AXE BEATS SCALPEL -- by a factor of nearly 10 to 1.

GLOBAL HAWK orders cut to pay for sensor fix. Yep. It’s the sensors that cost the real money. The aircraft is just a truck.

PUNISH MISUSERS OF BODY SCANNER IMAGES.

[An] amendment by Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to an aviation bill pending in the Senate was approved 98-0 [that] would prohibit anyone with access to the scanned body images, whether security personnel or members of the public, from photographing or disseminating those images. Besides a prison term, violators could be fined up to $100,000 per violation.

So what’s the point? Beyond moral preening, that is. Does anyone with a lick of common sense (there’s that common sense word again. --Ed.) seriously believe that even the most egregious violation will ever be punished by imprisonment or a $100K fine?

THE OBAMA BUDGET: Life is short, eat dessert first. “His policies are all about self-indulgence in the present, to be paid for with either long-run economic decline, or painful sacrifices by future generations.”

Cut the damn budget. It’s too late for a scalpel; it’s time for an axe.

UNCLE SAM charges up electric cars. I dislike saying it, but “I told you so.”

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DOG when he finally catches the car he chasing? William Jacobson on Shirley Sherrod’s filing suit on Andrew Breitbart.

The cost of defending the lawsuit, at least in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars and probably covered by insurance. The chance to take the depositions of Obama administration and NAACP officials, to investigate Sherrod’s connections to left-wing advocacy groups, and to expose the Pigford case intrigues — priceless.

He gets run over.

NASA BUDGET takes a hit. As expected. There are, however, two potentially good elements. One, increased funding for commercial rocket and space companies to develop transport to the International Space Station; and two, reduced funding for satellite data collection about the Earth and its “changing climate.”

INTERFAX: [Russian] Mission to Mars is possible in 20 years.

THE MAN [OBAMA] has the depth of a sheet of paper.

VIRGINIA ATTORNEY GENERAL Ken Cuccinelli will be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee at 9:30 am EST on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate.

It can be seen live here starting at 9:25 am.

An archived version should be available by the end of the week.

STARDUST-NExT MISSION:

On January 15, 2006, the Stardust spacecraft completed one history-making mission and began another. Returning from a rendezvous with Comet Wild 2, the spacecraft approached Earth and jettisoned the capsule containing particles collected directly from the comet, as well as interstellar dust medium. The capsule landed safely and on-target southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, completing the world's first sample return from a comet.

Now this spacecraft is on a new record-setting mission: a visit to Comet Tempel 1. Comet Tempel 1 was the comet previously targeted by the Deep Impact mission, making Stardust-NExT the first-ever follow-up mission to a comet.

The close encounter will occur at 8:48 PM PST today. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory link is here.

[Update & bump] The Tempel 1 images are here.

RANDOM THOUGHT: I wonder how long it will be under ObamaCare until "qualified" health care plans will be able to deny treatment to lung cancer patients because smokers don't deserve treatment.

FUN WITH MATH: the 2012 proposed budget. The New York Times has an interactive graph up of the $3.17 trillion proposed governmental budget up on their website. Some of the more interesting numbers:

$808.04 billion in mandatory spending for the Social Security Administration (which the CBO has stated, barring any reforms, is permanently set to give out more money than it is taking in).

$474.15 billion for interest on Public Debt -- not the principal, just the interest.

$11.57 billion for the Federal Communications Commission, which is best known for making sure that people don't curse on television.

$6.95 billion for the Railroad Retirement Board, a Social Security-style program for railroad workers.

$1.31 billion for Agricultural Marketing Services. Not only does the government subsidize agriculture, they pay for advertisements telling telling you how good those subsidized veggies are for you.

Feel free to find your own interesting ways the government is spending money.

BONUS: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States is 309,050,816, which means that if the $3.7 trillion dollar passes as stands, on average, each individual is responsible for $11,972 for this years budget.

Well, it was nice of Mr. Obama to give me a “heads-up” on my next year’s tax bill.

FOR ONCE I AGREE WITH DANA MILBANK: "With the release of Obama's budget proposal, Washington's budgeting style can instead be described as tiptoeing past the can and hoping nobody notices."

HAS ANYONE SEEN the Liberty Mutual insurance commercial where the guy pulls on the spare tire of a wrecked car to pull out an entire new car? Volkswagen is taking it seriously. Well, almost.

AIRCRAFT DETECTION BEFORE RADAR. As someone much of whose professional career has been spent obsessing over radar detection, tracking, and location, these historical photos of acoustical tracking of aircraft are fascinating.


Notice the azimuth ring to allow for direction finding. The two "antennas" are offset-fed parabolic dishes, much like you see today in satellite cable system antennas. It appears to me that the two are slightly offset in elevation, which would suggest an amplitude monopulse capability to estimate elevation angle as well as azimuth.


The pedestal the men are standing on suggests an azimuth ring for rotation to direction-find in azimuth. The two vertical plane horns on the right suggest a capability to estimate elevation angle. One man probably controls elevation; the other azimuth.


The final picture is clearly an AZ/EL capable system. Most likely the man on the right controls the azimuth-finding horns; the man on the left controls the elevation-finding horns, and the man in the center is a spotter using a telescope for visual detection. Once an aircraft is spotted, he would control fine guidance.

It's interesting to note how the details have changed, but not the process. We use phase interferometry today for the accuracy it provides, but the physical structure hasn't changed a whit.

WE’RE TOO IMPORTANT to give you your money back. DOE to “reinvest” money saved through pay freezes.

HEY YOUNGSTERS, such a deal I've got for you.

Let's see -- you’re 22, right? OK, so here’s the deal ... you give me (at least) 12.4% of your income for the next 45 years (or thereabouts) and when you're 67 (or 68 or maybe 70 or 75) I'll pay you a princely sum (not to exceed 27% - but probably a lot less) of your total final salary each year for the rest of your life.

But wait! That's not all. As a special deal, I'll throw in annual cost-of-living increases (unless I decide not to).

This is an offer you can't turn down (no, really, you can't - it's against the law).

And there are only a few minor (truly minor - miniscule, really) strings attached.

For one, I reserve the right to change the percentage you "contribute" (heh) at any time and on my whim. And by the way, I've done it before - it's never gone down.

For another, right now I'm only demanding 12.4% of the first $106,800 of your income. I may decide up that 'contribution' to all your income at any time. After all, if you earn more than $106,000, you're rich, right? You'll never even notice the added 'contribution.'

Third, right now I'm letting (heh) you retire as early as age 67, but I'll probably up that age soon to 70 or maybe 75. After all, you're going to live much longer and we wouldn't want you to be bored, would we?

And, well, let's see: fourth, that 27% number is pretty generous (hell, it's over one quarter of your pre-retirement income), so I'll only give you that much if you make over the minimum specified in this chart over your entire 45 year (or longer, see above) working life.


If you don't earn more than that minimum, I'll give you a higher percentage of your total average income, but fewer total dollars.

Doesn't that sound really, really good? I'm glad you think so, because ... well, because you have no choice.

Oh. And one last little teensy-tiny string. I reserve the right to completely cancel the program at any time -- sorry, no refunds.

ECONOMISTS SPEAK: Obama, rein in federal spending.

THE WASHINGTON ‘WINK-WINK’ IN ACTION: “talk a great case on the looming fiscal disaster that will befall us if federal spending is not brought under control before the next dawn, but then propose only the smallest possible cuts and do absolutely nothing about the entitlements - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- that are literally bankrupting the nation and robbing our children and grandchildren of their futures.”