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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.

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Sheehan Arrested During Anti-War Protest

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became a leader of the anti-war movement after her son died in Iraq, was arrested Monday along with hundreds of others protesting outside the White House.

Obviously an example of the NYT's "news that's fit to print". Hey - she had to do SOMETHING to get back on the MSM front pages after the hurricanes!

The whole Sheehan thing has gone beyond outrageousness, passed absurdity, and has now entered the realm of Cartoonville.

F.H.T.E. On second thought, NO! Just T.E.

UPDATE:
This coverage in the D.C. Times seems to offer some confirmation - if - as noted in the piece - C.S. is actually crying around on the Kos site.

As SDP has reported before, Daschle's former/current campaign manager and several former/current Daschle staffers are being paid by Americans United, which has been big in their permanent campaign against Senator Thune. According to today's Roll Call, they could be closing...

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Romney stands by comments about Muslims

A while back the Chief posted here about Governor Mit Romney (R-MA) calling for increased surveillance in radical mosques to nip terrorism in the bud.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts delivered a letter, which was co-signed by 21 other organizations, saying that Romney's comments characterized Muslims living in the U.S. as potential or actual terrorists.

Well, as expected the PC moonbat crowd from the ACLU to assorted Islamist groups got all hot and bothered and demanded retractions and an apology. So, what's a pol to do when faced with this sort of criticism? Back down? Waffle?

Usually so, but not in this case! In a more recent press conference:

Romney told reporters that he stood by his comments. "When it comes to protecting our citizens, there is no place for political correctness. We should be doing more in terms of intelligence and counterterrorism in the state to protect ourselves from terrorists. We spend a lot of our resources thinking about response, but response can't protect us. We have to be able to prevent attacks."

Talk about saying the unspeakable ut true!

Romney said that if U.S. intelligence officials have information that a person is "preaching messages of hate and terror," then there should be sufficient grounds to conduct surveillance on them in their places of worship. "Surely, we have to recognize that some of this has gone on in mosques in the past," Romney said. "Most mosques are teaching doctrines of love and consideration, but there have been places of extremism where certain teachers have been identified as having been involved in or led to terrorist attacks. Let's not pretend that's not the case."

This is really excellent, not only to highlight a potentially serious security issue, but then to NOT back down in the face of the usual barrage of politically correct complaints about having done so.

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