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Remember this: anyone who tells you that free speech is alive and well on college campuses is a flat out liar. The First Amendment? Hell, they won't even let anyone tell the truth....

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.

According to Matt Taibbi ("Hunter Thompson, but without the talent!"), Douglas Brinkley left his cats and his maid behind when he evacuated New Orleans. But that's all right, he did this probably knowing that Sean Penn was going to be...

Media, blushing, takes a second look at Katrina

First was the priceless moment when General Honore told the assembled press "You're stuck on stupid!".

Later on, inaccuracy, sensationalism, and in effect rumor-mongering has been noted to be endemic in the coverage of the gulf coast hurricanes.

Several media organizations have examined, sometimes harshly, the work of newspapers and particularly cable-TV news networks. The New Orleans Times-Picayune published a lengthy account Monday of errors, misrepresentations and wildly exaggerated claims of murder, rape and abuse of children at the New Orleans Superdome. The newspaper cited publication of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Meanwhile, what's that bit again about the alternative media such as the blogosphere not having responsible editorial and organizational control to insure factual reportage? Like the cases with the NYT reporters fabricating stories, and the TV networks doing the same, when not reporting forged information as fact, apparently they regard themselves as having transcended the standards they would impose on others.

A slight issue with hypocrisy here? Shocking behavior by elements of the (self)esteemed 4th estate!

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...

The moonbats who wanted to build an International "Freedom" Center at Ground Zero didn't care much for their options after Governor Pataki told them to take a hike yesterday. So, doggone it, they're just not going to build anywhere at...

From NewsMax: Yesterday's anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., is being hailed as the biggest since the halcyon protest days of the Vietnam war - a claim that seems to surface every time the anti-war left gets together en-masse. Leaving the...

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...

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