• NASA’s return to space : Karl Rove NASA’s return to space : Karl Rove Florida Today, Melbourne — July 10, 2005 For more than 2 1/2 years, the countdown clocks at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center have been dark. …
• NASA’s return to space : Karl Rove
NASA’s return to space : Karl Rove
Florida Today, Melbourne — July 10, 2005
For more than 2 1/2 years, the countdown clocks at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center have been dark. …
That is to finally change this week as NASA marches toward the scheduled liftoff of shuttle Discovery on the first mission since the Columbia disaster in 2003.
The stakes are enormous, and the world will be watching.
The mission must be flawless for NASA to regain its footing and get the nation’s human spaceflight program moving again, and show the aging shuttle fleet still has the legs to finish building the International Space Station.
But that is only part of the heavy burden on NASA’s shoulders.
The flight also must be successful for the agency to begin regaining the public and political support it will need to move forward on its daunting goal of returning astronauts to the moon and later sending an expedition to Mars.
A clean mission — and a problem-free end of the shuttle program in 2010 — will meet that test.
Anything less almost certainly won’t.
San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News — July 13, 2005
All of a sudden, the White House isn’t talking about Karl Rove and the leak that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. The “no comments” are not improving Rove’s image or the president’s. …
The investigation into the leak has challenged the media’s ability to protect anonymous sources. Cooper narrowly escaped going to jail for refusing to reveal his source to Fitzgerald; Time magazine turned over notes. New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail for refusing to reveal her source, which may or may not be Rove.
So maybe the press is a little testy, in addition to its usual tendency to pounce on glaring contradictions from the White House.
McClellan took a grilling in news conferences on Monday and again Tuesday. A sample exchange, after he had repeatedly invoked the criminal investigation as a reason for not commenting.
McClellan: “If you’ll let me finish . . .”
Reporter: “No, you’re not finishing — you’re not saying anything.”
McClellan’s credibility has been shredded. Consider this assertion Monday: “No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.”
Really? Has the president talked with Rove?
