February 5, 2025

JD Vance visits East Palestine again, promises to bring MAGA common sense to clean-up Biden’s failures

Vice President JD Vance just made his fifth trip to East Palestine, Ohio on the second anniversary of the derailment disaster involving a hazardous freight train run by Norfolk Southern. There has been extensive site remediation, a settlement of two ...

February 3, 2025

Incompetence at the IRS

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration had the money to hire 88,000 new IRS employees—but did they provide the assistance and do the work that they said they would do? I just had my tax preparer submit my 2...

September 19, 2023

Stop blaming Venus for Green New Deal oppression on Earth

One big premise for the Green New Deal is that Venus's atmosphere is a "runaway greenhouse" due to its atmospheric composition being largely carbon dioxide gas, which absorbs the outgoing infrared radiation from the surface, thereby ret...

July 9, 2023

TEAM USA and diversity

As a longtime member of the National Governing Body of the Sport of Sailing, I just received a calendar and request for funding from Kristi Yamaguchi on behalf of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation. It is titled “Unity in Diversit...

June 28, 2023

Preventing the Next East Palestine, Ohio, Train Derailment

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just wrapped up its two-day, four panel “Investigative Hearing: Norfolk Southern Railway Train Derailment with Subsequent Hazardous Material Release and Fires” in the East Palestine High Sch...

May 4, 2023

East Palestine derailment update

We are now three months past the derailment of the Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio.  What have we learned? On Feb. 6, 2023, Michael Graham of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) informed the p...

March 25, 2023

Preliminary report card for the NTSB in East Palestine

As a retired sale engineer for industrial pressure relief devices, I have been following the investigation of the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023.  I have watched the news accounts, plus the state and...

September 8, 2022

Will California freeze in the dark?

The current electricity crisis in California is an echo of a similar situation in 2000–2001.  There were power generation issues then, due in part to shortages causing rising prices for natural gas.  One factor in the shorta...

January 31, 2020

Hillary dodging process servers?

Speaking of disinformation, lying, and defamation, it seems that Hillary Clinton is using government funds (her Secret Service detail) to dodge Tulsi Gabbard's process server. She is trying to excuse her defamatory statements by claiming that ...

September 1, 2019

Bernie Sanders’s TVA problem for his Green New Deal

Senator Bernie Sanders has released his version of the Green New Deal.  His aims include "Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030...". Being an avowed socialist, he favors governme...

July 20, 2019

The silence of the wind turbines

As the nation is gripped in a national hot spell, it is worthwhile to re-learn some weather lore that was obvious to our ancestors who lived and worked outdoors. Summer hot spells are a result of high pressure systems. High pressure systems tend to b...

April 11, 2019

Nick Sandmann v. Washington Post: The defendant countersues

Just under the 30-day limit for filing a response, the Washington Post has filed its response to Nick Sandmann's defamation complaint.  He alleged they defamed him; now they claim they didn't and, in fact, printed a front-page Edito...

April 4, 2019

Don Blankenship, Round 2: Taxpayers to pay $550,000 for MSHA failures

As noted earlier on AT, former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship filed a $12-billion defamation suit against multiple media companies and individuals.  He based much of his suit on his claim that the federal government, specifically the Oba...

March 26, 2019

A media reckoning that may be very, very costly

It may be Spring according to the calendar, but America's dominant media outlets are heading toward a brutal winter season when it comes to accountability for the actions. Not just a reckoning for pushing a hoax about Russian collusion with a pre...

February 21, 2019

Nick Sandmann wouldn't be the first to win a libel suit against the Washington Post

Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann has just filed a libel suit against the Washington Post.  Our court system is built around precedent, so it is important to search for prior cases with relevance to the current one....

February 14, 2019

Senator Ed 'Green New Deal' Markey's record

Most Americans know very little about Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), but viewers of CNN doubtless got their fill during the BP oil spill in 2010.  He was on CNN with Anderson Cooper (and Bobby Nungesser) practically every night.  Do...

January 30, 2019

Making NBC News great again

NBC News's political director, Chuck Todd, recently hosted a Meet the Press show on "climate change" and intentionally excluded any "deniers."  When challenged by The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, he said, ...

January 27, 2019

Hey, Ocasio-Cortez: The planet was saved two years before you were born

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a bit of news recently with her projection that we only have twelve years to save the planet from global warming.  But she may already have missed her chance to save the world, born after the rescue. It seems she ha...

January 6, 2019

Green Power in the Fourteenth Congressional District of New York

The newly elected representative for the Fourteenth Congressional District of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is pushing a "Green New Deal" plan on Twitter.  Vox has a detailed description of the plan.  Simply put, i...

November 29, 2018

Obama pathetically claims credit for increased oil production

Jack Crowe of the National Review noted that former President Obama claimed credit for the recent boom in U.S. oil production last Tuesday. "I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords because – you know, I know we'...

November 21, 2018

Educating Chris Wallace – Trump Style

Chris Wallace got an exclusive interview with President Trump for his “Fox News Sunday” show. How did Chris do? He and his colleague, Howard Kurtz, talked about it on Howie’s show “Media Buzz.” What kind of grade should ...

November 19, 2018

Acosta: the next step

Now that the judge in the Acosta matter has issued a temporary restraining order against the White House, it is necessary that they follow his instructions as detailed by the AP.  The judge told attorneys to file additional court papers in th...

November 16, 2018

Governor Jerry Brown vs. UCLA scientists

California governor Jerry Brown is claiming that global warming is causing the current rash of severe wind-driven wildfires in California.  It seems he is in conflict with the research of scientists at UCLA: Another popular mi...

September 29, 2018

Michael Bromwich, left-wing superhero

Michael Bromwich appears to be the Democratic Party superhero attorney relied on when things go very, very bad. Not only did he represent Andrew McCabe of FBI anti-Trump conspiracy infamy, but he was also called upon by Barack Obama to replac...

August 16, 2018

Republican vs. Democratic mayors of Somerville, Mass.: A contrast

The current Democratic mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, Joseph A. Curtatone, has taken to Twitter.  He has boldly vowed, "I will never drink Sam Adam's [sic] beer again!" He said that in response to a Twitter post b...

July 29, 2018

Want to pin down corrupt officials? Try 'obstruction of Congress'

With the Mueller probe investigating obstruction of justice charges in the Trump campaign, it might be interesting to see what would happen if Congress set in motion obstruction of Congress investigations.  We have heard a great deal about ...

May 5, 2018

Don Blankenship's West Virginia Senate candidacy putting DOJ on trial

The media have not been reporting much about Don Blankenship's candidacy in the Republican primary to run against Joe Manchin for the Senate.  He is certainly controversial.  He is the former chairman and CEO of Massey Energy ...

April 21, 2018

TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline update

As one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda to revive both the KeystoneXL and Dakota Access pipelines by expediting the environmental review process. The Dakota Access pipeline is now in full opera...

February 25, 2018

Compare and contrast: Cowardice at Parkland vs. heroism in the deep sea

With the school shooting in Parkland at the top of the agenda, we have a chance to look at how men react in a life-or-death crisis.  The vast majority of Americans have never actually faced death and survived.  We need to ask ours...

February 10, 2018

When the French do 'military' better than the USA

While in France on Bastille Day, President Trump got to stand in the reviewing stand with French president Emmanuel Macron.  President Trump came back inspired to do something significant on the Fourth of July, and the idea of a m...

February 8, 2018

The stress is showing on Lisa Page's face

The former paramour of the FBI's James Bond 007 Wannabee master spychaser, Peter Strzok, has been caught on camera by the Daily Mail. For reasons of copyright, we can only show a thumbnail size version of her face, but follow the link to see the ...

January 23, 2018

President Obama, Jay-Z, and 's-holes'

It is likely that many readers of the American Thinker are not conversant with the lyrics of rapper Jay-Z.  I certainly was not.  But being curious about the outrage Senator Dick "Dicky" Durban expressed about the a...

January 21, 2018

Mad Dog Mattis still working hard during shutdown time

There is new evidence of SecDef Mattis's new strategy in the latest showing of the American flag via a Freedom of Navigation exercise in the Pacific.  From Fox News: A U.S. Navy warship sailed close to a contested reef west of the Ph...

December 29, 2016

Abe and Obama at Pearl Harbor

The recent joint ceremony at Pearl Harbor featuring Japan's Prime Minister Abe and President Obama was a fitting tribute to both countries.  President Obama has come a long way since he incorrectly asserted that we had forced Emperor Hirohit...

December 11, 2016

The Polar Vortex Comes to Kill AGW Hype

From USA Today, we get a teachable moment. The headline reads “Weekend snow sets stage for polar vortex’s icy return” "Snow is forecast to spread across the nation's northern tier this weekend and as far east as Mai...

May 2, 2016

Hollywood’s October Surprise

It is predictable that in the end phases of the 2016 election Hollywood will try to shape public perceptions. The outcome is unknown at present, but the basic shape of the debate is emerging. The opening battle will take place on September 30th when ...

April 6, 2016

Final justice in the BP spill

Now that U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier has approved the $20.8-billion settlement in the BP oil spill case, we can look at tying up the loose ends.  The biggest remaining injustice is that the man who was the project leader for the successful ...

March 24, 2016

Have we reached 'peak CO2 emissions'?

On Wednesday, March 16, Executive Director Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed the good news that CO2 emissions have been decoupled from economic growth. Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) – the ...

March 12, 2016

Chicago, 1968, all over again?

The thuggish behavior exhibited by students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) hearkens back to an earlier era.  Given that the median age of Americans is 37.6 years, well over half of all Americans have no personal memory of the eve...

March 11, 2016

The mathematics of ending the endless war on poverty

The Wall Street Journal has an article titled “Americans Rank Last in Problem-Solving With Technology,” with very bad news for the economy. The results build off a global survey conducted in 2012 by the Organization for Economic Coop...

March 9, 2016

New report sheds light on Fukushima radiation incident

March 11, 2016 will mark the fifth anniversary of the TЕЌhoku earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant accident.  An interesting report has just appeared on MarineLink.com.  The first paragraph not...

March 7, 2016

DOJ seeks truce in BP oil spill

Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times Picayune reports: The U.S. Justice Department will file a motion to approve a proposed $20.8 billion settlement of civil claims between BP and federal, state and local governments stemming from the Deep...

February 24, 2016

Who got women out of their kitchens?

Governor John Kasich is now being accused of being misogynist: Gov. John Kasich is still in the race and still trying to frame himself as the moderate, compassionate Republican, but on Monday, the governor issued two glaring reminders of his ver...

February 18, 2016

When SCOTUS justices are out of their element

The passing of senior associate justice Antonin Scalia makes this a fitting occasion to marvel at his wit and wisdom.  Note that his technique was to teach his fellow jurists, even taking them on hunting trips.  With the recent unprecedente...

February 4, 2016

Time for Chelsea Clinton to get drafted?

Stars and Stripes reports that, as predicted here on American Thinker, it's time for women to sign up for draft . The Marine Corps commandant and Army chief of staff told the Senate on Tuesday that they believe women should be required to si...

January 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton and drafting women

Based on existing legislation, women have been exempted from registering with the Selective Service System upon reaching their eighteenth birthday, as men are required to do.  That is now an active legal issue.  The Supreme Court held in Ro...

January 5, 2016

How to stop the Porter Ranch gas leak?

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Residents Want Action on Gas Leak" from a well owned by Southern California Gas that is spewing methane into the California sky!  Erin Brockovich is aghast!  Experts agree that this is the wor...

December 20, 2015

Carbon dioxide plus natural gas (or coal) equals zero-emissions electric power?

Gustavus Swift once said about his meat-packing operations that they used "everything but the squeal." We have just seen the world's politicians meet in Paris to sign a worthless piece of paper aimed at reducing global emissions of c...

July 9, 2015

Politicized Department of Justice loses again

Two BP engineers have been successful in court fighting off politically motivated criminal charges filed by the Department of Justice in the aftermath of the BP oil spill.  The story of the attempted persecution of Kurt Mix has been covered at A...

May 29, 2015

Justice as Collateral Damage

On Tuesday, June 2, we will find out what the Department of Justice alleges constitutes the crime of obstruction of justice by deleting electronic messages. That is when case No. 14-30837, United States of America, Appellant vs. Kurt Mix, aka Kurt E....

April 11, 2015

Video with ISIS point of view mocks Hillary on Libya fiasco

There is a German language video on YouTube that shows the ISIS side of the Libya operation undertaken at the behest of Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, the group that Jacob Heilbrunn of The National Interest dubbed The Three Valkyries...

January 31, 2015

Deflate-Gate and Physics

For all you adults out there... Charles' Law describes the relationship between the absolute temperature of a gas and the absolute pressure. To find the absolute temperature you need to convert Fahrenheit to Rankine degrees. To do this, add 46...

November 3, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- Paul Hseih and the Missing Drill Pipe

Now that the testimony of Phase Two of the Deepwater Horizon trial is done, it is possible to cull the transcripts and depositions for the truth. Having already settled with the majority of the private plaintiffs and with BP, Transocean and Halliburt...

October 17, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- The Government's Involvement

The first week of Phase Two of the BP oil spill trial pitted the "aligned parties" against BP regarding Source Control. The aligned parties include the private claimants represented by the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, the States, Transocean, and H...

October 17, 2013

Halliburton Lab Manager's Guilty Plea

The Associated Press has just reported that in the BP oil spill case... Anthony Badalamenti, 62, of Katy, Texas, faces a maximum sentence of 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine after his guilty plea in U.S. District Court to one misdemeanor count o...

October 6, 2013

BP Trial Phase 2 - Source Control

Remember Thad Allen telling George Stephanopoulos "George, they have been able to stop the hydrocarbons from coming up the well bore..." (0:27 of the video) during the Top Kill operation on May 28, 2010? The first week of Phase 2 of the BP trial was ...

October 2, 2013

Opening Day at the BP Trial -- Phase 2

The legal battle over the responsibility for source control efforts and their duration got off to a blazing start. As Judge Carl Barbier noted, for the opening rounds we have an "Alliance" of parties against BP. The Alliance consists of Transocean, H...

September 30, 2013

Will Kurt Mix, Criminal Defendant in the BP Deepwater Horizon Incident, Go Free?

Former BP engineer Kurt Mix was the first, and for some time only, person criminally charged in the Deepwater Horizon incident. He has a court date October 2nd.  A good  possibility exists that the court may vacate the charges against him. ...

September 14, 2013

Feds eye billions in fines in Deepwater Horizon trial

The federal government is eying billions of dollars in penalties to extract from BP for the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. Depending on the verdict in a trial underway determining the number of barrels spilled, the fine could vary between 3.3 and ...

August 6, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- Halliburton's Plea Deal

The FBI has announced that Halliburton has "...agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the Deepwater Horizon disaster..." The terms of the agreement have got John McCain in an uproar as he complains about the "paltry fine" of...

July 14, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- BP's Response to Inflated Government Flow Estimates

As the BP oil spill trial approaches the second phase, source control and flow estimates will come to the fore. Phase One of the trial dealt with how we got into this mess, Phase Two will deal with who did what to solve the problem and how big did it...

June 26, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- Apportionment of Blame

The civil trial in the Deepwater Horizon accident is now in the hands of Judge Carl Barbier. The final arguments have been filed. The payment of claims has continued, despite a court-appointed claims settlement attorney suddenly resigning under alleg...

June 8, 2013

Is 'Defensive Engineering' Next?

With an out of control regulatory environment in Washington, we expect doctors to practice defensive medicine. Is defensive engineering next? What happens when OSHA regulators disagree with state fire marshals? We now have an example of Obama-enginee...

May 26, 2013

Lying to Congress -- the IRS vs. BP

With the controversy swirling around the IRS's Lois Lerner and the issue of what constitutes lying to Congress, it is interesting to note the disparate standards of proof between government officials, such as Ms. Lerner, and private citizens. Is ther...

May 13, 2013

Republicans Block Obama's Choice for EPA Administrator

The Republicans on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works have blocked the vote on confirming President Obama's choice to become the new EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy. The previous Administrator, Lisa Jackson, became embroiled in an ...

April 27, 2013

The Deepwater Horizon Trial: A Headache for Obama?

Just over three years after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton has finally decided to face the music and increase its reserves for payment of civil damages by $1 billion. Things did not go well for them in the seven weeks of te...

April 6, 2013

Was the White House Bin Laden Photo Photoshopped?

President Obama's recent appointment of Julia Pierson to head the Secret Service provides an opportunity for the Republican senators to put her on record regarding the veracity of his claim to have gotten bin Laden.  Interesting questions about ...

April 5, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- 'It Troubles Me Greatly.'

That is what Federal Judge Carl Barbier told Halliburton's lead attorney at the BP Oil Spill trial Thursday. Here is the report from Richard Thompson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "Well, here's the problem with that, Mr. Godwin," the judge said,...

March 23, 2013

Deepwater Horizon: Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

"I don't want to dwell on 'coulda, shoulda, woulda,'" he said. "There's nothing I can really point to that we shouldn't have done based on what we knew at the time." - Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy "Do I wish the crew would have done more? Ab...

March 15, 2013

Deepwater Horizon: Criminalizing an Accident

The most emblematic comment by an Obama Administration official during the Deepwater Horizon incident was Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who said "our job is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum". Secretary Salazar went on to impose the...

March 12, 2013

Deepwater Horizon -- Another Holder Coverup?

The trial regarding the assessment of fines for environmental offenses due to the BP Oil Spill has started and some trends have emerged. Federal, state and local governments are all looking to maximize their windfalls from the fines that will be ass...

February 26, 2013

Deepwater Horizon: the Government on Trial?

Now that the criminal charges against BP and its drilling contractor have been settled and cannot be reopened under the principal of double jeopardy, we can expect to see an argument develop over who should be responsible when the government takes ch...

February 23, 2013

Deepwater Horizon - The Unquenchable Expectations of the Politics of Envy

On Monday February 25 the civil phase of the Deepwater Horizon trial is set to begin. There will be a contest between those who want justice and those who want revenge, the "lynch mob." As one might guess, the federal government under Obama has been ...

February 20, 2013

Deepwater Horizon - Pre-Trial Maneuvering

Following my blog post, Deepwater Horizon - The Civil Trial Phase, BP's General Counsel Rupert Bondy has chosen to give a 30-minute telephone interview to reporters from The Wall Street Journal ($), the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Financial Ti...

February 17, 2013

Deepwater Horizon Update - The Civil Trial Phase

Now that Transocean has joined BP in having their guilty pleas to the criminal charges arising from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire approved by the federal court, we are about to enter the civil phase of the linked court proceedings. Anyone ...

February 2, 2013

Deepwater Horizon Update - BP's Rope-a-Dope Legal Strategy

During last year's Super Bowl Clint Eastwood made a big stir saying, "It's halftime in America". At that time Obama was riding high, and he and his thugs (e.g. Ken "Boot on the Neck" Salazar), AKA Oli-Bama and his Forty Thieves, were salivating at th...

December 6, 2012

Deepwater Horizon: Who's Lying to Congress?

Now that the Justice Department has charged a BP executive, David Rainey, with lying to Congress regarding the flow rate from the BP Macondo 252 well, it makes sense to examine the quality and veracity of the government's own witnesses whom we m...

December 2, 2012

Is Kurt Mix Now the Government's Star Prosecution Witness?

On November 15th, the federal government announced criminal charges against three more current or former BP employees for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Those men got their chance to enter not guilty pleas on November 28th. Two of the men were actu...

November 30, 2012

A Possible Republican Strategy for the Fiscal Cliff

There is much debate regarding how Republicans ought to handle the fiscal cliff. They are in a showdown with President Obama as to who will blink first. So my suggestion to them is to take a page from Obama's playbook and kick the can one more time. ...

October 3, 2012

Our Ill-Mannered President

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote an op-ed, "The GOP's Female Trouble," noting that Democrats get away with gender politics because Republicans have shied away from speaking directly to women about matters of interest to them as wome...

September 21, 2012

Gulf of Mexico Seafood Catch Has Rebounded to Its Highest Volume Since 1999

Benjamin Alexander-Bloch of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported this good news. The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday released fisheries statistics that show the 2011 seafood catch in the Gulf of Mexico rebounded to its highest v...

September 18, 2012

Feds' Charge of Criminal Negligence in Gulf Oil Spill Floundering

On November 8, 2012 Federal Judge Carl Barbier will hear arguments for or against accepting as final the settlement reached between BP and the private sector parties damaged by the Gulf Oil spill. The time period for filing objections ended on August...

September 15, 2012

Confronting an Obama administration stonewall

On Thursday September 13, the House Natural Resources Committee took a giant step toward achieving accountability in the Department of Interior during its questioning of two functionaries who have failed to comply with subpoenas demanding documents r...

September 10, 2012

'Tell Me This Isn't a Government Operation'

Given the proclivity for President Obama to try and sell the American people on the idea that government is the fount of all goodness in life, perhaps someone will offer to show him the film, Apollo 13. With the recent death of a true American hero, ...

July 27, 2012

Smart Regulation -- The Chemical Safety Board vs. OSHA

The Chemical Safety Board has just released a preliminary report on the Deepwater Horizon accident.  The core finding was that the crew was too focused on reportable lost-time accidents and too unfocused on process safety.  Of course, our p...

July 11, 2012

NAIIC Fukushima Report: A Warning Regarding Politicized Crisis Management

The Japanese legislature, the Diet, has just received a report from their Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) that is a scathing indictment of the man-caused Fukushima disaster.  But unlike the typical governmental resp...

July 3, 2012

Kurt Mix Counter-Attacks the DoJ

Former BP engineer Kurt Mix, the only person criminally charged in the Gulf Oil Spill, has launched his counter-attack against the Eric Holder's Justice Department. Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has the story. (Mix's attorneys...

June 29, 2012

Only 43.7 Percent of Gulf 'Oil Spill' Was Actually Oil

Today, Friday June 29, is the day that Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) researchers are required to provide "criminal" defendant Kurt Mix, a former BP completions engineer, with the flow rate data they wanted to hide behind a claim of academ...

June 12, 2012

Why Didn't Obama Halt Gulf Oil Spill in the First Weeks of June 2010?

For a man who could halt the rising level of the seas on the day he was elected, President Obama seems to have been incredibly inept in stopping the BP gulf oil spill. The question the media lapdogs have never asked him is, what defense does he have ...

June 11, 2012

'Academic' Scientists Forced to Reveal Private E-Mails in BP Trial

With billions of dollars at stake, BP is using every legal weapon at its disposal in federal court in New Orleans.  The central question is: how much oil actually entered the Gulf of Mexico between the time the Deepwater Horizon Well blew out on...

June 7, 2012

Obama Stonewalling Gulf Oil Spill Disclosure

The Obama administration is desperately trying to avoid coming clean about its role in delaying capping the Gulf Oil Spill.  Billions of dollars in fines are at stake, so BP is fighting in court to force release of correspondence related to hand...

June 4, 2012

Dept. of Justice Case against Former BP Engineer is Rapidly Crumbling

On Tuesday, May 29, the attorneys for former BP drilling and completions engineer Kurt Mix got to make another motion on his behalf before a federal magistrate, and the Obama administration lost another round.  The miscarriage of justice in this...

May 21, 2012

A Bush-Cheney Green Energy Project That May Increase America's Proven Natural Gas Reserves by a Factor of 100

Back during the Bush administration in October 2008, under the influence of their Texas oilmen buddies, the Department of Energy entered into a joint public-private partnership with ConocoPhillips and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (J...

May 16, 2012

Feds jumped the gun in BP Engineer's arrest

The government's desperate effort to collect outsized environmental fines as a result of the BP oil spill took a major blow when former BP drilling engineer Kurt Mix finally got his day in court Monday May14th. He is still the only person to have bee...

May 14, 2012

Did Steven Chu Sabotage BP's Top Kill Effort Just as It Was Succeeding?

One benefit of being a media lapdog to the Obama administration is that you can get access to administration figures not available to other branches of the government or the general public.  The White House loves to try to slime others, but it i...

April 30, 2012

Was BP's Kurt Mix a Criminal or a Hero?

The FBI has arrested a former BP drilling and completions project engineer, Kurt Mix.  This happened on the eve of the hearing to obtain preliminary approval of the civil settlement between BP and the Plaintiff's Steering Committee for damages...

April 23, 2012

House Republicans Fighting against an Oceans Czar

In addition to pursuing subpoenas issued to the White House regarding the illegal offshore drilling moratorium issued in the midst of BP's top kill operation on May 27, 2010, the House Natural Resources Committee is also pushing back against Executiv...

April 20, 2012

The Deepwater Horizon Two Years Later

On the two year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon accident, a lot of progress has been made to restore, as closely as humanly possible, the status of the Gulf Coast to where things stood before the accident.  A lot of effort has gone int...

April 19, 2012

The Politics of the BP Settlement Terms

There has been a rush of developments in the BP settlement talks in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. To make sense of seemingly odd behaviors on the part of the players, it helps to have a scorecard. So here goes. BP BP wants to remain as apolitical a...

March 24, 2012

Government Regulators Negligent

A new report by an independent panel has found that if government coal mine inspectors had done their jobs inspecting the Upper Big Branch Mine, the massive coal dust explosion, which killed 29, could not have occurred. "In short, even if there had ...

March 22, 2012

Kathleen Sebelius's War on Green Algae Power

Before she became czarina of ObamaCare, Kathleen Sebelius was the governor of Kansas.  In that role she vetoed the construction of the expansion of Sunflower Power's Holcomb power plant.  To fully understand the potential of algae power, yo...

March 20, 2012

Cheaper Gasoline Starts at the EPA

The rise of gasoline futures prices is an example of having adequate supplies of gasoline domestically, but in the wrong location.  In gasoline, as in real estate, price is driven by location, location, location.   The key fact to unde...

March 15, 2012

Sorting out Responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Legal accountability is on the way for those who bear responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.  Billions of dollars are at stake, but the Obama administration is likely to be quite accommodating if the oil...

March 10, 2012

The Pyrolysis of the Spent Fuel Rods at Fukushima

As the detailed story of the Fukushima accident slowly emerges, it is increasingly apparent that much of the radiation that was emitted came from overheating spent fuel rods.  The inflection point in the crisis came when the Fukushima 50 managed...

March 3, 2012

BP's $7.8 billion settlement just the start

The just-announced settlement between BP and the class action plaintiffs in the Gulf oil spill is just overture to the real court battle that will take place. The plaintiffs are no doubt deserving, and will finally receive compensation. But in terms ...

February 20, 2012

America's Maritime History vs. 21st Century Ambulance Chasers

Once again the New Orleans Times-Picayune (NOLA.com) has an excellent article recounting the players in the upcoming trial to determine liability for the Deepwater Horizon incident. Rebecca Mowbray describes the action this way: Because of the compl...

February 6, 2012

Will Obama Cave to BP to Avoid Trial?

David Hammer and Rebecca Mowbray of the New Orleans Times-Picayune have done a great job of reporting the big-government (i.e., Democrat) side of settlement negotiations in advance of the February 27 trial regarding the Gulf oil spill.  They hav...

February 4, 2012

Public Safety: Voluntary Industry Standards vs. Government Regulation

Imagine that your life is in mortal danger as you cling to an inverted sailboat in stormy seas, at night, in the middle of Lake Michigan, with two crewmates caught under the boat.  Whom would you put your faith in to save your life -- a bunch of...

February 2, 2012

Reality TV Coming Attractions: 'Plumegate'

If you loved Climategate, you will swoon over Plumegate, the upcoming trial in Federal Court in New Orleans regarding the BP oil spill!  Aside from the minor squabbles that have taken place so far, we are approaching the main event, featuring ...

January 28, 2012

'Hope and Change' in a 'Precautionary Principle' Administration

If there is one lesson I learned from the debates over how to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil spill, it is how strongly committed the Obama administration is to the "Precautionary Principle."  They are definitely n...

January 25, 2012

Plaintiffs bar feeding frenzy in Gulf oil spill

From the New Orleans Times Picayune we have this commentary from columnist James Gill regarding feeding frenzy of the plaintiff's bar in the pending Deepwater Horizon litigation. Their concern for the victims became apparent a year ago, when they to...

January 5, 2012

Deepwater Horizon: Halliburton Under the Microscope

The headline on CNN'S story reads BP still wants Halliburton to pay for whole Gulf oil spill cleanup. Many readers may ask themselves "still?" Does this mean BP may pass the liability for the Gulf oil spill onto Halliburton? Here is what the article ...

December 29, 2011

Gulf Coast rebound defies Obama's doomsaying

Fox News has just reported some great news, "Gulf Coast Sees Record Rebound After Deepwater Horizon Spill". Along the beaches of the Gulf Coast, 2011 ends with a surprise that no one expected this soon: a post-oil spill rebound in tourism, and recor...

December 23, 2011

A Nuclear Christmas Gift

Lost in all the noise about the 2 month extension of the payroll tax deduction is a wonderful piece of good news. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just approved a new generation of reactor design which includes passive cooling in the event...

December 20, 2011

NY Times draws the wrong lessons from Deepwater Horizon

The New York Times has come out with an editorial whitewash of governemnt incompetence, "Lessons of the Deepwater Horizon." The oncoming court battle between BP and its contractors against the government and its National Incident Command will bring t...

December 16, 2011

Deepwater Horizon: The National Academy of Engineering Report

The most definitive report yet on the Gulf oil spill has just been released.  This long awaited report by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on the causes of the Gulf oil spill has been buried like a document dump on the Friday befor...

December 4, 2011

Leader of Fukushima 50 Put On 'Medical Leave'

The November 29, 2011 edition of the Wall Street Journal had an article headlined, Fukushima Daiichi Manager Steps Down Due to Illness. The manager of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will leave his post after serving as on-site crisis m...

November 16, 2011

Stopping the Decline in Housing Prices

We all know that corporations are really just collections of individuals working toward a common goal. So why does the government provide corporate welfare through the tax code when we could cut out the middleman?  The thought arises because one...

October 26, 2011

Stalled energy projects moving forward

Believe it or not, the current Obama energy strategy is not all that different from Rick Perry's.  Under pressure from Congressional hearings, all of a sudden it is Drill Barry, Drill. Check out this collection of stories from the Wall Street Jo...

October 22, 2011

Marx Was Right - Woodstock to Zuccotti Park

Conservatives may disagree with Karl Marx's economic theories, but they must agree that he was right when he said, "History repeats itself -- first as tragedy, second as farce." The Occupy Wall Street protestors are a pallid echo of their forebears a...

October 6, 2011

Questions for the Co-Chairmen of the Joint Coast Guard - Minerals Management Service Investigation Team

The Gulf oil spill may have been contained, but the fallout from the Obama administration's subsequent conduct continues to raise eyebrows. Jonathan Tilove of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that under pressure, Michael Bromwich of the Burea...

September 17, 2011

Sweeping the Oil under the Rug: More Chicanery on the BP Spill

Amid a cloud of controversy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has just released its final report on the Deepwater Horizon accident.  The report comes as Volume II of a joint release with the Coast Guard ...

September 5, 2011

McDonald's, Technology, and Job Creation

With all the blather about "green energy," a real story about using technology to improve energy efficiency and thereby create jobs seems to be in order.  So let me tell you a tale about arguably the Greatest Job-Creator of the Twentieth Century...

August 4, 2011

First Anniversary of the Killing of the Deepwater Horizon Macondo Well

August 4, 2011 marks the first anniversary of the completion of an operation that Washington Post blogger Joel Achenbach described in his book, A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.  On August 3, the 106th day of the crisis, BP performed an "injectio...

July 23, 2011

Defending the Full Faith and Credit of the United States

The people are waking. The biggest challenge facing America is the entitlement mentality, particularly regarding pensions and retiree medical benefits. Those who quail at the thought of dealing with the problem fear the greater victim strategy that h...

July 16, 2011

Caylee Anthony's Legacy

Rather than depending on government to prevent another tragedy such as Caylee Anthony's, I would suggest a proactive solution based on the way we teach young sailors in our Junior Fleet sailing class. We make it a rule that the kids always wear their...

June 28, 2011

Obama's Mickey Mouse Administration

President Obama's call for an increase in "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) majors is an acknowledgement of the proliferation of what British education minister Margaret Hodge infamously called Mickey Mouse degrees.  Giv...

June 22, 2011

Deepwater Horizon Update: Transocean's Investigation

More than 14 months after the blowout and explosion aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drill rig, the company  has come forth with their public investigative report. It was accompanied by a press release. The debate is likely to get very heat...

May 18, 2011

Solving the Piracy Problem

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) has just returned from a trip to Africa to investigate the problem of piracy, particularly off the Horn of Africa. He has suggested some measures to deal with a major threat to international trade, such as blockading the pira...

May 9, 2011

Obama's Next Vacation

Given the hectic pace of recent events, it is clear that President Obama and his family will soon need a vacation. So it's time to find an appropriate vacation spot for them to visit. The perfect spot would be SEAL Beach California! Why would it be s...

May 6, 2011

Government action to reduce prices at the pump

A very simple cause and effect was observableyesterday. The House passed a bill to force the administration to sell offshore drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Virginia coast,  and the price of oil fell 8.6% in one day, the ...

May 1, 2011

Risk to Fukushima 50 Falling

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Agency (NISA) released today a summary of the workers whose exposure to radiation has approached the annual limit of 250 milliSieverts (mSv). According to the report:Exposure of Workers- April 30 - TEPCO summarized...

April 27, 2011

Regulating Extraordinary Disasters into Existence

"The perfect is the enemy of good enough."  One wonders if the big government enthusiasts of the Obama Administration have the gravitas and understanding of nuance to see the irony that government over-regulation played a major role in...

April 24, 2011

Easter in Fukushima -- American Exceptionalism at Work

Easter is about resurrection and we are about to see the resurrection of the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima after the twin battering of the tsunami and the reactor accident. That may be a surprising statement to many, but remember that the resurrec...

March 28, 2011

What went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon blowout

The forensic report on the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer (BOP) was released to the public on March 23, 2011. The next step in the investigation will be to try and reconcile it with the report of the Chief Counsel of the Oil Spill Commission ....

March 24, 2011

Fukushima: better but not good

Another update has come out from official Japanese sources. They have finally started pumping more seawater into the cores of Units 1, 2 & 3 to raise the water level to cover the fuel rods. Amazingly enough, they have had the levels from 1,300 mm...

March 22, 2011

Intellectuals vs. Men With Machinery

Many Americans would recognize Michio Kaku from his shows on The Science Channel. On Thursday afternoon, March 17, he appeared on Fox News and called for the Japanese to use their air force to implement the Chernobyl option. What he was recommending ...

March 4, 2011

Gulf Oil Spill Could Have Been Stopped 48 days Earlier

For 48 days and nights, the Deepwater Horizon well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, when it could have been shut down. We now know this: It is very likely that if the top kill had been designed to deliver more than 109 bpm of 16.4 ppg drilling flu...

February 20, 2011

The Oil Spill Crisis That Didn't Go To Waste

The extent of the Obama Administration's political opportunism in the Gulf oil spill is being revealed as the investigation into the Deepwater Horizon accident continues to plod along. A spate of new developments on the political front highlights the...

December 6, 2010

Auditing the President's Oil Spill Commission

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (the Oil Spill Commission OSC) just finished its last set of public meetings as it prepares to submit its report to the president, due January 12, 2011. There is good news and bad news. Th...

November 27, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill Response in Perspective

AT readers who have been following the Gulf oil spill and its consequences have a new standard of comparison for crisis response, the Honorable Martin Ferguson AM MP, Australia's Minister for Resources and Energy, who was faced with the largest offsh...

November 23, 2010

'Unrealized at the time...' - Deepwater Horizon Update

"Unrealized at the time, a critical point had passed: BP would not have to reopen the stack, and oil had finally stopped leaking from the Macondo well into the Gulf." That quotation comes from the just released report by the Oil Spill Commi...

November 21, 2010

Janet Napolitano - Eleanor Roosevelt as Farce

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...

November 15, 2010

Deepwater Horizon's Blowout Preventer Rusts While Lawyers Argue

If you ever wanted proof that about the worst news you could ever receive is "I'm a government lawyer and I'm here to help", it would be the picture of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer (BOP) rusting in the warm moist oxidizing atmo...

November 4, 2010

Time For the GOP to Go On Offense

There are many questions regarding what can the Republicans do with their new majority in the House of Representatives. My suggestion would be KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Introduce a bill top amend the definition of a pollutant in the Clean Air Act...

October 30, 2010

Obama's Katrina -- Hurricane Rahm

President Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is notorious for saying, "You never want a serious crisis go to waste," specifically with regard to energy policy. To fully understand the context of his comment, you need to watch the ...

October 20, 2010

Crisis and Presidential Management Skills: Obama and Chile's Piñera

Fate has provided an opportunity to compare President Obama's crisis management skills with those of another democratically elected president. Obama and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera each faced a major crisis recently, and their le...

October 13, 2010

Happy Birthday, US Navy!

On October 13, 1775 the Continental Congress authorized the procurement of two fast, agile, well armed vessels to seize munitions bound for the British army in America thus giving birth to the United States Navy. On this 235th birthday, it is fitting...

July 19, 2010

Steven Chu's Snake Oil

You probably have been hearing a lot of nonsense lately about the integrity of BP's Macondo well casing. A lot of it has been coming from those who ought to know better, specifically including Energy Secretary Chu. Click here for a copy of ...

July 17, 2010

NYT Confirms Steven Chu Frustrated Spill Intervention Attempts

The New York Times has published a report on Steven Chu's meddling in the BP spill recovery efforts. Here are the main points. A few weeks later, he overruled some BP officials and ordered the company to stop the "top kill" e...

July 12, 2010

Deepwater Horizon Update

Here is a link to a video of the spool piece being installed. At about 8 seconds in there is a quick cut. At that point you can see the spool piece beginning to enter the top of the BOP stack. There is no visible oil emerging. The Helix is connected ...

July 10, 2010

Deepwater Horizon update

As discussed in my earlier blog entry, BP is preparing to install a new cap on the blowout preventer stack creating a double-decker BOP stack. Admiral Allen announced the government's approval of this process to be run simultaneously with the con...

July 8, 2010

Progress made on Deepwater Horizon

There is progress to report on controlling the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Relief WellFox News reports that the progress on the relief well is going ahead of plan."In a perfect world with no interruptions, it's possible to be ready to stop t...

July 1, 2010

Progress in the Gulf?

The flow of information from BP and the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command has been less than transparent, but the website The Oil Drum has lots of information that offers some much needed hope to residents of the Gulf States. The Man in ChargeThe man...

June 19, 2010

About Those Relief Wells

Right now, the hopes of the nation rest on the successful drilling of two relief wells aimed at "plug[ging] the damn hole" in the Gulf of Mexico. On Thursday, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing featuring B...

June 14, 2010

Botching the Gulf Spill Investigation

The investigation into the Gulf Oil Spill has become a disarrayed mess. What the public expects would be something along the lines of a National Transportation Safety Board review of the cockpit recorder tapes, followed by a preliminary assessment of...

May 28, 2010

Obama's 'best and brightest'

Even some of Obama's media lackeys are irritated at the intellectual elitism on display in the White House. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a video of Chris Matthews saying something that I heartily agree with in toto."If I hear one more time t...

May 27, 2010

Waiting and studying while the oil washes in

Drue Wands has it right in a letter to the editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:Gov. Bobby Jindal was on TV and asked why there was so much oil boom still on the docks and not deployed. A member of the Coast Guard stated that he was "just sl...

May 7, 2010

Good news from the Gulf

The oil leak could be over sooner than the prophets of doom proclaimed. Here is the latest from Fox News ...The dropping of the box is just one of many strategies being pursued to stave off a widespread environmental disaster. BP is drilling sideways...

May 2, 2010

What if Obama was aware of a bribe to fill IL Senate seat?

Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times  has the latest from the Blago pre-trial motions. I think he has it wrong.The real reason the judge and Fitzgerald want to bury Obama's testimony is that if he was indeed aware of a bribe, and failed to report...

May 1, 2010

A novel solution to the offshore oil well problem

The details of the BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico are finally trickling out. The latest rumor is that the well blew out while a tool was inserted into the blowout preventer. The tool is too strong for the shear rams to squeeze the well casing full...

April 12, 2010

A Justice Stevens Performance Review

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...

March 27, 2010

Electric Green Waste

Green initiatives are costing hard-pressed Americans billions of dollars in the form of higher utility bills and squandered investment in inefficient electric power generation. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Department of Water an...

March 13, 2010

The Granularity of Climate Models

As an engineer schooled in the slide rule era, I have been trying to educate myself about the nature of climate models. The details of the specific construction of the models have been hard to find. I am old enough that I have been through the evolut...

July 26, 2009

Obama's appalling ignorance

The past week has been a strange one for American-Japanese relations. While discussing an unrelated subject, the President ignorantly mischaracterized the Japanese surrender. He said:I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you kno...

May 10, 2009

Helping urban youth

Today's Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting article  about a Chicago community organization, the Black Star Project, which seeks to improve the lot of inner city black youth in a positive manner. Their mantra is "Educate or Die". Out ...

May 2, 2009

Another 'catch and release' incident with Somali pirates

Today there is yet another story of a NATO ship, this time from Portugal, catching pirates, now armed with explosives, and releasing them. The reason the officers of the NATO ships are releasing "enemies of humanity" is their concern o...

April 19, 2009

'Daley baby sitters'

John Kass has another great article on the woes facing the Daley Machine. Note his wonderful turn of phrase, "Daley baby sitters."  Kind of makes you want to figure out who Obama's "Daley baby sitters" are.Hint:Rahm EmanuelDa...

April 14, 2009

Somalia's Coast Guard?

This morning comes the news that Somalis have captured three more vessels. But are the captors pirates or a militia coast guard? One vessel, MV Irene E. M. was merely transiting the Gulf of Aden, an innocent passage protected by custom and internatio...

April 13, 2009

Shriners hospitals under threat of closure

The Shriners Children's Hospitals, which have provided free medical care to children, may be closing many of their facilities. The endowment supporting these facilities have fallen in value from $8 billion to 5 billion, with income also down sharply....

March 9, 2009

Chicago buyer's remorse

Could it be that the citizens of Chicago might start to develop buyer's remorse with their home town  President? We'll soon find out if he keeps mau-mauing the convention industry. We know that mau-mauing is a specialty of the community organize...

February 27, 2009

Atlas shrugs, moves to Massachusetts

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on a drive to increase unemployment compensation benefits for New Yorkers. The poor babies only get a maximum of $405 per week, whereas those in Massachusetts get $942. Those fat cats get benfits w...

December 13, 2008

The First Time as Tragedy, the Second as Farce

Rod Blagojecvich in 2002 "''Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Illinois has voted for change'' . Sound like anyone else you've heard lately? Such as his 2002 campaign advisers Barack Obama (another guy with a funny name) and Rahm Emanuel....

December 5, 2008

James Hansen's carbon tax dreams

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting editorial noting that the father of Anthropogenic Global Warming, James Hansen, has come out in favor of a 100% rebated carbon tax and fourth generation nuclear power plants! [emphases added throughout]...

November 22, 2008

Email the EPA to Avoid CO2 Regulation

In the comments to Gregory Young's article "Bring It On" in the American Thinker  Fearless Bear makes a critical point. The EPA public comment phase for carbon control ends next Friday 11/28/08. Here is what he said"As an att...

November 10, 2008

'Only Glimmer of Hope' is Obama's Mentor's Retirement

An editorial from the self-proclaimed "progressive" newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights the malign influence of Emil Jones, Barack Obama's mentor in the Illinois State Senate, who allowed the president-elect to attach his name to v...

November 9, 2008

Obama and the Daley Machine

A well-spoken black liberal from Hyde Park is elected to the highest office. Blacks are rejoicing that one of their own had risen so high and affirmed their chance for the brass ring. Been there, done that with the election of Harold Washington as Ma...

November 8, 2008

That's the Chicago way...

It's a good thing for Chicago that so many tourists want to visit Barack Obama's hometown! Here is a perspective from one of his "homeys" "Total employment in metropolitan Chicago grew moderately before the 2001 recession, declined fro...

October 14, 2008

'That's the Chicago way'

John Kass wrote a priceless column the other day describing how the Daley Machine currently functions by co-opting the likes of Obama ally (and former SDS security chief during the "Days of Rage") Marilyn Katz. "What that story and man...

October 10, 2008

Obama's electricity plans versus economic reality

Barack Obama wants the United States to replace its current electric power generation capability with Green Power (e.g. wind) in 10 years. The current crisis in the stock markets renders such a plan impossible. The Heard on the Street column in ...

September 17, 2008

Ethics, anyone? In the Illinois State Legislature?

Remember how the Democrats promised the most ethical Congress ever? Well here is Carol Marin's take in the Chicago Sun-Times on the status of ethics reform in the new home of the national Democratic Party, Illinois, under the control of Barack Obama'...

September 6, 2008

Chicago Mayor Daley: 'There's no machine'

Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley is quoted as saying so in Thrusday's Chicago Sun-Times ""Chicago and the metropolitan area is very Democratic and the state is. [But] there's no machine. I thought it was laughable."The Obama campaign d...

July 27, 2008

Don't tear down this wall, Mr. Obama

As a counter to Barack Obama's call to tear down walls, it would help to review the e-mail from a Marine printed in Andrew Sullivan's column in The Atlantic Magazine April 30, 2007. "But speaking of counter-insurgency, much of the success in Al ...

March 29, 2008

Questioning Chelsea

Chelsea Clinton took offense when questioned about her mother's reaction to the Monica Lewinsky affair, claiming it was a personal matter. Okay, let‘s ask Chelsea about Mom‘s cattle futures trading. Chelsea has been employed in hedge fund...

March 26, 2008

Robin Hood populism

A big part of the Barack Obama philosophy is to bring more money into poor neighborhoods by a variation of a well established Cook County Illinois policy, which I will call Robin Hood Populism. It is the promise to tax the rich to give to the poor. B...

March 14, 2008

The first Winter Soldiers

Neither the VVAW or the IVAW, discussed yesterday by Kyle-Anne Shiver, are the original Winter Soldiers. That honor goes to those who stood by George Washington through the winter of 1776-77.There is a very rare book originally published by the Princ...

March 10, 2008

Real science versus 'settled science'

Even a casual perusal of the paper by Miskolcki's discussed in James Lewis' article today gives a hint as to the overwhelming complexity of atmospheric science. While his purpose is to introduce more accuarcy into the calculations than the alarmists ...

March 2, 2008

The 'Hussein' memory hole

In responding to Hillary Clinton's latest ad, the Obama campaign has once again slipped the name "Hussein" down the memory hole. Specifically Saddam Hussein. Obama's answer to the question as to who is best prepared to take a 3 A.M. call is...

July 14, 2007

Proposed solution to the CO2 'problem'

The Japanese National Maritime Research Institute has proposed a new technique to sequester CO2. The concept is to liquify the gas captured from the smokestacks of power plants. It would then be transported by tanker to an offshore location at least ...

June 12, 2007

Another anniversary today

Today is the 232nd anniversary of the capture of the British warship Margaretta by the men of Machias, Maine. This was the first naval victory of the American Revolution and occurred on June 12, 1775, 5 days before the Battle of Bunker Hill. Presiden...

May 12, 2007

Safer alternatives to CFL light bulbs

A more environmentally friendly alternative to compact flourescent lights(CFL) is likely to be one of several forms of solid state lighting, variations on the familiar light emitting diode (LED). Here is a link to the U S Department of Energy page.Th...

March 2, 2007

Deconstructing Al Gore's utility bill (updated)

Much of what has been written about Al Gore's carbon footprint demonstrates the ignorance of the writers more than it illuminates the facts. So let's try and understand the reality.So far the description of his electric bill has been undisputed....

March 1, 2007

TXU and global warming

The proposed buyout of TXU Corp by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is an example of fashion over technology when it comes to global warming. Reacting to the public hysteria over the issue, KKR has promised to halt the proposed construction of eight out of el...

February 7, 2007

IPCC's cloudy forecast

The bold assurances of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that their predictions are 90% sure should give the layman pause. "If it sounds too good to be true..." John Fialka of the Wall Street Journal uncovered an interesting adm...

January 1, 2007

Force size in Iraq

One of the changes our forces in Iraq are undergoing is the shift from division size units to battalion size units. These are then subdivided into even smaller units used to embed with Iraqi forces. In the process, we greatly reduce the logistics tai...

August 24, 2006

Climate of Fear: From Nuclear Winter to Global Warming

Before there was Global Warming Theory to scare the public into rash action, there was Nuclear Winter Theory. The two theories are contradictory, but both were peddled by the political left, and both used some similar rhetorical and political tactics...

December 8, 2004

Reinventing the wheel

With all the concerns over the high cost of prescription drugs, and with the threat of terrorists exposing the public to releases of chemicals from manufacturing plants, let us step into the shoes of a pharmaceutical plant safety engineer needing to ...

November 11, 2004

Bob Dole, enigma to the Democrats

On this Veteran's Day, it would be an appropriate time to say thank you to Bob Dole.  Most recently he served as National Chairman of the National World War II Memorial, war in which his heroism resulted in grave life—changing wounds. But ...

November 5, 2004

Mayor Daley

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had some interesting things to say yesterday. He seems to be quite disaffected by the National Democratic Party. He noted that it has become a party of insiders and wealthy contributors (i.e., the Clintonistas). He even de...

October 27, 2004

Presidential campaigns and the draft

The current Democratic demagoguery on the draft is aimed a group of young people with no personal experience with conscription. They can't put the issue in context, and the revisionist history taught in our schools and referenced in the mainstream me...

October 11, 2004

Kerry clueless on military transformation

John Kerry seems to be adopting a consistent theme on our involvement in Iraq. Briefly stated, it is that Iraq is a diversion from our war against al Qaeda. He sometime seems to feel that we should have devoted those resources to Afghanistan. This is...