Free Republic

Newt Gingrich’s moon base idea takes center stage at the GOP debate in Florida If aliens were watching from outer space, even they might have been shocked by the amount of time devoted to space travel in Thursday’s presidential debate. Newt Gingrich excited Florida’s struggling space coast this week when he pledged to industry executives that he would colonize the moon by the end of his second presidential term. The big promise drew flak from his GOP rivals, and a question at the debate from a Twitter user who wanted to know how the former speaker planned to pay for...

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...

[snip] Giuliani transformed a city whose budget and workforce were larger than those of all but five or six states. He and police chief William Bratton famously cracked down first on quality of life crimes like panhandling and public urination. Teenagers who leaped over the turnstiles at subway entrances were arrested — a departure from the practice under Mayor David Dinkins. Giuliani later quipped that the police under his predecessor had become "highly skilled observers of crime." Those turnstile jumpers turned out to possess a huge number of illegal guns, which were confiscated, and criminals throughout the city discovered that...