Hagel Jumps Shark

Chucky "Janus" Hagel, one of my very least favorite politicians in any party, decided that yesterday's talking head circuit was the best place to showcase his cluelessness and faulty understanding of the US Constitution. He started huffing and puffing about impeaching the president over policy differences on the Iraq war. Ed Morrisey cheerfully hands Chucky his head.

Only Senators completely ignorant of the Constitution would consider impeachment a viable option for dealing with policy differences between the executive and the legislature. The Constitution, in Article 2, Section 4, makes very plain the bases on which Congress can move to impeach a President:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

It does not grant Congress the right to remove a President on policy grounds. In fact, the entire idea of the balance of powers is to ensure that policy differences get worked out by compromise and that Congress does not act out of a mob mentality. The founders made the branches co-equal for a reason, and that was to limit the power of both. Otherwise, they would have chosen the parliamentary model — they had the British system as an easy example to follow — and made Congress the arbiter of executive policy.

The folks betting against America are going too far. There will be a backlash - soon, I think. Hagel has backed the wrong horse and is digging himself a deeper hole every time he opens his mouth lately. He has effectively eliminated himself from consideration for the Republican nomination with his antics. Frankly, I don't think he's endearing himself to moderates either - people see through opportunism (see earlier post on Gorezilla). So if he is, as I suspect, trying to line up for an independent run, he's already toasted himself before he's even started.

Titanic Paving Project

Scientists are astounded by the number of impact craters they have found on the largest moon of the planet Saturn. The Cassini probe has finished mapping by radar of about 10% of the surface of Titan.

And there aren't any craters to speak of.

Only three have been confirmed so far. With about twice that number of suspected craters that they are working to confirm. But all the other real estate in the solar system is heavily pockmarked with craters. Why is Titan so smooth? Scientists are suspecting that it may be a cosmic paving project that essentially fills in the holes rather rapidly after they are formed.

The trio of impact craters confirmed to date are named Menrva, Sinlap and Ksa and have diameters of 273 miles (440 kilometers), 50 miles (80 kilometers) and 17 miles (28 kilometers), respectively.

Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere hinders the formation of impact craters less than about 12 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter, because smaller space rocks burn up before they reach the surface. This is one reason the shrouded moon’s crater count is so modest.

As Cassini continues to map up to 30 percent of Titan’s surface at radar wavelengths the crater tally is set to grow.

“We've seen three craters on 10 percent of the surface, so we will probably find another 10 to 30. Maybe there are 30-100 in total, although we will need a follow-on mission to Titan to find and document them all,” Lorenz told SPACE.com.

Still, researchers consider the surface nearly pothole free when it should be on the road to ruin. Something yet to be determined must be keeping the crater count down.

Buried

Clues to Titan’s smooth finish can be seen in the presence of vast tracts of sand dunes, river channels and evidence for cryovolcanism visible in Cassini images.

It is likely that a combination of burial in sand, erosion by methane or obliteration by the cold hand of cryovolcanism is responsible for paving over the craters. Cassini has already spotted vague circular features among Titan’s sand dunes that may be evidence of craters undergoing burial.

Pinning down the rate of crater removal will be an important factor in dating the age of Titan’s surface features, including those craters that have survived.

”We have no way of knowing how recent the known craters are, although Menrva is old enough that it has a fairly eroded rim, cut by river channels,” Lorenz said.

Whoever is running that paving company up there could make a fortune here on earth. Just think of it: no more roadwork that goes on for generations! No more orange and white striped barrels or flashing signs. This could be huge if we unlock the secret!

Cutting Off The Money

This is a very quiet but enormous success that the administration has managed to pull off. They have been able to choke off Iran's access to the world's financial institutions with a very low key campaign. In doing so, they have severely damaged Iran's ability to function in the modern world. There is virtually no foreign investment inside Iran right now. That is directly the fault of Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has greatly aided the US effort to cut off the flow of money to Tehran.

The U.S. campaign, developed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, emerged in part over U.S. frustration with the small incremental steps the U.N. Security Council was willing to take to contain the Islamic republic's nuclear program and support for extremism, U.S. officials say. The council voted Saturday to impose new sanctions on Tehran, including a ban on Iranian arms sales and a freeze on assets of 28 Iranian individuals and institutions.

"All the banks we've talked to are reducing significantly their exposure to Iranian business," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "It's been a universal response. They all recognize the risks — some because of what we've told them and some on their own. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the dangers."

The new campaign particularly targets financial transactions involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is now a major economic force beyond its long-standing role in procuring arms and military materiel. Companies tied to the elite unit and its commanders have been awarded government contracts such as airport management and construction of the Tehran subway. The practice has increased since the 2005 election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.S. officials say. The Revolutionary Guard — of which Ahmadinejad is a former member — is part of the hard-line leader's constituency.

"The Revolutionary Guard's control and influence in the Iranian economy is growing exponentially under the regime of Ahmadinejad," Levey said in a speech in Dubai this month.

The campaign differs from formal international sanctions — and has proved able to win wider backing — because it targets Iran's behavior rather than seeking to change its government. "This is not an exercise of power," Levey said in the interview. "People go along with you if it's conduct-based rather than a political gesture."

Iranian importers are particularly feeling the pinch, with many having to pay for commodities in advance when a year ago they could rely on a revolving line of credit, said Patrick Clawson, a former World Bank official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The scope of Iran's vulnerability has been a surprise to U.S. officials, he added.

This is exactly what caused Russia to suddenly stop work on the reactor they have been building. One suspects that this also had something to do with the Iranians reverting to their old hostage-taking behavior that they started their regime with. Their violation of Iraqi territory to grab 15 British sailors and marines begins to look like a real act of desperation.

Hurting The Cause

I mentioned that I suspected Al Gore actually hurt the cause of global warming true believers right after his Oscar win. Roger Simon points to a poll that indicates that a very large number of Americans feel the same way. Only a very small percentage of Americans, less than 25%, think Gore is an expert on the subject at all. The American public is a lot smarter than politicians often give them credit for.

I have long suspected that Al Gore hurt the very cause - anthropogenic global warming - he is famous for espousing. Now I have some evidence of that in a new Rasmussen Poll saying only 24% percent of Americans consider the former veep a global warming expert. Furthermore, "just 36% of Americans say that Gore knows what he is talking about when it comes to the environment and Global Warming. [caps theirs]"

Gore's problem may stem from the attitude inherent in his remark before a Congressional Committee quoted further down in the Rasmussen article: "Global Warming is 'not a partisan issue; it's a moral issue.'" Wrong, Al. It's neither. It's a scientific issue.

And, considering the Rasmussen Poll, most of us apparently know it.

When I first viewed Gore's Oscar-winning movie, it was that very thing that immediately occurred to me: why am I listening to a politician talk about this? Why not a scientist or scientists? You could cut the inauthenticity of the whole enterprise with a knife, starting with pseudo-self-deprecating joke about his near presidential victory to the recitation of facts that seemed to support his cause (but perhaps didn't, we later learned). The documentary form, of course, allows for these kinds of distortions. How many serious scientific arguments can you fit in an eighty minute film? How deep can you go? Not very far. So someone must select. And with selection comes unscientific bias.

Between Gore's quasi-religious televangelism on the subject and his rank hypocrisy in his own gargantuan energy use, people are not buying what he is selling. This is particularly funny in light of the continued fantasies of Gore attempting another run at the Presidency. But by all means, do carry on, Gorezilla. Then maybe after your hysteria is discredited enough, we can start talking about real issues and real solutions. (Which do not include making the likes of Gore rich off phony carbon offset money-from-nothing shell games.)