John Carter McKnight has a nice piece on why Bob Zubrin’s proposal for a government-sponsored Mars program would almost certainly be doomed to failure, as demonstrated by Zubrin’s own book. It also contains a good, but concise, description of why the space station was such a programmatic disaster. Highly recommended for anyone interested in space and technology policy.

John Carter McKnight has a nice piece on why Bob Zubrin’s proposal for a government-sponsored Mars program would almost certainly be doomed to failure, as demonstrated by Zubrin’s own book. It also contains a good, but concise, description of why the space station was such a programmatic disaster. Highly recommended for anyone interested in space and technology policy.

Kimberly Strassel has an eye-opening piece with some useful links in today’s Opinion Journal on how supposed “grassroots” organizations actually outfund and outlobby the “evil corporations.” It also describes the nexus between environmental and leftist groups (as a consequence of leftists’ allergy to technology, because it’s more revolutionary than they are) that I discussed a month ago.

Some superb critiques this morning on two of what have become our elite institutions–academia and the press, by Professor Glenn Reynolds and Matt Welch (including Matt’s comments on Glenn’s piece). Matt does a compare and contrast between an erudite college professor’s (Glenn) thoughtful and penetrating description of the problems within his own profession, and a self-indulgent whine from an LA Times journalist, who is utterly unwilling, even unable, to see the flaws within his, or to acknowledge that they might even exist.

Both are well worth the read, and provide food for thought on the future of blogging. As Glenn says repeatedly, there’s plenty of room at the top–in both the academy and the newsroom.

Great, now the frogs are whining about the possibility that we’ll execute Mr. Moussaoui–turns out he’s a French citizen. Well, they should have kept him in France, and let him blow up the Eiffel Tower. I’m actually not all that big on the death penalty for these creeps (it doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for people who want to suicide and get their 72 virgins), but now I’d like to fry him just to spite the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Tell you what, Frenchies, here’s the deal. Why don’t you have a referendum on the death penalty. And while you’re at it, on the Euro. You might be surprised at the results.

Then we might hand him over.

Great, now the frogs are whining about the possibility that we’ll execute Mr. Moussaoui–turns out he’s a French citizen. Well, they should have kept him in France, and let him blow up the Eiffel Tower. I’m actually not all that big on the death penalty for these creeps (it doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for people who want to suicide and get their 72 virgins), but now I’d like to fry him just to spite the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Tell you what, Frenchies, here’s the deal. Why don’t you have a referendum on the death penalty. And while you’re at it, on the Euro. You might be surprised at the results.

Then we might hand him over.

Great, now the frogs are whining about the possibility that we’ll execute Mr. Moussaoui–turns out he’s a French citizen. Well, they should have kept him in France, and let him blow up the Eiffel Tower. I’m actually not all that big on the death penalty for these creeps (it doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for people who want to suicide and get their 72 virgins), but now I’d like to fry him just to spite the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Tell you what, Frenchies, here’s the deal. Why don’t you have a referendum on the death penalty. And while you’re at it, on the Euro. You might be surprised at the results.

Then we might hand him over.

Just as we saw in Kabul, Kandahar shows little evidence of any civilian casualties, let alone massive ones.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we find out that, in overthrowing the Taliban, probably fewer civilians have died in the past couple of months than they would have killed themselves, had they not been distracted by dodging bombs. I hope someone can gather the data (i.e., nominal death rate due to ongoing executions and starvation via Taliban misrule prior to 911) and do the comparison.

In the midst of all the buzz about LOTR (just one more week!), Atlas Shrugged, the movie, now has a web site.

Like Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg tackles the subject of how wrong all the quagmirers and handwringers were a month ago. He chooses William Pfaff’s piece of just a couple weeks ago as emblematic of the short sightedness of the professional punditocracy.

What this suggests to me is a new noun, pfaff, for warrantless doom-saying about American military and foreign policy.