Of course, it helps that it’s frozen over:

Adventurer completes first-ever climb up frozen Niagara Falls

Canadian climber Will Gadd has become the first person to ever climb frozen Niagara Falls.

More commonly associated with the daredevil pursuits of highwire walks or riding the powerful cascades in a barrel, Gadd, 47, made history when he took the opportunity of the area’s annual freeze to scale the 180-foot frozen cliffs next to Horseshoe Falls.

“I checked out the spot we were thinking of climbing in the summer,” Gadd told Redbull.com. “You’d be swept away by the torrential downpour then.”

Gadd may have claimed the glory of being first over the lip, but he didn’t climb alone. His partner — who achieved the same remarkable climb just hours later — was a fellow Canadian, 34-year-old Sarah Hueniken.

She was left huddling in an ice cave for several hours partway up the route, to avoid being hit with chunks of ice, National Geographic reports.

[…]

The vulnerable ice formations posed peculiar challenges to the experienced climbers. “The ice is formed in layers,” Gadd said. “That means there’s a layer of ice, then snow (with a lot of air), then another layer of ice. It’s unstable, for sure.”

Abolish it and hand its job back to the states.  By pretty much every measure, we were better off without them for our first 200 years:

Department of Education nearly fails ‘plain writing’ rules with ‘D’

The federal agency that suggests what American schools should teach and grades the performance of millions of students with ever-expanding federal standards barely passes Uncle Sam’s biggest demand: complying with rules to write in plain English.

A new study of how federal agencies write public documents gave the Department of Education an embarrassing grade of “D.” Even the Treasury Department, home to the Internal Revenue Service, got an “A.”

Education’s low grade was one of the highlights of the Center for Plain Language’s annual Federal Plain Language Report Card. It judges how well agencies are complying with the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

A top grade of “A” went to 19 of 22 agencies covered by the law. That puts Education’s “D” in the lowest percentile, so to speak. Only State and Interior did worse, with an “F.” However, they could actually be better, but they refused to work with the grading group.

In our present Idiocracy, the bad guys can’t even pull off a carjacking because they’re flummoxed by one of these:

Stick shift defeats carjackers in downtown Ocala | Ocala.com

Are you better off now than you were six years ago? Most aren’t. Have a look at this:

(cribbed from Theo Spark)

All that progress since the early ’60s? Nearly wiped out.

Protip: Farcebook apparently doesn’t like animated GIFs when you post them directly. If this still isn’t animated, click through to my blog to view.

On requiring voters to show ID:

Most of these laws are not preventing the overwhelming majority of folks who don’t vote from voting. Most people do have an ID. Most people do have a driver’s license. Most people can get to the polls. It may not be as convenient; it may be a little more difficult.

You’re not going to believe who said this. Was it the second coming of Bull Connor, as most Democrats would have you believe?

Nope. It was none other than Barack Hussein Obama.

<snark> I always told you he was a racist son of a bitch. </snark>

:-)