SPACE DEBRIS: The Threat of Objects Lost in Space.

For cleanup, we need better law. And here’s a longer piece (PDF) that Rob Merges and I wrote for the Environmental Law Reporter.

HMM: Could Hypersonic Weapons Make Nuclear War More Likely?

The extremely high speeds hypersonic weapons travel at reduce an adversary’s ability to react to them. Suppose two nuclear-armed countries—let’s call them India and Pakistan—have hypersonic weapons and nuclear weapons. Both weapons are located in each country’s capital. A hypersonic missile launched from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, will reach the Indian capital of New Delhi in just over six minutes.

Under this scenario, India has just six minutes to decide whether the attack is real, what to do about it, and to do something before the missiles hit. That’s virtually no time at all. India might well choose to launch its own weapons as soon as it detects an incoming attack to prevent them from being destroyed on the ground. But what if the attack is the result of an early warning system malfunction, or was launched by accident? By the time India figures that out, the retaliatory strike — and perhaps a nuke — is already underway. The United States, China, and Russia could all have similar problems with one another.

The good news is that hypersonic weapons are far more difficult to develop, build, and deploy than even nuclear-tipped ICBMs — putting them out of reach of rogue nations or terrorists for the foreseeable future. And the major powers have decades of (admittedly tense) experience of dealing with the End of the World on a hair-trigger alert.

That said, the US, Russia, and China need to get serious about faster and more-reliable warning systems (and perhaps upgraded hotlines) before we hit the first crisis of the coming hypersonic era.

FLASHBACK: Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline. “To help illustrate Facebook’s shift away from privacy, we have highlighted some excerpts from Facebook’s privacy policies over the years. Watch closely as your privacy disappears, one small change at a time!”

SARAH HOYT: The dangerous writings of Robert A. Heinlein.

Look, it’s my duty as a blogger to sample as much danger as I can.

CLARICE FELDMAN: Take Back Your Diamonds, Take Back Your Pearls, What Makes You Think I Was One of Weinstein’s Girls?

Jimmy Kimmel says he’s laid off the Harvey Weinstein jokes because he’s not the “moral conscience of America” (there’s also a video of him asking young women to guess what’s in his crotch. And suggesting they feel it and put their mouths on it).

Famously, NBC is playing shy about the scandal, having refused to broadcast the detailed exposé by Ronan Farrow, who took it to the New Yorker which did publish it.

The story has laid bare the hypocrisy of the media giants, Democratic biggies, and the Hollywood virtue signalers.

At the Boston Herald, Howie Carr reminds us of the NBC double standard. . . .

Once Again the Elite Set Up a Two-tier System on Misogyny

For college males they set in motion the horrible, anti-due process Title IX witchhunts. They cheered on the phony rape charges against the Duke Lacrosse team and the University of Virginia fraternity. For their own gang, they looked the other way or set up excuses like Steinem’s “One Grope” rule or Nina Burleigh’s offer to fellate Bill Clinton because of his stand on abortion. Every woman who marched in a pussy hat for Hillary should do some serious soul searching.

But they won’t.

ROGER KIMBALL: Yes, Trump Is Winning.

Trump is methodically pushing ahead with the agenda he campaigned on. That includes:

Nominating judges and justices who can be counted on to interpret and enforce the law but do not endeavor to use the law to promote their social agenda;
Addressing the problem of illegal immigration and securing the borders of the United States;
Developing America’s vast energy resources;
Rolling back the regulatory state, especially the administrative overreach of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency;
Pursuing policies that put America, and American workers, first, not to the detriment of our relationships with our international partners but through a recognition that strength and sovereign independence make nations more reliable actors;
Restoring the combat readiness and morale of the United States military;
Simplifying the U.S. tax code, making it more competitive for U.S. businesses and more equitable for individuals;
Getting a handle on the unconstitutional and shockingly inefficient monstrosity ironically called the Affordable Care Act;
Putting a stop to the obscene violation of due process that Title IX fanatics brought to college campuses across the country.

And many other initiatives large and small.

In all of these areas, Trump is proceeding not as a wrecking ball but as a deliberate, if often voluble and sometimes exasperating, agent of change.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised that, if elected, the American people would start “winning” again. “You’ll have so much winning,” he said, “you’ll get bored with winning.”

Now, almost nine months into his first term, how is he doing? Real unemployment is on the wane. The stock market is at an historic high. So is consumer confidence. Illegal immigration is down nearly 70 percent. America is now a net exporter of energy. Just a few days ago, Trump declined to re-certify the malevolent nuclear deal that Obama made with Iran, winning from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu this commendation: “I congratulate President Trump for his courageous decision today. He boldly confronted Iran’s terrorist regime. . . . If the Iran deal is left unchanged, one thing is absolutely certain—in a few years’ time, the world’s foremost terrorist regime will have an arsenal of nuclear weapons and that’s a tremendous danger for our collective future.”

Just a couple of days ago, Trump, having been disappointed by a supine Republican Congress, issued an executive order that will make it easier for people to band together to obtain health insurance tailored to their needs (instead of being forced into federally defined, one-size-fits-all plans) while also ending the unconstitutional federal subsidies (unconstitutional because the money wasn’t appropriated by Congress) to big insurance companies, amounting to some $7 billion per year (the price of getting those companies on board with Obamacare in the first place).

In any normal world, these would be called significant accomplishments. But in the NeverTrump bubble, none of these victories can evade the protective refracting mirrors that intercept and distort the message.

Read the whole thing.