Free Republic

Heeere we goooo. Fingers toes and eyes crossed for a successful test flight of the 33-Raptor engine Superheavy booster and Starship first time into space. Both vehicles are planned to splash down...the booster in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship off of Hawaii.

A new Mason-Dixon poll out tonight shows Democrat Bill Nelson leading Republican Katherine Harris by 26 points in the U.S. Senate race. Nelson polls at 57 percent; Harris at 31 percent. Nelson has been ahead by at least 15 points since Mason-Dixon first began polling nearly two years ago. While campaigning in North Florida this week, Nelson told supporters that the race would even and that garnering 55 percent of the vote would be a landslide. Harris spokeswoman Jennifer Marks released a statement, saying "Congresswoman Harris has a long history of rebounding from negative polling predictions because her message of...

What does "stay the course" mean? At one time it meant "regime change." Then it came to mean "weapons of mass destruction," then it meant "war on terror." Now apparently it means an Iraq that is "democratic and free." ...that is nonsense. How many Arab countries are currently both free and democratic -- from Mauritania to Saudi Arabia? Not a one. Does that not suggest that it would be impossible for the United States to impose on Arab culture what we mean by freedom and democracy? In fact, how many Muslim countries can boast of Western-style civil society and democracy?...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Imagine the planet wired for a nearly continuous readout on its vital signs, shared by all. That's the essence of a White House plan announced Monday. The new "Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System" envisions linking nearly 60 nations within a decade to gather and share information from satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations and other surface and airborne instruments. "Whether it's agriculture, or land use, or water planning, or transportation, or energy, there's a lot of data about the environment that has to be collected," said John Marburger III, President Bush's top science adviser....