Slate is breathlessly reporting that Sarah Palin occasionally removes comments from the Facebook page.

Now anyone who has run a blog or anything else on the Internet knows that one has to remove comments that are inane, obscene, or spam. I do not allow comments here to spare me the time and bother of policing comments, but on my Associated Content page I am constantly obliged to delete comments. These include posts with obscene or racist language, spam, and those from some diseased person who, from time to time, posts bizarre sexual come ons signed either with my wife's name or Sarah Palin (and if I ever find out who that person is, he will be sorry he was not still born.)

The point of course is that Sarah Palin, being as she is a public figure with more than her share of enemies, is obliged to police the contents section of her Facebook page. There is no scandal or anything else here.

Bill Nye the Science Guy is perplexed that he finds himself in disagreement with two of the greatest astronauts in history, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, over Obamaspace.

But I never imagined, not for a moment, that I would so strongly disagree with two of the world’s heroes, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. As of this writing, these astronauts are opposed to key aspects of NASA’s new plan for space exploration. They, along with a few others, believe that the U.S. is ending its human (manned) space exploration. I cannot help but ask, have these opponents read the same documents that I have? Are we all talking about the same NASA?

Glenn and Armstrong might ask Nye the same question.

The new plan strikes me as just that — new and inherently exciting. It’s focused on doing new things in space, developing new technology, making discoveries, and going where no one has gone before.

Obamaspace is none of those things. It focuses on subsidizing a space taxi service and a vague, technological development program in the near term. There are vague promises of equally unfocused deep space exploration voyages in the distant future, unfunded for the most part.

I believe we would agree that the Constellation program, which included the Ares 1 and 5 rockets along with an Orion space capsule, would not take anyone back to the Moon before 2020, or even 2025, some 50 years after the Apollo astronauts made the same voyage.

Actually we will not agree with that at all. Even the Augustine Committee suggested that the only problem with Constellation was that it was under funded and that an infusion of cash (something the Obama regime is ordinarily very good at doing) would get it back on track.

Imagine NASA taking us on a new path. Imagine new journeys. Imagine NASA leading our world in space exploration, so that we all can appreciate and know our place in space.

I can imagine all sorts of things. But Obamaspace does not do any of those things.

'Covert Affairs' Season 1 Episode 4 'No Quarter'

"Covert Affairs" Season 1 Episode 4 "No Quarter" finds Annie Walker in Zurich and in a great deal of trouble. A simple "brush pass" of one metal brief case for another is interrupted by an explosion at the Zurich Air Port.

Missouri Voters Reject Health Care Reform by Passing Proposition C

One of the more interesting results of the Aug. 3 primaries is the overwhelming passage of Proposition C in Missouri. Proposition C would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health care insurance or punish them for not having it.

The Amazon Kindle is a Civil Rights Violation - Obama Justice Department

It seems that the Justice Department regards the Amazon Kindle, that wonderful device that is the first successful ebook reader and, in effect, a library in a thin box, as a civil rights violation. At least that is what Justice told some universities.

Nancy Pelosi Asked 'Did Jesus Have a Right to Life from the Moment of Conception?'

Rick Snyder 'One Tough Nerd' Wins Michigan Republican Primary for Governor (Video)

Erik Sorge doesn't think much of NASA's new video game, Moon Base Alpha. I can't comment on his analysis of the game play itself, but there is some other stuff that Sorge says that is downright irritating in it's ignorance.

The success of the rovers—and the increasingly tepid public response to shuttle launches or to the astonishing fact that there is a space station orbiting the planet—has called into question the relevance of astronauts. Moonbase Alpha, in its own small way, only hurts the case for humans in space. If the game featured an all-bot lunar mining facility, players would be spared the burden of gradually, tediously fixing a life-support system. Critical decisions such as whether to carry a wrench or a welder (apparently, NASA doesn't plan on producing a moon-worthy toolbox by 2025) could be replaced with, say, a simulation of the powerful, spider-like ATHLETE robot's perilous navigation of craters on the dark side of the moon. Instead of being given control of the array of awe-inspiring bots currently in NASA's labs, such as the humanoid Robonaut 2, players can deploy toylike rovers whose arms and integrated welders make the astronauts piloting them even more redundant.

I would have thought that the Royal Astronomical Society's study on human space exploration would have settled the hoary old robots vs. humans kerfuffle once and for all. But like the moon landing hoaxers, the robots uber alles crowd keep charging the windmill, impervious to logic, facts, and even embarrassment. The RAS report is based on the needs of science, of course, but commerce and national security also call for humans in space.

Report Shows Stimulus Package Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Senator Tom Coburn and Senator John McCain have issued a report detailing what they view as the one hundred worst spending projects in the so-called stimulus package, passed last year to spend the economy back out of recession.

Hollywood conservatives throw a party.

Sarah Palin is the Bear

Arianna Huffington is often given to new-age blather and psychobabble. But her essay on Sarah Palin, the Mama Grizzlies, and Jungian archetypes is entertaining not just for the blather and the psychobabble, but for her not getting Palin.

What to Do About the Bush Tax Cuts?

With economic malaise unaccountably resistant to President Obama's entreaties and mountains of government cash, and with the Democrats at the edge of an electoral abyss, Washington is wondering what to do with the Bush tax cuts.

'The Good Guys' is Finished for the Summer

"The Good Guys," a comedy/action/cop series by Burn Notice's Matt Nix, has concluded its summer run. The good news is that the show will return in the fall. The bad news is that Fox is putting it in the Friday Night Death slot.

Christopher Hitchens relates the true madness that is Hugo Chavez.

I was hugely impressed by the way that the boss scorned this overture. He essentially doubted the existence of al-Qaida, let alone reports of its attacks on the enemy to the north. "I don't know anything about Osama Bin Laden that doesn't come to me through the filter of the West and its propaganda." To this, Penn replied that surely Bin Laden had provided quite a number of his very own broadcasts and videos. I was again impressed by the way that Chávez rejected this proffered lucid-interval lifeline. All of this so-called evidence, too, was a mere product of imperialist television. After all, "there is film of the Americans landing on the moon," he scoffed. "Does that mean the moon shot really happened? In the film, the Yanqui flag is flying straight out. So, is there wind on the moon?" As Chávez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.

Clearly Chavez has not seen Mythbusters.

Apparently the tooling for the F 22 Raptor has been preserved, just in case a new administration with some sense wants to restart that plane's production.

Howard Zinn, whose polemic "People's History of the United States", is actually used in some High Schoool, was a communist.

Largest Ancient Roman Canal Ever Built Discovered at Site of Italian Sea Port

Archeologists have discovered an ancient Roman canal, the biggest ever built during the time of the Romans, connecting the town of Portus, on the mouth of the Tiber River, to the river town of Ostia.

'Centurion' a Film of Ancient Rome

The Big Lie: Pro-American Films Don’t Sell Overseas (Are You Listening, Captain America?)

I love this story, which proves that a lot of Hollywood types have no clue how people in other countries really think:

We were about to shoot a film that I wrote and would produce. I got a call from the Exec Producer. “Hey, I’ve been thinking,” he says (always a bad sign), “since one of our investors is German, you better ditch the whole bit with the vampire Nazis. I don’t want to offend him.” Damn it, I thought, that part was awesome. Everybody hates Nazis. How much more evil can you get than vampire Nazis decked out in SS uniforms? But it wasn’t worth the fight.

When the German investor arrived to check out the set, we grabbed lunch. “What happened to the Nazis?” he asked. My heart sunk. He read an early draft and he was offended. I replied that it just wasn’t working, and I acted surprised that he had read such an early version of the script. “Oh, that’s a shame. I thought that was really cool. And the way the heroes reacted to them was hilarious.” I breathed a sigh of relief, then confessed that we took it out as not to offend him. He seemed more offended that we would have thought he we be offended. “I’m not a Nazi. Everybody hates Nazis,” he explained. No, duh!

And from Andrew Klaven American Movies, Foreign Minds

Taylor Dinerman has an excellent post mortem of Obamaspace that should be read by virtually anyone interested in space policy. Very few escape Dinerman's caustic analysis, from the Obama administration to people who tend to use the term "pork" to describe "spending I do not like." (Note to Mr. Dinerman, people still use the word "fascist" to describe "government I do not like", a practice revived by Jonah Goldberg excellent but misunderstood book "Liberal Fascism.") to commercial space advocates looking for a government handout.

Dinerman ends with a warning:

The greatest danger for NASA is that the ill will that has been engendered by this debate will carry over into next year's budget process and may result in the cancellation of virtually all US human spaceflight activity. The budget pressures are going to be more severe than ever. There is already a group of space leaders out there who will, if they do not get what they want, recommend that the whole space exploration budget be eliminated. That would be music to the ears of those whose goal has long been to bring US national achievements down a few notches. Ending the era of major national accomplishments in space would be a fine way to grind away at the idea of American Exceptionalism.

Amen amen amen.