Astronauts, Riots, and Pandemics: 2020 vs. 1969

Written by Dr. Paul G. Kengor

In July 1969, three American astronauts landed on the moon. It wasn’t just a great technical triumph. It was a much-needed respite amid social and political chaos.

America was already beset by Vietnam and civil rights struggles. That summer of 1969, things got worse. The nation was shocked by news of a riot after a confrontation between gay rights activists and police outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28.… Continue Reading

YouTube Is Fighting against Scientific Inquiry and the Expansion of Human Knowledge

Written by William Balgord And E. Calvin Beisner 

Curiously, the mainstream media seem to have ignored the story, but it’s an important one. Buzzfeed reported August 7 that “YouTube Is Fighting Back Against Climate Misinformation.”

As of July 9, “YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change … as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform.”

But neither YouTube nor Wikipedia, the source of its “fact check,” is qualified to function as unassailable arbiter calling balls and strikes over what is or isn’t fact in any given field of human inquiry.… Continue Reading

Good News in Global Warming

Written by Josh Gelernter

There were two big pieces of news out of NASA [last] week. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and scientists at the Southwest Research Institute discovered a new moon, orbiting a dwarf planet named Makemake (one of the many Pluto-esque bodies that live in the far reaches of the solar system). And NASA announced that the Earth is getting greener. Literally greener. Plant growth is way up.

Why is plant growth way up?… Continue Reading

Why You are Being Misled on Global Temperatures

Written by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

I’ve been inundated with requests this past week to comment on the NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record. Since I was busy with a Japan space agency meeting in Tokyo, it has been difficult for me to formulate a quick response.

Of course, I’ve addressed the “hottest year” claim before it ever came out, both here on October 21, and here on Dec.… Continue Reading

Obama’s Disconnected, Out of Touch, In Denial State of the Union

Written by Byron York

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama’s first address in 2009 — 69 fewer Democrats in the U.S. House and 14 fewer in the U.S. Senate. The scene in the U.S. House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.… Continue Reading

A Moral Primer: Obama’s Legacy is Government-Induced Chaos at Home, Moral Equivalence Abroad

Written by Victor Davis Hanson

The last but long gasp of the Obama administration is characterized not so much by deceit and incompetence as by growing chaos. Everything appears to be coming apart. The chariot of state now veers up and down with a terrified Phaethon clueless at the reins. Whether it is ISIS, Ebola, Putin, or Obamacare, the common strain is not simple incompetence, but a maladroitness born of intolerant ideological fundamentalism.

Have our government agencies ever seemed more corrupt or useless or both, staffed by political cronies and leftist zealots?… Continue Reading