Ilya Somin wonders when the Federation lost its freedom.

A candidate with his own presidential seal is prone to decide he also needs his own personal salute.

And, sure enough, US News & World Report recently found, Barack Obama’s gotten himself one of those, too.

But, maybe, just maybe, Obama needs to re-think these little personal touches. They provoke mockery, and worse, they prompt cynical people, like Gateway Pundit, to investigate possible sources of plagiarism.

video ad for Wireless DVD Projector ($2900, ouch!) & Wireless Webcam with light saber IP phone (only $400) in the form of (miniature) R2-D2 droids.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

An editorial from a 25th Century edition of National Review has mysteriously made its way to the desk of the editors of the current journal of opinion. It warns about the errors of “Pelosians” and “Picardians” in dealing with the Romulan threat.

The Romulans are arming Cardasia to the gills while we stand idly by watching the Bajorans get slaughtered. The Pelosians, always eager to protect tribbles wherever they happen to sprout up, turn a blind eye to the fate of actual sentient humanoids and allies. Based on the most dubious science, they are willing to place a speed limit on warp drive, but images of actual Bajorans stacked like cordwood move them not a nanometer. We have had our disagreements with Klingons and Ferengi, but we can look on with nothing but admiration as they fulfill their promises and contracts with the Bajorans while we spend our days here on Earth debating whether the entirely defunct Organian Peace Treaty applies to non-signatories of that irrelevant piece of parchment. It’s enough to make one declare “Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no sign of intelligent life here.”

Reuters reports that a small Iowa town has identified itself as the future birthplace of Star Trek Captain James T. Kirk.

A small Iowa town is trying to lure tourists by going where no town has gone before — forward 200 years in time to be the birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk from cult science fiction show “Star Trek.”

Welcome to Riverside, a once prosperous little farming town with a population of 928 that has fallen on hard times, wants to attract tourists and much needed money with a “Star Trek” museum to revive its largely lifeless, boarded-up main drag.

The town has no famous offspring like West Branch, 25 miles away, where former U.S. President Herbert Hoover was born in 1874, and can’t boast the “World’s Largest Strawberry,” a 15 feet high fiberglass fruit, like Strawberry Point, 100 miles to the north.

So former town councilor and self-declared “Trekkie” Steve Miller in 1985 persuaded the council to declare Riverside the future birthplace as Kirk, a main character of the “Star Trek” television series that began in 1966 and following films.

“Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wrote a book saying Kirk will be born in Iowa, but didn’t say where,” said Miller. ”So I thought ’why not here?”’

Kirk’s birthday was never officially established but the town lists it on a plaque as March 22, 2228. The show’s official Web site, however, says he was born on March 22, 2233. Canadian actor William Shatner who played the captain of the starship Enterprise was born in real-life on March 22.

Read the whole thing.

The Obama campaign is not responsible for this.

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SciFi Weekly reports:

Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci (sic), who are writing the 11th Star Trek movie, revealed a few key points about the top-secret script in an interview with MTV.com. Among the revelations: The movie will be titled, simply, Star Trek; it will take place aboard a starship; and they’re OK with Matt Damon playing Capt. James T. Kirk.

Not that the writers confirmed that Damon had been cast, as rumored. “I’m the hugest Matt Damon fan ever,” Kurtzman told the site. “If he became [Kirk], great.”

Captain Ed Morrissey (who confesses that his nickname was acquired as the result of an excessive fondness for Star Trek) links a couple of intriguing essays by Kelly L. Ross on:

The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism

and

Firefly, the anti-Trek

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