It's time to withdraw our forces from Iraq and redeploy them--to Iran and Syria.

Taylor Dinerman suggests that the ascendency of the Democrats in Congress constututes a threat to effective missile defense.

Mona Charen, whom I generally like, wrings her hands at the idea of extending life for centuries or even longer:

What would that mean? Let's see, Social Security benefits for 135 years? Medicare for the same period? Prescription nanobots for a century? Assuming that people will remain healthy and working for decades and decades (which is what the futurists predict), would the economy expand due to the continued productivity of well-trained people, or sink under the weight of the extra elderly? (Not all of those doddering around at the age of 140 are going to be on the tennis courts.)

The entire concept of family life would have to change. What would happen to the already high divorce rate if people had to spend the better part of two centuries together? How about military service? Would young men and women who could otherwise expect to live to such astounding ages be willing to risk dying at 20 or 25?

On the up side, interstellar colonization would become more practicable, even without magic, faster than light warp drives. Someone who expects to live thousands of years won't shrink from the long voyage time to get to the new worlds.

Is the world ready for a new Cleopatra film project? Maybe, but we must agree that Cleopatra was Macedonian/Greek and not Egyptian and, unlike Richard Burton's depiction, Marc Antony was not a whipped dog in the arms of the Queen.

Will Stephen Hawking get to fly in space? It may happen.

George Will is the latest to give the junior boor elect from Virgina a a sound spanking.

Stephen Hawking once again calls for space colonies.

Eric Flint's new alternate history novel, 1824, is now out:

The New Horizons probe will shortly pass by Jupiter, where some of its systems will get a good shakedown. It will not reach Pluto, the former 9th planet, for another eight years, which just goes to show haw vast just our Solar System really is.

Recently a judge actually ruled that American currency was unfair to blind people. Captain Ed went to a blind person of his acquaintance for comment.

For my report, I decided to interview a blind person to discover her reaction to the news that Judge Robertson had freed her from the bonds of discrimination. The First Mate's initial response is hard to quote, because I don't know how to properly transcribe a snort and a peal of laughter.

Jason Miks has a conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Just in time. Lomborg is writing a book about climnate change that, I imagine, Al Gore will not like.

It's at the stage where people are saying its even worse than we thought yesterday, and that it is going to be catastrophic, and chaotic and disruptive - all these kinds of words. This has actually led to one of the lead modellers in the UK to come out and say it's bizarre that before we had the debate between the climate change skeptics and the scientists, and that now we have the debate between the scientists, who are now becoming the skeptics, and those who are saying it's all going to end in chaos, when it is going to do nothing of the sort - and this is not what the UN panel is telling us.

Perhaps this is most clear when you look at the movie from Al Gore. Everything he says is technically true. He says for instance that if Greenland melts, sea levels will rise about 20 feet. This is technically true. But of course the very evocative imagery of seeing Holland disappear under the waves - or New York, or Shanghai - leaves the impression that this is all going to happen very soon. Where in fact the UN climate panel says that the sea level rise over the next 100 years is going to be 30 cm - about 20 times less than he talks about. So there is a dramatic difference between what we're being told and what we're actually seeing.

Bob Tyrrell has some fun at the expense of the soon to be junior Senator from Virginia, thus placing his health in danger.

According to the Hill, Webb even told a source for the paper that "he was so angered by this [encounter] that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief." Webb claims that one of his heroes is President Andrew Jackson. I too admire Old Hickory, but I at least recognize the rough ways of the early 19th century are not to be reprised in the 21st century. What next, will the junior senator from Virginia being challenging those who arouse him to a duel? What century does Webb think he is living in? Believe me Senator Webb is going to be a vast source of amusement, and he will fit in nicely with the unpleasant pols whose political base is the Angry Left.

The First Great Deep Space Expedition.

It looks like the good people of Virginia have elected a complete boor at their junior Senator.

Scientists are already looking at ideas for lunar observatories.

If you want to know why Senator Mikulski is supporting the Vision for Space Exploration when she was so instrumental in gutting Bush the Elder's Space Exploration Initiative, the answer lays in part which NASA center will help develop a lunar observatory.

Ken Silber, at the risk of stating the obvious, suggests that future space colonists should be handy with tools.

Looks like the AP has been using bogus sources to fabricate stories about death and mayhem in Iraq.

Actual science on the space station? Who knew?

Looks like those six Imans brought things on themselves by behaving exactly like a group of terrorists preparing to seize an airliner.

Naturally that doesn't matter to the mad cap member of Congress from Texas, Sheila Jackson-Lee.

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans."
"Understandably, the imams felt profiled, humiliated, and discriminated against by their treatment," she said.

Understandably I feel frightened and apalled by Rep Jackson-Lee's casual disregard for the security and lives of airline passengers.

Hugh Hewitt has more.

A coalition of space groups have banded together to help save funding for the Centennial Challenges. Kudos, for I think this is a good fight and one that can be won, unlike a pointless squabble with NASA over hardware.