Nuclear Power

Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality - Kevin Bullis

Conventional reactors generate heat and electricity as a result of the fission of a rare form of uranium—uranium 235. In a traveling wave reactor, a small amount of uranium 235 is used to start up the reactor. The neutrons the reactor produces then convert the far more abundant uranium 238 into plutonium 239, a fissile material that can generate the heat needed for nuclear power. Uranium 238 is readily available in part because it's a waste product of the enrichment processes used to make conventional nuclear fuel. It may also be affordable in the future to extract uranium 238 from seawater if demand for nuclear fuel is high. Terrapower says there's enough of this fuel to supply the world with power for a million years, even if everyone were to use as much power as people in the United States do.

Gunwalker/Fast and Furious

What led to `Project Gunwalker'? - Pauline Arrillaga

A different kind of strategy was developed and put in motion. It went like this: Instead of working to interdict the many guns that were bought, ATF agents allowed weapons to move through the trafficking network in an attempt to identify additional conspirators and, ideally, build a bigger, stronger case.

It was a risky proposition for a typically risk-adverse agency, a strategy in which the consequences may not have been entirely thought through. But this puzzle had many more pieces that came together to complete the final picture: Gun laws that make curbing arms trafficking challenging. Several unsuccessful prosecutions. A government faced with a deadly, and growing, problem—and the need for a solution, no matter the hurdles.

...

In January, Avila and 19 other members of the alleged Fast and Furious network were indicted on charges including conspiracy, dealing in firearms without a license and making false statements in the acquisition of guns. Trial is currently set for February, though officials say the investigation continues and other suspects may be charged.

At the time of the indictment, the heads of the ATF and Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office touted the recovery of some 567 weapons in both Mexico and the United States. But in congressional testimony Tuesday, an ATF intelligence analyst said that Fast and Furious associates had purchased, in all, more than 2,000 firearms—and that 1,430 had yet to be recovered.

2011 Power Line Prize

The winner:


2nd place, "Dear Uncle Sam":



One of the 3rd place prize videos:


Another 3rd place video:


An honorable mention:

Summer Camp

It's time for summer camp:

Obamacare Sales Pitch

WOLF: Barack Obama’s pants on fire - Dr. Milton R. Wolf

Recent revelations by author Janny Scott in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother” (Riverhead Hardcover, 2011), show that Stanley Ann Dunham, the president’s mother, was in fact well-insured and, what’s more, her health insurance company - those evil corporatists - never attempted to deny payment for her health care. Stanley Ann’s out-of-pocket expenses amounted to “several hundred dollars a month.”

...

Dishonoring the dead with deception, as pathetic as that is, barely scratches the surface of the Obamacare falsehoods. You can keep your current doctor: Lie. You can keep your current insurance: Lie. Hearings will be made public: Lie. The deficit will be reduced: Lie. Four hundred thousand jobs will be created immediately: Lie. There are no death panels: Lie. Taxes won’t be increased on families earning less than $250,000 a year: Lie. And all of this comes before the first Obamacare waivers exempted the White House’s best friends from the rules that you must follow.

This degree of dishonesty is not merely taking a mulligan on the back nine or fudging a couple of pounds on your driver’s license. There’s something far more sinister at work here. America is being “fundamentally transformed” by deception, and the explanation is simple: demographics. In America, self-proclaimed conservatives outnumber liberals by a ratio of 2-to-1, according to Gallup, or, more recently, almost 3-to-1, according to Rasmussen. How else is a power-hungry ruling class to pry ever-more liberty from the people, other than to prey on Americans’ higher angels of compassion with the demon of deception?

Economics and Prosperity

The Benefits of Free Enterprise - John Hinderaker



Our Debt Binge Is Ending — And The Middle Class Will Get Clobbered - Henry Blodget

Our Betters in Washington

America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution - Angelo M. Codevilla

Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all. So was "social engineering." Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.