Obama's NASA Administrator Inadvertently Admits to Committing Misfeasance at Obama's Command
That is almost certainly not what NASA Administrator Charles Bolden thought he was saying when he explained, in an interview with Al Jazeera (*) reported by Fox News ("NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations With Muslim World", http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/)
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
Nothing is wrong with any of those things, in themselves. The problem is that none of these are NASA's actual mission. NASA was created to promote the American development of spacecraft technology, and carry out missions aimed at the American exploration and colonization of regions beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA is not the Department of Education. Nor is NASA the State Department. And NASA is especially not whatever the heck would be covered by making Muslim nations "feel good about their historic contribution to science" ... I don't believe that it's even one of the functions of the US Government, as chartered by the Constitution, to help other countries "feel good" about themselves.
Now, it may be that something NASA does incidentally promotes one of these ends. American space exploration certainly gets more children interested in science and math than would otherwise be the case. When we partner with other countries in, for instance, the International Space Program, it does probably help our "international relationships." And ... oh, I'm still totally at a loss as to what NASA could legitimately do that would have the effect of making Muslims feel good about their medieval scientific heritage. Really, that one's totally irrelevant to any of NASA's purposes.
What Bolden has just claimed is that Obama told him that NASA should now almost completely ignore the purposes for which it was originally established, and embark upon other purposes for which it was not originally established, which is to say violate the very enabling legislation that created the agency. And Bolen has admitted that he supinely accepted this demand, rather than offering his resignation at being asked to commit such obvious misfeaseance (I would say "malfeasance," but it's difficult to see how either Obama or Bolden could criminally benefit from this nonsense) in office.
I'm assuming that Bolden's statement to Al-Jazeera was true. It is possible, of course, that he was lying. But in either case, Bolden should be removed from office, as he is clearly incompetent to run NASA. And, technically, Obama has also done something worthy of impeachment, though I know that he won't be impeached for an offense that most people would consider trivial.
I don't consider it trivial, though, because what Obama is doing threatens to destroy NASA, and thus impair America's future in space.
Note that I did not say "Man's future in space." The human race, unless annihilated within the next century, will most certainly colonize other worlds. This is almost guaranteed, because there are so many Powers and corporations already interested in do so.
There is no guarantee that these colonizing Powers will include America. We can quite easily opt out of relevance to the long-run human future, if we are so foolish as to do so.
Obama apparently thinks that opting out of the future is a good idea, anyway.
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(*) And why, exactly, was a US government official appearing on a TV network inimical to the United States of America, anyway?
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
Nothing is wrong with any of those things, in themselves. The problem is that none of these are NASA's actual mission. NASA was created to promote the American development of spacecraft technology, and carry out missions aimed at the American exploration and colonization of regions beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA is not the Department of Education. Nor is NASA the State Department. And NASA is especially not whatever the heck would be covered by making Muslim nations "feel good about their historic contribution to science" ... I don't believe that it's even one of the functions of the US Government, as chartered by the Constitution, to help other countries "feel good" about themselves.
Now, it may be that something NASA does incidentally promotes one of these ends. American space exploration certainly gets more children interested in science and math than would otherwise be the case. When we partner with other countries in, for instance, the International Space Program, it does probably help our "international relationships." And ... oh, I'm still totally at a loss as to what NASA could legitimately do that would have the effect of making Muslims feel good about their medieval scientific heritage. Really, that one's totally irrelevant to any of NASA's purposes.
What Bolden has just claimed is that Obama told him that NASA should now almost completely ignore the purposes for which it was originally established, and embark upon other purposes for which it was not originally established, which is to say violate the very enabling legislation that created the agency. And Bolen has admitted that he supinely accepted this demand, rather than offering his resignation at being asked to commit such obvious misfeaseance (I would say "malfeasance," but it's difficult to see how either Obama or Bolden could criminally benefit from this nonsense) in office.
I'm assuming that Bolden's statement to Al-Jazeera was true. It is possible, of course, that he was lying. But in either case, Bolden should be removed from office, as he is clearly incompetent to run NASA. And, technically, Obama has also done something worthy of impeachment, though I know that he won't be impeached for an offense that most people would consider trivial.
I don't consider it trivial, though, because what Obama is doing threatens to destroy NASA, and thus impair America's future in space.
Note that I did not say "Man's future in space." The human race, unless annihilated within the next century, will most certainly colonize other worlds. This is almost guaranteed, because there are so many Powers and corporations already interested in do so.
There is no guarantee that these colonizing Powers will include America. We can quite easily opt out of relevance to the long-run human future, if we are so foolish as to do so.
Obama apparently thinks that opting out of the future is a good idea, anyway.
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(*) And why, exactly, was a US government official appearing on a TV network inimical to the United States of America, anyway?