and arguments presented at the hearing, the Court finds that entry of a preliminary injunction enjoining defendants from certifying the election results for State Question 755 would not be adverse to the public interest. While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out, for the reasons set forth above, the Court finds that the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individualÂ’s constitutional rights.

The preliminary injunction will be in force until the judge rules on the merits of the lawsuit, but having already analyzed the constitutional issues, I don't suppose that will take too long and we know which way it will shake out.

My own view is that the judge's order seriously misconstrues the law of standing, which requires a litigant to have a sufficient injury which can be redressed by the court. The court essentially bought the CAIR plaintiff's argument that the Oklahoma amendment would interfere with his free exercise of religion. She credited, among other dubious ideas, the plaintiff's testimony that Sharia law is not law, but rather a religious practice.

As I mentioned on the Pat Campbell Radio Show, if it were true that Sharia law is a religious practice and not law then the First and Fourteenth Amendments would already prevent Oklahoma courts (and all other state courts) from using it. The plaintiff's argument contradicts what he claims is a goal of his lawsuit: to have his will probated under Sharia law. Nevertheless, Judge Miles-LaGrange ate it up.

Expect the Tenth Circuit to spit this one back.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:32 AM | Comments (50)
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What do you mean THEY cut the power? How can they cut the power, man?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:05 AM | Comments (56)
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Remembering Leslie Nielsen and Police Squad

After Airplane! but before the Naked Gun movies Nielsen starred in a short-lived Abrahams/Zucker TV series called Police Squad. It only ran for 6 episodes in 1982 before being cancelled but it was so popular on videotape that it was eventually made into the Naked Gun movies. So here's a little taste of what was one of the funniest, shortest TV series ever.

And in case you were wondering how Nielsen got cast in Airplane! in the first place, well this is how:

According to Hollywood legend, the Zucker brothers and Abrams wanted Nielsen for Airplane!, but wondered if he would take the job--skewering the type of character that had been his bread-and-butter for decades. They invited him to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood; a farting contest ensued and the producers knew they had their man.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:19 PM | Comments (610)
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Omri Ceren over at Big Peace points out that one of the revelations from Wikileaks is confirmation on how badly Obama and his advisers misunderstood the actual views of Arab leaders.

It's been a long tradition among the Arab countries to publicly blame all of their ills on Israel and the unresolved Palestinian-Jewish conflict. Of course this is mostly propaganda aimed at deflecting their own people's anger away from their repressive governments - in private the Arab rulers are far more concerned about the Iranian threat than Israel or the conditions of the benighted Palestinian people.

And the Arab leaders like Saudi ArabiaÂ’s King Abdullah just assumed that the Obama administration was sophisticated enough to understand that this was all public posturing purely for domestic consumption. But when Obama came visiting in June 2009 on his way to give his Cairo speech, they found out how wrong they were. And the trip was something of a disaster:

Under this theory King Abdullah expected to talk about militarily confronting Iran, and he couldn’t believe it when Obama kept reciting bromides about the earth-shattering importance of the Israeli/Arab conflict and his enthusiasm for solving it. That was a regular public topic between the two – Obama’s first talk with Abdullah focused on Gaza and the President later emphasized his abiding support for Saudi Arabia’s “Israel Has To Commit Suicide” plan – but the King kind of thought he was dealing with a serious person who could separate spectacle from policy. Instead he got the equivalent of an International Relations graduate student enamored with pseudo-sophisticated “insights” he’d gleaned from Arab media outlets. Ergo, meltdown.

So not only did Obama and his vaunted middle east policy experts get this wrong, but they seem to have learned nothing from this brush with reality since then. What's worse than having a naive, foolish view of the world? Well how about having a naive, foolish view of the world and then thanks to Wikileaks having it made public for all to see. Even the hapless Jimmy Carter didn't have to deal with that.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 02:33 PM | Comments (195)
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In May 2009, rumors surfaced that President Obama was planning to leave several European countries exposed to Russian ambition if Russia would agree to help keep nukes out of Iran.

Rumors confirmed: according to the Wikileaks cables, Obama proposed a trade -- he would cancel the Polish missile shield if Russia would support sanctions for Iran.

The whistle blowing web site, publishing diplomatic cables and other documents via The New York Times, the Guardian (UK) and other media outlets, show that George BushÂ’s anti-missile shield plan to station 10 interceptor rockets in Poland not far from the Kaliningrad (Russia) border and a radar system in the Czech Republic was seen as an obstacle by Washington in getting tougher sanctions against IranÂ’s nuclear ambitions.

The diplomatic cables show that the US believes that Iran has already received missiles from North Korea which could threaten western Europe.

The missile shield was officially canceled in September 2009. Shortly thereafter President Obama met with President Medvedev who came out of the meeting conceding "in some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

A diplomatic victory for Obama? Not remotely. Less than a month later, Russia reversed itself and declared that "[t]hreats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive." After the US and the EU imposed tough penalties on Iran in September of this year, Russia immediately condemned the sanctions regime and started finding ways to undermine it.

Obama sold out our allies to Russia for a bill of goods.

Thanks to Ben.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:56 PM | Comments (172)
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Here's what the NYT had to say during ClimateGate:

“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.” Andrew Revkin, Environment Editor, New York Times Nov 20, 2009.

That sentence almost invents new punctuation used to denote sniffing and chin-elevating.

Here's what they say today:

“The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.” New York Times editorial 29/11/2010

What a difference an ideology makes.

James Darymple calls this ideological bias. I'm thinking that's not a strong enough term. That's kind of a so-what sort of thing. Everyone's ideologically biased.

The Times is ideologically biased, for starters. But what they really are -- and all the media is -- is dishonest in service of leftist ideology.

I realize that's what we generally mean when we say "bias," but maybe we should start spelling it out for those who haven't gotten the message. Bias sounds like a penny-ante charge. Dishonesty doesn't, and we need to make clear what the charges against the MFM are.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (117)
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Awww....the poor non-defense federal employees aren't going to get their scheduled raises for two years. My heart bleeds.

Bowing to growing budget concerns and months of Republican political pressure on federal pay and benefits, President Obama today announced he would stop pay increases for most of the two million people who work for the federal government.

The freeze applies to all Executive Branch workers -- including civilian employees of the Defense Department, but does not apply to military personnel, government contractors, postal workers, members of Congress, Congressional staffers, or federal court judges and workers.

"Getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifices and that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government," Obama said in a speech Monday afternoon explaining the decision. He added, "I did not reach this decision easily, this is not a line item on a federal ledger, these are people's lives."

The decision will save about 30 Billion over the next 5 years.

Here's my thought...not good enough. Not even close.

Obama has run up the size of the federal workforce to historic levels. There are now more federal employees making more than $150,000/year than ever before and all we are doing is eliminating some raises?

That's not even a good start.

Incoming Speaker Boehner says okay but now let's do something more important.

“I welcome President Obama’s announcement, and hope he will build on it by embracing much-needed steps to reduce both the size and the cost of government, including the net federal hiring freeze Republicans propose in our Pledge to America. Without a hiring freeze, a pay freeze won’t do much to rein in a federal bureaucracy that added hundreds of thousands of employees to its payroll over the last two years while the private sector shed millions of jobs.

“Today’s action is a clear indication that the Pledge to America, which lays out concrete steps to cut spending and reduce the size of government, is the right plan to address the people’s priorities. Republicans and Democrats don’t have to wait until January to cut spending and stop all the tax hikes. We can – and should – start right now.”

Again...no good enough. Start firing people. Start closing down programs, offices and whole agencies. Yes, even then, it's a drop in the ocean without entitlement reform. But here's my thing...I'm not as concerned about balancing the budget as an end. To me it's about shrinking the reach and influence of government in and over our lives. It might be possible to devise some strategy to balance the budget and save entitlements at their current levels or near there and that would be a disaster.. A balanced budget (at a much lower percentage of GDP) is simply a pleasant by-product of getting the government back in the box it belongs in. Do that and let free people take care of their own business. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:42 AM | Comments (98)
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