Free Republic

Former President Bill Clinton addressed the recent unrest in the Muslim world over a U.S.-made film insulting the prophet Muhammad, saying that while the underlying message is offensive, "you can't react every time you're insulted." Clinton sat down with "CBS This Morning" co-hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell to discuss his thoughts on the turmoil in the Middle East as the Clinton Global Initiative begins its annual meeting in New York City this week.

I have written here more than once that on long space missions like New Horizons, mission teams form family-like bonds. Well, on May 30, the New Horizons family lost one of our own, co-investigator and friend, Dr. Dave Slater, of the Southwest Research Institute. Dave grew up in Los Angeles, where his dad worked in the aerospace industry, including time in project Apollo. Dave was intensely interested in astronomy as a boy, and grew up determined to become a scientist. After earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics, Dave was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 -- popped up in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km). "I find it remarkable...

It would be fair to say that the crashy culmination of NASA's LCROSS mission on October 9th was a technical success but a public-relations fizzle. LCROSS on final approach LCROSS and its Centaur rocket prepare to crash into the Moon. NASA On the plus side, the engineering team for LCROSS (short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) delivered as promised, deftly driving a spent 2½-ton Centaur rocket into a target zone near the Moon's south pole only 2 miles (3½ km) across. Four minutes later, after flying through the debris cloud raised by the rocket's crash, an instrument-packed 600-kg...

There is an amusing Quick-Time movie advertising New Horizons's upcoming Jupiter Fly-By. Some cool Jupiter images are included.

Jupiter Ahoy! Blazing along its path to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons has come within hailing distance of Jupiter. The first picture of the giant planet from the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken Sept. 4, 2006, is a tantalizing promise of what's to come when New Horizons flies through the Jupiter system early next year. New Horizons was still 291 million kilometers (nearly 181 million miles) away from Jupiter when LORRI took the photo. As New Horizons comes much closer, next January and February, LORRI will take more-detailed images. "These first LORRI images of Jupiter are awe-inspiring," says New...

I have been working on seeing the United States fly a mission to Pluto since early in 1988. After a few weeks of discussions with colleagues and a little scheming and ritual screwing up of a 31-year-old's courage, my first meeting with NASA officials on this was held on May 8, 1988, in the office of Geoff Briggs. Dr. Briggs was NASA's Director of Planetary Exploration at that time. In that meeting I asked Geoff, "With Voyager about to arrive at Neptune, why isn't NASA even planning a mission to Pluto?" His deceptively simple response lulled me into a false...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Mike Love is suing his cousin and former Beach Boys bandmate Brian Wilson, but Love's lawyer hopes the lawsuit won't mar their good vibrations. Love filed the lawsuit in federal court Thursday accusing Wilson of promoting his 2004 album, "Smile," in a manner that "shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the 'Smile' album itself."

HOUSTON - Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, America’s first black astronaut, had already traveled far by the time he was selected as a military astronaut in 1967. His death later that year in a tragic accident not only cut short a promising career, it led full recognition of his accomplishments and hard-won status to be obscured for decades. Only after his supporters traveled their own difficult journey was Lawrence accorded his proper place in space history. Lawrence was a 31-year-old Air Force officer when he was selected in 1967 to join a small team of military officers training for a planned...

Terry Melcher, a record producer and songwriter who aided the careers of Ry Cooder, the Byrds and the Beach Boys, has died, his publicist announced Saturday. He was 62. Melcher, the son of actress Doris Day, died Friday night at his Beverly Hills home after a long battle with melanoma. Melcher co-wrote the hit song "Kokomo" for the Beach Boys. The song was used in the movie "Cocktail" and was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1988 for best original song. He also performed on the Beach Boys album "Pet Sounds." In the early 1960s, Melcher began singing as a...

I know all of you are waiting eagerly for the details of BobLee’s Big Election Adventure on Tuesday. Since I can’t even go to a Waffle House for a bowl of chili without “three columns worth of weird” for dessert you can bet there were some “moments” to rehash. We’ll cover those moments. BobLee is always waggling his finger at most of you about “hating” too much. “Hating Wuffies, hating Tar Holes, hating Baddour – Amato - Jim Knight – Coach K – Laettner – Dickie V – Caulton Tudor – and the DOT folks screwing up I-40 thru the...

Decision time draws near in one of the most contentious presidential elections in modern times. Polls indicate a small number of undecided voters in a handful of states will determine the result. While the Express-News understands that most voters who have seen televised debates between the two candidates and followed their campaigns for weeks likely already hold strong opinions on the subject, the newspaper today shares its view. We recommend George W. Bush for re-election. When we endorsed Bush in 2000 and when he took office the following year, neither Bush nor the nation could have imagined the challenges they...

A new major scientific payload flew in space last week after launching aboard a NASA suborbital Black Brant rocket. The payload, consisting of a telescope/spectrometer combination and an image-intensified imaging system, successfully explored the ultraviolet spectrum of the planet Mercury and also searched for the long-sought belt of small bodies called Vulcanoids that may lie even closer to the Sun than Mercury. Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) provided the payload and is responsible for data analysis. "The rocket flew a textbook flight and got the goods on our calibration star (Zeta Ophiuchus), Mercury and the Moon -- everything in the flight...

NASA suborbital mission 36.210 (PI Stern) will use the newly-developed, high-throughput BDPR ultraviolet spectrograph to make the first ever far ultraviolet spectrum of the planet Mercury. BDPR will also fly an image intensified CCD camera to search for Vulcanoids near the Sun. The mission will reach a maximum altude of 263 km (164 km, 870,000 ft) during its 15 minute research mission to space and back. This mission has been primarily supported by the NASA planetary suborbital rocket program. Additional support was provided by the NASA Applied Information Systems program and The Planetary Society.

AUSTIN — Before the so-called Texas 11, before the Killer Ds, even before the Killer Bees' 1979 dash from the Legislature, there were 13 Reconstruction-era bolters. And their treatment when they returned apparently marked the last time state senators took dramatic action to punish a quorum-breaking colleague. The last time, that is, until last week, when Republicans imposed hefty fines on 11 Democratic senators who remain in New Mexico to halt action on a redistricting effort designed to send more Republicans to Congress. Some see parallels to the 1870 clash, which led to one senator's expulsion. "Whenever political power turns...

Why do we love our San Antonio Spurs? Because while most basketball champions rush to the television cameras and champagne showers, David Robinson rushes to embrace his son and Tim Duncan rushes to kiss his wife. Because Tony Parker will tell you in his humble French accent that his post-season game was sometimes ugly, and that he's glad he saw victory from the sidelines thanks to his able understudy, Speedy Claxton. Because Stephen Jackson got plenty of attention for his less-than-harmonious departure from the opposing New Jersey Nets and still has the class to praise his former team for its...

I was in Mission Control when Neil Armstrong announced that the Eagle had landed. The applause was unexpectedly muted as we were all overwhelmed by the significance of the moment. Nobody had any doubt that Tranquility Base was the first step in an expansion into space that would drive human progress for centuries to come. We had of course all seen the 1968 Kubrick/Clarke movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the facilities depicted there seemed entirely reasonable. In our lifetimes, we expected to see hotels in orbit, translunar shuttles operated by commercial airlines, and settlements on the Moon. Only the...

NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Thirty-seven years after aborting his most ambitious project midway through recording, former Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson plans to resurrect the long-lost "Smile" album in U.K. concerts next year. Wilson has set four dates at London's Royal Festival Hall for February 2004 as well as five additional shows throughout the U.K. the following month. "Smile" was intended to be the follow-up to the Beach Boys' best-known album, 1966's "Pet Sounds" (Capitol). Later that year, the symphonic hit single "Good Vibrations" gave listeners an idea of the direction Wilson was planning to take the music. The artist...

Two US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returned safely to earth from the International Space Station on Sunday despite landing several hundred kilometres (miles) off their target in Kazakhstan after an apparent malfunction in their Russian Soyuz craft. Nikolai Budarin and US crewmates Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit, who had blasted off from the International Space Station (ISS) on the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft earlier on Sunday, were to have been met after landing at around 0200 GMT. But the capsule landed 440 kilometres (275 miles) off course and rescue teams took more than two hours to locate it, according to...