As promised we saw The Sum of All Fears. The movie was not so much a story as something slapped together haphazardly with various elements, some from the excellent Tom Clancy book, others from the imagination of creative development execs in Hollywood. What was resulted was less that satisfying, but not altogether so aweful that it caused pain.

Yes Ben Affleck is miscast as Jack Ryan, Clancy's crack CIA analyst and world saver. It's not his fault. In ten years, with a little seasoning and a few more lines about the face, Affleck might have made a great Ryan. But in the movie he's a kid playing "stop nuclear terrorism" in an adult world. And it's Affleck's misfortune to share the screen with Morgan Freidman, an actor of supreme gifts and experience.

And of course the PC tendencies of Hollywood hurt the movie. The original story had Hamas-type terrorists behind the nuclear attack. But Hollywood decided (before 9/11) that Arab terrorists were passe and that, besides, Arabs have an effective lobby dedicated to preventing any film being made from depicting an Arab in a bad light. At first American, right wing militia types were going to be the bad guys. But the idea of red neck, inbred crackers smuggling nukes was too silly, even for Hollywood. So they settled on Eurotrash NeoNazis, who have no lobby that I know of. Of course for plausibility it created they might as well have chosen Perotistas or aliens from the X Files.

It's rather too bad. A lot of Clancy novels beg to be made into movies and I'm afraid that Sum of All Fears have made that less likely. My personal favorite is Rainbow Six. The bad guys in that story are environmentalist wackos who create a genetically enhanced virus to kill 99 percent of the human race. What a cool, original movie that would make.

Earlier this year the Texas National Resources Conservation Commission rolled back the speed limit on most Texas highways to 55 miles per hour. This was done to comply with the Clean Act Act based on a computer model which suggested that the edict would cut back on nitrogen oxide emmissions. The rollback has been very unpopular and has been widely ignored. But the last straw came when a new computer model indicated that rolling back the speed limit to 55 would produce no reduction in nitrogen oxide emmissions. So now the TNRCC will likely reserve it's decision and move the speed limit back up to 70.

Vietnam's regime has officially accused former Senator Bob Kerrey of commiting war crimes while he was a Navy SEAL. This is, of course, rich coming from a regime which engineered the Hue Massacre and other mass atrocities, but it does illustrate a danger and the wisdom of President Bush for avoiding it. Bob Kerrey might have found himself headed for that UN court, accused by one of the biggest human rights violators in history, had Bush not "unsigned" the treaty his predecessor incautiously entered into.

A very silly bureaucrat in the Houston Indepedent School District named Angela Miller wants to rid the phrase "Remember the Alamo!" from textbooks. She thinks that teaching the idea that the Texan rebles who died to the last man at the Alamo were "good" and that the Mexican soldiers who, under Santa Anna, slaughtered them, as well as other Texans at the Goliad, were "bad" will offend Hispanic students.

Never mind that Tejanos were among those who were martyred at the Alamo and Goliad and fought at San Jacinto. This sort of silly thinking is, of course, the leading edge of the wedge. Soon we will be rewriting the history of World War II to avoid offending Germans and Japanese. If you don't beleiev me, just you wait.

Jonathon Last has sadly concluded that The Sum of All Fears, the movie, is the worse in memory, done in by a combination of bad acting by Ben Affleck and politically correct screen writing. More about the film anon when we have seen it.

Meanwhile the Washington Times is reporting another victory over the politically correct busy bodies who think American Indian names for sports teams is offensive:

Washington public relations mogul Hugh C. Newton is back in town after spending a week in scenic Monument Valley, which slices through the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona.
No sooner did Mr. Newton get home and pick up a copy of The Washington Times that he read about one Maryland public school system that was asked to ban Indian-inspired team names.
Richard Regan, a Lumbee-Cheraw Indian, unsuccessfully demanded that the Washington County school system change the names of the Boonsboro High School Warriors and the Conococheague Elementary School Indians.
Mr. Regan argued in a complaint that such names demean American Indians, promote poor race relations and destroy the self-esteem of American Indian schoolchildren.
Fresh from his journey West, and having camped in one of the largest Indian reservations in the country, Mr. Newton isn't so sure.
"And I have visual proof," he tells Inside the Beltway, forwarding the photograph that appears today of a large sign erected outside Red Mesa High School. It reads: "Red Mesa Redskins."
"I heard it was true and went looking for the high school," explains Mr. Newton, a longtime fan of the Washington Redskins. "Several Indians I talked to said they were proud of the name "
As for Mr. Regan, who doesn't even live in Washington County (he's a suburban Washington resident), acting schools Superintendent Elizabeth Morgan ruled that he had no standing to make such demands because nicknames like "Indians" and "Warriors" are used respectfully to honor the dignity and courage of American Indians.

That makes two in a row. Amazing.

The Washington Times is reporting that weapons bans in schools are having an unintended effect on the abbility of students to learn a thing or two about ancient history:

Weapons bans put in place in our nation's schools — albeit for good reason — are having a negative effect on cultural and historical education.
Consider this letter sent home to D.C. families of Latin III students at St. Anselm's Abbey School, regarding a "Roman Military Re-enactor Event."
"Dear Parents of Form III Latin Students: I tried but was unable due to D.C. school-weapons law to have an historic re-enactor who heads a local Roman Legion, Quints of Legion X, come to school to demonstrate his equipment on Field Day.
"However, Quints recently reminded me that his legion will encamp for a weekend at Marietta Mansion in Prince George's County June 8-9. I will copy below his description of the details in case you and your [child] would like to attend. It should be fascinating."
The fifth annual Roman Days, as the event is called, is a display of ancient military and domestic living history, hosted by the 20th Legion. Representatives from the Gaelic provinces will be on hand, Bean the Barbarian, "plus any Greeks, Siberians, Ice Men, etc., that turn up, but naturally, the emphasis will be on Rome. Not just military re-enactors, but civilians, teachers, war gamers — if you have any interest in ancient history, please come."

In what surely must be the result of some big mistake, the California State Assembly voted not to require California schools todrop Indian mascots and Indian team names. So if you're a High School jock in California, you can still call yourself an Apache or a Cherokee, no matter what the politically correct busy bodies think.

Professor Reynolds writes about the reasons we should settle Mars. He even suggests challenging China to a space race. Heavens, I wonder if he's been listening to the BBC? Proof one supposes that great minds think alike. Except Glenn wants to race to Mars and I think-despite some contradictory statements by Chinese officials-that the Chinese have already thrown down the gauntlet for a race to the Moon.

According to Rollcall, Houston's irrepresiable, Imperial Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee is at it again:

No matter how hard she tries, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. (D-Texas) just can't seem to shake her car troubles.

Jackson Lee took a beating in the media a few months back for having a staffer wait outside her front door each morning in a government-financed car to shuttle her the whole two blocks from her apartment to the Rayburn Building. HOH. later reported that she had started slipping out the back door to have her chief of staff drive her to work, though her office insisted that the boss wasn't trying to evade scrutiny.

Then, during a House vote Wednesday night, an interesting scene played out on the east side of the Capitol. The Capitol Police cleared Rep. John Dingell's (D-Mich.) car. to go through the security barriers, which only let through one vehicle at a time.

But suddenly a Mercedes with dark windows sped up. and tried to sneak through the barriers on Dingell's tail. According to HOH's spy, police officers rushed over and ordered the car to stop, as the tinted windows slowly started rolling down. "Who should be in the passenger seat but Sheila Jackson Lee.," said the source.

The police did a close check of the vehicle, and then the Congresswoman was waved in.

I wonder what would have happened if the officers had decided it was a car bomb and opened fire? That would have been a very embaressing development.

NASA's James Garvin had some interesting things to say about Mars exploration.

"That's a vision not a program, but I ask what is the difference between what we are doing on Mars now and the preparation we would have to do for a manned Mars mission. The answer is nothing.

"Our unmanned exploration of Mars is just the homework we need to be doing for any eventual manned mission. This programme is the right antecedent for man on Mars."

Dr Garvin points out that other areas of Nasa will be looking into the technologies needed to propel humans across interplanetary space, keep them alive in space and bring them back home.

In other words, NASA has in fact decided that it will send humans to Mars. Just as soon as those people in the White House and the Congress decide to see it their way and fund the program.

Experts are running the numbers of what the butcher's bill for a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be. The death toll could exceed that of both world wars and could happen in a day or so.

Considering this, can anyone now doubt that a space based missile defense system is vital?

The politics of rebuilding Ground Zero is already starting to sound like something from an Ayn Rand novel. Too bad Howard Roark was a fictional charecter. One wonders what he would come up with.

The British media is now backing away from reports that a commitment to send people to Mars will happen this week. The referenced article also advances an interesting, albeit PC idea of including among the first crew to go to Mars someone from "the poorest country on Earth" and allow him or her to be the first person to walk on Mars. What the purpose of such a thing is, I'm not sure. Part of the glory of Neil Armstrong being the first man to walk on the Moon is that he represented the efforts of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the commitment of the American nation to send him there. Carrying someone from-saw-Zimbabwe as an affirmative action case seems to me to be slightly insulting.

Meanwhile, stories about a Chinese lunar effort persist despite the voices of complacency coming from some space policy analysts in the West.

This story claims that NASA is going to announce a manned mission to Mars to take place "within twenty years." I would be surprised if a mid level NASA official would make such an announcement. That's the sort of thing that a President of the United States would do.

In any case, twenty years is hardly a neck or nothing Apollo-style effort, in my opinion. In the near term it means very little, except perhaps for some more technology research and development spending.

It looks like that an underground ocean of ice has been found on Mars. This has, understandably, sparked some renewed interest in sending humans to Mars. Rand Simberg reviews most of the disadvantages of doing an all out, Apollo-style mission to Mars. In any event, despite the wishes of some folks at NASA, I don't think it's immediately in the cards anyway. Sean O'Keefe, the current NASA Administrator, has publicly stated that there are a number of problems which need to be solved before we send humans to Mars. The first is the problem of the effect of cosmic background radiation on humans. The second is the problem of trip times and distance. With current, chemical rocket technologies, trip times to Mars could last anywhere from six months to a year, with a complete mission time of up to three years. Worse, the windows for such voyages only occure every 26 months. The nuclear propulsion and power initiative O'Keefe has started will address that problem. Once we get the trip times to Mars down to a couple of months or even weeks, we'll send humans to Mars. And the ice ocean means that very shortly after that, the first settlers will go there to stay.

I'm not certain it was the result of the BBC interview, but Amazon.CO.UK is reporting a jump of sales of Children of Apollo in Great Britain. To those discerning readers in Great Britain, and everywhere else, thank you very much.

It is a certain sign that subjects like the commercial development of the Moon have entered the mainstream when environmental extremists want to forbid it. Arthur C. Clarke predicted just this kind of folly decades ago.

In my humble opinion, the proposal to make the Earth's Moon into some kind of preserve is plain nuts. Commercial development and human settlement would surely improve the ascetic beauty of the Moon. And it wouldn't ruin the ecology because, strickly speaking, the Moon doesn't have any.

Looks like the real opinions Democrats hold about social security have been found out in a memo about an opinion piece mistakenly sent to a Republican Congressional staffer.

But another Kaptur staff member responded that the information in the opinion piece was "not entirely factually accurate," adding: "Talk about scaring seniors — this may be a little over the top. But it is sooo fun to bash Republicans." She included an e-mail "smiley face" — :) — after her comment.

Well, of course.