Free Republic

NASA has just finished building a $350 million test facility in Gulfsport, La., despite the program it was designed for having been canceled nearly four years ago.

The infamous $640 toilet seat which the Pentagon purchased back in the 1980′s now has a crappy, excuse the pun, modern day equivalent: a government-made mobile app with a price tag of $200,000. Rich Jones of Gun.io, a job board for hackers, downloaded and installed the Heat Safety app from OSHA. It’s a straightforward service that finds your current location, measures the heat and humidity and serves up a warning with notes if the temperature is dangerous. One might call it the kind of app that could have been created for less money by simply telling people to stick their...

A press release by the National Resources Defense Council indicates that President Obama’s motorcade tonight will be carbon neutral. At first glance one might be impressed that the President is putting his money where his mouth is by driving a more environmentally friendly vehicle or some other personal action that could have a green effect. Alas, this is not the case. The claims on the ride being carbon comes from the purchase of energy carbon offsets through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. These offsets can come in a variety of flavors, such as investment in wind farms.

Researchers from California Business for Education Excellence and the Pacific Research Institute have taken a look at what the state and its students are getting from more than $1 billion spent so far to help improve low-performing schools. Their conclusion: not much. The schools in the program are not doing any better than similar schools that did not participate and did not get the extra money, they say. And they say the state's accountability program is covering up that failure by using a system to assess schools that most people do not understand. ... Their report's executive summary is here.