If a tree fell on Ashcroft...

...and no Americans were around to see it, would you still hear cheering?

Alphecca has mentioned it, and I’ve ranted about it a couple of times. I wish I could have put it as eloquently as this.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) now claims in a letter to Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that hobby rockets can be used to make "light anti-tank" weapons with a range of up to five miles. The best the United States military can do is only 3.1 miles with the LOSAT anti-tank missile system. How ridiculous is it to claim that a terrorist can cobble together anti-tank weapons superior to what is produced by Lockheed-Martin for the US Army? This absurd claim strongly suggests that Department of Justice and ATFE simply fabricated claims without any research or supporting analysis.

It’s clear that many Senators, Representatives and the media simply accepted the Department of Justice & ATFE claims at face value. This blind acceptance was dramatically illustrated by the Senator Schumer and Lautenberg press conference on July 29. During the press conference, they repeated the false claims, which were then repeated in the New York Times and various wire stories.

The Amateur Rocketry Society of America has been conducting research to show the truth about the false claims made by the Department of Justice and ATFE. Every claim made in their letter on the dangers of rocketry in America is provably false. The ARSA has since published reports on the technical feasibility of using hobby rockets as anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapons.

Or as one rocketeer put it: “I'm going to put in a resume to the DoD, as it's obvious I can do better the Thiokol, or Lockheed who are wasting millions of my tax dollars.”

(the above includes excerpts from numerous posts in the Rocket newsgroup)