"So, I understand that NASA is going with the private sector to send its astronauts to the ISS....

Wasn't Thiokol a private sector corporation? Didn't they manufacture the SRBs that caused the Challenger disaster?"

And they said don't launch when freezing.

There is no government manufacturing anything thing in America. Everything NASA does is assembling stuff from the private sector. The shuttle orbiter was built by Rockwell [Boeing]. Rockwell and other companies built everything for Apollo program. Even with the Soviets there was a few independent companies competing {and controlled by the soviet govt] which built their space vehicles.

Either way, I guess it's "put-up or shut-up" time for everyone advocating privatization, or COTS, or whatever.

Comments?"

The shuttle was planned to be canceled before Obama took office. There was and still is a question whether the shuttle program will actually end in 2010 as planned.
What is in the news [though most news reporters are still and probably always be rather clueless] is that the Constellation program was canceled by Obama. It was canceled because it was failing to meet it's goal- not because it didn't spend untold billions attempting. The question was whether to continue funding that particular disaster which had no hope of being on time.
Now, in rather short order the private sector is being called in to see if they do anything- this should have happened about 4 or 5 years ago. Fortuately, Constellation
disaster was somewhat predictable and SpaceX had already been developing it's rockets and dragon space capsule.