Redoubt keeps erupting

For the past week or so, Redoubt, the volcano in Alaska, just keeps blowing its stack. Ash drifted into Anchorage yesterday.

The Anchorage Daily News has an amazing photo display including some great night time shots from Friday's eruption.

The volcano's continued eruptions have resulted in a whole new round of criticism of Governor Bobby Jindal:

Thanks to "something called volcano monitoring," to use the denigrating language of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, passenger jets did not fly into ash clouds when Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted earlier this week.

Volcanic ash creates conditions akin to flying into a sand blaster. A KLM flight lost power in all four engines after it flew into the cloud created by a 1989 eruption of Redoubt.

The plane dropped by more than two vertical miles before its crew could restart the engines and land in Anchorage. No wonder Alaska Airlines canceled 19 in-state flights.... after Redoubt sent an ash plume 60,000 feet into the sky.

The eruptions of Redoubt carry a lesson that Jindal did not learn back when he was a Rhodes Scholar: Don't sneer at science.

It's been a long-standing GOP talking point to sneer at science. That's deadly. Every time the volcano blows, it's a reminder of how dangerous Jindal and his GOP colleagues are.