The “right wing echosphere” has been bouncing this around the last few years – I came close to repeating it but decided to check out if it was actually true – the claim is that Ms Jackson-Lee asked someone at JPL if the Pathfinder rover took any pictures of the flag on Mars put there by Neil Armstrong. I heard Rush Limbaugh repeat it a few days ago and others have now repeated it on many blogs – but two of the most obvious sources have removed the pages making the assertion (we wouldn’t want to print a retraction!)
A reminder – Pathfinder was the lander from the U.S. on Mars – it landed on July 4th, 1997 and took a nice picture of its landing site. It had a small onboard rover that was dispatched to do some tests to see if Mars might have the ingredients or evidence of life. This is not the more recent pair of rovers that did much more.
I have yet to find an actual quote. I did find a reference in National Review online in 2002 – this is the “source” quoted in Wikipedia:
http://old.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru072602.asp
five years after the fact that states that she asked the question during a subcommittee hearing 5 years earlier (presumabley 1997) but doesn’t have an actual quote. One word can make a huge difference – and if the “source” was merely another member recalling what they think she asked.
Here is a pretty unflattering profile about her from the Houston Press from 1997
http://www.houstonpress.com/1997-02-20/news/what-s-driving-miss-shelia/
(Is that an actual paid subscription newspaper or a right wing financed web site? :))
However that’s several months before the Pathfinder landed so it can’t be a source for the specific quote but gives a hint at her umm…. attitude.
She -was- put onto the SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS of the House Science Committee in 1997:
http://www.aip.org/fyi/1997/fyi97.043.htm
Chaired by Dana Rohrabacher (a pretty good candidate for being the “source”)
One version of the story says it was at a subcommittee hearing, another version says it was on a visit to JPL.
In 1997, the Hubble Space Telescope was repaired…. could she have asked if the Hubble telescope could see the flag on the moon? In fact, I remember someone asking exactly that question – Larry King comes to mind. The answer is that the focal range of Hubble is to look into deep space and is not useful for looking at nearby objects. It can see less detail than an inexpensive telescope since it is not designed to look at close objects.
2005 article (remember the quote was in 1997)
Looking at all of Thomas for 1997 and 1998, she is only twice speaking about NASA – once supporting opening up space to private business and strong support of the Space Station. She is from Houston, so supporting the space program would not be a big surprise.
Her B.A. degree is from Yale…. and she earned her law degree from University of Virginia law school (see: Thomas Jefferson)
Seriously, before you start spreading rumors about people – especially that a black congresswoman is stupid – do a tiny bit of fact checking.
[Yes, I know the quote about two Viet Nams]
mo·ron noun \ˈmȯr-ˌän\
Definition of MORON
1 usually offensive : a person affected with mild mental retardation
2: a very stupid person
Yale and UV Law guarantee liberalism – not education or intellect.
Ms. Jackson-Lee could also be a prime example of social promotions and affirmative action. She is a highly -credentialed ignoramus.
Can’t say anything negative about Ms. Jackson-Lee because I’ve never heard anything except the same rumor-quotes you referenced Art.
Don’t want to imitate the mo-rons who attack Sarah Palin with no proof.
Now Larry King is another matter.
He is a complete IDIOT. Just review his interview of the Levy kid where he is digging for dirt on Sarah knowing about her daughter and him sleeping together under her roof.
What a tool. Actually, calling him a tool insults tools everywhere.
So glad I don’t see him anymore when I channel surf.
I could be wrong about this because it’s been so long ago and to me just a passing inconsequential thing at the time, but I seem to remember actually seeing a video of that exchange. That there may be no video out there now wouldn’t surprise me. Nevertheless, whether or not the story is true, suspect, or false, she is exactly as rosegrower noted, a highly-credentialed ignoramus.
Every once in a while someone will lob out the idea…. “Hey, the country would run better if we just picked 435 random people and let them run the country”.
There are a lot of Shelia Jackson-Lees out there.
Reading the Houston paper account, and lived on the edge of Detroit for a while, and listen to “black” radio probably more than your “typical white person”, she seems to be operating in the Reverand Ike model. If you project confidence and power, people react to that.
She arrives at the Big House from Houston, and if she plays the insecure black woman asking for permission to speak, people will immediately treat her like a doormat, and that will last the rest of her career. Telling her aide to “quick, let’s write an amendent” did several things – it established that she’s the boss and would be the alpha female in her office. It tested the loyalty and competence of her new staff, and by word of mouth would tell others she wasn’t a person to be screwed with.
None of that overrides that she may actually be a moron :) but I think I understand her a little better than the author of that article.
I just heard Rush retell the story on the Best of Rush on the weekend. Rush stated that this exchange was recorded on video. Perhaps that’s what you remembered. I can find no actual evidence to back this claim up. One thing I’m sure of is it didn’t happen on the floor of the House.
“…Sheila Jackson-Lee, just to refresh your memory, […digression…] – this is the woman…. our little Mars rover was running around on the planet of Mars, and NASA is in Houston – it’s her district in Congress – and they brought her in as a matter of respect, and in an attempt to show everybody how smart she is, she asked NASA – while the cameras were rolling – if the Mars Rover would go over to where the astronauts had planted the flag. The problem was that nobody had been to Mars yet, and nobody has yet – the astronauts planted the flag on the moon. Shelia Jackson-Lee confused the Moon and Mars – my guess is she spends a lot of time on both…”
Let me craft a scenario that might have happened:
Presentation to Congress leaders on the Pathfinder mission:
Powerpoint presentation:… and the orbiter traveled 97.2 million miles and lasted 385 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes and 13 seconds. At launch, the vehicle weighed 132.5 tons, including 102 tons of fuel…. [time passes]… and the infrared spectrometer can measure radiation down to 3.2 nanometers.
Any questions?
Ms. Jackson-Lee: Yes – I was just wondering, are there any pictures of the flag we left on the moon? Some of my people think they’re fake because the flag is waving and there is no air on the moon.
Dana Rohrabacher (oh god, not the “We never went to the moon” conspiracy again)
Most of the copy/paste word for word echoes on this story describe it as
“Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who, on a visit to JPL, asked if Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted there in 1969 by Neil…”
JPL is located in California, not Houston. The Pathfinder was the lander – it used an airbag to soften the landing. The “rover” was a small thing named Sojourner – it weighed 23 pounds. Dana Rohrabacher has JPL and its 5,000 employees in his district.
What I find more disturbing is that Rush felt the necessity to explain to his audience what the problem was with the supposed question by Ms Jackson-Lee, in case they didn’t “get it”. Does he think his own audience isn’t bright enough to know that we haven’t sent men to Mars yet?
You mean the “Mission to Mars’ movie is fake???
Ahhh… this is reminiscent of Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Ga) wondering if Guam might tip over and sink if we station too many US servicemen in the island. And, that was caught on camera back in April 2010. Then there’s Alvin Greene… LOL!