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Looks like another GISS miss, more than a few people are getting fed up with Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and their climate shenanigans. Some very prominent NASA voices speak out in a scathing letter to current NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr.. When Chris Kraft, the man who presided over NASA’s finest hour, and the engineering miracle of saving Apollo 13 speaks, people listen. Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change positionFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.comJoint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidenceHOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.49 former NASA...

The United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if Newt Gingrich is in charge, the Republican presidential hopeful announced today (Jan. 25). Gingrich laid out this goal during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast. He also said that near-Earth space would be bustling with commercial activity by 2020, and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently. "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it...

A generic Republican candidate now holds an eight-point advantage over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup for the week ending Sunday, December 4. This is the largest gap measured between the two since early September.

Job creation remained weak in the U.S. during November, with just 120,000 new positions created, though the unemployment rate slid to 8.6 percent, a government report showed Friday. The rate fell from the previous month's 9.0 percent, which would reflect a drop in the participation rate among those without jobs. Average earnings were essentially flat, up two cents to $23.18 an hour. Private payrolls increased 140,000, considerably less than a report earlier this week showing that nongovernment jobs were up by more than 200,000 for the month.

MOSCOW –  An unmanned Russian supply ship bound for the International Space Station failed to reach its planned orbit Wednesday, and pieces of it fell in Siberia amid a thunderous explosion, officials said. A brief statement from Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, did not specify whether the Progress supply ship that was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan had been lost. But the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Alexander Borisov, head of a the Choisky region in Russia's Altai province, as saying pieces of the craft fell in his area some 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of the launch...

Generic Republican Candidate 48%, Obama 43% A generic Republican candidate earns the highest level of support yet against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election matchup. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that the generic Republican picks 48% of the vote, while the president gets 43% support. Three percent (3%) favor some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Last week, the incumbent and the generic Republcian candidate were tied, each earning 44% support. The GOP candidate has now outpolled the president in seven-of-10 surveys conducted...

Rep. Ron Paul announced Tuesday that he won't seek re-election to the Texas U.S. House seat he's presented for nearly 24 years, and instead will concentrate on getting the Republican nomination for president to run against President Obama in 2012. "Dr. Paul will not seek re-election in the Texas-14 and will focus his efforts on winning the presidency," Jesse Benton, a Paul campaign aide, told Fox News. Paul made the announcement via Twitter, and linked to a local Texas newspaper to share the details. "I felt it was better that I concentrate on one election," Paul told The Facts, a...

WASHINGTON — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is suing Herndon, Va.-based Valador Inc. and its vice president, Joe Fragola, for making what SpaceX says were defamatory allegations about the safety and reliability of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. At the heart of the lawsuit is a June 8 email Fragola allegedly sent to NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance, Bryan D. O’Connor, saying he was trying to verify a rumor that the Falcon 9’s first stage experienced a significant anomaly during its December launch of the Dragon space capsule. The suit was filed June 14 in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit...

The NASA scientist who once claimed the Bush administration tried to "silence" his global warming claims is now accused of receiving more than $1.2 million from the very environmental organizations whose agenda he advocated. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a group claims NASA is withholding documents that show James Hansen failed to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding substantial compensation he earned outside his $180,000 taxpayer-paid position as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Hansen's office appears to be somewhat of a rogue operation. It's clearly a taxpayer-funded global warming advocacy organization," said...

Just for the sake of contrast..... President Bush addresses Virginia Tech students.

KPFT (90.1 FM) will begin airing an hour of news from the Al Jazeera English radio network as part of an agreement announced Monday between the international news and current events channel and the Pacifica Foundation. Houston will be one of three markets, along with Berkeley, Calif., and New York, where Al Jazeera English will air on Pacifica-owned stations beginning this week. The program will air beginning in January in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and then will be made available to other Pacifica affiliates.

NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request.  Orion and Ares are part of Constellation, a NASA program designed to take astronauts back to the moon. Under his 2011 budget proposal, President Barack Obama called for canceling Constellation and urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars. The outlook for Constellation's fledgling rocket and capsule spacecraft is not clear. Obama did recommend continuing development of Orion -- but only as an escape ship that...

Republican candidates have jumped out to a record-setting 12-point lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, August 15, 2010. This is the biggest lead the GOP has held in over a decade of Rasmussen Reports surveying.

Despite repeatedly voicing concerns about Arizona's new immigration enforcement law in recent weeks and threatening to challenge it, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday he has not yet read the law -- which is only 10 pages long. "I have not had a chance to -- I've glanced at it," Holder said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing when asked by Rep.Ted Poe, R-Texas whether Holder has read the state law cracking down on illegal immigrants. "I'll give you my copy of it if you would like," Poe responded.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will revamp NASA's planned Orion crew capsule, speed up development of a massive deep space rocket and perhaps consider adding more shuttle flights beyond their scheduled retirement this year, a senior White House official said Tuesday. Obama will “outline a broad vision for NASA that unlocks our ambitions and expands our frontiers in space,� ultimately reaching Mars, the official said in a telephone interview as he previewed the speech Obama will deliver Thursday at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.“We are going to increase our investment in groundbreaking technologies to allow astronauts to reach space faster and...

President Obama is reportedly going to flatline NASA's budget when he releases his annual spending plan Monday, effectively grounding the agency's Constellation program, which oversees human spaceflight. Houston, we have a problem. President Obama's renewed focus on creating jobs, which he plans to lay out in his State of the Union address Wednesday night, apparently doesn't include reaching for the moon. Obama is reportedly going to flatline NASA's budget when he releases his annual spending plan on Monday, effectively grounding the agency's Constellation program, which oversees human spaceflight. The program needs about $3 billion in additional funding annually for the...

Republican candidates again hold a nine-point lead over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The new national telephone survey shows that 46% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Voter support for GOP congressional candidates is up slightly from last week, while support for Democrats held steady. Republicans started the year ahead by nine points -- their largest lead in several years -- while support for Democrats fell to its lowest level in years. Republicans have held the lead on the ballot for several months...

On the surface, three recent polls on the upcoming Massachusetts special election to fill the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy seem to tell three different stories. A Rasmussen Reports poll, released last week, shows Democrat Martha Coakley leading Republican challenger Scott Brown by nine points. Two new polls released over the weekend show wildly different toplines. A Boston Globe poll puts Coakley up by 17 points, while a survey by Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds Brown ahead by a single point. As always, it’s important to look at what the polls have in common to learn the...

Republican candidates start the year by opening a nine-point lead over Democrats, the GOP's biggest in several years, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 35% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

It's 32°F and snowing like a fiend in the Clear Lake, League City, Friendswood, Alvin, and other areas south of Houston.Algore was not available for commentThat is all.

<p>LONDON – The reigning Miss England has relinquished her crown after being accused of a fight in a bar.</p>

In what is currently a difficult political climate for Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trails two potential Republican challengers seeking to unseat him as he faces reelection next year in Nevada. The first Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of the 2010 race shows Sue Lowden beating Reid by 10 percentage points, 50% to 40%. Lowden is chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party and the preferred candidate of the Republican party establishment. GOP hopeful Danny Tarkanian beats Reid by seven points, 50% to 43%. Tarkanian is a former basketball player for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and the son of...

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. That represents the lowest level of support for Democrats in recent years, while Republicans have tied their highest level of support for the third straight week. The previous low for Democrats over the past year was 37%. This summer, support for Republican candidates ranged from 41% to 43%, support for Democrats ranged from 37% to 39%. Looking back one year ago, support was strikingly different for the parties. Throughout the summer of...

Though a little scandal might alienate advertisers, it’s pure ratings gold. Last night Glenn Beck had over 3 million viewers at 5pm, second only to O’Reilly for the night. But, Beck had more 25-54 viewers than O’Reilly (888K to 876K). I don’t watch or really even care about the cable news wars, but still…wow. Even though Beck airs before primetime, when there are fewer people watching TV, he had the most 25-54 viewers in the cable news world for the night. Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for August 26, 2009

This summer brought a significant shift in voter preferences in the Generic Congressional Ballot. As Republican Congressional candidates once again lead Democrats by a 43% to 38% margin this week, this is now the ninth straight ballot the GOP has held a modest advantage. Over the past nine weeks, Republicans have held a two-to-five point advantage over Democrats every week. It is important to note, however, that the recent shift is not only because Republicans have been gaining support, but that Democrats have slipped in support. While support for Republican candidates ranged from 41% to 43%, support for Democrats ranged...

Republican candidates have now matched their biggest lead over Democrats of the past several years on the Generic Congressional Ballot. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. The level of support for Democratic candidates is unchanged this week, but backing for GOP candidates rose one point from a week ago. This is now the eighth straight week Republicans have led on the Generic Ballot.

NEW YORK —  Hackers from Russia may have attacked Google, Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to silence a pro-Georgian blogger, it has emerged. A year after troops from the two countries became locked in a five-day war, the co-ordinated cyber assaults shut down Twitter for a couple of hours and disrupted access for Facebook users. LiveJournal, a blogging site, was also hit while Google managed to fend off "denial-of-service" attacks. The hacking technique uses thousands of compromised computers to contact a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through. A Georgian blogger by the name of...

Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer leads former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in an early look at California’s 2010 race for the U.S. Senate. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that Boxer attracts 45% of the statewide vote while Fiorina, her best-known possible Republican challenger, earns 41%. Seven percent (7%) say they’d vote for some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. In March, Boxer led Fiorina by nine, 47% to 38%. Any incumbent who polls below 50% early in a campaign is considered potentially vulnerable. However, a Democrat running in a heavily Democratic state like California is often able...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the first time Thursday said that the full Senate will not vote on the legislation until after the August recess. He told reporters it's more important to get it right than to ram through an incomplete bill. The decision means Congress will not meet President Obama's ambitious deadline for legislation -- the president wanted both chambers to pass out a bill by the August recess. It's unclear whether the House will be able to move legislation to the floor by the break, but delays continue. The only House committee left to vote on the package was again...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0wr8egTnYw

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here: "Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor"...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That’s the President’s lowest rating to date and the first time the Presidential Approval Index has fallen below zero for Obama (see trends).

NASA does not suspect sabotage was behind the glitch that twice delayed the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour recently. But, as with any problem without an apparent solution, the space agency is investigating all possible explanations, including intentional tampering, officials said. Endeavour's STS-127 mission was supposed to lift off June 13, but a leak of hydrogen gas from a pipe attached to the shuttle's fuel tank kept the vehicle grounded. NASA tried to launch Endeavour a second time on Wednesday, but again the leak appeared, even after workers replaced the leaky seal between the pipe and the shuttle. The...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Cisco Systems and The Travelers Companies Inc. will replace General Motors Corp. and Citigroup on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes said on Monday. The move was triggered by General Motors' filing for bankruptcy earlier on Monday. "A bankruptcy filing immediately disqualifies a stock regardless of a company's history or its role as a cultural icon," said Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief for all of Dow Jones.

p>MADRID – Spain's Health Ministry confirmed the country's first case of swine flu on Monday and said another 20 people are suspected of having the disease. It was the first confirmed swine flu case in Europe and the first outside of North America. Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said the patient is a young man who had recently returned from Mexico where he had been as part of his university studies.Jimenez told a press conference the man is responding well to treatment and that neither he nor any of the people under observation are in serious condition.

For the first time since Barack Obama was elected president last November, more than half of U.S. voters (53%) say it is at least somewhat likely that the next occupant of the White House will be a Republican. Thirty-one percent (31%) say it is Very Likely. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it is not very or not at all likely, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twelve percent (12%) aren’t sure. This is not an expectation related to the 2012 election. It is a question about the President following Obama which could happen in either 2012 or 2016....

The women huddled in the corner of the Panera Bread restaurant on a recent Friday looked like friends catching up on their busy lives over a late lunch than revolutionaries planning a tax revolt.Felicia Cravens and her friends call themselves the Houston Tea Party Society, part of a national movement in which thousands of people in cities across the country plan to stage Tax Day Tea Parties on Wednesday to protest the federal government’s billion-dollar economic stimulus packages and bailouts for the banking and auto industries. Tea parties are planned for nearly a dozen cities in the Houston area, including...

During the next few weeks, a fine comet bright enough for observation in binoculars and possibly even with the naked eye will provide a fine skywatching target when weather permits.Comet Lulin will be closest to Earth on Feb. 24 and will occur than and on surrounding nights. For sharp-eye viewers with dark, rural, skies, the comet is expected to be visible as a dim, fuzzy star.People living in cities and suburbs are not expected to see the comet with the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will reveal its cloudy head and perhaps a striking tail, too. Comets are unpredictable,...

A state trooper who noticed a school bus on the side of a southwest Texas highway last weekend decided to stop and see if there was a problem.His superiors are glad he did.The trooper looked inside the abandoned bus along U.S. 59 in Webb County and discovered more than 4 1/2 tons of marijuana, the Texas Department of Public Safety reported today.The discovery on Saturday morning resulted in the second-largest marijuana seizure the DPS has recorded during routine traffic enforcement since 1997, officials said.

DENVER – A Colorado man has been indicted on charges of threatening to kill President Barack Obama and blow up the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis. The man said the threat against Obama was a prank. [snip] The indictment claims Gutierrez e-mailed the FBI's Washington office eight days before Obama's inauguration saying: "I'm going to assassinate the new president of the United States of America. P.S., you have 48 hours to stop it from happening."The indictment says a second e-mail threatened to blow up the mall with 40 pounds of C4 explosive and TNT planted on seven cars parked...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- New York Times Co. executives said Wednesday that the decline in digital advertising revenue the company saw in the fourth quarter was primarily attributable to the economic downturn, with much of the drop-off coming from the help-wanted classified category.

A new technique that separates truth from lies finds it takes about 30 percent longer to fib. The computer-based analysis, reported in The Times of London, showed that British test subjects took 1.2 seconds on average to speak reality in recent tests, while prevarications took 1.8 seconds. The timed antagonistic response alethiometer test (Tara) was developed by Aiden Gregg, a psychologist at the University of Southampton. It involves questions answered on a computer using the keyboard, then an algorithm to see how users did. In 85 percent of cases, interviewees were slower when they lied.

An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a fatal 2007 Houston office fire announced Wednesday that it will drop its legal argument that the victims’ families aren’t entitled to a payout because the deaths were caused by smoke pollution, not the fire’s flames.

CAIRO, Egypt  —  An intelligence monitoring center reports that Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader is blaming Barack Obama and Egypt's president for the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The SITE Monitoring Service says the audio statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri was posted on militant Web sites Tuesday. This is al-Zawahiri's first comment on the crisis since the war began eleven days ago. In a transcript of the statement released by SITE, he calls the Israeli offensive a "Crusade against Islam and Muslims" and "Obama's gift to Israel" before he takes office. Al-Zawahiri also calls Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, a "traitor" for keeping...

CLEVELAND —  Cleveland Browns fan Mike Meredith is a couch potato with a cause. Meredith has a motorized sofa — the "Go-Kouch" — that he usually rides around a municipal parking lot for tailgate parties before games. But on Nov. 23, he decided to take the couch, a converted riding mower, the extra two blocks to the Browns' stadium for a game with Houston. Meredith said several police officers waved him through. One didn't, issuing him citations for driving an unregistered vehicle and having expired plates. Meredith pleaded not guilty and will argue his case in court Tuesday. He has prepared...

TEHRAN, Iran —  Iran has rejected a suggestion by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that a carrot and stick policy of economic incentives and additional sanctions might persuade the Iranian government to change its behavior. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hasan Qashqavi, said Monday that Obama's proposed policy was unacceptable and had failed in the past. Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that the international community should adopt a carrot and stick policy to alter Iran's behavior toward its nuclear program and support for militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He also said the U.S. should increase direct diplomacy.

BUNA, Texas – The one that didn't get away held an unlikely surprise for a Texas man. The blue-stoned class ring of Joe Richardson, engraved with his name, turned up inside an 8-pound bass 21 years after he lost it while fishing on Lake Sam Rayburn. "My first reaction was — you gotta be kidding," he said Wednesday. The fisherman who discovered the tarnished ring inside his catch contacted Richardson on Nov. 28 in Buna, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, after tracking him down with help from the Internet. Richardson, 41, said he lost the ring about two weeks...

WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Democrats' plan to tap the Wall Street rescue fund to save U.S. automakers doesn't have the votes to pass. One day after Detroit's Big Three sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for $34 billion in government aid, Reid said there's still not enough support in Congress for using some of the $700 billion bailout to help the teetering carmakers. He told The Associated Press in an interview, "I just don't think we have the votes to do that now."

WASHINGTON  —  The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists."Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," states the report, obtained by The Associated Press. It is scheduled to be publicly released Wednesday.The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official on the National Security Council to exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combatting the...

LOS ANGELES – A homeless man has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison and ordered to pay more than $101 million for starting two fires, including one that burned more than 163,000 acres in California two years ago.Fifty-year-old Steven Emory Butcher was convicted in February of starting blazes in the Los Padres National Forest in 2002 and 2006.The 2006 fire raged for more than a month and cost more than $78 million to suppress. It injured 18 people, destroyed 11 structures and was the fifth-largest fire in California history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire...