This afternoon, Mark Levin made an in-studio appearance with Neil Cavuto to discuss his new book “Ameritopia”, as well as the current GOP race for president. It was a great interview where the two discussed an ever invasive and all-encompassing government. Levin said, “My big fear is we’re already in a post-constitutional America….the government is attacking the individual.” When asked for his candidate of choice, Levin replied, “I like Santorum”, but he continued, “I’d vote for an orange juice can against Obama.”
(NYTimes)…CHARLESTON, S.C. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. informed his advisers on Sunday that he intends to drop out of the Republican presidential race, ending his candidacy a week before he had hoped to revive his campaign in the South Carolina primary.
Mr. Huntsman, who had struggled to live up to the soaring expectations of his candidacy, made plans to make an announcement as early as Monday. He had been set to participate in an evening debate in Myrtle Beach.
A third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last week failed to jump start his flagging candidacy, aides said, and his campaign limped into South Carolina with little money. Mr. Huntsman has spent days pondering his future in the race, but aides said that he concluded he was unlikely to topple Mitt Romney or match the momentum of his Republican rivals in the conservative Southern primary. Mr. Huntsman will endorse Mr. Romney’s bid for the Republican nomination this week, according to several people who spoke on condition of anonymity. (more…)
Fourteen ton spacecraft still has 11 tons of toxic rocket fuel on board…(rollover below)
After a long delay in the posting of the late-Saturday NORAD tracking fit for Phobos-Grunt, internet watchers were beginning to worry that the spacecraft had already broken up in the atmosphere about a day before most predictions. That vigil ended last night, at around 10:40pm Treehouse time. One thing that can be concluded from this update, other than the vehicle being intact, is that the orbit decay trends are continuing fairly smoothly. You probably won’t hear this elsewhere, but that may indicate that the Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS has not been completely straight about the tank material housing the toxic propellants. If it were aluminum as stated, the tanks likely would have ruptured after more than a day of being engulfed by plasma, especially since the vehicle seems to be flying in a tanks-first attitude. The propellants would have been scattered by now, dramatically decreasing the mass of the vehicle, and causing a spike in the decay rate. This apparently hasn’t happened. The vehicle seems to have held together so far, and that’s a bad sign. In my opinion, it supports the suspicion that the tanks are really titanium, which will probably survive the reentry all the way to the ground.(more…)
This video debuted on YouTube only three days ago but already has over six million views. Quoting its author, Jefferson Bethke…”A poem I wrote to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion. In the scriptures Jesus received the most opposition from the most religious people of his day. At it’s core Jesus’ gospel and the good news of the Cross is in pure opposition to self-righteousness/self-justification. Religion is man centered, Jesus is God-centered. This poem highlights my journey to discover this truth. Religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride because you make a list and can do it and act better than everyone, or despair because you can’t do your own list of rules and feel “not good enough” for God. With Jesus though you have humble confident joy because He represents you, you don’t represent yourself and His sacrifice is perfect putting us in perfect standing with God!”
(Buzzfead)…I didn’t know there was an emoticon for privacy! During a discussion on MSNBC today about a new book detailing Michelle Obama’s tensions with White House staffers, noted nepotism beneficiary Meghan McCain spoke out against the tell-all, arguing the Obamas deserve “some small emoticon of privacy.” This is when I’d note McCain clearly meant to say “a modicum” instead of “emoticon” and probably just got tongue-tied so let’s all give her the benefit of the doubt and oh my god why are you all so cynical, you know, if not for the fact that she repeated the mistake five seconds later. So instead, I’ll just 🙁 .
Filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest expose for Project Veritas couldn’t have come at a more prescient time. O’Keefe and his team walk into a multiple New Hampshire voting precincts during Tuesday’s primary election requesting ballots in the name of deceased persons. They mention that they have no ID, then are consistently told that, “This is New Hampshire. No ID needed.” Daily Caller has the complete write-up.
The following letter was written by Dan McLaughlin, aka “baseballcrank“. He mentions DeMint’s interview with Mark Levin (previous post) in the last paragraph.
Dear Senator DeMint:
By the numbers, we are yet very early in the presidential primaries. 1144 delegates are needed to sew up the nomination, and depending how you count these things, Mitt Romney has maybe 13 delegates after finishing Iowa in a de facto tie with Rick Santorum and thumping Ron Paul in New Hampshire last night. But presidential primary races are often about perception: like wars, you more often win them by convincing the other side that further resistance is futile than by total, to-the-last-man annihilation. And so the coming South Carolina primary is widely recognized as the last realistic chance to stop Romney, or at least visibly slow his momentum and eliminate the divisions among conservative candidates that have thus far precluded a unified opposition. Romney has been lining up endorsements (including SC Governor Nikki Haley), money and favorable press from conservative journalists to create an air of inevitability that he hopes will end this race by Florida, if not South Carolina. I think it is fair to say that a great many grassroots conservative activists view the prospect of a Romney candidacy with varying shades of dismay. (more…)
Has Jim DeMint officially crossed over to the dark side? He appeared on Mark Levin’s radio show last night predicting that Romney would win the South Carolina Primary. “I think Romney’s going to win here,” said DeMint, “I think that some of the other that might have had an advantage here have really crossed ways with some Republicans as they’ve criticized free enterprise concepts.” DeMint said, probably referring to recent verbal volleys launched Romney’s way by Huntsman, Perry and Gingrich regarding Bain Capital. (Skip ahead to the 11:58 mark to hear the quote.) Sounded to me like he’s pretty much written off the presidency, and will instead focus his attention on winning the Senate. Your take?
Phobos-Grunt image taken from ground, on Nov. 29, 2011 by amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh from The Netherlands.
The launch of the Phobos-Grunt probe from Kazakhstan on November 8th marked the first Russian Mars mission in 15 years. Space experts now say that underfunding of the ambitious project may have doomed it from the start. ”Way too ambitious, and way too underfunded, to reach its goal,” says space law attorney Michael Listner, who writes for The Space Review. All went well for the spacecraft during the launch and injection into a parking orbit around the Earth, but the failure of an orbital boost stage doomed the vehicle to a slow decay through the Earth’s atmosphere until it reenters in mid-January. (more…)
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Fourteen ton spacecraft still has 11 tons of toxic rocket fuel on board…(rollover below)
Dear Senator DeMint: