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NASA is pressing forward on plans to build a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, an outpost for astronauts positioned in the space near Earth's moon. According to NASA, the Gateway will not only be a place to live, learn and work around the moon but will also support an array of missions to the lunar surface. And scientists foresee a host of uses for the station. By making use of a suite of instruments housed on or inside the structure itself, or free-flying nearby, scientists could make Earth and solar observations. They could also carry out astrophysics and fundamental physics experiments. ......

The Department of Transportation's Inspector General says the “FAA’s oversight of industry actions to remove unapproved parts (from the nation’s aviation system) is ineffective,” and the agency “cannot be assured that unapproved parts … no longer pose a threat to safety” for the traveling public. That OIG report has prompted ranking member of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Peter DeFazio, (D-Oregon), to vow to crack down on unapproved airplane parts that he says pose a safety risk to the flying public. The inspector general’s report echoes a series of stories by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit that...

Britain’s foreign secretary Boris Johnson says it’s time Britain and France were linked by a bridge, calling it “ridiculous” that the two European powers were “only linked by a single rail line”. But is it even possible? And which side of the road would they drive on? The often loose-tongued and bungling Johnson made the eyebrow raising suggestion at Thursday’s Franco-British summit, held at a British army base. Johnson, who along with Theresa May had thrashed out a new summit with French president Emmanuel Macron, championed the idea of a bridge over the English Channel. […] … [T]he idea of...

An independent safety panel recommended NASA not certify SpaceX's commercial crew system until the agency better understands the behavior of pressure vessels linked to a Falcon 9 failure in 2016. That recommendation was one of the stronger items in the annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released by NASA Jan. 11, which found that NASA was generally managing risk well on its various programs. The report devoted a section to the composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) used to store helium in the second stage propellant tanks of the Falcon 9. The investigation into the September 2016 pad explosion that destroyed...

Credit six-term Republican Sen. Richard Shelby for Democrat Doug Jones’ shocking win in Alabama, senators from both parties said Wednesday. Shelby, Alabama’s senior senator and the state’s most influential official, publicly opposed GOP nominee Roy Moore and declared before the election that ”the state of Alabama deserves better” than a former judge accused of sexual contact with teenage girls decades ago. A former Democrat, Shelby, 83, announced weeks before the election that he had already cast an absentee ballot for another, unspecified Republican, even as President Donald Trump and other prominent state Republicans stood up for Moore. “I give the...

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said on Wednesday that he is "relieved" GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore lost the Alabama race and won't be representing the Republican party in Congress. "Relieved? Yes that's a good word. I'm relieved and I believe a lot of Republicans are relieved that Roy Moore and some of his people aren't the face of the Republican party," he told reporters when asked if he was feeling any relief over Tuesday's election results.

If you were asked to rate the readiness levels of the U.S. military, what would you say? For this exercise, assume you have a scale with five choices: very weak, weak, marginal, strong and very strong. Think about each branch of the military. Where would it fall? Perhaps you're thinking, "I'm not an expert, so I can't say for sure." So let me refer you to the latest report from The Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense. The authors are, in fact, experts -- and their conclusions are sobering. I'm referring to the 2018 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The...

Earmarks again are a topic in Congress, and people in this part of Pennsylvania shouldn’t condemn them. Back in the 1970s, when highway construction was booming around the biggest population centers of the Keystone State, places like Altoona, Johnstown, Ebensburg and Bedford were told that once those projects were completed, work would begin on their roadway needs.But as the large-scale projects around Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Erie were completed, the promises that had been made to Blair County and other smaller-population areas, didn’t materialize because of alleged money shortages.The message seemed to be: “We’ll get to you sometime, but for...

On June 10, the House Appropriations Committee made clear the way many on Capitol Hill view national defense. By a raised-hands vote of 13 to 23, the Committee rejected an amendment from Congressman Jack Kingston—a Georgia Republican—to redirect $339 million from operation and maintenance funds, deemed excess, to retain 234 A-10 close air support aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory. Even though the committee found $1.6 billion to increase the Obama Administration’s budget to buy hardware, it could not find a penny to retain one of the most extraordinarily effective weapons in the U.S. arsenal—and one of the cheapest...

… The bill will cost nearly a trillion dollars over ten years. But, considering the bill itself is 702 pages long, the bill will cost about $1.4 billion per page. If that doesn’t garner the attention of taxpayers, there was something else that bothered at least one member of the House today—how settling on cutting $8 billion of waste could be a called “compromise” between a $40 billion House cut and a $4 billion Senate cut. …

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have plans to spend up to $18 million over the next five years to develop “reliable” climate change predictions for the next few decades. The “funding opportunity enables interagency cooperation on one of the most pressing problems of the millennium: climate change and how it is likely to affect our world,” according to NSF’s official request for bids. … Current methods of predicting future climate change have proved to be wildly inaccurate. For example, none of the 73 computer models used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked why reporters were making an issue out of the additional spending that was added to the continuing resolution that re-opened the federal government and increased the debt limit. “What difference does it make? Why are we talking about this? We’re talking about a bill that as I said last night, I’m not asking anybody to vote for this bill on the merits,” Pelosi said. …

Bridges for field mice, a disastrously over-budget philharmonic hall and a cycle path that stops in the middle of nowhere—a list published on Thursday reveals the bizarre ways in which the government has wasted German taxpayers’ money. The so-called “Black Book”, compiled by the German Taxpayers’ Alliance, lists the many and diverse ways where the state has spent billions of euros of public finances through poorly planned, questionable and absurd projects. The body’s head, Rainer Holznagel said: “Germany is richer than ever before. But far too much of our hard-earned money is not being spent efficiently.” … Most expensive of...

“The Pig Cafeteria” was an exhibit produced by the Department of Agriculture to educate farmers about new methods of farming and raising livestock — specifically, what to feed pigs so that they would be healthy and profitable.

The Internal Revenue Service, already under fire after officials disclosed that the agency targeted conservative groups, faces increased scrutiny because of an inspector general’s report that it spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012.The report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general about conference spending is set to be released Tuesday. The department issued a statement Sunday saying the administration “has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending.” The White House and the agency were on the defensive before the report on conference spending. Agency officials and the Obama...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three months after Superstorm Sandy ravaged coastal areas in much of the Northeast, Congress on Monday sent a $50.5 billion emergency relief measure for storm victims to President Barack Obama for his signature. "I commend Congress for giving families and businesses the help they deserve, and I will sign this bill into law as soon as it hits my desk," Obama said in a statement late Monday. Despite opposition from conservatives concerned about adding billions of dollars more to the nation's debt, the Senate cleared the long-delayed bill, 62-36, after House Republicans had stripped it earlier this...

EARMARKS $129,859,196,359 This is a short outline describing only one method, only one very small portion of the vast Federal Budget, that elected officials use, with impunity, to TRANSFER WEALTH from hard working citizens, like you, to UNDESERVING PATRONAGE GROUPS. Or, to put it in other terms, they STEAL your money and BUY LOYALTY and VOTES so they can stay in office and power. Or to put it yet another way, THEY APPROPRIATE THE MONEY YOU WORKED YOUR ASS OFF TO EARN AND RE-DISTRIBUTE IT IN A MORE “FAIR” WAY. Don’t forget they are SMARTER than you and know how...

Critics have called it the train to nowhere and a $98 billion boondoggle. As concerns mount over the practicality and affordability of California's plan to build a high-speed rail system, even many former supporters are beginning to sound skeptical. Not so Gov. Jerry Brown. He has emerged as the most vocal cheerleader of a project that is as risky as it is ambitious. Building a first-in-the-nation project would provide a lasting legacy for the 73-year-old Democratic governor as he moves into the twilight of a long political career. His father is revered for promoting the construction of California's comprehensive water...

When Newt Gingrich says he never lobbied, he's not telling the truth. When he was a paid consultant for the drug-industry's lobby group, Gingrich worked hard to persuade Republican congressmen to vote for the Medicare drug subsidy that the industry favored. To deny Gingrich was a lobbyist requires an Obama-like word parsing over who is and who isn't a lobbyist. Gingrich stated last week on Fox News, "I do no lobbying of any kind. I never have. A very important point to make. I have never done lobbying of any kind." But the facts contradict that claim. First of all,...

Three marriages. Two divorces. Add up the numbers, and Newt Gingrich is an improbable candidate to win over the influential social-conservative bloc in the GOP. But in this unconventional cycle, both national and early-primary-state evangelical and social-conservative leaders are signaling that Gingrich’s personal history is no insurmountable obstacle, although some would like to see him further address his past decisions. “In general, I think people who have experienced the ultimate form of forgiveness themselves are willing to extend mercy and extend forgiveness to others,” says Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “In Newt’s case, he’s...