President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.

When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the "Do Nothing Congress" almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.

Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He's used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration.

The law does not define the difference between an executive order and a memorandum, but it does say that the president should publish in the Federal Register executive orders and other documents that "have general applicability and legal effect."

"Something that's in a presidential memorandum in one administration might be captured in an executive order in another," said Jim Hemphill, the special assistant to the director for the government's legal notice publication. "There's no guidance that says, 'Mr. President, here's what needs to be in an executive order.' "

He's already signed 33% more presidential memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He's also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt. In fact, no president has used them to this level since 1945, when Truman was at the height of the closing out a war that lasted from 1915 until 1945.

Obama has issued almost 400 total executive orders and memoranda and he has two years to go.

The New American Civil War

A Missouri bill prefiled for introduction in the Missouri State House for 2015 could effectively nullify federal executive orders signed into existence by the President.

House Bill 255 (HB255), by State Rep. Tim Remole (R-Excello), seeks to rebuke what is seen by many as federal lawlessness from the executive branch. The full text of the bill is as follows:

Any federal regulation or rule promulgated as a result of an executive order of the President of the United States repugnant of the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of Missouri shall be declared invalid in the state of Missouri. Such regulations and rules shall be considered null and void and of no effect.

It shall be the duty of the general assembly to adopt and enact any and all measures as may be necessary to prevent the enforcement of regulations and rules issued by a presidential executive order.

This measure would nullify in practice the effects of many presidential executive orders and memorandums. Pres. Obama has used these privileges to circumvent Congress and move his agenda forward without the proper checks and balances required by the Constitution. But, without state support and resources, federal programs often cannot be effectuated. As the National Governor’s Association noted in a 2013 statement, “states are partners with the federal government on most federal programs.”

“Partnerships rarely work when one side doesn’t participate,” said Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center. “By prohibiting any action that would give effect to such orders, the state of Missouri will defang their power in practice.”

Obama has already issued more of these commands than any other President in over six decades, as a USA Today report explains:

President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.

When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the “Do Nothing Congress” almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.

Obama’s executive orders and presidential memoranda have already been used to make policy on issues pertaining to firearms, immigration, energy and labor – with Congress offering little more than lip service as it persists.

Because Congress is so ineffectual in their role of checking the President’s power, measures such as HB255 are vitally necessary, and should be introduced in all states.

The state of Missouri now has the opportunity to lead on this important issue, and to become the potential standard bearer for resisting executive orders at the state leve

South Carolina Nullifies EO’s on Guns.

Senator Davis has filed SB 224 which is a Joint Resolution to Nullify Executive Orders infringing upon the second amendment, and the right to keep and bear arms. This Joint Resolution has been referred to the Senate Committee of Judiciary.

SB 224 states, “Any federal executive order restricting, abridging, or otherwise infringing upon the free exercise of a citizen’s second amendment right to keep and bear arms is

unconstitutional and shall not be enforced by any federal, state, or local law enforcement agency within South Carolina.”

Senator Davis referenced District of Columbia v. Heller. This Supreme Court held that, “the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.”

Also, Senator Davis held that Executive Orders are not a way to skirt Congress and enact laws. The purpose of executive orders are “to direct and manage the operation of the executive branch of the federal government.”

The president has no constitutional authority to use an executive order to write laws. Congress is the only entity granted power to make laws.

Article 1 Section 8 states, “Congress shall have Power… To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Congress has that power. Not the president.

Senator Davis continues in SB 224 that, “executive orders issued by the President may not exceed his constitutional authority or stand in violation of any legislation passed by Congress, and Congress retains the power to overturn executive orders.”

SB224, if passed, would declare that any unconstitutional exeecutive orders to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms in the State of South Carolina are null and void, and “shall not be enforced by any federal, state, or local law enforcement agency within South Carolina.”

The Second Amendment was not created to give the right to bear arms to the people, but it was created to limit the trespass of the federal government on its citizens.

Robert Natelson writes in The Original Constitution “The Second Amendment served purposes besides buttressing the natural right of self-defense and the reserved power of armed resistance. By guaranteeing continuation of the state militias, it strengthened state power in the state-federal balance…By protecting the militia, the Amendment promoted citizen involvement in government military affairs.”

The threats of banning certain types of firearms to ammo or accessories still infringes on the second amendment just as in the Heller case. Robert Natelson writes, “The purpose of the Second Amendment suggests that the word “arms” should be interpreted rather broadly to include a range of military and self defense weapons.”

Executive Orders can be Extreme and still Endure, Unenforced

Executive Order 44 was issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri during the 1838 Mormon War, which had been caused by friction between the Mormons and their neighbors, largely due to tensions resulting from the growing economic and electoral power of the Mormon community, and the Mormons' vocal opposition to slavery. [1][7] The war ended with the expulsion of almost all Mormons from the state of Missouri.[8][9] The Mormons had been given a county of their own to settle in after their expulsion from Jackson County in 1833, but the increasing influx of new Mormon converts moving to northwestern Missouri led them to begin settling in adjacent counties. This provoked the wrath of other settlers, who had operated under the assumption that the Mormons would remain confined to Caldwell County.[10]

On the fourth of July in 1838, Mormon leader Sidney Rigdon delivered an oration in Far West, the county seat of Caldwell County. While not wishing or intending to start any trouble with his non-Mormon neighbors, Rigdon wanted to make clear that the Mormons would meet any further attacks on them—such as had occurred in Jackson County during the summer and fall of 1833—with force:

“ We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ, to come on us no more forever. For from this hour, we will bear it no more, our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity. The man or the set of men, who attempts it, does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us: for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses, and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.—Remember it then all MEN.[11] ”

Far from settling tensions, Rigdon's oration had the opposite effect: it terrified and inflamed the residents of surrounding counties. By the Fall of that same year these tensions escalated into open conflict, culminating in the looting and burning of several Mormon farms and homes, the sacking and burning of Gallatin by Mormon "Danites", and the taking of Mormon hostages by a militia unit commanded by Cpt. Samuel Bogart, operating in northern Ray County (to the south of Caldwell). When Mormon militia from the town of Far West moved south to the militia camp on the Crooked River to rescue their co-religionists, the resulting battle aroused considerable terror throughout the western part of the state. Lurid rumors of a planned full-scale Mormon invasion of Missouri had run rampant throughout the summer, and these only increased as reports of this "Battle of Crooked River" reached the capital at Jefferson City, with spurious accounts of Mormons allegedly slaughtering Bogart's militia company, including those who had surrendered.[12] Further dispatches spoke of an impending Mormon attack on Richmond, county seat of Ray County, though in fact no such attack was ever

contemplated.[13] It was in this environment of fear and misinformation that Boggs chose to act.

Boggs issued Executive Order #44 to General John Clark, whom he had appointed to head up the state militia forces being assembled to reinstate citizens of Daviess County (north of Caldwell) who had been allegedly driven from their homes by renegade Mormons. Having heard lurid reports of alleged Mormon depredations on the Crooked River, Boggs directed Clark to change his mission to one of direct military operations against the Mormons themselves.[14][15][16]

The original handwritten "Extermination Order", issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs in October 1838.

Text of the OrderBoggs' Missouri Executive Order Number 44, read as follows:

“ Headquarters of the Militia, City of Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1838.

Gen. John B. Clark:

Sir: Since the order of this morning to you, directing you to cause four

”

hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese, Esq., of Ray county, and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids [sic], information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace--their outrages are beyond all description. If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may consider necessary. I have just issued orders to Maj. Gen. Willock, of Marion county, to raise five hundred men, and to march them to the northern part of Daviess, and there unite with Gen. Doniphan, of Clay, who has been ordered with five hundred men to proceed to the same point for the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the Mormons to the north. They have been directed to communicate with you by express, you can also communicate with them if you find it necessary. Instead therefore of proceeding as at first directed to reinstate the citizens of Daviess in their homes, you will proceed immediately to Richmond and then operate against the Mormons. Brig. Gen. Parks of Ray, has been ordered to have four hundred of his brigade in readiness to join you at Richmond. The whole force will be placed under your command.

I am very respectfully, yr obt st [your obedient servant],

L. W. Boggs, Commander-in-Chief.[17]

Aftermath and rescissionAlthough the Extermination Order technically became inoperative with an end to the state of war and the surrender of Mormon leaders at Far West on November 1, it continued to dignify the forced removal of the Mormons by unauthorized citizens and renegade militia units. The Mormons in Caldwell County had been forced, as part of their surrender agreement, to sign over all of their property to pay the expenses of the campaign against them; although this act was later held unlawful, [18] the Mormons were still forcibly ejected from their homes—often at gunpoint—and forced to leave Missouri with only what they could carry. Although Boggs belatedly ordered a militia unit under Colonel Sterling Price (later to achieve fame as a Confederate Civil War general) to northern Missouri to stop ongoing depredations against the Mormons, he refused to repeal Order #44.[19] The Missouri legislature deferred discussion of an appeal by Mormon leaders to rescind the decree, and nearly all Latter Day Saints—more than 10,000 altogether—had been driven from the state by the spring of 1839.

Boggs himself was excoriated in certain portions of the Missouri press, as well as those of neighboring states, for his action in issuing this order.[20] General David Atchison, a

prominent non-Mormon legislator and militia general from western Missouri who had refused to take part in operations against the Mormons, demanded that the Legislature formally state its opinion of Boggs' order, for "he would not live in any state, where such authority was given".[21] Although his proposal and similar ones by others went down to defeat, Boggs himself saw his once-promising political career destroyed as a result of the Mormon War (and especially due to his "extermination order"), to the point that by the time the next election came around, even his own party (the Democratic Party) was reluctant to be associated with him.[22] After surviving an assassination attempt in 1842, Boggs ultimately emigrated to California, where he died in relative obscurity in the Napa Valley in 1860.[23]

Boggs' extermination order, long unenforced and forgotten by nearly everyone outside the Latter Day Saint community, was formally rescinded by Governor Christopher S. Bond on June 25, 1976, 137 years after being signed. In late 1975, President Lyman F. Edwards of the Far West stake of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ, invited Bond to participate in the stake's annual conference as a good-will gesture for the United States Bicentennial.[24] As part of his address at that conference, Bond presented the following Executive Order:

“ WHEREAS, on October 27, 1838, the Governor of the State of Missouri, Lilburn W. Boggs, signed an order calling for the extermination or expulsion of Mormons from the State of Missouri; and

WHEREAS, Governor Boggs' order clearly contravened the rights to life, liberty, property and religious freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, as well as the Constitution of the State of Missouri; and

WHEREAS, in this bicentennial year as we reflect on our nation's heritage, the exercise of religious freedom is without question one of the basic tenets of our free democratic republic;

Now, THEREFORE, I, CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Governor of the State of Missouri, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the State of Missouri, do hereby order as follows:

Expressing on behalf of all Missourians our deep regret for the injustice and undue suffering which was caused by the 1838 order, I hereby rescind Executive Order Number 44, dated October 27, 1838, issued by Governor W. Boggs.

In witness I have hereunto set my hand and caused to be affixed the great seal of the State of Missouri, in the city of Jefferson, on this 25 day of June, 1976.

(Signed) Christopher S. Bond, Governor.[25]

The History of Nullification

Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional. The theory of nullification has never been legally upheld by federal courts.[1]

The theory of nullification is based on a view that the States formed the Union by an agreement (or "compact") among the States, and that as creators of the federal government, the States have the final authority to determine the limits of the power of that government. Under this, the compact theory, the States and not the federal courts are the ultimate interpreters of the extent of the federal government's power. Under this theory, the States therefore may reject, or nullify, federal laws that the States believe are beyond the federal government's constitutional powers. The related idea of interposition is a theory that a state has the right and the duty to "interpose" itself when the federal government enacts laws that the state believes to be unconstitutional. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison set forth the theories of nullification and interposition in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798.

Courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification.[2] The courts have decided that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law, and that under Article III of the Constitution, the federal judiciary has the final power to interpret the Constitution. Therefore, the power to make final decisions about the constitutionality of federal laws lies with the federal courts, not the states, and the states do not have the power to nullify federal laws.

Between 1798 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, several states threatened or attempted nullification of various federal laws. None of these efforts were legally upheld. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were rejected by the other states. The Supreme Court rejected nullification attempts in a series of decisions in the 19th century, including Ableman v. Booth, which rejected Wisconsin's attempt to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. The Civil War ended most nullification efforts.

The Constitution does not contain any clause expressly providing that the states have the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional.

Supporters of nullification have argued that the states' power of nullification is inherent in the nature of the federal system. They have argued that before the Constitution was ratified, the states essentially were separate nations. Under this theory, the Constitution is a contract, or "compact", among the states by which the states delegated certain powers to the federal government, while reserving all other powers to themselves. The states, as parties to the compact, retained the inherent right to judge compliance with the compact. According to supporters of nullification, if the states determine that the federal government has exceeded its delegated powers, the states may declare federal laws unconstitutional.[3] Nullification supporters argue that the power to declare federal

laws unconstitutional not only is inherent in the concept of state sovereignty, but also is one of the powers reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.[4]

This view of the Constitution has been rejected by the federal courts, which consistently have held that under the Constitution, the states do not have the power to nullify federal laws. The courts have rejected the compact theory, finding that the Constitution was not a contract among the states. Rather, the Constitution was established directly by the people, as stated in the preamble: "We the people of the United States. . . ."[5] The people made the federal government superior to the states in certain ways. Under the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, the Constitution and federal laws made in pursuance thereof are "the supreme law of the land . . . any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."[6] The courts have held that federal laws are therefore superior to state laws and cannot be negated by the states. Federal laws are valid and are controlling, so long as those laws were adopted in pursuance of—that is, consistent with—the Constitution. Determining whether a federal law is consistent with the Constitution requires interpretation of the law, which is inherently a judicial function. The federal judicial power granted by Article III of the Constitution gives the federal courts authority over all cases "arising under this Constitution [or] the laws of the United States."[7] The federal courts therefore have been given the power to determine whether federal laws are consistent with the Constitution, with the Supreme Court having final authority.[8]

Thus, the federal courts have held that under the Constitution, federal law is controlling over state law, and the final power to determine whether federal laws are unconstitutional has been delegated to the federal courts. The courts therefore have held that the states do not have the power to nullify federal law. [9]

But, what happens when the rule of law becomes the rule by law? What happens when laws violate the Constitution and the Supreme Court cannot or will not hear an argument to clarify their legal force? There is a process by which laws are brought before the Supreme Court. Justices are not involved in the review process. That is to say, the process for passing a law goes from the House to the Senate, to the president for signature.

The Federalist Papers do not assert that the states have the power to nullify federal law. On the contrary, they say that the power to declare laws unconstitutional concerning is delegated to federal courts, not the states.

Federalist No. 33 states that federal laws are supreme to state law, so long as they are within the federal government's delegated powers.[22]

Federalist No. 39 directly addresses the question of who is to decide whether the federal government has exceeded its delegated powers and has infringed on the states' reserved powers. It explains that under the Constitution, this issue is to be decided by the Supreme Court, not the states: "[The federal government's] jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects. It is true that in controversies relating to the boundary between the two jurisdictions, the tribunal which is ultimately to decide, is to

be established under the general [i.e. federal] government. . . . Some such tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the compact; and that it ought to be established under the general rather than under the local governments, or, to speak more properly, that it could be safely established under the first alone, is a position not likely to be combated."[23]

Federalist No. 44 discusses the role of the states in checking actions of Congress that exceed its delegated powers. According to Federalist No. 44, the role of the states is to "sound the alarm" regarding any unconstitutional exercise of power by Congress, and to assist in electing new representatives to Congress.[24] Federalist No. 44 does not imply that the states have the power to legally nullify federal law, although this would have been an appropriate context in which to mention it if such a power were thought to exist.

Federalist No. 78 says that the federal courts have the power "to pronounce legislative acts void, because contrary to the Constitution."[25]

Federalist No. 80 asserts that the final authority to interpret the Constitution and federal law lies in the federal courts, not the states, because of the need for uniformity. [26] Likewise, Federalist No. 22 says that the federal courts should interpret federal law due to the need for uniformity.[27]

Federalist No. 82 says that because of the need for uniformity and the federal government's need to effectively enforce its laws, the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to review decisions of state courts in cases arising under the Constitution or federal law.[28]

The Federalist papers therefore indicate that the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional lies in the federal courts, not in the states

Sometimes individuals are the plaintiff. Sometimes, they are companies, and sometimes it is a State that loses the original lawsuit. When and only when the law is challenged in court unsuccessfully, the case is appealed. If the appeal fails to defend the people, then it goes before the Supreme Court. The process can take many months if not years to be completed. The outcome cannot be predicted. Like any presentation, if it is done poorly the justices may throw it out or rule to support the law. They may succumb to political pressure. They may be threatened and also may become activist on their own by de facto writing new law in their interpretation of their argument.

The earliest assertion of the theories of nullification and interposition is found in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, which were a protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts. In these resolutions, authors Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that "the states" have the right to interpret the Constitution and can declare federal laws unconstitutional when the federal government exceeds its delegated powers. In modern times, we say that the Federal government or the Federal Agencies have overreached their authority. These resolutions are considered the foundational documents of the theories of nullification and interposition.

The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, written by Jefferson, asserted that the states formed the Constitution as a compact, delegating certain specified powers to the federal government and reserving all other powers to themselves. Each state, as a party to the compact, has a "right to judge for itself" the extent of the federal government's powers. When the federal government acts beyond the scope of its delegated powers, a state may determine that the federal government's "acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."[29] The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 called on the other states to join Kentucky "in declaring these acts void and of no force" and "in requesting their repeal at the next session of Congress."

The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 added the assertion that when a federal law is unconstitutional, the remedy is "nullification" of the law by "the several states." [30] The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 did not assert that Kentucky would unilaterally refuse to enforce, or prevent enforcement of, the Alien and Sedition Acts. Rather, these resolutions declared that Kentucky "will bow to the laws of the Union" but would continue "to oppose in a constitutional manner" the Alien and Sedition Acts. The resolutions stated that Kentucky was entering its "solemn protest" against those Acts. The author of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 is not known with certainty. [31]

The Virginia Resolutions of 1798, written by Madison, did not mention nullification. Rather, they introduced the idea of "interposition." The Virginia Resolutions asserted that when the federal government engages in "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise" of powers not granted by the Constitution, "the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties, appertaining to them."[32] The Virginia Resolutions did not explain what form this "interposition" might take. The Virginia Resolutions appealed to the other states for agreement and cooperation in opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions did not attempt to prohibit enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts within the borders of those states. Rather, these resolutions declared that the legislatures of these states viewed the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, called for the repeal of these Acts, and requested the support and cooperation of the other states.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were not accepted by any of the other states. Rather, ten states rejected the Resolutions, with seven states formally transmitting their rejections to Kentucky and Virginia[33] and three other states passing resolutions expressing disapproval.[34] At least six states responded to the Resolutions by taking the position that the constitutionality of acts of Congress is a question for the federal courts, not the state legislatures.

For example, Vermont's resolution stated: "That the General Assembly of the state of Vermont do highly disapprove of the resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia, as being unconstitutional in their nature, and dangerous in their tendency. It belongs not to

state legislatures to decide on the constitutionality of laws made by the general government; this power being exclusively vested in the judiciary courts of the Union." [35]

Virginia responded to the criticism of the other states by issuing the Report of 1800, written by Madison. The Report of 1800 affirmed and defended the Virginia Resolutions. The Report of 1800 also said that a declaration of unconstitutionality by the states would be only an expression of opinion designed to spur debate, rather than having the authoritative effect of a federal court decision.[36] During the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s, Madison denounced as unconstitutional the concept of nullification of federal law by a state.[37][38][39] Madison wrote, "But it follows, from no view of the subject, that a nullification of a law of the U. S. can as is now contended, belong rightfully to a single State, as one of the parties to the Constitution; the State not ceasing to avow its adherence to the Constitution. A plainer contradiction in terms, or a more fatal inlet to anarchy, cannot be imagined."

But anarchy refers to a society without a publicly enforced government. That is not what is being purported by any State, nor is it being publicized by any Constitutional advocate. Nullification of Executive Orders or Memoranda, written by some unelected and unaccountable agent and signed by the president, can and should be nullified by States, if those unilateral statements violate the State’s constitution, its laws, or infringe on its sovereignty or that of its citizens. That is to say, if you own a farm in Tennessee that grows sunflowers for seed, and some bureaucrat has an interest in a sunflower seed farm in Arkansas, and they draft a Memoranda that says the State of Tennessee is forbidden from growing sunflowers, and the president signs it (no one actually believes the president writes his own crap), the sovereign farmer has been put out of business. The State of Tennessee has an obligation to nullify that Memorandum. Failure to do so is a steep slope to a monarchy.

A monarchy is rule by one man. A monarchy is a form of government in which sovereignty is actually or nominally embodied in 1 or 2 individuals. When the monarch has no or few legal restraints in state and political matters, it is called an absolute monarchy and is a form of autocracy. Cases in which the monarch's discretion is formally limited (most common today) are called constitutional monarchies.

The Executive branch now has a black man in office. Although the people have gotten past that fact, twice, the neither the president, nor his ministers, have. I say ministers, rather than Secretaries, because the individuals that he appoints to the position of Secretary of the various agencies, departments, bureaus, and administrations tax, spend, seize property, and otherwise enforce regulations, memoranda, and executive orders with the force of law without any representation of the people in those organizations.

The infrastructure has taken 82 years to put in place, and about 20 years to put the monarchy process in place. It has merely been waiting for a person who would take advantage of those loopholes and seize the power of the office. The people’s representatives seem to be averse to taking action against the president for two

reasons. First, the president happens to be black, and any such action will be interpreted by the press as racist. Second, because the rightful lawmakers and the people sincerely believe that he only has 2 years left, so why risk the race war?

What those who choose not to take swift and powerful action fail to realize, is that this president has within his will the power to waive the 22nd Amendment. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

When the president issues an executive order rescinding the 22nd Amendment in order to provide continuity and to protect the American people and Mexican people from losing the transformation he alone was successful in making into law, the people will award him with the unlimited extension of his presidency.

Who would stop him? Congress? They have a lower approval rating that hemorrhoids. Besides, the IRS has already been systematically destroying every single Tea Party congressman and senator. The Supreme Court? Hardly. The military? Forget about that. Obama has removed more than 300 flag officers from their positions and has armed and funded the nation’s first domestic standing army that answers to no one but him. . I would say, that the presidency is his for the taking. Let’s hope he forgoes the first rule of power. That is, when you get the power in your hands, never let it go.

Obama Directs his IRS to Attack His Enemies

Last Friday, the American Center for Law and Justice filed its Second Amended Complaint against the United States, the IRS, and a legion of IRS officials.  This Complaint, in which the ACLJ represents 41 organizations in 22 states, presents perhaps the most complete story yet of the IRS conservative targeting scandal.

And it is an ugly story indeed.

What was sold to the American public as a low-level scandal perpetrated by a few rogue employees – a scandal stopped after senior officials became aware and asserted control – is now (to borrow a Watergate phrase) “no longer operative.”

Was Obama involved in the IRS scandal?  He was the one who identified the targets – in the most public manner possible.

Instead, we detail a long-running assault on the Tea Party, beginning shortly after its emergence in 2009, that is empowered, encouraged, and orchestrated not only by senior IRS officials in Washington, but also through outright targeting by the White House, Congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media.

In fact, the IRS was doing little more than focusing its attention exactly where the president of the United States told it to focus – on the groups the president himself identified as a “threat to democracy.”

Consider President Obama’s aggressive public statements – made just as we now know senior IRS officials were intentionally and aggressively scrutinizing conservative groups’ applications for tax exemption. 

On August 9, 2010 the president warned of “attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” during his weekly radio address.  The President said:  We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them . . . you don’t know if it’s a foreign controlled corporation. ... The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.”

On September 16, 2010, President Obama once again warned that some unidentified “foreign-controlled entity” could be providing “millions of dollars” for “attack ads.”  Less than one week later, he complained that “nobody knows” the identities of the individuals who support conservative groups.

On September 22, 2010, President Obama warned of groups opposing his policies “pos[ing] as non-for-profit social and welfare trade groups” and he claimed such groups were “guided by seasoned Republican political operatives” and potentially supported by some unidentified “foreign controlled entity.”

On October 14, 2010, President Obama called organizations with “benign sounding” names “a problem for democracy”; the next week he complained about individuals who “hide behind those front groups,” called such groups a “threat to our democracy,” and claimed such groups were engaged in “unsupervised” spending.

Next, consider the IRS’s actions following those statements.  Not only did the IRS continue its targeting, it issued broad questionnaires that made unconstitutionally-intrusive inquiries designed to get answers to exactly the questions President Obama posed.

Who are your donors?

What is the political activity of your family and associates?

What are the passwords for your websites?

After all, according to the president, you’re only afraid to answer these questions if “you’ve got something to hide.”

The demagoguery is breathtaking.  Not only does he raise the wholly-unsubstantiated possibility of shadowy “foreign” involvement in the Tea Party groups, a charge incredible

on its face, but he goes the extra mile of calling such groups, a “threat to our democracy.”

When the president of the United States declares these groups a “threat to our democracy” is it any surprise that his enthusiastic supporters (and donors) within the IRS responded with an unprecedented campaign of selective targeting, intimidation, and governmental intrusion?

One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels.

Was the president of the United States involved in the IRS scandal?  He was the one who identified the targets – in the most public manner possible.

A president singling out citizens groups for targeting and intrusive questioning merely because he dislikes their message and fears their political influence? 

Now that is a “threat to democracy.”

Christine O’Donnell attacked Twice by IRS

Adding to the long-running saga of IRS dealings with conservatives, former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell says the tax agency punished her mistakenly for the second time in five years by imposing an erroneous levy on her bank accounts.

Ms. O’Donnell told The Washington Times that she discovered the levy when she couldn’t access her checking account as she was preparing to visit relatives over Thanksgiving.

“The day before I was heading out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend, my bank told me the IRS had frozen my accounts. They didn’t give me a reason why, just a phone number to call,” Ms. O’Donnell said in an interview this week.

She said she called the Internal Revenue Service and was told the agency had concluded she owed $30,000 in taxes from a 2008 house transaction, which was long ago accounted for on her federal returns. She said she implored the agency to check her tax records and eventually was told the levy was generated in error and her accounts would be freed up

The IRS has been ordered to Attack

The Tea Party Patriots on Tuesday slammed the IRS after a House oversight panel released its report, saying that the agency moved to scrutinize conservative groups by Democrats calling for tighter regulation of nonprofits' political activities.

"There is no question that the IRS as an agency, and its leaders individually, directed and implemented a scheme to silence and demoralize tea party groups," said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Atlanta-based group. "We knew it was going on before Congress and the Treasury inspector general confirmed it.Editor's Note: PBS Doctor: You Can Boost Your Immunity – Protect Yourself Today "The truth is that it is still going on," Martin said. "The IRS still plans to defy the will of hundreds of thousands of Americans by its plot to reissue cumbersome regulations early next year that will likely be little different from the regulations they proposed a year ago to shut down citizen free speech."

Rep. Darrell Issa, in his final act as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released a report Tuesday saying that IRS officials were swayed by Democrats calling for stronger regulations on nonprofits that had become more involved in politics.

The 210-page report blamed senior IRS executives for failing to tell Congress what they knew about these efforts.

"Nearly five years after the IRS first began targeting conservative organizations for additional scrutiny due to their political beliefs, the agency has still not escaped the shadow of its misdeeds and abuse of power," the report said.

Issa's committee was among several on Capitol Hill investigating the IRS' scrutiny of tea party, conservative and religious groups. The Senate Finance Committee also is investigating, as well as the Justice Department.Special: Are you an AARP member? Please Read Immediately… The screening occurred when the groups applied for tax-exempt status. It generally involved lengthy delays and detailed requests for information.

The scrutiny started in 2010 and continued to just before the 2012 presidential election.

The Tea Party Patriots was among the groups targeted. Other groups included True the Vote, the Houston group that combats election fraud, and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a nonprofit political group advised by Republican strategist Karl Rove.

The IRS division that processed the applications was headed by Lois Lerner, who retired in September 2013 because of the scandal. She had been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to twice testify before Issa's committee.

According to Issa's report, investigators reviewed 1.3 million pages of documents and interviewed 52 officials.

Issa, a California Republican, is stepping down as chairman of the oversight panel because of term limits. He will be succeeded by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who will continue the investigation.

"We want the IRS and Treasury to hear us loud and clear: we are not going away," Martin said. "We will not be silenced, and we will continue to fight every effort they devise to target and intimidate our movement."

She said he hoped that the GOP-controlled Congress that takes office next month "will pass legislation to rein in the out-of-control IRS once and for all.

George Will, whom most consider an establishment Republican, spilled over the brim this week. Even he starting hinting that Barack Obama could be impeached over the IRS persecution of Tea Party groups, it’s significant.

“The Tea Party people have known about this and were working on this,” Will continued. “But they said – it was just some odd underlings out in Cincinnati who did this and there was no political motive whatever involved. Now the question is, how stupid do they think we are? Just imagine, Donna Brazile, if the George W. Bush administration had an IRS underling, he’s out in Cincinnati, of course, saying we’re going to target groups with the word ‘progressive’ in their title. We’d have all hell breaking loose.”

Mr. Will also noted that one of the items in the 1973 impeachment articles of then-President Richard Nixon, which ultimately led to his resignation, described the Nixon administration’s use of the power of income tax audits in a “discriminatory matter.”

“This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer here in Washington,” Will said. “’He has, through his subordinated and agents, endeavored…to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner,’ – Section 1, Article 2, the impeachment articles of Richard Nixon.

We will never have all the facts about the IRS politically targeting Tea Party groups. The corruption inside the nation’s most powerful Agency was crafted by Soviet spies more than 80 years ago. They know how to make evidence appear and disappear at will. The evidence, if it could be located, that Barack Obama ordered, or even knew about it and allowed the IRS to target his political enemies, he would certainly deserve to be impeached for it. So while it’s too early to say, Congress should certainly be aggressively investigating this matter and demanding to know how far up the chain of command this disgraceful abuse of the IRS to attack Obama’s political enemies went.

Of course, any such investigation will be seen to be racist and will be blocked and excoriated at every turn by the Democrat syndicated insurgency that will still have a direct line to the main stream media after the new Congress finds their way to the office chair.

The Oil Crash of 2014: The BRICS Smackdown

If you only paid attention to the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the US is going to get away from the collapse in oil prices scot free. According to popular belief, America is even going to be a net winner from cheaper oil prices, because they will act like a tax cut for US consumers. Or so we are told.

In reality, though, many of the jobs the US energy boom has created in the last few years are now at risk, and their loss could drag the economy into a recession.

The view that cheaper oil automatically boosts US GDP is overly simplistic. It assumes that US consumers will spend the money they save at the pump on US-made goods rather than imports. And it assumes consumers won’t save some of this windfall rather than spending it.

Those are shaky enough. But the story that cheap fuel for our cars is good for us is also based on an even more dangerous assumption: that the price of oil won’t fall far enough to wipe out the US shale sector, or at least seriously impact the volume of US oil production.

The nightmare for the US oil industry is that the only way that the market mechanism can eliminate the global oil glut—without a formal agreement between OPEC, Russia, and other producers to cut production—is if the price of oil falls below the “cash cost” of production, i.e., it reaches the price at which oil companies lose money on every single barrel they produce.

If oil doesn’t sink below the cash cost of production, then we’ll have more of what we’re seeing now. US shale producers, like oil companies the world over, are only going to continue to add to the global oil glut—now running at 2-4 million barrels per day—by keeping their existing wells going full tilt.

True, oil would have to fall even further if it’s going to rebalance the oil market by bankrupting the world’s most marginal producers. But that’s what’s bound to happen if the oversupply continues. And because North American shale producers have relatively high cash costs (in the $30 range), the Saudis could very well succeed in making a big portion of US and Canadian oil production disappear, if they are determined to.

In this scenario, the US is clearly headed for a recession, because the US owes nearly all the jobs that have been created in the last few years to the shale boom. All those related jobs in equipment, manufacturing, and transportation are also at stake. It’s no accident that all new jobs created since June 2009 have been in the five shale states, with Texas home to 40% of them.

Even if oil were to recover to $70, $1 trillion of global oil-sector capital expenditure—in fields representing up to 7.5 million bbl/d of production—would be at risk, according to Goldman Sachs. And that doesn’t even include the US shale sector!

Unless the price of oil miraculously recovers, tens of billions of dollars worth of oil- and gas-related capital expenditure in the US is going to dry up next year. While US oil and gas capex only represents about 1% of GDP, it still amounts to 10% of total US capex.

We’re not lost quite yet. Producers can hang on for a while, since there has been a lot of forward hedging at higher prices. But eventually hedges run out—and if the price of oil stays down sufficiently long, then the US is facing a massive amount of capital destruction in the energy industry.

There will be spillover into the financial arena, as well. Energy junk bonds may only account for 15% of the US junk bond market, or $200 billion, but the banks are also exposed to $300 billion in leveraged loans to the energy sector. Some of these lenders are local and regional banks, like Oklahoma-based BOK Financial, which has to be nervously eyeing the 19% of its portfolio that’s made up of energy loans.

If oil prices stay at $55 a barrel, a third of companies rated B or CCC may be unable to meet their obligations, according to Deutsche Bank. But that looks like a conservative estimate, considering that many North American shale oil fields don’t make money below $55. And fully 50% are uneconomic at $50.

So if oil falls to $40 a barrel, a cascading 2008-style financial collapse, at least in the junk bond market, is in the cards. No wonder the too-big-to-fail banks slipped a measure into the recently passed budget bill that put the US taxpayer back on the hook to insure any ill-advised derivatives trades!

We know what happened the last time a bubble in financial assets popped in the US. There was a banking crisis, a serious recession, and a big spike in unemployment. It’s hard to see why it should be different this time.

It’s a crying shame. The US has come so close to becoming energy independent. But it’s going to have to get its head around the idea that it could become a big oil importer

again. In the end, the US energy boom may add up to nothing more than an illusion dependent upon the artificially cheap debt environment created by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy.

Hackers could control your car by attacking safety features

Safety and security features can be exploited by hackers to steal information, extort money or even control vehicles, motoring experts have warned.

Modern cars are being fitted with internet connections and wireless networks to allow for music streaming, internet searches and news updates.

Through these, hackers can access and control a vehicle’s systems, including steering, braking and acceleration, according to experts.

Edmund King, president of the AA, told The Times : “You’re getting cars that are connected to the internet 24 hours a day. If cybercriminals targeted automobiles like they’re targeting other things we’d be in for a hard and fast ride.

“The more cars rely on technology, particularly remote technology, the more there is to get at.” Demonstrations have shown it is possible to access a car’s internal computer systems, known as the Controller Area Network (CAN), through a car radio or Bluetooth and wireless networks.

Researchers from Washington and California universities connected to a car’s CAN via laptop were able to unlock doors and windows, open the trunk, accelerate and brake, honk the horn, switch the headlights on and off, change the speedometer and fuel gauge and cause the car to swerve.

Mr. King said the most dangerous development was the possibility of criminals hacking into safety systems, including cruise control and braking.

The Auto-Hacking Technology Applied

I revealed on this program this year how Michael Hastings’ Mercedes was very likely hacked to travel at high speed, remotely control the power steering and brakes, as well as prevent Michael from shutting off the motor, changing gears, or opening the windows or doors. Michael hastings was a reporter who was very outspoken against the Drone Wars policy of Mr. Obama. Obama gave a major national security speech in which he defended the use of drone strikes as a key counterterrorism tool. Hastings said the speech marked a reversal in Obama's thinking.

"If you compare this speech to the speech he gave in Cairo, in 2009 or his Nobel Prize speech, you see almost a total rejection of the civil rights

tradition that President Obama supposedly came out of... and just an embrace of total militarism," Hastings said.

"That speech to me was essentially agreeing with President Bush and Vice President Cheney that we're in this neo-conservative paradigm, that we're at war with a jihadist threat that actually is not a nuisance but the most important threat we're facing today," Hastings continued.

The LA Times reported that he was working on a story that only partially broke a few days after his death about the love triangle scandal between General Patreus, Paula Broadwell, and Jill Kelly. The story resulted in the resignation of the general, who happened to be managing the most expensive war in history. This was false.

His widow reported that just days before his assassination, he had contacted Wikileaks to get advice on whistleblower legal council. He had told her that he had discovered a secret investigation on him by the FBI. The FBI denied investigating him. He emailed his friend from an embed assignment in Afghanistan, staff sergeant Joseph Biggs, saying he was in fact being investigated by the FBI. In fact, the subject line mentioned the FBI and the NSA. His recent book described Obama as the emperor with no clothes. Had he discovered a CIA and NSA project with Obama that would have demanded Obama’s resignation?

The evidence surrounding the targeting of Michael’s car is irrefutable, and does not square with the assertion by the press that his car exploded by simply ran into a tree without damaging it. When Michael’s car was finally struck by a missile or perhaps a drone, the motor was blown free of the car, killing Michael instantly and bringing the car to a rest next to a palm tree on North Highland blvd. Traffic cameras in the area recorded Michael’s 2013 Mercedes traveling at the speed limit of North Highland just before the explosion. Every single witness reported seeing or hearing the car exploding long BEFORE hitting the tree. Considering the main stream media insisted on reporting that he hit the tree driving in excess of 100 miles an hour, this smacks of a another government assassination of enemies of the president.

Some have said that approximately 5-8 pounds of C4 explosive was placed under the driver seat or in the dashboard. In looking at the damage to the hood of the car, it looks as though the car was struck by a small missile launched by a drone. The Obama kill team had already assassinated hundreds of people all over the world this way, many of them in moving cars. It would take a straight road like Highland Boulevard, and a steady speed to make the perfect target without any collateral damage. The driver must not be allowed to try to outrun the drone, which a 2013 Mercedes coup most certainly could have done.

I was perhaps the first automotive expert to propose the possibility that Mr. Hastings’ car was hacked and destroyed from above like one of Obama’s perfect drone strikes.

The DOT in fact has created this vulnerability through a busload of regulations demanding these systems be placed on all cars and trucks. Like all tampering with the natural technology of things, they create strange new vulnerabilities that make escape impossible. Although more people are killed by ingesting toothpicks and by falling down stairs than are killed while driving automobiles, it defies any other explanation as to why the regulations just keep on coming.

Because these new vulnerabilities have been created by the Agency government, ultimately there could be a terrorist-type threat to transport systems, including trains on collision courses, planes flaring 100 feet too late, and ships flooding ballasts while at sea.

The best way to address these threats is to allow auto maker, air traffic control, and GPS systems to return to systems that were not vulnerable to hacking.

The EU hopes to introduce its eCall directive by 2017, which will require all new vehicles to be fitted with a device that calls 999 and gives its location and collision details in the event of a crash. These will include the speed you were traveling, the percent of braking you were applying and for how long, and whether or not all occupants were wearing a seat belt. It is all engineered not to keep you safer, or to make the vehicle more efficient, but to allow the insurance companies to avoid paying a claim for injuries to someone involved in the crash or damage to a $40,000 car. It will save billions a year in what they call fraud.

NASA unveils its futuristic warp drive NASA scientist and Advanced Propulsion Team Lead Harold White has the kind of job thousands dream of and few achieve — he’s in charge of the space agency’s efforts to determine if a faster-than-light warp drive is actually possible and, if it is, how we might create one. Now, in conjunction with artist Mark Rademaker, White has unveiled a new starship model that illustrates how our consideration of the concept has evolved over the decades. Rademaker designed the first theoretical warp ship concept to consciously echo the Matt Jeffries design for the UEV-47; the first faster-than-light version of the Starship Enterprise. This new version of the ship is chunkier, more compact, and according to Harold White, a better match for what the mathematics of an Alcubierre warp drive currently predict.

[Image by Mark Rademaker. More images are   available on Flickr .]

And of course, she’s called the IXS Enterprise.

Have we found any proof a warp drive can exist?

While a pretty concept design is nice, it still isn’t clear if a warp drive can actually exist. NASA’s current experiments are an attempt to measure whether the warp bubble Alcubierre theorized could exist can exist in our universe . There’s an enormous gap between saying “Mathematically this doesn’t violate any of the known laws of physics,” and saying “We’ve detected an actual warp bubble in the real world.”

The inferometer experiment White oversees is designed to measure such an effect at nanoscale. Currently, data is inconclusive — the team notes that while a non-zero effect was observed, it’s possible that the difference was caused by external sources. More data, in other words, is necessary. Failure of the experiment wouldn’t automatically mean that warp bubbles can’t exist — it’s possible that we’re attempting to detect them in an ineffective way.

Nonetheless, the fact that we’re struggling to even discover if a warp bubble can form is evidence of how much work remains until we could plausibly tap the effect for space exploration. This new ship is as much a PR move as a demonstration of capability — but the implications of a warp bubble that allowed for even fractional light-speed travel are enormous. The ability to move at 1% the speed of light would put the entire Solar System within our reach; 0.1% light speed would make exploration and colonization of Mars or the Moon a much simpler problem.

In Harold White’s possible Alcubierre warp drive, the ring around the starship creates a “warp bubble” that allows for faster-than-light travel inside it.

One good piece of news is that early fears that a hypothetical warp drive could be a star system-annihilating event have been disproven by a better evaluation of the mathematics. New data suggests this is unlikely to be an issue, though vessels observing the warp drive ship in close proximity could still be at risk. Energy requirements have also come down sharply, from Alcubierre’s initial calculation that planetary-sized power sources would be required to more recent data that suggests we could build a ship with a power source the size of Voyager 2 — if we can create the necessary effect at the appropriate scale. [Read: The hunt for alien, star-encompassing Dyson Spheres begins.]

Apparently annoyed by the persistent boosters of several similar but distinct designs, the space agency finally agreed to test an American-made variant called the Cannae Drive. “Alright!” they said. “We’ll test your stupid drive that won’t work.” Except it did work. Seemingly in contravention of the law of conservation of momentum, the team confirmed that the device produces thrust by using electricity, and nothing else. Supporters call them microwave thrusters or quantum vacuum plasma thrusters (QVPT), while most others use the phrase “anomalous thrust device.”

First, the results of NASA’s experiment, since that’s all the team itself wants you to be talking about. Seemingly wanting to avoid unproductive controversy about the nature of existence, they’ve totally ignored the question of how the drive works in favour of simply reporting the data. With controls in place to avoid any confounding forces or variables, the NASA team recorded a reliable thrust between 30 and 50 micro-Newtons, less than a thousandth of the output of some relatively low-powered   ion thrusters in use today . Still, the ion thrusters require fuel to operate, and the original QVPT inventor claims the version NASA tested is flawed, leading them to collect far lower thrust readings than his original can provide.

This is an older version of the QVPT than the one NASA tested, though it may still produce more thrust

If confirmed, the practical upshot of this technology would be amazing. Solar panels could provide the electricity needed to keep the thruster working, meaning that propulsion would be low-thrust and long-term with virtually no associated cost. That would not only drastically reduce the cost of keeping satellites running and in orbit, but it could make interstellar travel much easier; Harold White, of warp drive fame, predicted that a beefed up version of the QVPT could reach Proxima Centauri in about 30 years (assuming the concept actually works at all).

Warp drives aren’t such a harebrained concept any more, so why should quantum drives be?

While NASA might not want to talk about it, though, for us it’s worth discussing just how this drive’s creators hypothesize the thruster works. By now, most people are aware that the laws of classical physics tend to break down at the quantum scale, and exploiting that fact can give you interesting little physical impossibilities like infinitely accelerating negative-mass photons. However, the effects of these quantum-scale impossibilities have always stayed at the quantum scale; sure one atom could theoretically phase-shift through another, but we still can’t run through walls.

The central insight here (assuming this isn’t all a big mistake) is that something called quantum vacuum fluctuations will occasionally spontaneously create particles all throughout the vacuum of space, and that these short-lived particles can be put to useful work.

Fetta, an independent inventor with a background in chemical engineering, explains that the drive is a “superconducting resonating cavity.” According to him, the cavity is designed with little wells along the bottom edge to trap electrons, so that when electromagnetic waves bounce around inside the cavity, more electrons push up on the top surface of the cavity than push down on the bottom. This imbalance, Fetta says, creates upward thrust.

In the paper, NASA seemed reluctant to dive into the drive’s mysterious physics. They wrote nothing to suggest how, exactly, the force was produced. In fact, the mysterious drive actually worked even when they modified it in such a way it shouldn’t have produced any thrust, suggesting the mechanics of the system are hazily understood. The one exception was a reference, in the paper’s abstract, to a possible interaction with the “quantum vacuum virtual plasma.”

David Hambling, writing for Wired.co.uk, explains what that might mean:

“This paper implies that the drive may work by pushing against the ghostly cloud of particles and anti-particles that are constantly popping into being and disappearing again in empty space.”

A similar “microwave thruster” drive, proposed by British engineer Roger Shawyer, was tested last year by a Chinese team. Those results were largely dismissed. NASA’s results, though, seem to lend some credence to the idea that supposedly impossible “unbalanced forces” can actually result in momentum.

The NASA team stresses that the drive needs to be tested more thoroughly—but if it really works, it could be a major breakthrough for deep-space exploration. Because a drive like this could be powered solely by solar energy, satellites and space stations could stay on course and in orbit without having to lug around so much propellant.

Hambling:

A working microwave thruster would radically cut the cost of satellites and space stations and extend their working life, drive deep-space missions, and take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months.

Thus, this thruster actually does use fuel — it just finds that fuel in other dimensions and uses that fuel as it goes. The thruster essentially turns these virtual particles into a plasma and expels them out the back of the ship, much like a conventional fuel source. If you look at the blue glow behind the Millennium Falcon, you get the idea what the quantum fuel, spontaneously appearing inside the thruster’s reaction area without even the need for collection or injection hardware might look like. All things considered, that’s more than a little exciting. To infinite and beyond.

Ion thrusters are another low-powered solution, applying weak but constant acceleration

The original design, called the   emDrive by creator Roger Shawyer, should get significantly more attention in the coming months, which ought to feel good given the long struggles he’s had with professional apathy and skepticism. As mentioned, the version tested by NASA is distinct from the emDrive, but still (they think) makes use of the quantum vacuum particles as the propellant. There are very preliminary plans to test a version of the drive in space, but such orbital work is expensive; now it might finally have the juice to warrant such a plan.

Life in the Back Yard…of Space

A NASA probe is about to get the first up-close look at a potentially habitable alien world.

In March 2015, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres is a

relatively warm and wet body that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Jovian moon Europa and the Saturn satellite Enceladus, both of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it, some researchers say.

"I don't think Ceres is less interesting in terms of astrobiology than other potentially habitable worlds," Jian-Yang Li, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson , Arizona, said Thursday (Dec. 18) during a talk here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Life as we know it requires three main ingredients , Li said: liquid water, an energy source and certain chemical building blocks (namely, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur).

The dwarf planet Ceres — which is about 590 miles (950 kilometers) wide — is thought to have a lot of water, based on its low overall density (2.09 grams per cubic centimeter; compared to 5.5 g/cubic cm for Earth). Ceres is likely a differentiated body with a rocky core and a mantle comprised of water ice, researchers say, and water-bearing minerals have been detected on its surface.

Indeed, water appears to make up about 40 percent of Ceres' volume, Li said.

"Ceres is actually the largest water reservoir in the inner solar system other than the Earth," he said. However, it's unclear at the moment how much, if any, of this water is liquid, he added.

As far as energy goes, Ceres has access to a decent amount via solar heating, since the dwarf planet lies just 2.8 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, Li said. (One AU is the distance between Earth and the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km). Europa and Enceladus are much farther away from our star — 5.2 and 9 AU, respectively. That is just a little further than Mars from us.

Both Europa and Enceladus possess stores of internal heat, which is generated by tidal forces. This heat keeps the ice-covered moons' subsurface oceans of liquid water from freezing up, and also drives the eruption of water-vapor plumes on Enceladus (and probably Europa as well; researchers announced last year that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted water vapor erupting from the Jupiter moon in December 2012).

Intriguingly, scientists announced the discovery of water-vapor emission from Ceres — which may also possess a subsurface ocean — earlier this year.

Ceres' plumes may or may not be evidence of internal heat, Li said. For example, they may result when water ice near Ceres' surface is heated by sunlight and warms enough to sublimate into space.

"Right now, we just don't know much about the outgassing on Ceres," Li said.

Dawn should help bring Ceres into much clearer focus when it reaches the dwarf planet this spring. The spacecraft, which orbited the huge asteroid Vesta from July 2011 through September 2012, will map Ceres' surface in detail and beam home a great deal of information about the body's geology and thermal conditions before the scheduled end of its prime mission in July 2015.

Ground-based instruments should also play a role in unveiling Ceres. For example, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA — a huge system of radio dishes in Chile — has the ability to probe deeper than Dawn, going into Ceres' subsurface and shedding more light on the dwarf planet's composition and thermal properties, Li said.

"This is highly complementary to the Dawn mission," he said

Dark-matter signal detected?It's possible that years from now, 2014 will be remembered as the year dark matter was first detected.

Researchers using data from ESA's XMM-Newton spacecraft reported finding a mysterious X-ray signal coming from both the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster. The signal doesn't correspond to any known matter, and the researchers say that one plausible explanation is dark matter.

Dark matter has never been directly detected by scientists (that remains true until the signal from XMM-Newton is confirmed as dark matter). It does not emit, reflect or absorb light (hence the name "dark" matter). But scientists estimate that dark matter makes up 80 percent of the matter in our universe, and it exerts a measureable gravitational force on regular matter like stars and galaxies.

The XMM-Newton results haven't garnered the kind of attention from the scientific community that one might expect for the discovery of the century. Researchers say there are still alternative explanations for the mysterious signal, so don’t get your hopes up yet.

Scientists don't know what dark matter is made of, but there are multiple candidate particles. The new results would indicate that dark matter is made of a particle called an axion. Other dark-matter searches are looking for particles called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

This year, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation approved funding for three next-generation dark-matter experiments, which will all be at least 10 times more sensitive than current detectors. The hope is that once these experiments are up and running, an answer to the dark-matter puzzle will be just around the corner. The only question now is whether we will use this discovery to cleanly power our planet, or to harness it as a weapon to destroy the enemies of the president.

First glimpse at the cosmic webThis year, scientists got a glimpse at one of the largest structures ever observed in our universe: a thread of the cosmic web, stretching 2 million light-years across the universe.

At very large scales, our universe may resemble a spider web, with long strings of gas stretched between galaxies, connecting them together. This cosmic web hypothesis goes well with theory, but scientists had not seen the intergalactic threads directly until this year.

Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the researchers studied the light from an intensely bright object called a quasar, which happened to be pointed at such an angle that it lit up the gas thread between two galaxy nodes. Quasars are powered by material surrounding supermassive black holes, and they shine brighter than all the stars in their host galaxy combined.

"The quasar is illuminating diffuse gas on scales well beyond any we've seen before, giving us the first picture of the extended gas between galaxies," J. Xavier Prochaska, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in January. "It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of the universe."

The results could also help scientists study the distribution of dark matter in the universe. The distribution of regular matter is believed to mirror that of dark matter, so where tendrils of gas are found, dark matter may lurk as well. Consider it the footprints left by the creator.