Shots Across No Man\u27s Land: A Response to Handgun Control, Inc.\u27s, Richard Aborn

In response to Richard Aborn\u27s article The Battle Over the Brady Bill and the Future of Gun Control Advocacy, Johnson argues that Aborn\u27s bad gun formula trivializes the Second Amendment, ignores issues vital to the gun control debate, and obfuscates what should ultimately need to be a choice between an armed citizenry or a disarmed one. Aborn\u27s article suggests no real changes and does not effectively advance the debate

Current Issues in Orbital Debris

During the past two decades, great strides have been made in the international community regarding orbital debris mitigation. The majority of space-faring nations have reached a consensus on an initial set of orbital debris mitigation measures. Implementation of and compliance with the IADC and UN space debris mitigation guidelines should remain a high priority. Improvements of the IADC and UN space debris mitigation guidelines should continue as technical consensus permits. The remediation of the near-Earth space environment will require a significant and long-term undertaking

‘Performative Criticism: Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit’

Art criticism is most often expressed as monologue rather than as dialogue, and is generally disseminated in printed text rather than in embodied performance. The Three Dialogues between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit, a series of debates on contemporary painting first published in 1949 in Paris, present a valuable opportunity to question, to counter, and to reframe this tradition. These dialogues highlight some of the ways in which criticism is already a performance, and their actual staging – undertaken in three different contexts in Dublin between 2010 and 2011 – foregrounds the extent to which art criticism can be an embodied, performative practice. The treatment of this text as a script for performance and its insertion into critical contexts raises methodological questions of value to the art historiographer: how can performance function as a tool of criticism, and how to account in art history for ‘events’ of criticism that may not be secured in print

Mission Success and Environmental Protection: Orbital Debris Considerations

The current U.S. National Space Policy specifically calls on U.S. Government entities "to follow the United States Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices, consistent with mission requirements and cost effectiveness, in the procurement and operation of spacecraft, launch services, and the operation of tests and experiments in space. Early assessment (pre-PDR) of orbital debris mitigation compliance is essential to minimize development impacts. Orbital debris mitigation practices today are the most effective means to protect the near-Earth space environment for future missions

A New Look at the GEO and Near-GEO Regimes: Operations, Disposals, and Debris

Since 1963 more than 900 spacecraft and more than 200 launch vehicle upper stages have been inserted into the vicinity of the geosynchronous regime. Equally important, more than 300 spacecraft have been maneuvered into disposal orbits at mission termination to alleviate unnecessary congestion in the finite GEO region. However, the number of GEO satellites continues to grow, and evidence exists of a substantial small debris population. In addition, the operational modes of an increasing number of GEO spacecraft differ from those of their predecessors of several decades ago, including more frequent utilization of inclined and eccentric geosynchronous orbits. Consequently, the nature of the GEO regime and its immediate surroundings is evolving from well-known classical characteristics. This paper takes a fresh look at the GEO satellite population and the near- and far-term environmental implications of the region, including the effects of national and international debris mitigation measures

Plenary Power and Constitutional Outcasts: Federal Power, Critical Race Theory, and the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments

Rights and power in modern American constitutionalism are conceptually interdependent: We have no way of thinking about constitutional rights independent of what powers it would be prudent or desirable for government to have. In an era where substantive boundaries on federal power seem ephemeral, this suggests that what we call rights may be primarily fair weather or illusory barriers to the exercise of power.From a majoritarian perspective, the shifting boundary between rights and powers, and the capacity of power to consume rights, may be unproblematic and even attractive. If the exercise of plenary power reflects majority will, then this exercise renders a balance between rights and powers that best reflects our current problems, ambitions, and fears. Indeed we might view the alternative of a more formalist structure, in which constitutional language imposes (at least until formally changed) solid and frustrating substantive boundaries on power, to be foolishly inflexible.But this majoritarian critique masks a core danger that is revealed when the issue is viewed from a minority perspective. From a minority perspective the view that conceptually unlimited federal power renders the balance between rights and power that best reflects our current needs is paradoxical at best. Critical race theorists have argued that America\u27s unfailingly majoritarian doctrinal, political, and social framework presents a multitude of dangers and problems that are principal barriers to racial reform. From these critiques, we can understand that dissolving power boundaries might coincidentally produce results beneficial to minority interests (and in the case of 1960s civil rights laws [*1557] vitally important results) but will not predictably yield the balance of rights and powers that minorities would consider prudent, necessary, or attractive. The dilemma and danger for minorities is that plenary power tethered merely by majoritarian preferences and necessities leaves minorities simply to gamble on the direction of future swings in the mood of the majority.This this Article 1) constructs the position that the conceptual interdependence of rights and powers in a plenary power environment (a) renders rights illusory, and (b) tethers power to majoritarian preferences and necessities 2) tests the assertion of a rights-corroding plenary power constitutionalism, by examining three provisions of the Bill of Rights that in the modern era have been disparaged, ignored, and essentially cast out of the Constitution - the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments, and 3) argues that the illusion of rights in plenary power constitutionalism can only be maintained convincingly where the right is grounded in values that are nominally independent of the principle of limited federal power. The perceived and relative absence of such independent values in the three outcast provisions, their more direct dependency on the principle of limited power and pervasive conflict with plenary power, explains their condition as outcasts. That condition, I contend, is evidence of a plenary power constitutionalism that can only feign to respect rights where it is possible to submerge their dependency on the principle of limited power