Abusive driver fees repealed, officially passed now.

By the way, the General Assembly has now officially passed a bill repealing those abusive driving fees.

SR-71 remembered fondly

Via Instapundit we have this post, itself a story by a Major Brian Shul, recounting the experience of flying the fastest of the fast movers: the SR-71 Blackbird. Here’s a taste:

After several agonizingly long seconds, we made the turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean. ‘You might want to pull it back,’ Walter suggested. It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. It was the fastest we would ever fly. I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily, but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar.

I was at Dulles International Airport the day they retired the SR-71 from active service and got a front-row seat to the 2 flyby’s that day. She was, and remains, a fearsome beauty and a testament to the men and women who worked on her. She was always way, way ahead. Even ahead of her time!