THE NEW SPACE RACE: Watch India’s prototype space plane ace a landing test (video).

JOHN PODHORETZ: Joseph I. Lieberman, 1942-2024.

As a man in his private life and his everyday relationships, he defined the word “mensch.” As a Jew, he spent his life as a devoted follower of the obligations of Orthodoxy. As a public servant in Connecticut and Washington, he was never anything less than a man who served his state and served his country faithfully, rigorously, honestly, and with true honor.

It was one of the great blessings of my life that I got to know him over the past 20 years—to break bread with him, and celebrate the marriage of his daughter with him, and celebrate the birth of grandchildren with him, and honor him (for we do actually intend it as an honor) as one of COMMENTARY’s roastees. It is a mark of his amused and amusing character that he appeared at a COMMENTARY roast to pay tribute to the opposite number who had prevailed in that 2000 contest, Dick Cheney—and that Cheney returned the favor with comparable graciousness and high good humor when we roasted Joe two years later.

Indeed, the Lieberman-Cheney debate in 2000 was one of the last genuinely civil exchanges on the highest planes of American politics. And the memory of it stings—because we have spent the last quarter century doing what we can to rid Washington of exactly the kind of civility and respect Joe Lieberman extended across ideological and partisan boundaries.

Indeed, his career proved an early example of the nightmarish direction in which American politics was heading when, in 2006, he was targeted by leftists in his own party for defeat—even though he was the sitting senator from the state of Connecticut, only six years removed from his vice presidential candidacy, and only three years removed from his own bid for the presidency in 2004.

For the sin of supporting a war to remove a monstrous tyrant, and for the even more egregious sin of embracing George W. Bush at the State of the Union in 2005, Democratic voters in Connecticut voted for a primary rival, Ned Lamont, in his stead. To give you a sense of the emotional capaciousness of the man, just a week after he had lost his primary, Joe gave his daughter Rebecca away in marriage to my very, very dear friend Jacob Wisse. Notwithstanding the difficult circumstances he found himself in, Joe glowed with joy the entire weekend, so devoted was he to Rebecca (also one of my closest friends) and so aware of the value of a marriage that has thrived and has since produced two beloved granddaughters.

“I am so thrilled today,” he said in his toast at the wedding, “that I would love to give you all an earmark.”

He told me—I had not spent any time talking to him until this moment—that he felt confident things would be all right. He had decided to run as an “independent Democrat” in the November election. And indeed, he beat Lamont by 10 points because the entirety of the state of Connecticut understood and wished to pay tribute to Joe’s great and surpassing value. He served out that term, retired after 28 years in the Senate, and moved to New York, where he worked as a lawyer and continued to provide sage counsel on the most important matters facing America and the Jewish people.

Read the whole thing.

HOW IT STARTED: Houston Mayoral Runoff: Why It Might Matter to the Rest of the Country.

Kevin Williamson recently wrote the article “Republicans Must Save the Cities,” in which he noted that no city larger than San Diego has a Republican mayor. Tonight, if you hear that Bill King won Houston’s runoff mayoral election, then we will see what Republican fiscal leadership in a major U.S. city can do today. Because in many ways, Houston is like other distressed U.S. cities.

Lost in all of the Houston economic powerhouse stories of growth and employment are the city of Houston’s horrible finances.

Houston has odd borders complete with about half a dozen pocket cities. A true city of Houston map looks like a nibbled-on slice of Swiss cheese. It is all too difficult to explain in most urban-analysis reports, so the economic powerhouse everyone reads about is actually the greater Harris County area. The growth, the jobs happen there.

Why do businesses and residents locate outside the city limits? Taxes and regulations — the things others often moved to “Houston” to get away from.

The county is run by a county commissioner and treasurer, all fiscal Republicans. (Full disclosure, I have worked for Orlando Sanchez, currently Harris County treasurer, as a campaign and research advisor many times since 2001.) But the city of Houston has been run by Democratic mayors for decades and is on the brink of bankruptcy. Like other U.S. cities in dire financial straights, we have unfunded public pensions, poor budgeting, and tax base flight.

—Leslie Loftis, PJ Media.com, December 12^th, 2015.

How it’s going: Houston’s Democratic mayor reveals the Texas city is BROKE after decades of overspending that’s left it with a $160 MILLION deficit and has stopped them from even being able to pay firefighters.

—The London Daily Mail, today.

Houston’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1982.

THIS IS KIND OF LIKE HOW JOURNALISTS RESPOND WHEN CRITICIZED: Sperm whales respond to orcas with diarrhea: “a big red poop slushy.”

DON SURBER: The greatest Trumpenfreude of all: They kicked President Trump off Twitter. That’s about to make him $3,600,000,000. “Oh how they danced on the night Trump was banned.”

JEFF GOLDSTEIN ON “The Jewish Problem.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

This contrast is a PR nightmare.

If the Biden campaign lets this side-by-side visual play out tomorrow, they are toast

We'll see what happens.

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 27, 2024

BOTH MOSTLY COME FROM CHINA, BUT ARE ADDRESSED VIA A WAR ON AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN CONSUMERS: Global Warming and Plastic Pollution Are Inextricably Trapped in a “Vicious Circle.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: District Hiring ‘Whiteness’ Superintendent to Root Out White Supremacy. “It seems that ‘Whiteness’ is a pressing problem for the district, which no doubt explains why there has been so much learning loss in the public schools over the past few years. Enrollment of White students has been dropping, with only 53% of the students being White, and as they have fled to other districts, the problem of White Supremacy has gotten worse, leading to horrible test scores. . . . It’s a troubling thing, to see how Whiteness is harming minority students, and the district is working hard to root it out. As the student body and staff become less White, Whiteness has become an increasing problem. No doubt testing is a White concept too, so perhaps eliminating measurement of student performance will help improve student success rates.”

It’s easy to mock this stuff. And you should. Because it’s stupid. And evil.

FOR BETTER SLEEP, EXERCISE: “Insomniacs looking to get more shut-eye could experience better sleep with consistent exercise, according to new research. The study, published Tuesday in the journal BMJ Open, found those who exercised regularly were 55% more likely to sleep a normal cycle of six to nine hours a night.”

RIP: Joseph Lieberman, senator and vice presidential nominee, dies at 82. “Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City. He was 82. The cause was complications from a fall, his family said in a statement.”

SATIRE… OR JUST A MATTER OF TIME?

Diddy Hired As New President Of Nickelodeon Studios https://t.co/vP6bl4GdqQ pic.twitter.com/RlACeytl3D

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 27, 2024

THE WINDS OF CHANGE ARE BLOWING: DC Shocker: Woman Acquitted of Murder, Other Charges After Self-Defense Claim.

THESE ARE THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER: Your Favorite Trashy Cocktail Is Now Incredibly Highbrow. “How bartenders are turning the Appletini, Jello Shot, Pickleback and Long Island Iced Tea into more elevated affairs.”

STAY DRY: Compact Travel Umbrella. #CommissionEarned

OH: Woman Who Wrote a Book on Grief After Husband Died Now Charged With His Murder.

THE PROPHECIES OF TITANIA MCGRATH:

Today is the fifth anniversary of the publication of Titania McGrath’s acclaimed book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice. I created this intersectional activist and slam poet in order to satirise this new intolerant and authoritarian identity-obsessed religion and its stranglehold on society. Having seen so many posh and entitled activists berating working-class straight white people for their privilege, I could think of no more appropriate reaction than mockery. Even Harry Windsor was at it. And he’s an actual prince.

Five years on, and I cannot decide whether I find it funny or depressing that so many of Titania’s ideas in that book ended up becoming reality. Nothing that Titania was ever able to suggest has not eventually been outdone by real-life activists. It is as though they were reading her book for inspiration.

For instance, in a chapter from Woke entitled “Towards an Intersectional Socialist Utopia”, Titania makes the following observation:

“Capitalism, after all, is a singularly male phenomenon. The ultimate symbol of capitalism, the skyscraper, is nothing more than a giant cock on the horizon, fucking the heavens.”

Sixteen months after the book was published, this article appeared in the Guardian:

Or what about this passage from a chapter in Woke called “White Death”? Here, Titania calls out Hellen Keller for her white privilege:

“Consider, if you will, the example of white American author Helen Keller (1880–1968). Even though she was left deaf and blind following an illness as a baby, she still managed to study for a degree, write twelve books and travel the world to give lectures. This kind of privilege is staggering.”

Compare this with an article that appeared in Time magazine over a year later, in which the author writes:

“However, to some Black disability rights activists, like Anita Cameron, Helen Keller is not radical at all, ‘just another, despite disabilities, privileged white person,’ and yet another example of history telling the story of privileged white Americans.”

Andrew Doyle, under his secret identity of Titania McGrath, is running straight into Muggeridge’s Law. Or as Tom Wolfe wrote:

While Malcolm Muggeridge was editor of Punch, it was announced that Khrushchev and Bulganin were coming to England. Muggeridge hit upon the idea of a mock itinerary, a lineup of the most ludicrous places the two paunchy, pear-shaped little Soviet leaders could possibly be paraded through during the solemn business of a state visit. Shortly before press time, half the feature had to be scrapped. It coincided exactly with the official itinerary, just released, prompting Muggeridge to observe: We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.

Wolfe wrote that in 1989; given that we’re living in the age of Idiocracy, the trend is accelerating exponentially.

THERE SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH OUR BLOODY BRIDGES TODAY: Three ships have hit bridges in different countries – in just three months. Should we be worried?

LOGISTICS: Baltimore Bridge Collapse Has Major Implications for Automotive Sector. “As a major shipping corridor for the United States, losing access means supply chain bottlenecks. It simultaneously makes for a good excuse whenever the transport of goods is delayed or companies begin pitching higher rates for oceanic freight — something we saw take place in the wake of the pandemic. The Port of Baltimore is responsible for moving all kinds of goods. But it’s most famous for passenger vehicles, semi trucks, and construction equipment. In fact, it’s typically the U.S. port that sees the largest number of cars and light trucks annually — at roughly 800,000 passenger vehicles per year.”

COOL. NOW DO MUSLIMS. Studio Mocks Christians to Promote Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Immaculate.’

GAME, SET, MATCH: Disney Surrenders Its Legal Fight Against Florida and DeSantis.

STUNT-CASTING: ‘Band of Brothers’ Actors Are Training to Parachute into Normandy for the 80th Anniversary of D-Day. “Led by Capt. Dale Dye — a decorated Marine Corps veteran who conducted the original boot camp; served as the show’s military