Here’s another one for the stupid criminal tricks file–he didn’t get eaten by a crocodile, but here’s a guy who lost an arm in escaping from handcuffs. He can only do that trick one more time, then they’ll have to cuff one of his legs. If it continues, it could end up like Monty Python’s Black Knight.

“All right, this time it goes around your neck, you stupid git.”

XCOR had a test flight incident that might have been a problem if the vehicle had been unmanned. One of the engines didn’t shut down due to an electrical failure. Rutan let the engine burn long enough to give him the energy he needed to land, then shut it down with a manual valve and landed safely.

This is how you test vehicles–not with billions of dollars in software and simulations.

The government continues to take our money and hand it to the dairy industry to overproduce, so we can pay more for milk, and they can take more of our tax money to store the surplus.

“They keep making it and we keep buying it,” said Steve Gill, an Agriculture Department official.

No kidding? Give that man a raise for mental acuity.

This kind of outrageousness has been going on for so long that I’m just numb to it, but it’s useful to remind ourselves of the stupidy and venality of government policies occasionally, particularly as elections approach. Unfortunately, both parties are guilty.

The Supreme Court has ruled that candidates campaigning for judgeships can describe themselves and their opponents.

Cheerfully, this bodes ill for McCain-Feingold.

Jon Dougherty has the scoop on Magaw and his opposition to armed pilots. It would threaten his plans at empire building.

Putting this pompous, power-hungry gun-grabbing bureaucrat in charge of airline security is one of the most infuriating things that Bush has done. By itself, it’s enough to cost him my vote next time. Not that I’d ever vote for a Democrat either, of course.

Tapped says we all should be outraged over this column by Cal Thomas.

On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His protection against future attacks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists.

Well, like all aspects of this pledge deal, I’m having trouble getting very worked up over it. If he’d said, “I believe it’s a greater injury…” then I might say, what an idiot. But he’s simply saying that many will conclude that, which may, as far as I know, be perfectly true.

Some people get pretty upset about God, and his name, and taking it in vain, and saying it or not saying it. I’m not one of them, though I try not to needlessly offend people whose beliefs differ from mine.

And to be honest, while I don’t think that this particular decision is all that big a deal, I do think that bad judicial decisions can, and have, damaged more property and killed more people than the Islamists could dream of doing.

[Update at 12:46 PM PDT]

Orrin Judd agrees with Cal. Or at least he’s one of the people that Cal’s talking about.

Another government employee has been arrested for forest arson. It’s a county employee, hired to count Mexican spotted owls in New Mexico.

Thomas James, at the Louisiana Mars Society (whose blog I just added to the left, in the Space/Science category), has an on-point critique of the most recent report from the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry.

I haven’t read it in full myself, but when I do, I’ll try to get around to saying something intelligent about it. But for now, read his.

If, that is, you can manage it without making your eyes bleed. He really needs to fix the colors on the site–the links themselves are unreadable.

I wonder if there’s more to the story of the Las Vegas threat than the FBI wants us to know? J.J. Johnson thinks so. He interviewed the man who picked up the Arabic phone call himself.

The Las Vegas Review Journal article on Saturday sent us on a mission. We were determined to meet Michael Hamdan for several reasons:

1. The FBI said that the story was not credible but did not provide any reasons for this conclusion – as if somehow in the last two weeks the FBI itself has acquired the credibility to pass judgment. They have missed tips before.

2. The FBI mentioned a polygraph, but never stated that Mr. Hamdan had failed it. In typical government newspeak, they implied a connection and hoped their 8th grade reading level subjects would make that assumption.

3. Mr. Hamdan claimed that the FBI did not return his phone calls. This happened to us in 1996, in the aftermath of the pipe-bombing at the Olympics.

4. Mr. Hamdan was demonized by the local media. Due to our past experience, that was a clear red flag.

In short, we’ve seen this movie before.

I’m wondering if the FBI is saying publicly that there’s nothing to it, to prevent panic and reduction in casino business over the holiday, while hoping to find/prevent the perps from carrying it out. If so, they’re playing a very dangerous game.

I disagree with Philip Shropshire about almost everything, but he understands why space is important.