One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.

Base Spike Detox is what I am currently using in my practice for those who have had COVID-19 multiple times, one or more of the COVID-19 vaccines, or both and believe persistent SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein could be causing problems in their body.

I have arrived, based on the emerging scientific literature (1) and my clinical observation, that three OTC products are essential as a triple base combination:

1. Nattokinase 2000 FU (100 mg) twice a day
2. Bromelain 500 mg once a day
3. Nano/Liposomal Curcumin 500 mg twice a day

Additional products can be added, including NAC, IVM (Ivermectin), HCQ (Hydroxychloroquine), fluvoxamine, low-dose naltrexone, and blood thinners, depending on the clinical evaluation and the syndrome. The therapeutic objective is to start treatment and allow the body to clear Spike and its fragments with the natural reticuloendothelial system. I believe this triple combination is the best approach.

Patients can get a big head start if they self-initiate Base Spike Detox as they get organized for appointments. I have found three months is a minimum duration, and some require more than a year. Don’t expect instant results, be patient. //

Thus an empiric starting dose could be 2000 FU twice a day. Full pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies have not been completed, but several years of market use as an over-the-counter supplement suggests nattokinase is safe with the main caveat being excessive bleeding and cautions with concurrent antiplatelet and anticoagulant drugs. //

Former NIH researcher David Scheim, PhD, early in the pandemic proposed that SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein was acting like a grappling hook pulling together circulating red blood cells (RBCs) into long chains and clumps in a process called hemagglutination (HA).

This explained why the red blood cells could not carry oxygen normally and was congruent with the finding of micro blood clots in the lungs. Boschi et al (6) have provided additional support for this mechanism. By reversing the clumping of red blood cells, ivermectin enabled the patient’s proper respiratory function to return.

Detox from spike proteins

Spike protein detox protocol:
All Over The Counter !

1.Natokinase 2000 units 2 x a day

2. Bromelaine 500 mg 1 x a day
3. Curcumin 500 mg (nato or liposomal) 2 x a day

3-6 months

The left loves to talk about how they are all about "trusting the science," but one of the fundamentals about science is this: When the data contradicts your hypothesis, you change your hypothesis. The Biden administration certainly didn't do this; they would rather hide inconvenient data.

Case in point: A recent Daily Caller exclusive reveals that the Biden administration buried an inconvenient liquid natural gas (LNG) export study that would have removed the primary reason for that administration's LNG export ban. //

The thumbnail? The Biden administration had a draft report in hand that contradicted their claims that halting LNG exports would result in more greenhouse gas emissions. The draft report indicated the opposite was true. So the Biden Department of Energy round-filed the report. //

The first layer of this stinker is in the deliberately deceptive practice. The administration made a claim to justify the damage the export ban was doing to domestic energy development; that claim was not only false, but the administration knew it was false, they had data in hand showing it was false, and they went ahead and implemented the ban anyway, in the name of "climate change."

The second layer of this stinker is that the Biden administration hid the results of a taxpayer-funded study and then lied to the American people about it.

And the final layer? They completely disregarded the standard Democrat shibboleth about "trusting the science," but then, Democrats have never been about the science - about the data. They are about the agenda, and this episode is just one more example of many.

Since 2019, Hilary Perkins had proudly served as a career lawyer for the government. She took seriously a basic tenet of the job, which is to argue the position of the administration, no matter the political stripes of the boss you serve. A Christian conservative hired under President Trump, she went on to defend the availability of the abortion pill under President Biden.

But last week, three days after becoming chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, Ms. Perkins abruptly resigned, forced out by a pressure campaign instigated by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. “It turns out this Biden lawyer has argued FOR Biden’s outrageous pro-abortion rules in many cases,” he wrote on social media.

He omitted that Ms. Perkins worked on the opposite side of a case his wife, Erin Hawley, took to the Supreme Court over access to the pill, mifepristone. He also did not mention that, in at least one other instance, Ms. Perkins had worked to keep limits on the drug’s availability.

The episode underscored the continuing purge of civil servant attorneys across the government, claiming, in this instance, a conservative casualty. Her ouster, current and former Justice Department lawyers said, is a troubling indication of how the ejections of government attorneys, at a time when the administration is engaged in dozens of high-stakes legal battles, is weakening the department.

“Senator Hawley’s accusations against me are false,” Ms. Perkins told The New York Times. “I am not who he says I am. I am a Christian who is both conservative and pro-life and who simply followed my oath as a Department of Justice career attorney. He should be fighting for me, not against me.”. //

A memo issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi emphasized that point, but she went further in suggesting that any lawyer who did not follow orders could be fired. The argument leveled against Ms. Perkins, then, is in effect at odds with Ms. Bondi’s guidance. //

Ms. Perkins left her job at the Justice Department to join the F.D.A. Tim Goeglein, the vice president of government affairs at the anti-abortion group Focus on the Family, said time was running out to get “a pro-life F.D.A. chief counsel.” He added, “I have only known Hilary Perkins to be categorically and reliably pro-life.”. //

“I was honored that President Trump appointed me to be F.D.A.’s chief counsel, and I was firmly committed to advancing the administration’s priorities,” Ms. Perkins told The Times.

Natalie Winters, co-host of "Steve Bannon's War Room," had Steele served up by Morgan on a silver platter and just eviscerated him for his efforts to sabotage President Donald Trump.

Steele, in the early part of the segment involving several commentators, made his case that Trump was engaged in a "pro-Russian Ukrainian peace plan."

Winters lay in wait until Morgan went to her for comment. And, like an agitated bull behind the gate at a bullfight, she came out horns down, full-sprint.

She began:

I know Christopher Steel probably wanted to go down in history as someone that [sic] colluded with the Clinton campaign to take down President Donald J. Trump, but I really think that you represent probably the ultimate grifter in the American political space.

She accused Steele of trying to "sabotage" Trump's peace efforts, and mocked his previous efforts to paint Trump as a Russian asset.

"If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data," said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden's University of Gothenburg.

"If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months."

His project includes 31 million data points for 202 countries, compiled by 4,200 scholars and other contributors, measuring 600 different attributes of democracy.

Lindberg happens to be in the U.S. this week presenting this year's report — which only includes data through the end of 2024. //

The number of autocracies (91) has just surpassed democracies (88) on this list for the first time in two decades, and nearly three-quarters of humans now live in an autocracy — where one person has unconstrained power — the highest rate in five decades.

The latest report still ranks the U.S. as a "Liberal Democracy," the highest of five tiers, one higher than Canada, which is classified as an "Electoral Democracy."

The report adds an important caveat: this year's version does not include events in 2025, meaning it does not cover the start of Donald Trump's latest presidential term. //

Liberal democracy
Requirements of electoral democracy are met; judicial and legislative constraints on the executive along with the protection of civil liberties and equality before the law.

Electoral democracy
Multiparty elections for the executive are free and fair; satisfactory degrees of suffrage, freedom of expression, freedom of association.
↑
Democratization

Grey zone
Countries belong here if confidence intervals between electoral democracy and electoral autocracy overlap, making the classification more uncertain.

Autocratization
↓

Electoral autocracy
Multiparty elections for the executive exist; insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections.

Closed autocracy
No multiparty elections for the executive; absence of fundamental democratic components such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free and fair elections.

Florida’s Voice
@FLVoiceNews
·
Follow
BREAKING: President Trump is tomorrow signing an executive order commencing the closure of the U.S. Department of Education through @EDSecMcMahon, White House confirms to Florida's Voice, first reported by USA Today
6:02 PM · Mar 19, 2025. //

Popdaddy eburke
4 hours ago
I think the EO directs McMahon to identify what can be done at the executive level and develop a plan to present to Congress to clean up their mess.

The jury in Mandan, North Dakota—a community that bore the brunt of the mayhem—saw through the sham. After just two days of deliberation, they delivered a verdict that didn’t just meet Energy Transfer’s $340 million damage claim but doubled down with punitive damages, totaling over $660 million. Trespass, defamation, conspiracy—the list of Greenpeace’s transgressions read like a rap sheet, and the jurors weren’t buying the group’s excuse that it was just a bit player in the mess it helped create.

Greenpeace, predictably, is crying foul, whining that this payout could bankrupt its U.S. operations. Good riddance, say many conservatives who’ve watched the group thumb its nose at law and order for years. "This is about accountability," said Trey Cox, Energy Transfer’s lead attorney from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, outside the courthouse. "Peaceful protest is American as apple pie, but what Greenpeace did—funding destruction and smearing a company trying to keep our country running—that’s not protest, that’s sabotage." People like @theCCR love to say that their right to protest is being harmed yet they don't tell you about the damage to the environment when they leave trash and destroy private properties. //

Of course, Greenpeace is pulling out all the stops to spin this as an attack on the First Amendment. “This threatens our rights to peaceful protest,” bleated Deepa Padmanabha, a Greenpeace lawyer, as if torching equipment and delaying a vital infrastructure project qualifies as "peaceful." The irony wasn’t lost on Cox, who called the ruling a “powerful affirmation” of real free speech—speech that doesn’t come with a Molotov cocktail attached. //

As one local put it outside the courthouse, “Maybe now they’ll think twice before messing with our way of life.” Amen to that. //

stripmallgrackle RedRaider85
an hour ago
Big Oil Stacked Jury implies jury tampering in the jury selection process. That sounds like a defamation/libel suit waiting to happen, unless SpleenPeace can prove the jury was rigged. Clearly, the post was intended to defame Energy Transfer. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
3 hours ago
The hypocrites abandoned hundreds of junk cars and over 48 million pounds of trash (it filled hundreds of semi trucks). Over a million was spent cleaning up their trash.

Pipelines significantly more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than trains. Those oil trains still run not too far from my house.

It was a greenwashing power trip. They earned their court loss and I hope it ruins them.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/1/dakota-access-protest-camp-crews-haul-48-million-p/

https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/10/environmentalist-protest-destroys-environment-standing-rock/. //

ThatGuy81
3 hours ago
Oh, you mean the Indian "tribe" that was holding out for more money then got pissed when they and their "sacred land" was bypassed by accommodating land owners and they got nothing, then decided to hold the company hostage by claiming environmental issues? Yeah, those greedy a**holes. //

USA_Proud
3 hours ago
ProPublica reported that Greenpeace has $22M in Revenue in 2023, with total assets of $48.4M.. Greenpeace Fund Inc; Washington, DC; Tax-exempt since Jan. 1979; EIN: 95-3313195. As such, doubtful that Energy Transfer can ultimately recover compensatory damages, much less punitive damages. They will fight it to Bankruptcy, and likely would be willing to spend every dollar on a legal challenge before they give anything to Energy Transfer. I would expect that they would get some form of legal claim against them, so that they can't commit more dollars to their legal defense. Even if they go into bankruptcy, it will be a warning shot to other 501C organizations messing around with what can rightfully be considered terroristic actions. The next step may be to find if some big donor put leverage on them to do these steps, and pursue it as a conspiratorial act.

A parrot called the budgerigar controls its vocalizations with a flexible system.

INGRAHAM: But going forward...would you defy a court order? Because...we all know that was out —

TRUMP: No, I never did defy a court order.

INGRAHAM: And you wouldn't in the future?

TRUMP: No. You can't do that. However, we have bad judges. We have very bad judges. And these are judges that shouldn't be allowed...I think at a certain point, you have to start looking at: What do you do when you have a rogue judge? //

Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland
·
From a friend: "It’s hard to tell whether the principal purpose of Lawfare 2.0 is (1) to stop Trump from doing stuff or (2) to goad him into saying he won’t follow court orders (so that they can say he’s a dictator, and potentially turn the Congress and the Supreme Court against him; so far, Congress has been helpful by the narrowest of margins and the Supreme Court has been slow but not hostile). Conservatives need to realize that Trump is playing it smart by avoiding direct confrontation. By the end of the year, he’ll get 90% of what he wants through the budgetary or appellate process."
10:49 AM · Mar 19, 2025. //

anon-89ic
3 hours ago
You can't ignore the corruption of the federal bench. Federal judges are now generally picked by the senior Senator of each state, so Liz Warren picks the federal judges for all the Bray State and it was obvious during the covid hoax that all of these judges she has picked for so many years are partisan hacks, and the same is true in New York, California and elsewhere, so the problem is not judicial v. executive, but also legislative v. executive in which the courts are a tool of select members of the Senate. this is a real constitutional crisis because it is clear that 28 years of bench packing has created a constitutional crisis from a discredited and politicized judiciary. No, you cannot ignore a court order from a legitimate and non partisan court, but that isn't what we have now, and that is a huge problem.

A government is a necessary evil in a fallen world. It exists to establish rules to regulate the evil impulses of man, and take money from him in order to keep civilization ticking. It has a military that halts dangers that may threaten that civilization. It creates barriers for man in order to help that civilization flow smoothly.

The issue is that government is run by fallen individuals and needs to be checked and, from time to time, pruned with extreme prejudice. Democrats don't believe this to be true. They don't see it as "getting in a man's way," they see it as a tool to achieve greater heights, and if a little is good, then a lot has got to be better... despite clear historical evidence to the contrary.

What stops them from seeing logic about the negatives of big government — and I find this part incredibly ironic — is their own corruption, with which they use government to enrich themselves. They don't see the waste, fraud, and institutional abuse as an issue, they see it as part of the process to build their Utopia, but what they don't see is that their dehumanization of the people to build it is really just an attempt to mechanize human beings to create a Utopia for themselves. It's hard to see that when you're using it as an avenue to live large yourself.

And this should disqualify Democrats from office for years to come. Until they can see humanity as individuals, each with a story, a personality, and a life, they cannot be allowed to step foot into power, because this kind of thinking about humanity is, at its core, evil.

Ryan, Craig. Sonic Wind. New York: Livewright Publishing, 2018. ISBN 978-0-631-49191-0.

John Paul Stapp's family came from the Hill Country of south central Texas, but he was born in Brazil in 1910 while his parents were Baptist missionaries there. After high school in Texas, he enrolled in Baylor University in Waco, initially studying music but then switching his major to pre-med. Upon graduation in 1931 with a major in zoology and minor in chemistry, he found that in the depths of the Depression there was no hope of affording medical school, so he enrolled in an M.A. program in biophysics, occasionally dining on pigeons he trapped on the roof of the biology building and grilled over Bunsen burners in the laboratory. //

It was not until the 1960s that a series of mandates were adopted in the U.S. which required seat belts, first in the front seat and eventually for all passengers. Testifying in 1963 at a hearing to establish a National Accident Prevention Center, Stapp noted that the Air Force, which had already adopted and required the use of seat belts, had reduced fatalities in ground vehicle accidents by 50% with savings estimated at US$ 12 million per year. In September 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed two bills, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act, creating federal agencies to research vehicle safety and mandate standards. Standing behind the president was Colonel John Paul Stapp: the long battle was, if not won, at least joined.

Stapp had hoped for a final promotion to flag rank before retirement, but concluded he had stepped on too many toes and ignored too many Pentagon directives during his career to ever wear that star. In 1967, he was loaned by the Air Force to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to continue his auto safety research. He retired from the Air Force in 1970 with the rank of full colonel and in 1973 left what he had come to call the “District of Corruption” to return to New Mexico. He continued to attend and participate in the Stapp Car Crash Conferences, his last being the Forty-Third in 1999. He died at his home in Alamogordo, New Mexico in November that year at the age of 89.

In his later years, John Paul Stapp referred to the survivors of car crashes who would have died without the equipment designed and eventually mandated because of his research as “the ghosts that never happened”. In 1947, when Stapp began his research on deceleration and crash survival, motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. were 8.41 per 100 million vehicle miles travelled (VMT). When he retired from the Air Force in 1970, after adoption of the first round of seat belt and auto design standards, they had fallen to 4.74 (which covers the entire fleet, many of which were made before the adoption of the new standards). At the time of his death in 1999, fatalities per 100 million VMT were 1.55, an improvement in safety of more than a factor of five. Now, Stapp was not solely responsible for this, but it was his putting his own life on the line which showed that crashes many considered “unsurvivable” were nothing of the sort with proper engineering and knowledge of human physiology. There are thousands of aircrew and tens or hundreds of thousands of “ghosts that never happened” who owe their lives to John Paul Stapp. Maybe you know one; maybe you are one. It's worth a moment remembering and giving thanks to the largely forgotten man who saved them.

Random US Citizen
3 hours ago edited
He’s not “going to lose” the narrative, he’s already lost it. He lost it back when he manipulated the outcome of the Obamacare case by ignoring the plain wording of the statute and decided the the word “penalty”—those seven literal letters—meant “tax.” Everything he’s done after that has just proved that he is a politician, not a judge. The damage he has done to the reputation of the judiciary through his blatant political maneuvering is incalculable. It’s rather ironic that insiders claim he is doing this to protect the court from a reputation for being political. But the Supreme Court has gone from one of the most trusted institutions in the country to one that is at a historic low of trust.

John Roberts has no one to blame for this but himself. His constant refusal to decide constitutional matters before the court in favor of remanding them over minor issues is part of the problem. His willingness to join the conservatives on the bench in important decisions merely so he can write tepid opinions is another. His need to make choices based on political calculations is a third. But most damaging is his unwillingness to admit the reality that lower court judges are making decisions based on their personal politics and take action. His claim that “There are no ‘Obama judges’” in the face of this reality was proof that he’s not serious about his job as a justice.

Either that, or someone is holding his kids hostage.

jester6 Random US Citizen
8 minutes ago
As I wrote in another thread, SCOTUS's power to declare actions of the Executive and Legislative branches unconstitutional is not found in the text of the Constitution. That power comes from a 1803 court decision called Marbury vs Madison. SCOTUS granted themselves that power, and the other branches aqueised.

However, for most of our history, it was only SCOTUS who challenged the Executive or Legislative branch openly. Over the last 40 years the Circuits began to do it. And now, since 2016, the District courts are playing at the game. These judges are operating on the idea that power of the judiciary iis sacrosanct; infact the judiciary is the weakest branch if government in our system. It has no real power over the other branches if they decide to ignore it.

Thanks to the actions of these district judges, the entire judiciary is now part of our political process. Sooner or later, the traditional political branches are going to start treating the judiciary as political players. The judiciary has very little power to withstand that onslaught.

Not only can Trump simply ignore the judiciary, Congress can wipe out all courts but SCOTUS with a simple majority vote, and there is nothing the judiciary can do. Congress can also simply remove jurisdiction on certain matters from the courts with a majority vote.

If Trump decided to ignore the courts tomorrow, their only hope would be for Congress to impeach Trump... and the judiciary has made enemies of so many people in Congress, there is zero chance the Senate would vote two-thirds to remove Trump from office. The bottom line is Roberts has let these district judges put the entire judiciary into a precarious position.

These judges are like a 50 year old man reffing a football game who decides he wants to play running back... they've picked up the ball but they have not considered what it will feel like when a 300 pound 25 year old linebacker takes them down. They are foolishly assuming the protections that went with their role as ref will continue when they play the game. If they don't reverse course, they will find out that is a bad assumption. //

1776-2023RIP
3 hours ago
It is Roberts job to rein in these out of control judges.
Like everything else, he’s failing at this. He pontificates that “for over 200 years…blah, blah”.
But he doesn’t acknowledge that no president has ever faced this level of litigation. This is Judicial tyranny. Nothing less.
The Judicial Branch ( headed by the Supreme Court ) is a coequal ( not superior) branch of government.
The Executive Branch ( The President) is a coequal ( not inferior) branch of government.
Sometimes they are in conflict. It would then be up to the other Co-equal branch ( the Legislature) to resolve the conflict. That is our system under the constitution.
Reminder the Supreme Court has gotten many, many things wrong over the years. The “Dred Scott decision “ being a notable one. Abraham Lincoln famously ignored this ruling. He was right to do so.
Just because a court ( even the SC) says it so, doesn’t mean it has to be so. Otherwise, a rogue supreme court could simply rule that every action a president took is unconstitutional. Effectively neutering the President, and arrogating Executive Powers to themselves. This is judicial tyranny and Justice Roberts should put an end to it. Before Trump does. //

Mike Rogers
2 hours ago edited
Roberts gets ONE chance. Either the court takes one of these challenges to article 2 and rules in favor of the constitution or Trump can remind the nation that the judiciary cannot control the presidency and plow on with the people’s agenda.
There is a big difference between contract law and the (unfortunately) painful procedures for firing civil servants, and ruling on policy which is outside the purview of ANY judge.

During Trump 1.0 Roberts was concerned about maintaining the legitimacy and relevance of the Supreme Court, but Trump 2.0 can destroy both if he does not guide the court to adhere closely to the constitution. //

anon-jzmf
3 hours ago
Justice Roberts wants courts and judges to be seen as neutral arbiters sitting on a serene plane high above the excesses of politics. But John, if you want your fantasy to come true, your courts and judges have to actually sit above politics, and many judges do not. If a significant number of judges decide to become activists, making their venues "political courts," then the political branches will inevitably respond to the politicization of those courts. Get ready, Johnny, because it's coming and coming hard. //

Jeff Bartlett
2 hours ago
You miss the point. Trump is whining about impossible impeachments when he should be doing this:

1. Sue EOs in pro-Trump courts: Trump wins, uses as cover to proceed while
   rulings conflict.
2. Use Lincoln precedent: remove judges for violating Article 3, Section 1, Clause 1.
3. Charge judges with treason: acting w/o jurisdiction (US v Will, Cohens v Virginia). //

It took nearly two years for doctors to figure out the cause of his chest pain. //

The doctors were concerned enough that they decided it was time to take the implant out. After removing it, they sent the device and samples to the Florida health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which did clinical and genetic testing. They all turned up Brucella suis.

B. suis is an extremely infectious bacteria that's usually found in pigs. The most common symptom in pigs is reproductive losses, such as stillbirths, though they can also develop other symptoms, such as abscesses and arthritis. In humans, it causes an insidious, hard to detect infection called brucellosis, which is used to describe an infection from any Brucella species: B. suis, B. melitensis, B. abortus, and B. canis.

In the US, there are only about 80 to 140 brucellosis cases reported each year, and they're mostly caused by B. melitensis and B. abortus. People tend to get infected by eating raw (unpasteurized) milk and cheeses. B. suis, however, is generally linked to hunting and butchering feral pigs and hogs.

Until recently, the Brucella species were designated as select agents by the US government, a classification to flag pathogens and toxins that have the potential to be a severe threat to public health, such as if they're used in a bioterror attack. The current list includes things like anthrax and Ebola virus. Brucella species were originally listed because they can be easily aerosolized, and only a small number of the bacterial cells are needed to spark an infection. In humans, infections can be both localized and systemic and have a broad range of clinical manifestations. Those include brain infections, neurological conditions, arthritis, anemia, respiratory involvement, pancreatitis, cardiovascular complications, like aneurysms, and inflammation of the spinal cord, among many other things.

In January, federal officials removed Brucella species from the select agents list—a designation that limits the types and amount of research that can be done on a pathogen. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the reason for the removal was to ease those limits, thereby making it easier for researchers to conduct veterinary studies and develop vaccines for animals. //

The man said he wasn't a hunter, but recalled receiving a gift of feral swine meat on several occasions in 2017 from a local hunter. Though he couldn’t recall the specific hunter who gave him the biohazardous bounty, he did remember handling the raw meat and blood with his bare hands—a clear transmission risk—before cooking and eating it. //

The man, meanwhile, finally received the proper course of antibiotics recommended by the CDC for brucellosis treatment, which was a combination of oral doxycycline and rifampin for six weeks. At the end of the course, his blood cultures were negative. A few months later, he had a new AICD placed. A year after the ordeal, lingering signs of the infection had faded. At a routine check-up after more than 3 years, he appeared to remain free of brucellosis.

On Monday, the president posted a long statement on Truth Social that repeated this canard of the Biden administration, "They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be very embarrassing event for them—another thing I inherited from that group of incompetents."

Trump then went on to state that he and Musk had just sent up a SpaceX Dragon (which, in point of fact, launched last September) to rescue the crew. //

One of the common refrains about spaceflight for decades and decades is that it is nonpartisan.

That is, the Apollo Program brought the country together in the turbulent 1960s and helped make everyone feel good about the country. Pretty much ever since then, Republicans, Democrats, and independents have generally supported NASA and civil spaceflight. //

But if we're going to start lying about basic truths like the fate of Wilmore and Williams—and let's be real, the only purpose of this lie is to paint the Trump administration as saviors in comparison to the Biden administration—then space is not going to remain apolitical for all that long. And in the long run, that would be bad for NASA.

Let's also be clear that Musk and SpaceX are currently flying the only spacecraft in the Western world that is capable of reliably flying humans into orbit. Without Dragon, NASA would have been beholden to Russia for the last five years for human spaceflight. And when Boeing's Starliner had issues nine months ago en route to the International Space Station, NASA was fortunate to have the reliable Dragon program to turn to.

Yet perverting that good news story into some tawdry political gain cheapens SpaceX, NASA, and Wilmore and Williams. In this case, the truth was beautiful. When one American space company had a problem, another stepped in, and the heroic astronauts made it home safely with a perfect backdrop.

If only the story ended there.

Darkness fell over Mare Crisium, ending a daily dose of dazzling images from the Moon. //

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon's surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface.

These are all important achievements, gathering data that could shed light on the Moon's formation and evolution, demonstrating new ways of collecting samples on other planets, and revealing the remarkable reach of the US military's GPS satellite network.

But the pièce de résistance for Firefly's first Moon mission might be the daily dose of imagery that streamed down from the Blue Ghost spacecraft. //

Dtiffster Ars Praefectus
9y
3,725
Subscriptor
TylerH said:
Given the amount of fuel needed to return to Earth, probably somewhere around the middle.

The prop to lift back off is at least 1.1 times the dry mass + up mass, but 78% of that is LOX which goes in the bottom tank. We don't know if the liftoff prop will just be in the tanks or in some kind of a really large header in the tank (as a boil off mitigation), but I would assume if there are headers they will be at or near the bottom of the of their respective tanks. Thus atleast 41% of the landed mass would be LOX and be very near the bottom. The legs and engine section will also be fairly substantial and very low. The methane for liftoff would be another 11% and only about a third of the way up the rocket. Much of the rest of the mass is tankage, but that center of mass is also probably no more than a third of the way up. The habitat section and equipment is high up, but it's less than 15% of that lift off mass. The CoM of the whole thing on landing/liftoff is probably only 25-30% up from the surface. It is much less tippy than your initial intuition would lead you to believe. //

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2P-z_cXsOs

https://youtu.be/IpA9DORDkeE?si=oNmwnzJs6_UwzjPb

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/72177720313239766/with/54395270843

That’s right: While the Oversight Project hasn’t confirmed it yet, evidence suggests that beyond a rogue staffer using the autopen — possibly without Biden’s authorization — one or more aides may have outright signed his signature on certain pardons and commutations.

Could the inconsistencies be a symptom of Biden’s cognitive decline? Perhaps. But the variations in his signature may point to something even more troubling: deliberate forgery.

This could be huge because it tells us that staffers were confident Biden was out of it to the extent that they could get away with actual forgery, not just abuse of the autopen.

A federal judge has no power to usurp Executive Branch authority or dictate foreign policy to the president. //

In response, Boasberg called a hearing on Monday demanding to know exactly what time those planes took off, when they left U.S. airspace, and when they touched down in El Salvador — again, as if he, a lone federal judge, has authority to direct counter-terrorism operations that fall under the exclusive authority of the Executive Branch. The administration said simply that these were operational questions that it was not at liberty to discuss in a public setting. (In a jaw-dropping display of arrogance, Boasberg shot back that that his judicial powers “do not lapse at the airspace’s edge.”)

Just prior to that hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out the administration’s view of the larger question of whether the federal courts even have the power to intervene in this case. In a response and motion to vacate, Bondi argued that the plaintiffs in this case “cannot use these proceedings to interfere with the President’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority, and the Court lacks jurisdiction to do so.”

Bondi went on to explain that “just as a court assuredly could not enjoin the President from carrying out a foreign drone strike or an overseas military operation, or from negotiating with a foreign power to coordinate on such an operation, nor could a court lawfully restrict the President’s inherent Article II authority to work with a foreign nation to transfer terrorists and criminals who are already outside the United States.” The president’s invocation of the AEA, in other words, is non-justiciable and unreviewable.

What the administration is expressing here is a view of judicial and executive powers that more closely conforms to how the Founding Fathers understood them. Put simply, the Founders didn’t think the judiciary was the sole arbiter of what is and is not constitutional. While the courts, headed by the Supreme Court, indeed have an independent power to interpret and apply the Constitution, that doesn’t mean they are supreme over the other two branches, or the states for that matter. //

James Madison stated plainly the reasoning behind this more expansive view of separation of powers clearly in Federalist No. 49: “The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.”

That means the judiciary can’t simply dictate to the Congress or the president what they must or must not do according to the Constitution. As legal scholar Michael Paulsen has written, “the power of constitutional interpretation is a divided, shared power incident to the functions of each of the branches of the national government — and to instruments of state governments, and of juries, as well — with none of these actors literally bound by the views of any of the others.” According to this view, the Constitution itself, not the Supreme Court, is the supreme law of the land.

If that sounds like a radical view of the Constitution and the separation of powers, that’s only because we have strayed so far from how our constitutional system was first established, and have imported the alien concept of judicial supremacy that elevates the role of the courts over and above the political branches and the states.

It wasn’t always this way. Abraham Lincoln, for example, understood that the Executive Branch was not necessarily bound by the rulings issued by the Supreme Court but had its own inherent power to interpret the Constitution. Lincoln and the Congress both famously asserted what we might call constitutional supremacy in their defiance of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, by enacting and enforcing laws prohibiting slavery in federal territories — something Dred Scott expressly forbade. Lincoln also defied a Supreme Court decision purporting to limit his authority as commander-in-chief to hold enemy prisoners during the Civil War.

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