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With a courage based on the proposition that, if I get it wrong no one will remember, and if I get it right, I can remind everyone that I'm brilliant, I confidently predict that John McCain will be the Republican...

The Rapid City Journal has a brief piece by Celeste Calvitto on Johnson's decision to support John Roberts.The individual he (Roberts) is going to replace was a very conservative member of the court, so his confirmation does not change the...

NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake

Any good "hard" science fiction fan was capable of making this analysis. Among others, rocketeer Homer Hickham, author and main character of October Sky retired from NASA and wrote a novel titled Back to the Moon in which NASA is given a pretty good black eye for having become moribund with bureaucracy and political correctness.

Latest in this feeling that NASA had lost its direction comes from no less than the NASA chief administrator himself:

The space shuttle and International Space Station ? nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades ? were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.

Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth. ?It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,? Griffin said. ?We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.?

Reading between the lines, it appears to the Chief that NASA needed more von Braun and less Rube Goldberg in its design philosophy:

Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, ?My opinion is that it was. ? It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.? Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, ?Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.?

Sounds like we finally have a NASA chief worthy of the name after too many bureaucrats, program managers and barely-disguised political hatchetmen, and not nearly enough engineers in the lead. Hopefully now the Congresscritters will give Griffen the support needed to get us back on the road towards the stars. It's absolutely essential if our civilization is to continue to exist and improve itself.

Don Adams is dead at 82. Many will remember him as Maxwell Smart. To me, he will always be Tennessee Tuxedo. Now he's at the big zoo in the sky....

From the AP: Earlier this year, gun control advocates failed to block a Florida bill allowing people to use deadly force in the street to defend themselves. The advocates vow not to let that happen in Michigan. The battle in...

For those who want us to surrender to the terrorists in Iraq, take a look at what happened when Israel surrendered the Gaza strip: Israel has information al-Qaida-linked members likely infiltrated the Gaza Strip while its border with Egypt was...

I've been a Miami Dolphin fan for a long time, thanks largely to Dan Marino, but this current incarnation of the 'Fins is just pathetic. Ricky Williams? Please. I hope that new coach Nick Saban can right the ship, and...

As the confirmation of John Roberts draws near, we're beginning to see how Democrats and Republicans will vote for him. Most of us figured that the Dems would play nice with Roberts and stifle the next nominee, all the while...

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