Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, July 2007

1. Scaled Composites. Three people were killed and three others seriously hurt in an explosion at a test rig at Scaled Composites last Thursday. Scaled Composites is Burt Rutan’s company that produced the first privately funded manned, reusable spacecraft. SpaceShipOne won the X-Prize in 2004. The explosion took place during a cold flow propulsion system test using nitrous oxide (laughing gas). We should pray for them, their survivors and their friends and co-workers. Aviation is a dangerous business. Most of the current aerospace systems have been painstakingly brought to the current level of operational safety over a century of accidents, test failures, explosions, crashes and other “brute force” ends to development and operational flights and experiments. The Air Force lost nearly 60 men developing inflght refueling in the late 1950s. Most of the notes, warnings and cautions in flight manuals are written in blood. Manned spaceflight is an offshoot of aviation, and we will purchase our safety and experience in space with additional lives. Our forefathers thought it was worth the cost to fly. There are enough of us today that believe it is worth the cost to go into space on a permanent basis that I believe it will happen. This was the first big accident in NewSpace. It won’t be the last. It is the cost of creating something new. And I believe we are up to the task at hand as long as the lawyers, politicians and regulators stay sufficiently far out of the way.

2. Belugas. The National Marine Fisheries Service st arted public hearings on whether or not to list Cook Inlet Belugas as an endangered species (subspecies). According to the feds and the Usual Suspects in the environmental community up here, the numbers of Belugas in Cook Inlet have been decreasing and it is all the fault of human activity in the inlet. They haven’t quite got around to blaming it entirely on President Bush, but I expect that’s next. Belugas are small white whales that are plentiful in the northern waters. There has been a population of around 1,000 in Cook Inlet for decades. Over the last decade or so, that population has decreased. If you listen to the feds, they now number just under 400 animals. If you listen to the local native whale hunters, the feds are deliberately undercounting the whales as a vehicle to impose more environmental controls in Cook Inlet. The whalers also point to the commercial salmon fleet operating in Cook Inlet as a reason whale numbers are decreasing. Greens, who have filed the necessary complaints to bring this entire mess into the public process, blame oil platforms in Cook Inlet, the Port of Anchorage, boats, and everything manmade going on in the Inlet over the years. Cook Inlet is a pretty nasty body of water. It is glacially fed and full of gray, cold, nasty, silty water. Visibility through the water is measured at best in inches. The west side of Cook Inlet is populated by a number of volcanoes that erupt on a regular basis, dumping millions of metric tons of ash, acids, and other volcanic chemicals into the Inlet. The last eruption was Mount Augustine in 2006, which dumped ash, sulfuric acid and other acids into the Inlet over the course of a few months last year. Total volumes of volcanic ejecta are greater that everything we humans can do to the water by several orders of magnitude. There is no correlation between volcanic eruptions and whale sightings the few years following. The only rule of thumb about salmon survivability after eruptions, is old rules of thumb that salmon runs pick up a bit following eruptions. None of this matters to either the feds or the greens. As an aside, there are enough Belugas in the Inlet for Killer Whales to regularly hunt them in Cook Inlet. The greens and the feds are playing the subspecies game with Belugas again. If you draw the line around the mythical habitat or ecosystem for a group of animals that tend to move long distances in search of food, you can systematically wall off much of the surface of the e arth to human activity – which is one of the goals of the greens. I tend to agree with the native whalers on this one, and believe that the food sources have tended to shift a bit due to changes in the temperature and composition of the North Pacific, and the Belugas, like the Stellar Sea Lions, have moved on to follow the migration of their food sources. We plan on fighting the listing as long as humanly possible.

3. ACORN. Investigation into massive voter fraud in Washington State has uncovered the federally funded, union and democrat supported activist group ACORN at the center. ACORN has once again fraudulently registered thousands of new voters that then can be used to request absentee ballots. Addresses usually given coincide with local homeless shelters and abandoned buildings / lots. Names are remarkably creative, with Mary Poppins, Leo Spinks, Dennis Hastert, etc. The complaint was filed by state prosecutors in King County, WA after election canvassers tossed out over 1,700 fraudulent names from the voting roles. ACORN canvassers sat at a local library and filled out registration forms. Given that the currently elected democrat governor of Washington State Christine Gregoire won on the third recount by a mere 130 votes, it appears that once again the democrats and unions using their vehicle, ACORN, have managed to steal yet another close election via voter fraud. ACORN has been implicated in voter fraud in over 14 other states including Missouri ( St. Louis) and Ohio. ACORN is federally supported as an urban activist group. This support must be immediately eliminated. As an aside, voter fraud is at the he art of the firing of the eight Federal Prosecutors by Attorney General Gonzalez last year. The prosecutors were not pursuing voter fraud allegations. Schumer’s assault on Gonzo has a lot more to do with shutting down all Bush Administration interest in voter fraud during the 2008 elections than it does with anything else. The uproar over Gonzalez and the fired attorneys is intended to intimidate the Justice Dep artment into not pursuing voter fraud next year.

4. John Doe. Democrats tried mightily to take care of their friends and supporters among the jihadis during the last couple of weeks by stripping the John Doe provision from the Homeland Security Bill. This provision is intended to give legal immunity for any American that reports suspicious activity by fellow passengers or support personnel on transportation. It is an outgrowth of the Minnesota Imams episode which concerned passengers turned in a group of six loud-mouthed Muslims acting suspiciously in the waiting area and onboard a Northwest Airlines flight late last year. The episode appeared to be a public relations ploy by pro-Hamas Islamist group CAIR to intimidate the airlines and passengers into silence. CAIR and the Imams followed the ejection with a lawsuit against the airline and an unnamed number of John Does – passengers and crew that complained to the local authorities. The lawsuits are intended to intimidate us all into silence so that these Islamist vermin can say and do whatever they want to do as they practice, train and prepare for their next murderous rampage through our airways. Republicans crafted legislation to give people complete immunity from Islamist lawsuits. Democrats apparently are just fine with the lawsuits and Islamist intimidation and managed to strip the provision from the legislation while in conference committee. Word got out and the phones to DC lit up nicely. After a week or so of being beat about the head and shoulders, the democrats relented and allowed the provision to remain. We won yet another victory in congress via lighting up the phone lines – and have given them yet another reason to impose the Fairness Doctrine, as they have once again been outed and corrected by an enraged public.

5. Lebanon. Good news out of Lebanon last week was the final destruction of a 40,000 person infestation by Fatah-Al Islam, an Al Qaida front group masquerading as a refugee camp in Southern Lebanon. The camp had been turned into an operations base for the terrorist organizations. The Lebanese Army has been fighting these vermin for weeks and finally sealed the deal late last week. LGF, Sat.

1. Cigar Tax. One of the basic axioms of modern political life is that when you elect democrats, you get taxes. Latest up to bat is a proposed increase in taxes on cigars from the current nickel per cigar to $10 per cigar. The tax increase is p art of a proposed bill in front of the Senate Finance Committee that will grossly expand a program to provide universal health care insurance for children. This is the latest attempt to install Hillary Care. This time around, they plan on turning a small program intended to cover the very poor into a middle class entitlement, with children of families making up to $89,000 yearly covered. The yearly wedge needed for this new entitlement is an additional $35 to 50 billion. The proposed funding is yet another gouge to smokers via an increase in tobacco taxes from 39 cents to $1. Cigars are merely along for the ride, as they do not constitute a large portion of tobacco sales. The new tax will apply to all cigars larger than cigarette sized and if passed, will destroy cigar sales in the US. After all, it’s for The Children. Captain’s Qu arters, Weds.

2. Plame. A federal judge dismissed the Joe Wilson – Valery Plame lawsuit against VP Cheney, Carl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage, accusing them of invading her privacy via the leak of her employment at the CIA in 2003. Armitage, who actually leaked the name to the media, was added after the initial filing when it became clear that nobody named had anything to do with either Wilson or Plame. The judge dismissed on procedural grounds, noting that administration officials were doing their jobs in response to public criticism of their actions by anti-war critics such as Joe Wilson. This judge believes that if you want to get into the mud and wrestle a bit, you are probably to get some return fire, and get some mud on you. It’s another way of saying that if you don’t want to take return fire, you probably ought not to shoot at someone in public. Big Lizards, Fri.

3. Dubai. Drudge Saturday posted a little item that described the underlying rationale for the proposed Dubai Ports World deal so hysterically killed by democrats, the media and anti-competitive, isolationist Republicans early last year. Remember that the deal was a proposal by Dubai to purchase operations contracts for a number of American ports. Dubai hosts several companies that operate ports worldwide, and apparently do it well. Democrats saw an opening and whipped up a hysterical response, implying that the Bush administration was giving Al Qaida the ability to own and operate all American ports with impunity. Protectionist and isolationist Republicans jumped right onboard and dumped gallons of gasoline upon a brightly burning fire. The Bush administration did not respond well to the hysteria, and Dubai Ports World withdrew its offer. Now comes Matt Drudge last weekend with the little note that the agreement the administration had with Dubai Ports World in support of the purchase agreement allowed the administration to place intelligence operatives at any port facility operated by Dubai Ports World worldwide – an intelligence coup that would have gone a long way toward making us all safer. Democrats, the drive by media, and protectionist Republicans all have worked together to make us less safe and decrease our intelligence capabilities in this war. Democrats even used this as a vehicle to help them retake congress in 2006. Many conservatives in the blogosphere were strongly in opposition to the sale. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Had we stood by our free market principles and defended the deal, it would have gone through and the ports would have been operated a little more efficiently and our intelligence gathering abilities worldwide would have improved a bit. Nice job, guys. Big Lizards, Sat.

4. Al Ameriki. Michael Yon from Iraq reported a significant step forward in the war. Americans are st arting to get tribal status from the Iraqis – which is a very big deal over there. We are st arting to be referred to collectively as the Al Ameriki tribe, which means we have been accepted at the tribal level by Iraqis and their tribal leaders. This also means that we have won the he arts and minds portion of this war, which is 80% of the battle in defeating Al Qaida.

5. Murkowski. Something is going on up here in Alaska. For the last year or so, our entire congressional delegation has been dodging public charges of corruption, insider trading, cronyism, bribery, and other ne’er-do-well activities in our local leftist media. Given that none of these folks are democrats, and that two out of three have been in congress for decades, it sure smells like the democrats and their willing accomplices in the drive-by media are setting the stage for the 2008 and 2010 elections, when they believe there will be two of the three seats in play. We have seen charges that Ted Stevens has benefited financially via close associations with Veco. There was an AP story last week that had our congressman Don young under federal investigation for corruption. Of course the article was printed in the local fishwrapper above the fold on the front page. It also used unnamed federal sources. Last on the list was an accusation that Senator Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) had purchased some land along the Kenai River (primo salmon fishing river south of Anchorage) at a very sweet price via her connections with the seller. The implication was that she had been given a gift by the seller. As it turns out, Murkowski’s husband purchased the property at the most recent tax appraised value. The seller publicly said that he wanted the Murkowski’s as neighbors. Some of the local realtors jumped into the scandal mongering, claiming that the purchase price was way, way below fair market value for the property. Though, their complaints probably have a whole lot more to do with the fact that the transaction was between two people and did not use the services of a realtor. The tax appraised value for the property on the late December purchase date was just over $179,000. The Kenai Borough reassessed the property the following January for nearly $214,000, which is a not uncommon increase in assessed value across south-central Alaska these days. The leftist watchdog groups got involved and one filed an ethics complaint against Murkowski in DC. By weeks’ end Murkowski blinked and announced she was going to return the property to the seller as it was turning into a distraction. From my standpoint, it is really no big deal, but the outcry appears to be far in excess of what you would expect. Murkowski has not been as solidly conservative as I would like. But she does seem to be reasonably honest and honorable. She is also a sm art lady. There is more going on beneath the surface up here than is apparent from casual observation. I fear that the democrats have determined that scandal mongering is their ticket to veto-proof majorities in both houses of congress. That is all well and good, as we will find out in exquisite detail all the ethics and legal problems that conservative candidates and office holders have so we can remove them from office. Unfortunately, the same drive-by media and leftist watchdog and ethics groups that are so interested in cleaning out all corrupt Republicans give their democrat compatriots a complete pass. You need to look no f arther than Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi land deals, or Diane Feinstein steering federal construction contracts to her husband’s companies while on a defense appropriations subcommittee. Throw in “Cold Cash” Jefferson and John Murtha and you quickly get a real long list of dirty democrat politicians who continue to hold office and exercise power.

6. Shell. A federal district court ordered Shell Oil to stop an oil exploration program off the Alaskan North Slope in the Beaufort Sea. The lawsuit was brought by the North Slope Borough, strap-hanging greens, and other Usual Suspects because they were concerned that the exploration program would harm subsistence hunting of whales in the area. Shell plans to drill up to 12 exploratory wells in two lease tracts over the next three years. As usual, the opinion came out of the Ninth Circus which issued a preliminary injunction against Shell Oil and the Federal Minerals Management Service (MMS). The Court set a date of August 12 for a hearing and asked Shell and the MMS to come up with more information to support continuing the exploration program. Note that there are several offshore oil exploration areas in the waters off Prudhoe Bay. A couple of them built artificial islands for well pads that are now producing. The whales don’t seem to mind a lot. It is unfortunate that the North Slope Borough that has profited so greatly from oil exploration over the years now join the obstructionists. ADN, Fri.

1. Carbon Tax. I had the unfortunate circumstance to attend a briefing on the “Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007”, the Bingaman-Specter carbon tax. This legislation is one of the worst examples of inside the Beltway garbage, for it is intended to work the problem of global warming caused by carbon dioxide by imposing a cap and trade regime on anything that emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the next several decades. The bill has Republican support, including that of the Alaska delegation for a couple reasons: First, it is the least awful piece of legislation out there. Barbara Boxer (D, CA) is working on a version that will impose immediate and draconian carbon taxes nationwide. Secondly, the Alaska congressional delegation is going to use the bill to pump a boatload of money into Bush Alaska as the price for their support. Just once, I would like to see someone on the so-called conservative side of the aisle oppose something because it is bad policy, based on the worst sort of junk science rather than support it because it is the least awful and can be used as a vehicle to transfer of boatloads of money from one p art of the country to the other. I asked the briefer afterwards why they didn’t include water vapor as a greenhouse gas, especially as it was responsible for over 95% of the greenhouse effect. He looked horrified at the notion that the democrats would st art regulating water vapor. Why not? Then they can st art regulating argon, oxygen and nitrogen and solve the problem of the atmosphere entirely, looking ultimately foolish by overreaching. Framework is important here, as the Rocket Scientists writing this legislation subscribe to the notion that global warming is an established fact. Interestingly enough, there are solar astronomers that believe we are on the verge of the next extended cooling period similar to the Little Ice Age of 300 – 500 years ago. One such briefing was given in Melbourne last month by David Archibald. You can find the PDF version here: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/Conf2007/Archibald2007.pdf
He basically ties global warming and cooling to changes in the 11-year (or 22-year) solar cycle. When there are lots of sunspots (active sun), things are toasty warm. When there are few, we tend to get a global cooling. Additionally, when the solar cycles are longer than normal or start late, the sun tends to be less active than normal. The upcoming cycle is already a year or so late. Now, this is completely at odds with the current environmentalist hysteria over warming, and it will be ironic that we put all this junk in place to control global warming just at the point when the sun is in the process of plunging us into the next Little Ice Age. We really need to understand the natural processes that keep the earth warm and those that cool it off before we start passing new taxes, redistributionist legislation, or other hysterical reactions to the environmentalists’ latest fundraising scam. Do not expect this turkey to make it out of the senate this time around, as it will be strongly opposed by the White House. But do expect something like it – or something far, far worse – out of a democrat congress with veto proof majorities in both houses in 2009 should the elections go poorly for Our Side next year.

2. Ellison. Keith Ellison (D, MN) is the first Muslim in the House of Representatives. He ran as the typical democrat moderate though he is closely tied with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and Hamas-supporting CAIR. He distinguished himself by refusing to take the Oath of Office on the Bible in January, demanding a Koran instead. Last week, he stepped off into Islamist nana land, comparing President Bush to Hitler. Normally, when someone on the left pulls the Hitler card, they have already lost the argument before it has st arted. Ellison has demonstrated in his short time in the House that he is more interested in being an Islamist than representing his constituents. On the other hand, if he is representing his constituents precisely, we are in Big Trouble. Here’s his actual quote from Captain’s Qu arters, Monday as he refers to 9/11 being an inside job, planned and executed by the Bush administration:

3. Congress. Sensing a bit of weakness among senate Republicans last week, democrat surrendercrats (redundant phrase) in the senate pushed to cripple the ability of the Pentagon to raise, manage and deploy forces as they see fit. The effort was codified in an amendment to the Defense Authorizations Bill by Senator James Webb (D, VA), who is rapidly becoming an embarrassment to all Virginians. Webb’s amendment would set minimum stateside times for troops rotating in and out of Iraq. By doing so, it would make it impossible for the current force structure to send people back into country after 6 months or so stateside. The amendment was cloaked in all the usual claptrap masquerading as actual concern for the mental health and welfare of the active duty forces. Interestingly enough, Webb, who is also a prolific writer, as recently as the mid 1990s railed in print against congressional micromanaging of the Vietnam War as one of the reasons we lost. Now he is in a position of power, having completely (or conveniently) forgotten everything he used to believe in, trying to do the same thing railed against a decade ago in congress today. The amendment was defeated in a cloture vote 56 – 41, with seven RINOs voting to limit debate. The RINOs included Norm Coleman, (MN), Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), Chuck Hagel (NE), Gordon Smith (OR), John Sununu (NH), John Warner (VA). Coleman, Collins, Hagel, Smith, Sununu and Warner are all up for reelection next year. Hagel already has significant primary opposition that may unseat him in Nebraska. I can’t believe that an attempt to gut the ability of the Pentagon to prosecute this battle will be good for them in the upcoming Republican primaries.

4. Investigations. Another fun statistic out of congress is a count of investigations into the actions of the Bush administration by the new democrat congress. To date, there have been over 300 investigations launched in just over 100 days of session. In that time, they have passed one, count ‘em, one bill. The administration has provided over 200,000 pages of documentation to democrat congressional staffers who are busily pouring over them for misplaced tildes, unclosed parens, too many commas and other similarly impeachable offenses. Limbaugh believes this fishing expedition is simply a vehicle to ensure that the WH doesn’t get anything done for the next couple of years. If they come up with real live crimes and misdemeanors, so much the better – at least from their perspective. On the other hand, this course of action is not without its risk for the congresscritters executing it, as they are expose themselves to be tarred with the same brush Harry Truman did the 80 th Congress from 1947 – 1949. Truman managed to turn a two-year Republican majority that overreached into an over 40-year democrat majority that made it all the way to 1994. Will Giuliani, Thompson, Romney or Bush be able to do the same thing this time around? Don’t know. But I think there will be a budget showdown over taxes and spending this fall. There is some planning for an extended government shutdown by some in congress. And their approval ratings in the 14 – 24% range do not bode well for their future in power. This fall is going to be a lot of fun. Bush will get some control of spending. He will reinstate taxes as a central Republican issue. General Petraeus will return in September with reports of the Iraqi tribal leadership turning on Al Qaida in Iraq and stunning success in this phase of the war. And the democrats will be out of airspeed, out of ideas, and out of time. Next up to bat? Iran.

1. OSHA. Leftists are predictable. For instance, the leftists infesting the federal bureaucracy that have been mostly lying low during the first six years of the Bush administration are now st arting to crawl out from under their respective rocks as democrats flex their political muscle in congress. One such instance comes out of OSHA, courtesy of the NRA via Limbaugh last Friday. OSHA wants to regulate firearms near locations that explosives are handled and sold. The way the rules are written all but makes ammunition and reloading sales illegal. Here are excerpts from the NRA web site last weekend:

Whether this is simple bureaucratic incompetence or yet another underhanded, sneaky assault on gun owners remains to be seen. My guess is that it is probably both, with the anti-explosives guys being aided and abetted by the anti-firearms people in the bureaucracy. The ultimate outcome of these rules if adopted would be yet another restriction on sale and handling of firearms and ammunition, p articularly those that load their own ammunition, people who by definition handle explosives on a regular basis. The NRA says the public comment period on these new rules close on July 12. To comment, look for Docket Number OSHA-2007-0032 at www.regulations.gov

2. Publication. Another Limbaugh Friday story has local gun owners in Sandusky Ohio fighting back against a local editor who published a list of all concealed carry permit holders in Sandusky. The publication of names by the local paper was the second event of this nature that I know of by a leftist editor in recent months. It represents a way for local anti-gun newspapers to go after local gun owners via invasion of their privacy and outing them publicly. In this case, the local gun owners fought back. They went out and used the internet to uncover all manner of private and personal information on the editor in charge of the Sandusky Register, which they then posted on their web site. They have posted a photo of the guy’s home, its address, how much his mortgage is worth and how much he has paid on it. In the words of the article on the Buckeye Firearms Association web site they are “… weighing how much of the (rest of the) information to make public on our web site. Here’s a preview:”

3. Fundraising. I suppose this summer can be properly referred to as the Summer of Our Discontent - due to the war, democrats doing what democrats do in congress, and weak-kneed RINOs pretending to be Republicans. Leftists are invigorated and believe they are on the verge of grabbing veto-proof majorities in both houses of congress, capped off with winning the presidency next year. Will it happen? Hope not. But we conservatives may have to pay a price for taking our majorities in past years for granted. One of the places this is reflected is fundraising for various campaigns. The second qu arter fundraising numbers were announced last week, and the big winner is Barak Obama, who raised more than everyone else on either side of the political divide with over $32 million. That number is also more than all Republican candidates combined and reportedly includes over a qu arter million small donors. Big winner on the Republican side was Rudy Giuliani with over $17 million. Democrats have similar leads in fundraising for congressional candidates. So what does this all mean? If you listen to Dick Morris, he is predicting the Apocalypse for Republicans next year – all due to the war. I have a couple friends in the Lower 48 that believe that several western states are clanging hard democrat due to the war. These states include Montana and Colorado. On the other hand, some on the right believe that a number of the large donors to conservatives are sitting out the current three-man race until Fred Thompson formally declares. They may be correct. More troubling is the notion that we as conservatives are going to be outspent next year by our opponents on the left, as the democrats have truly become the p arty of the rich, the insider, the unions, and special interests. The only thing we have going for Our Side is that their message is essentially fraudulent, confiscatory of our wealth and property, and of our liberty. The only good news on the horizon is the 14% approval polling for congress – which tells me that somebody is not buying their animal act. Should our candidates stand up and run as strong, principled conservatives, I expect they will do quite well. This election will be the last gasp of the drive-by media, as they are all in with their support of democrat candidates. Their opposition will be the online media and the talk shows. Let’s see who can turn out more people next year.

4. e-Jihad. Little Green Footballs reported on e-Jihad last Wednesday. E-Jihad is a collection of hacker tools that will allow the enterprising jihadi to mount an electronic attack on any web site that does business on the web. The tool kit is powerful, automated, and sufficiently dumbed down so that most anyone can use it. It is available from the Al-jinan.org web site. The tools allow the user to target specific IP addresses, choose a level of attack from a windows-like interface, and launch an attack intended to take the target servers off line. Expect the attacks not only to be mounted against businesses, government entities, but bloggers and people like me who write anything negative about Islamists. LGF and Michelle Malkin have withstood such attacks many times over the last several years. With the intentional proliferation of the cyberterrorist tools and online training for their use, expect more of us to become targets for the Islamist vermin in the not so distant future.

5. Libby. President Bush commuted the jail sentence of former Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby after a federal appeals court refused to allow him to stay out of jail pending his appeal for perjury in the Valerie Plame case. The move infuriated democrats who have been pursuing their political agenda via the courts and he artened conservatives who were in the midst of tossing Bush over the side based on the recent fight over the immigration bill. As far as I am concerned, the prosecution of Libby was fraudulent, an outgrowth of the internal political fights between the CIA, State Dep artment, Pentagon and the Vice President over how to prosecute this war. The entrenched bureaucracy in the CIA and State has been doing everything possible to undermine execution of this conflict. The Valerie Plame – Joe Wilson affair was simply one gambit in that battle. The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed by an acting Attorney General, James Comey, who was acting while John Ashcroft was hospitalized. It turns out that both Comey and Fitzgerald are favorites (cronies?) of Chuckie Schumer (D, NY), and that their real target was Cheney himself. Fitzgerald was charged with investigating the leak of Valerie Plame’s name to the public, and whether or not that leak was a violation of federal law. As it turns out, Fitzgerald knew who the leaker was within days of his appointment – Colin Powell Deputy Richard Armitage. Soon after, he determined that the leak was in no a way a violation of federal law, yet he continued his investigation for over a year more, jailing a NYT reporter for six months for refusing to testify. He finally managed to create a perjury trap that caught Libby. As far as I am concerned, this investigation and prosecution is a fraudulent event and if anyone ought to be disbarred, fined and jailed it ought to be Comey and Fitzgerald for diddling both the investigation and the process. Is Libby guilty of perjury? We have a jury that says so. Yet it appears that Libby was the only one who testified before the grand jury that was actually trying to help the prosecution find the facts of the case. Events like this have significant impact on what public employees will do in future investigations. The Laws of Physics do apply to the political world. I predict that no public official will cooperate with any other investigation for many a year without having a lawyer in the room with them. Eventually someone will fix the CIA and State Dep artment bureaucracy, and it will not be a pretty event.

1. Immigration. Backers of the awful immigration legislation suffered a stunning defeat Thursday when they lost a cloture vote on proposed amendments. They managed to get only 46 of the 60 votes needed to shut down debate on the Bill. Beltway reaction to the failure was anger and frustration at the bloggers, talk shows, constituents, and other voting malcontents that derailed their finely tuned attempt to naturalize 12-20 million new democrat voters this year. Public outrage was so high that the phone system supporting senate offices was shut down for a couple days. A few senators made the rounds of the talk shows in defense of the legislation and were publicly crushed. Sean Hannity made George Voinovich (R, OH) looking like a complete idiot after an interview that made it quite clear that Hannity knew far more about the Bill than Voinovich did. Voinovich scheduled the interview in an attempt to get the general public to stop calling his office. Instead, he turned himself into a caricature of a typical bombastic, clueless, senior politician from a (now) democrat state. Make no mistake about it, the general public defeated this Bill, and we did so knowing more about its contents than the actual senators appeared to know. One blogger believes that this event resurrected the old coalition between Reagan democrats and conservatives. He may be right, as this attempted fraud was opposed by both the conservative movement and union membership. Beltway conservatives were split on it. Union leadership had been bought off and was supporting it. Several conservatives took great exception with the defeat. Linda Chavez was p articularly disappointing with her after action analysis. AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere continued to hammer home his view that the “immigration hypochondriacs” had just moved the Republican P arty into minority status for another generation. I don’t agree with either one of them. The bottom line here is that nobody trusts congress – p articularly on this issue. A congress with democrat majorities in both houses and approval ratings on 14% is a very good thing, indeed and a great opportunity. I have no idea whether or not conservatives can take advantage of those numbers in 2008, but do enjoy the opening. Nobody trusts the government to close the Mexican border, build fences, or do anything else they say they are going to do on this issue. And if that trust does not exist on this issue, it is not a stretch by any means to extend that lack of trust to other things the feds do not do well and st art making a renewed case for small government. Limbaugh went directly after the entire episode as an example of what happens when government gets too large, bloated and unresponsive, setting the ground for next year. The conservative base, which stayed home in very large numbers last year, will not stay home next year. They appear to be invigorated, fired up, and angry – all good things indeed. What happens next? Several things, I think. There will be an effort by senate liberals and old-boy Republicans like Lott, Graham, McCain and Voinovich to shut down talk radio and the blogs. Expect them to float legislation and regulations to do this. Expect House Republicans to propose a series of Bills to bite off small pieces of the solution to the immigration problem, st arting with security of the Mexican border. Supporters of this legislation in the senate are really, really angry, mostly because they can no longer dump 1,000 pages of garbage on the desk one evening and vote it into law the next morning without anyone reading it. We read things out here now and can respond very quickly to the Old Game. The game has changed. We hope it has changed for the better. Congratulations to everyone involved in defeating this turkey.

2. Bigelow. Bigelow Aerospace launched their second one-third scale prototype module for their orbiting hotel. Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Motel chain is spending up to $500 million in an effort to build an orbiting manned hotel open for business by 2015. The module is an inflatable structure with solar cells, cameras, transmission and telemetry capabilities, improved life support, and attitude control. It was launched from Russia on top of a Dnepr rocket. The module measures about 15 feet long by 8 feet long. This event is significant as it demonstrates once again the triumph of the marketplace over a government program. Take a look at the difference here. NASA constructs a space station. Cost so far is over $100 billion for a facility that can only support 3-6 people. It has been under construction for over a decade and isn’t finished yet. Bigelow on the other hand is dedicating some $500 million – a factor of 200 less – to the goal of a permanent hotel for paying customers. He plans on being up and in operation within nine years following their first test launch last year. And should he find some commercial company capable of putting paying customers into orbit, I expect that date to move in a bit. It is long past time for the feds to get out of the way of the private sector in space – like they ought to get out of the way of the private sector everywhere else. Congratulations to Mr. Bigelow. We wish him well in his continued efforts to open space to the paying customer. SpaceRef.com, Sun.

3. Rationing. Things are heating up nicely for the mullahs in Iran as anti-government rioting has broken out in Tehran. The issue is gasoline rationing due to the mullahs’ socialist / Islamist economy – which is incapable of refining sufficient gasoline for domestic use. Iranian citizens see very clearly the amount of dollars spent going nuclear, training international terrorists, and exporting those terrorists throughout the Middle East, and wonder why the money is not spent taking care of their needs. Ahmandinejad and his handlers have a real problem. So do we, for Iran is crumbling from within, and all we need to do is give it a push. Hopefully there will be sufficient support among the weak sisters in congress and Bush’s opponents at State and in the intelligence community to allow the administration to give the Iranian revolutionaries the support they need to remove the mullahs from power. Captain’s Qu arters, Weds.

4. London. London dodged a bullet last weekend when two car bombs were discovered parked outside very crowded areas in town. The vehicles were packed with propane tanks wrapped with nails and gasoline, with the intent of turning them into fuel-air explosives. The cell phone-operated triggers didn’t work. One of the early reports had one vehicle parked outside of the London Apple store where crowds were lined up buying the initial release of the iPhone. The next day, a flaming SUV drove into the terminal entrance at Glasgow Airport in Scotland. Two people got out, one in flames. The burning guy tried to open the trunk to set up propane tanks carried in it. He and his running mate were pounded by a cab driver who saw the crash, figured there was a problem, and jumped out of his cab to defend the airport. The cab driver kicked the burning guy between the legs so hard that he tore a tendon in his foot. Video shot of the altercation had bystanders yelling ‘let ‘im burn.” The burning guy is still alive with burns covering over 90% of his body. Hope it was worth it, dude. The cab driver was ticketed for parking by airport cops while all this was going on. As London is completely covered by video cameras, it didn’t take long to get good photos of the guys who left the London car bombs and st art rolling them up. Turns out they were all either doctors working in local hospitals or medical people. To date, London police have rolled up over 10 people, including 5 doctors – all Muslims, all recent immigrants to London. The Glasgow guys were also involved in setting the London car bombs. By the weekend, London police were sufficiently jumpy that they had seized and destroyed another couple vehicles. Drive by media play on this has been shock, simply shock at nice young medical professionals turning into wild-eyed, murderous Islamists. The drive bys need to remember that Islamists include a large percentage of highly educated, middle and upper class Middle Eastern men, with bin Laden’s Number 2 Zawahiri himself being an Egyptian physician. Apparently the Muslim version of the Hippocratic Oath reads a bit different than the real version. Best comment on the failed attacks heard last week was that there appears to have been some grade inflation at Jihadi U. Fun comment with a bit of truth in it, for we have been consistently killing them, rolling up their networks, destroying their training grounds, and disrupting their state sponsors that it appears to be getting hard to train them sufficiently to execute these plans on a regular basis outside the Middle East. This is a Good Thing. They are just as nasty and murderous as they ever have been, but their training is (fortunately) lacking, and local response to them is getting harsher and harsher.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

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