Jihad Johney, while fighting for a regime which kills gay people as a matter of "Islamic law", was apparently engaging in gay sex with some of his jihadi bretheran. This reminds me of an old Pashtu song which dates back a century or so:

There's a boy across the river
With a bottom like a peach.
But alas I cannot swim.

Torricelli is in the process of trying to slide out of the Senate race and perhaps the Senate in such a way as it will look good and allow the Democrats to keep their clammy grasp on power. The Republicans may sue to keep him from doing so, just a month before the election, since New Jersey law says one can't do this unless one dies. Oh, what fun.

Close to forty five years since Sputnik, it is time again to summon the future.

President Al Gore addresses the nation in the wake of 9/11. Embrace the horror.

Three liberal Democrat Congressmen, David Bonior of Michigan, Jim McDermott of Washington State, and Mike Thompson of California, announced in Baghdad that Saddam Hussein will allowed unfettered access for arms inspectors. How do they know such a thing? Why Tareq Aziz told them so.

They also suggested that President Bush is lying to the world to justify an invasion of Iraq.

In my humble opinion, these people give appeasement a bad name. They have performed the rough equivilent of going to Berlin three months before D-Day and embracing Adolf Hitler and calling FDR and Eisenhower liars for wanting to invade Europe. Bonior will be out of Congress soon, but the constituents of the other two really need to vote them out as well. And every Democrat office holder should denounce them, or else it should be assumed that they share their views.

The Turks caught some folks smuggling 33 pounds of weapons grade uranium just 155 miles from the Iraqi border. But Gore, Daschle, and Teddy Kennedy insist that Hussein isn't getting the Bomb anytime soon and that we shouldn't attack him.

Armadillo Aerospace is making good progress toward building a piloted, suborbital vehicle.

The Orlando Sentinal casts the light of day on pork barrel spending inside NASA. These earmarks, many of which have little if anything to do with space, are gobbling up resources NASA needs to maintain its programs and fix decaying infrastructure. The problem certainly has to be addressed if we propose to embark on a bold, new program of exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit.

I just finished Red Rabbit, Tom Clancy's latest novel. It's a departure for Clancy in several ways. Instead of writing a near term technothriller, Clancy goes back to the history of the Cold War. It's the early 1980s and then KGB Chief Yuri Andropov is very annoyed at Pope John Paul II. Andropov, typically for a Soviet boss, decides that the Pope has lived too long. And so, in the same vein as Day of the Jackal and my own cold war thriller, Nocturne (in which we have a plot not just against one world leader, but seven including President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher), Clancy uses real world events to craft a story of intrigue and suspense which ends with a confrontation between KGB paid assasins and a small team of Western operatives (including a young analyst named Jack Ryan) in St. Peter's Square. I highly recommend the book.

Bill Buckley reminds us of the banal dysfunction of European socialism.

Edward Crane believes privitizing social security should be a civil rights issue for American blacks. Indeed.

One question I would like to have answered concerning the Department of Homeland Defense debate. If Leiberman's union protection rules get passed, how hard will it be to fire or even discipline a federalized airport inspector if he/she abuses a passenger. There have been too many cases of that sort of thing happening already for the question to remain unanswered.

Madeleine Albright thinks that the Bush Administration is displaying "irrational exuberence" for war with Iraq. This is the same woman who, when then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell cautioned about military adventures in the Balkans, blew up and demanded to know why we even had an army if it wasn't going to get used from time to time.

An old Jerry Pournelle novel, Birth of Fire, in which a young man gets shipped off to a penal colony on Mars, has been optioned for film. That's fine, but I'm still waiting for the movie version of Footfall.

One thing which might explain Daschle, et al going nuts is that they fear losing the Senate.

We saw, as promised, Barbershop tonight, thus defying Al Sharpton's boycott of the film. The humor was uproariously funny, especially the politically incorrect parts which have Jackson, Sharpton, et al in a tizzy. And the story actually imparted some universal values.

Eric Bana, who will be the big screen Increadible Hulk, will also be Prince Hector in Wolfgang Peterson's epic about the seige of Troy. Brad Pitt has already been signed as Achilles.

Steve Speilberg and Tom Cruise support war with Iraq.

Dick Morris says that the liberal Democrats have thrown themselves into the Iraq abyss and-being liberal Democrats-can't get out.

Rand Simberg suggests that, unlike in 1962, space ought to be easy, considering how much technology we have and how much we've learned in the past forty years. He's right, of course, though I think he focuses exclusively on the commercial aspects of what a space effort should be, and less on ensuring that the United States remains a great power by expanding it's influence beyond Low Earth Orbit.